Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Episode 14
Because of that.
When Lee Mu-seon ended the broadcast and started preparing for the day's classes—he did run a martial arts school, after all—it was only natural for people to come looking for him from every direction.
"Stop pushing! Do you know who I am!?"
"Team Leader Kim. Push these people back."
"You think being a major corporation gives you the right to play dirty?!"
There were major corporations called Korea's top ten companies, including Ungnyeok and Yuseong.
They were all lumped together as the top ten companies, but in reality there was an enormous gap between the top four and the remaining six.
So as a joke, people sometimes took four out of the top ten and called them the Four Heavenly Kings.
Ungnyeok. Yuseong. DS. Gyurim.
These were the Four Heavenly Kings!
And now, outside the entrance to Lee Mu-seon's martial arts school, people from all four of those giants and all sorts of small and mid-sized companies had gathered.
They were there to sign contracts with an awakened person.
"I finish my broadcast and come out, and it's total chaos...."
Did he have to deal with all those people?
Then, out of nowhere, he remembered his former life.
"Hmm. It can't be helped."
He hadn't wanted to do this, but the time had come to bring out the Martial God of his former life.
* * *
Park Pil-gyu, the HR team leader at DS, couldn't help looking dumbfounded.
What in the world... was this supposed to mean?
"Are you saying that Awakened Lee Mu-seon has no intention of signing a contract unless these conditions are met?"
"That's right."
This was Lee Mu-seon's martial arts school.
Of the people sent by each company, only those with real decision-making authority had come upstairs.
All ten major companies were represented, along with every other company considered reasonably large and stable.
Thirty-two people in total.
And all of them were staring blankly at what was written on the portable whiteboard.
1. Commission 0%
2. Signing bonus 10,000,000 DP
Only two items were written there.
A signing bonus of ten million DP was understandable.
For a super rookie with incredible abilities, a signing bonus around that amount was plausible.
Converted to Korean money, it was about 140 billion won at current rates.
It wasn't an amount they couldn't pay.
For someone with that much future potential.
But a 0% commission was a different story.
Companies operated for profit, so wasn't a 0% commission basically telling them not to make any money off the awakened at all!
Of course, there were occasionally awakened who signed contracts at a 0% commission.
Most of those contracts, however, were made only for special strategic reasons.
In that case.
Was Lee Mu-seon truly worth a 0% commission? And on top of that, they had to pay 140 billion won as a signing bonus?
A signing bonus was money handed over outright. It could not be recovered, which made the cost all the more painful.
This was insane.
Even if he was the first SSS-grade prospect to appear in ages, this was too much!
So everyone just stood there with their mouths hanging open, staring.
"Th-those conditions make it difficult for us to sign a contract...."
Park Pil-gyu stammered.
"Well, I think there will be companies willing to sign even under these conditions. Especially in America, or even that country over there where Dubai is. I'd be fine with those places too."
America!
Everyone broke into a cold sweat at those words.
That statement openly declaring he would go abroad!
But.
He had every reason to.
When people thought of the richest country in the world, they thought of America. The financial might of Middle Eastern states, backed by so-called oil money, was famous as well.
In fact, Korea had seen plenty of serious brain drain overseas.
This wasn't a problem unique to Korea.
Countries like Japan also suffered from serious brain drain, and that increased the danger of the Dimensional Tower.
That was because every country had a required number of Dimensional Tower clears proportional to its population.
If that number of clears couldn't be met....
A catastrophic tragedy would occur.
Such tragedies had already occurred several times.
In North Korea, situated in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and in Angola, Cabo Verde, Eritrea, and Guinea-Bissau on the African continent.
Tragedies had occurred.
For that reason, every country was desperate to keep its awakened people at home.
Recently, some governments had even introduced taxpayer-funded incentive programs offering awakened people large payments to keep them in the country.
The benefits each country provided to awakened varied wildly.
The United States offered the best benefits of all.
Korea was also fairly generous, but honestly, it couldn't compare to the economic powerhouses.
Even so, one of the reasons Korea had recently succeeded in keeping awakened was its tax exemption benefits.
An awakened person could become tax-exempt simply by entering the Tower ten times a year.
And besides, didn't everyone say it?
That Korea was comfortable to live in if you had money.
Once awakened people accumulated enough wealth, many became used to that convenience and simply chose to keep living in Korea.
They'll pay four times as much?
But... in that neighborhood, you could get shot just walking down the street.
That was the general idea.
"Has an offer come in from America?"
"Not yet. But I think one will."
Everyone broke into a cold sweat at Lee Mu-seon's words.
"First, I think we'll need to hold a meeting at our headquarters."
"Us too...."
"We will return after careful consideration at our headquarters."
And so, everyone who had come to scout Lee Mu-seon ended up leaving.
Lee Mu-seon gave a quiet chuckle.
* * *
"I thought you'd get a class like a martial artist, Master."
"You and me both."
