A New Construction Project Worth 100 Billion Won
Kim Hwang-je sipped his wine while snacking on the packaged cheese laid out on the living room table.
Somewhere out there in that glittering night view was the one-room apartment where he had lived until just recently.
It felt like he was sitting atop a constellation of stars.
But this was reality, and he couldn’t simply get drunk. Kim Hwang-je put the wine away.
From what he could see through World Observation, Park Jo-woon had already passed out cold in one of the rooms inside the royal castle.
The king and Gemini, both pleasantly tipsy, were handing out weapons and armor to the soldiers.
The soldiers, too, looked happier than ever as they gripped their new armor, spears, and loaded arrows into their bows.
The entire castle wall was buzzing with energy.
Knights carried container boxes on their shoulders and stacked them in front of the ramparts.
The sight of them preparing for the coming wave was full of vigor.
In a situation like this, it should be fine to bring the old man over.
Kim Hwang-je summoned Park Jo-woon onto a bed adorned with lion-carved pillars at each corner and finished with crocodile leather.
“Goro-ro-ro-long—”
Park Jo-woon, who had fallen onto the bed, was snoring loudly. It seemed he had drunk quite a lot before passing out.
“Kyaha. This ahjussi snores like a dragon too. Goro-ro-ro-long— I wonder where the sound is coming from~”
Poyu bounced up and down on the snoring man’s belly.
Then the little dragon grabbed Park Jo-woon’s nostril and began an expedition titled ‘Where Does the Snoring Sound Come From?’
“Poyu, do you want to stay here and play with ahjussi?”
“Aning~”
At Kim Hwang-je’s words, Poyu spun around while still clutching the man’s nostril.
“Gkeung!”
The ahjussi let out a bizarre noise and rolled over.
Poyu shook its head, then fluttered up with a pororong and nestled back into Kim Hwang-je’s arms.
Kim Hwang-je left the room and headed up to the second-floor study.
When he sat down in the mahogany-paneled study, the full-wall glass window offered a panoramic view of the entire city.
It was the kind of space where one should swirl red wine in a glass, wear a sinister smile, and mock the insignificant creatures below.
That was when his phone rang.
It was Su-ah.
“Oppa, I’m on the first floor right now. Where should I go?”
Her voice was flushed with excitement.
“Yeah, uh, tell the staff to send you up to the 130th-floor suite.”
“The suite?”
She swallowed hard.
“Got it.”
Her tone was grave.
Did she seriously believe she had been kidnapped by that butler earlier?
The butler’s face had certainly been intimidating enough to scare off gangsters with sheer presence,
but when they parted ways, he had been beaming like a grandfather looking at his grandchild.
It was all very strange.
Soon after Su-ah arrived upstairs, Kim Hwang-je went out to greet her. The staff member bowed politely and disappeared.
“Whew. I guess I don’t have to worry after all.”
Su-ah let out a huge sigh of relief.
There was no one else in the suite besides Kim Hwang-je.
And Park Jo-woon’s snoring was loud enough to echo through the walls.
For fathers who loved to drink, confirming their survival often didn’t require words.
“Can I have some water?”
“Sure, the kitchen’s this way.”
Su-ah fanned her flushed face with her hand to cool down as she headed to the kitchen.
Then her eyes widened into perfect circles.
A marble floor and countertops, a microwave oven large enough to fit an entire pig, and an induction stove of absurd proportions—if there were a max-level kitchen in a game, this would surely be it.
Su-ah’s eyes sparkled brightly.
“Whoa… Oppa, have you eaten dinner yet?”
“Looks like your cooking soul is burning again, huh?”
Kim Hwang-je opened the refrigerator.
“Sorry, but the state of things is like this.”
“Oh my. This is actually perfect.”
“Huh?”
He had assumed it would be completely empty, but it was the opposite.
In a luxury hotel like this, the refrigerator was naturally restocked with fresh ingredients every day.
After all, this place was essentially a safe house for state guests. They couldn’t afford to let the food supply be a concern.
“I was really scared when I suddenly had to come up to Seoul. But it’s nice that we can have a meal together after so long. You’ll explain everything while we eat, right?”
Su-ah said as she tied on an apron.
“Yeah, I’ll go wake up the old man and bring him over.”
Kim Hwang-je went to Park Jo-woon and used World Observation to find the priests.
Among the priests on the castle wall, there was one who possessed the Status Abnormality Removal spell.
But that priest demanded a full one million won.
