Chicken for Ten Thousand
Kim Hwang-je teleported to the safe house along with Seo Jun-seo.
The house was still as empty and barren as ever.
The only piece of furniture was the sofa.
It seemed Lost had prepared this place as some kind of bomb shelter.
“Hmm. Kinda chilly in here.”
Maybe he should have brought some clothes from his studio apartment.
No, the only thing worth taking from there was the framed photo of his parents.
Kim Hwang-je fiddled with the photograph he had tucked into the inner pocket of his Emperor’s Robes.
He sank deep into the hard sofa with a heavy thud.
All that filled his vision was the plain gray concrete wall.
It really was just like that wall.
A month ago, his life had been nothing but gray.
Hammer in hand, breaking down walls, hauling scrap, spreading cement—that was all he ever did.
“Work, drink, sleep. That was my whole life.”
After losing his family, he hadn’t wanted to do anything new.
So even when he fought with people, it was just the usual bickering with the construction uncles he worked with, nothing more.
Somehow, he had crossed an irreversible river with the country’s top chaebol family.
“I really went and did it…”
And that wasn’t all.
He had turned an entire hunter unit made up of chaebol heirs into his slaves.
As Kim Hwang-je sat there in a daze, Seo Jun-seo spoke up.
“Boss, is there anything uncomfortable for you?”
“No, nothing uncomfortable. It’s just strange. Even when you suddenly have a ridiculous amount of money in your pocket, you still feel anxious sometimes.”
“…The old saying goes that money should be spent in good places to ease that anxiety.”
“Really?”
Now that money was mentioned, something occurred to him.
Would that guy Rabanus manage the leaking funds properly now that he was back?
Dave wouldn’t try to kill Bahu again, right?
How should he spend money to make the anxiety go away?
A brilliant idea suddenly flashed through his mind.
The thing his father used to buy on hard days!
Only now did he understand his father’s heart.
The love of all people—chicken.
This was what it meant to spend money well!
“Do you have a delivery app?”
“An app, sir? Yes, I’ve already installed one just in case.”
Seo Jun-seo took out his phone.
A smile he couldn’t hide played at the corners of his lips.
“What kind would you like?”
“Dangppa Chicken, obviously!”
“As expected. Chicken really is love.”
Seo Jun-seo looked genuinely delighted.
It was fascinating to see him so happy, like a child.
“Boss, then how many should we order?”
Kim Hwang-je pulled out the exact same app that Seo Jun-seo was using.
“Jun-seo, starting now, call the chicken places on that app from the top down. I’ll start from the bottom.”
“Pardon?”
Seo Jun-seo tilted his head.
What exactly was he trying to order?
“Boss?”
“Tell them to prepare every single chicken they have. Money is no object. Have them fry it all.”
“Ah, surely not. Then the company dinner you mentioned earlier was…”
“Puhahahahahaha. That’s right. Let’s feed the entire royal castle.”
If he was going to buy chicken, he might as well do it in style, right?
Besides, these were the people he now had to feed and support like a father.
It was tough, but he shouldn’t complain too much.
Kim Hwang-je slapped his knee and stood up, looking out the window.
It was quite a bustling neighborhood, filled with white crosses and glowing neon signs.
The residents here probably had no idea there was a safe house in their midst.
“If we order from every chicken place in this area, we should be able to feed ten thousand people, right? I wonder how many we’ll need to order.”
Even in this world, there had been World Cups, baseball and volleyball matches against Japan, and chicken and beer joints were thriving.
There were rumors that they deep-fried the flesh of cockatrices—monsters that resembled chickens—but it would probably be fine.
Probably.
Seo Jun-seo answered.
“There was an ancestor who created data like this early on. It’s a chicken supply calculator that applies the Fibonacci sequence to chicken…”
Wait, excuse me?
What sequence?
“Here it is. Using this program will give us the appropriate amount. How many servings would you like to order?”
Seo Jun-seo opened the app on his phone.
Director Seo?
You’re not feeding the entire team nothing but chicken, are you?
Still, that level of preparedness—I like it.
Kim Hwang-je said,
“We’re feeding twelve thousand people. There won’t be any left over, so don’t worry.”
The royal castle’s population was only around ten thousand.
“I’ll calculate it.”
When Seo Jun-seo entered 12,000 into the calculator that analyzed the correlation between the Fibonacci sequence and chicken…
7,417 chickens required
“Seven thousand four hundred and seventeen chickens will be enough!”
“Ooooh!”