Lee Mu-seon's martial arts school focused on practical fighting—in other words, teaching people how to handle themselves in a real fight. But he also taught traditional martial arts to students who wanted them.
Thanks to his experience from his previous life, Lee Mu-seon knew all kinds of martial arts, including several that remained useful without internal energy.
He had chosen three of them to teach to any students who wanted to learn.
Baguazhang, Taijiquan, and Vajra Fist—those three.
Taijiquan was the epitome of the soft style: extremely yielding and excellent for defense. Vajra Fist was the epitome of the hard style, ideal for battering an opponent with speed and power.
Baguazhang belonged to the soft arts, but it was actually a martial art focused on speed and change.
The advantage was that all three were very usable even without internal energy.
Sixteen-year-old Lee Da-eun's eyes sparkled as she trained in those arts.
Her father was an awakened, and he had wanted his daughter to learn self-defense from a young age. Park Kang-chan had introduced her to this martial arts school, and she had been attending for a year now.
By now, she had become a fairly capable Taijiquan practitioner.
"By the way, Master."
Lee Da-eun spoke while working through a Taijiquan form.
"Are you really going to sign at a 0% commission? It's not just bait?"
"Of course. Really. I won't sign under any other conditions."
"What are you going to do if you don't sign?"
"I'll just hire a manager myself. And set up a corporation."
"You'd go that far?"
Among awakened, there were those who set up personal corporations and managed their money directly. Even so, the reason everyone belonged to a company was that it was more convenient and more advantageous in financial transactions.
It was especially convenient for negotiating with the government and for various other matters.
But Lee Mu-seon thought that because he was a special case, there was no need for him to join a company.
If things didn't go the way he wanted, he could just start his own company.
He figured he could put up with a little inconvenience.
"Of course I'd go that far. All right, let's do push hands."
"Yes, Master."
Push hands was one of the most important training methods in Taijiquan.
It was a training method in which two people slowly exchanged offense and defense at close range, working to use the opponent's force against them to maximize one's own movement or effectively subdue the opponent.
Even while doing push hands, Lee Mu-seon was thinking about something else internally.
'Anyway... my Necromantic Mana is already full.'
Necromantic Mana.
It had completely refilled. Mana was generally known to take a week to ten days to recover, yet only a few hours had passed since he cleared Floor 1 and his Necromantic Mana was already full.
'So the Necron Ossuary really was an amazing building, huh?'
The Necron Ossuary was incredible.
At this rate, no joke, he could probably climb the Dimensional Tower two or three times a day.
Lee Da-eun did push hands with strangely sparkling eyes and then went home.
After that, students kept coming.
He had started climbing the Dimensional Tower, and now there would be no problems on the financial side.
Even so, he had no intention of closing the martial arts school.
So Lee Mu-seon diligently taught his students, no different from usual.
As a result, it was unavoidable that a post like this appeared on the internet.
[Regarding the fact that the master of the martial arts gym I attend was a hidden powerhouse]
The title alone was enough to make his head spin a little, but Lee Mu-seon let it go.
* * *
Maybe it was because of the absurd conditions I had thrown out, but there was no additional contact until nightfall.
Well, today's classes were all done.
Now it was free time, so should I finish up the experiment I'd been working on?
"Enter Dimensional Tower."
Flash!
With a flash of light.
I stood in the Dimensional Tower Lobby.
"Experimental Jiangshi No. 1, come out."
Experimental Jiangshi No. 1 crawled out of the shadow.
The thing stood in front of me, groaning.
Good. Time to start the experiment.
Ssssss.
I poured in all the Necromantic Mana I had. Since I had reached level 10, far more Necromantic Mana than I had originally possessed flowed into Experimental Jiangshi No. 1.
According to my will, the necromantic mana circulated through the Microcosmic Orbit and Macrocosmic Orbit according to the rules of the Corpse-Spirit Heavenly Jiangshi Whole-Body Art, then gathered in the dantian.
The mana had become the Corpse-Spirit Heavenly Jiangshi Whole-Body Art's internal true qi.
The time it took to complete one cycle like that was one hour.
And.
Surprisingly.
When one hour had passed.
My necromantic mana had refilled by half.
"The Necron Ossuary... is insane, isn't it?"
By former-life standards.
It was no different from internal energy being generated infinitely.
Normally, internal energy had to be restored through qi circulation and breath regulation. Once someone reached the Profound Realm, however, they could enter communion with heaven and earth and their internal energy would recover automatically.
However.
The problem was that automatic internal-energy recovery only became possible around the Profound Realm.
And in my previous life, I was the only person who had ever reached the Profound Realm.
And even that was a realm I had barely reached after decades of bone-grinding martial arts training and making or stealing and consuming spiritual elixirs....
"Well, well... this single round already came to about four years, didn't it?"
Experimental Jiangshi No. 1.
It now possessed four years' worth of cultivation in the Corpse-Spirit Heavenly Jiangshi Whole-Body Art.