“Ugh…”
That was the price of three game consoles.
He felt like his sense of money was growing duller by the day. Still, Kim Hwang-je paid the one million won.
Soon, Park Jo-woon’s eyes snapped open wide as he sat up.
“Huh? I was in the middle of an otherworld grand expedition?”
He looked up at Kim Hwang-je with a still-sleepy expression.
As his mind gradually cleared, he took in the dazzling interior decor and nodded.
“Ah, we’re still in the royal castle, Emperor. Did you come to this side of the world too?”
“No. Ahjussi, Su-ah is cooking outside. Come out and see.”
“Ah, so it really was a dream. Too bad, it was nice while it lasted.”
Kim Hwang-je stepped out the door first.
Park Jo-woon followed behind him.
In that short time, Su-ah had skillfully used eggs, bean sprouts from the fridge, and the dried pollack from the pantry to make a pot of bean sprout hangover soup.
“Dad, are you feeling okay? Any hangover?”
“Yeah, I’m fine… Wait, but… Su-ah. When did you get here? How much time has passed?”
“Not that much. About half a day?”
“Half a day! Oh no, I need to call the site…!”
“Don’t worry. I already handled everything related to the construction site through Lost.”
Kim Hwang-je said.
Since Su-ah couldn’t find a trivet, she used one of the provided fashion magazines as a stand and set the pot on it.
She ladled a bowl for Park Jo-woon, then looked at Kim Hwang-je.
“Tell me. What happened?”
“A criminal organization tried to use ahjussi as a hostage to drag me down.”
It was the kind of news that would make an ordinary person’s heart pound violently.
But Su-ah continued serving the pollack soup into Kim Hwang-je’s bowl without pausing.
“You’re not surprised.”
“I am surprised. I just tend to get calmer in situations like this.”
It had always been that way.
If one were to rank people by composure, cool-headedness, and intelligence, Su-ah would be second to none.
If only that accident hadn’t happened on the day of the college entrance exam, she could have aced it and entered a prestigious university.
“And since we’re all here together, I assume you stopped them.”
“Yeah, I knew in advance. I moved ahjussi to another location and blocked the ones who attacked.”
“You killed them for sure, right?”
“Su-ah…”
Park Jo-woon paused mid-bite of his soup and stared at his daughter.
“You have to stamp out the embers to eliminate any future threats. Right?”
Su-ah, who had been sickly since childhood, had always lived with a blurred line between life and death.
It was a disease even doctors couldn’t identify. Though her body was weak, her mind was incredibly sharp.
“That’s right.”
Kim Hwang-je replied.
Through World Observation, it is confirmed that the enemies are alive but in no condition to be considered living. The Labor Correction will, sooner or later, break their spirits completely and turn them into loyal servants.
Since neither of them would be able to return to their previous lives, it was fair to say they were as good as dead.
“…Your meddling has decreased a bit. That’s a relief. I was worried you might start talking about showing mercy to enemies after awakening.”
Su-ah breathed a sigh of relief.
“But there may be additional attacks. That’s why I called both of you here.”
Park Jo-woon looked around the suite.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t live like this. It’s not right to live by relying on others one-sidedly. Just looking at this place, it must cost a fortune.”
One-sided reliance?
That was far from the truth.
This was a thoroughly calculated transaction.
“The cost of staying at this hotel is part of the defense budget. It’s an expense I’d have to pay even to protect myself alone.”
During a Wave, the place might become neutralized, so Kim Hwang-je had to prepare alternatives.
This was one of the good things about spending money—it allowed him to instantly purchase high-level technology and expertise.
“Ahjussi. Remember what you always said when you were drunk?”
“You mean rebuilding the construction company?”
“I’ll help you with that. Please build buildings for me.”
Park Jo-woon’s eyes immediately lit up.
He seemed to understand what was being asked, but his gaze suggested he wanted to confirm it one more time.
“Is it the place I’m thinking of? The one we go to by dump truck?”
“That’s right. It’s not a dream. It’s reality.”
Park Jo-woon’s heart began to pound wildly.
“That castle must be protected at all costs.”
“It really was a beautiful place. The people were kind too… And if my guess is correct… that must be inside a Gate.”
Kim Hwang-je nodded in agreement.
A Gate was a place where only qualified hunters could enter to hunt.
Civilians had no way of knowing what kind of world lay inside.
So he was saying they had to go into the even more dangerous interior of a Gate because their lives were at risk? Could he really accept this?