“A successful chicken shop aims to sell three thousand birds a month. That means an average of a hundred per day. So we only need to contact seventy-five shops.”
To Kim Hwang-je, the man looked like a living computer.
“Feeding ten thousand people with chicken is easier than I thought.”
Was this why every religion loved chickens?
Look at that supply volume—it couldn’t even be compared to cows or pigs.
“Hehehehe!”
Kim Hwang-je laughed like a villain and picked up the phone.
“Alright, let’s start calling.”
“Yes!”
As the two of them made calls, the shop owners’ reactions were all over the place.
“You want to shoot a commercial at night?”
“This isn’t a prank, right? No-shows get sued these days.”
“Wait, all of them? Every single one?”
“Is there a soccer match tonight? Or baseball?”
But no one could argue when money was being paid upfront.
“Oh my, thank you so much!”
“We’ll make it right away~!”
“Drinks are on the house, on the house!”
“Whoa, you really sent the money!”
In the end, they called a total of seventy-five shops.
After ending the last call, Seo Jun-seo said,
“They say it will take quite a while to prepare. It seems we’ll need to pick them up in four batches.”
“Then while we wait, go ahead and handle any work you need to do. I’ll take care of a few things myself.”
“Understood. Boss, it looks like we can head out in about an hour.”
Kim Hwang-je went upstairs.
He gently stroked Poyu, who had been sleeping on top of his head, and woke the little dragon.
“Uung?”
“Poyu. Did you sleep well? It’s time for dinner. This is your share.”
He’d have to eat chicken later too.
Kim Hwang-je handed Poyu a handful of gold coins.
Poyu had been drooping, thinking it hadn’t been able to help like Benedict.
“Hing… Ahjussi. Is it really okay to give this to me?”
“Yeah. Thanks to Poyu cheering me on from the side, I didn’t feel any pain and managed to do everything!”
When dealing with a child, one naturally started speaking like a child.
Since no one was watching, it was fine to act as cutesy as he wanted.
Of course, Seo Jun-seo on the first floor pretended not to hear the affectionate tone in Kim Hwang-je’s voice drifting down from above.
“Yeah! That’s right~ You did great this time too! If Poyu hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have done so well. Thank you for cheering me on! Aigoo! There there! Good job, our Poyu. Yeah, if you work hard, Ahjussi can work hard too. That’s right! Wow~ You’re already chewing five gold coins at once! You’ve grown so much~ Huh? Later you’ll eat an orc in one bite? No no~ Don’t eat that. Bad, bad. I’ll buy you a cow, a cow. For now, let’s start with chicken, okay? Promise?”
From Seo Jun-seo’s perspective, any further detailed explanation was unnecessary.
He simply had to accept it and move on. What else could he do?
As long as it wasn’t an imaginary friend, it was fine.
“Is Mr. Benedict doing okay?”
After playing with Poyu to his heart’s content, Kim Hwang-je asked.
Benedict, who had used too much power, still couldn’t even materialize his spirit form.
The necklace glowed faintly as only his voice came through.
“Aah… I am fine. The citizens sing praises every morning in Your Majesty’s castle. I believe I can recover by relying on that power.”
“Phew, that’s a relief.”
It was like plugging an industrial battery into 220 volts, but what could he do?
For now, he would leave him be and help him recover slowly.
“Up we go!”
Kim Hwang-je cleansed his body with a purification spell, then threw himself onto the bed.
He activated World Observation.
His heart was pounding.
Had the royal castle become a little more livable?
“Whoa… Is that really my castle?”
The first thing that caught his eye was the castle wall, which had become a literal cliff of reinforced concrete and rebar.
The royal steel mill was churning out sacred steel like taffy, and knights along with heavy machinery were pounding it deep into the ground.
Then they had poured special concrete all over it.
The cracked and broken castle wall now proudly stood like a concrete cliff.
“Wow, that actually worked. It looks ridiculously tough.”
It reminded him of the concrete barriers France had built during World War II to stop Nazi Germany.
Since it was built like a dam and could withstand bombings, it wasn’t something that could be smashed apart with weapons.
“Uhehe, uhahahahaha!”
Kim Hwang-je couldn’t help laughing from sheer delight.
Perfect.
At this level, even if they tried to break through the outer fortress, they wouldn’t even be able to touch the main gate!
“Ahjussi, you really worked hard.”
It was worth letting him spend money like water.
Park Jo-woon, who had been tamping down the ground in front of the wall, wiped the sweat from his forehead and spoke.
“Haha. The ultimate anti-monster defense tactic is trenches, machine guns, and barbed wire!”
“Whoa, that really is all barbed wire. You went all out.”
“Thanks to that, there’s barely any iron left in the royal castle. But isn’t this better?”
“Of course.”
Above the tetrahedrons densely packed across the plain in front of the castle wall, concertina wire had been generously laid out.
Iron posts had been driven in everywhere to firmly secure the wires.
“Man, those barbs…”
They resembled the seed pods of beggar’s ticks, a type of plant.
Once they hooked into flesh, they dug into the ground too, making it harder to move the more they caught.
“Even ogres won’t be able to break through with brute force. If we made something like this on Earth, it would destroy tank treads.”
The barbs on the wire were easily fifteen centimeters long, so that was no surprise.
And what about the trenches?
Of course, these trenches weren’t filled with rifle-carrying infantry.
Instead, they were packed with sharp stakes and small poison potion vials.
When a large monster fell in, it would be impaled and shatter the poison vials with its body, dying from the resulting poisoning.
After looking over the facilities, Kim Hwang-je said,
“Wow, Ahjussi, this is almost paranoid.”
“That’s because you nagged me so much.”
“Haha…”
He had indeed done that.
After first using the Emperor’s Iron Fist, Kim Hwang-je had been half out of his mind and hounded Park Jo-woon every single day.
“Besides, this is the grand construction project I’ve always dreamed of. Now that such a generous patron has appeared, I have to build to my heart’s content. See over there?”
“Did you draw stars on the ground?”
Around the royal castle, the basic foundations of hexagonal buildings shaped like stars had been marked out.
“That is the last fortress used in modern defense. It’s called a star fort. Later, if we can obtain firearms, we can properly build these forts and rain down enfilading fire with no blind spots on those monster bastards!”
Park Jo-woon looked genuinely happy.
He finally seemed like he was truly living again.
“But I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get machine guns.”
“Don’t worry, Ahjussi. I’ll get them for you someday.”
If he could sell oil properly, he could acquire petrochemical companies, and if he went even further, he could buy defense contractors too.
If things went well, he might be able to import massive quantities of firearms.
If possible, even mounted flamethrowers…
The more he thought about it, the more it all sounded like a defense game.
Since ‘life’ was truly his own, the more paranoid the defense, the better.
“Plus, that barbed wire is connected to the top of the wall.”
Kim Hwang-je observed.
Indeed, barbed wire ran along the castle wall as well, with long metal lines extending from its ends across the ramparts.
Those lines led to the mages’ watchtowers installed on the wall.
The area was also specially reinforced with concrete.
“If the mages send lightning spells through the barbed wire from there, it becomes an electric fence. It was Su-ah’s idea.”
“Oho…”
That actually sounded pretty useful.
“And Ahjussi, I sent you the titanium alloy you requested earlier. What are you going to use it for?”
“I’m planning to expand and reinforce the main gate a bit. I’ll strengthen the critical parts with titanium and make most of it from thick steel.”
“As long as you don’t destroy it, it’ll be fine. You know that, right? It’s a must.”
Making it bigger shouldn’t be a problem.
Lying on the bed, Kim Hwang-je glanced down at his lower body.
The light had almost completely faded.
It seemed his little one was returning from the far reaches of space.
“Hmm…”
Ever since it had ended up like that, he hadn’t been able to urinate even once in the bathroom.
At this point, he was starting to worry about where exactly his urine was going.
“Alright. Ahjussi, the wave is coming soon, so please finish up the final touches.”
“Got it! Leave it to me.”
Park Jo-woon returned to the construction of the watchtowers on the castle wall.
“Defense is all well and good, but…”
How were internal affairs going?
Kim Hwang-je scanned every corner of the royal castle.
First of all, the number of refugees walking around had increased compared to before.
They were still ragged and painfully thin, but at least they weren’t starving anymore.
Tattooed thugs who looked like gangsters were loitering in the back alleys,
but in brighter areas, quite a few merchants had appeared, and people mobilized for the wall construction could be seen buying various things with their wages.
“The New Deal project is really nice.”
As Kim Hwang-je continued observing the royal castle, he spotted Teacher Rabanus wearing a gray jacket over his red robe.
“Hmm? He’s not working inside the castle but doing on-site patrols?”
And then Rabanus and the royal guards smashed down the door of the guard headquarters and stormed inside.
“Hear the imperial decree!!”