To be precise, it wasn’t inside a Gate but inside Kim Hwang-je’s own body kingdom, but he couldn’t explain all of that.
Before the man could say anything else, Kim Hwang-je drove the point home.
“Initial construction funds: one hundred billion won.”
Kim Hwang-je’s words struck Park Jo-woon’s eardrums like a hammer.
An arctic silence, cold as glacial ice, descended over the tea table.
But within that silence, the boiling vitality of life finally erupted in a roar of “one hundred billion!”
“One hundred billion!”
“Your monthly salary will be twenty million won. I’ll also provide incentives based on construction progress, and of course, bonuses as well.”
Kim Hwang-je continued speaking to Park Jo-woon.
“However, you won’t be able to take any time off for a while. And you must keep everything absolutely secret. It’s not because I’m a bad person. Until the danger passes, I’d like you to stay and reside in that castle.”
Both Kim Hwang-je and Park Jo-woon were in danger.
They had to prevent any information about the castle from leaking out, and the construction needed to proceed as quickly as possible.
Just teaching the workers there how to operate heavy machinery would likely take a full month.
“The investment will increase exponentially. That place is an extremely fierce battlefield, and I will use every means at my disposal to protect it.”
“Wait! How can a kid who’s only been a hunter for two days get his hands on that kind of money?”
But Park Jo-woon soon seemed to realize something and slapped the table.
“I see! This is…! This isn’t an ordinary project. The government has finally…!”
“The government?”
Where did the government suddenly come from?
“Yes, it must be an incredibly massive secret project… right? Can we make Korea a superpower too? I’ve seen the rumors all over the internet—the Monster Security Agency scouted you! This project must be one of theirs too.”
The ahjussi’s eyes were misty.
What the hell is this…
There had once been a trend of comics about establishing colonies beyond the Gates to revive Korea.
It seemed he had mistaken this construction project for something straight out of one of those old popular comics.
Kim Hwang-je said,
“It’s not that.”
“Understood! I’ll keep the secret no matter what!”
Kim Hwang-je gave up on trying to persuade him further.
Instead, he decided to talk more about the work.
“Not only that, we need to handle all kinds of miscellaneous construction inside the royal castle. The floors don’t even have tiles laid down yet.”
Through World Observation, the interior of the royal castle was literally a medieval nation.
The noble residential areas had decent tiles, but the commoners’ living quarters had none.
To make matters worse, the slum areas were in the worst condition.
If an epidemic broke out among the people gathered in the lowlands where wastewater collected, the kingdom would collapse from within.
Once internal affairs collapsed, no amount of military power could save the nation.
“We need to increase the workload as much as possible. Don’t worry about the budget. I’d like you to expand the projects with the mindset of employing every single person in the royal castle.”
“It’s a New Deal!”
“Pardon?”
“The New Deal! The government decided to use that method. Good. So I just need to build castle walls like the Hoover Dam, right?”
“Wow, ahjussi, your mindset matches perfectly.”
“That’s right! That’s exactly the kind of massive construction project that sets a man’s heart on fire!”
But then he glanced at his daughter for a moment.
Even if the annual salary exceeded two hundred million won, could he really send her to such a dangerous place?
“Go ahead, Father. It’s been your lifelong dream.”
“Yeah, as expected of my daughter. You really are like the goddess of justice, aren’t you?”
With this money, he could save up enough for his daughter’s wedding fund,
and since they could live in a place like this, there was nothing to worry about.
And that rascal Kim Hwang-je wasn’t exactly an untrustworthy guy.
In the end, he nodded.
“Alright. Let’s get to work. Where should we start?”
Kim Hwang-je took out a sheet of paper.
“Please write down everything needed for the construction. However, no people. Whether it’s heavy machinery or anything else, you’ll have to train the workers there from scratch.”
Good. With this, the simple tasks were complete.
The day when he would train the local kids to become heavy machinery operators was drawing near.
Kim Hwang-je checked the time floating above World Observation.
He rose from his seat.
“Ah, I’d like to talk more, but there’s no time. I have to head up now. Ahjussi, feel free to use the lower floors as you like. You can order anything listed in the catalog. I’ll pay for everything.”
Room service breakfast miso soup here cost forty thousand won, but at this point, that amount didn’t even faze him.
“However, you must never come up to the upper floors. Especially tonight— no matter what sounds you hear, do not come up!”
The Wave was coming!