Chapter 97. Something Suspicious.
Chapter 97. Something Suspicious.
A chill settled over the room after the sudden incident.
'Well, since it's come to this, I might as well be brazen.'
"Hey, old man. Don't go messing with the women I keep around. Unless you've got a death wish..."
The man was already groaning in pain, clutching his ear—sliced clean off and dripping blood.
"Ghk!!!"
"Try that again and it won't be your ear that comes off—it'll be your neck."
What was unexpected was that, despite having sliced off one of his own men's ears without a shred of hesitation, the commander's expression only briefly flickered with surprise before settling into perfect composure.
He called for people outside to take the man away for medical treatment. Then, out of nowhere, he bowed and apologized to me with impeccable courtesy.
"My apologies. My subordinate acted out of ignorance and committed a grave discourtesy."
"Hah... well, it's not as if you were the one who did anything wrong, Commander. No need for that."
The atmosphere gradually thawed, thanks to the commander's painfully obsequious show of deference.
"In that case, how about a drink between ourselves?"
"That'd be fine."
"Ha ha, I'll have someone bring us something good."
And so we had a drinking session with the liquor and simple snacks that were brought in. Once he must have felt the mood had sufficiently mellowed, he started to steer things toward the real topic.
"What do you make of the current situation, Mr. Sihu?"
"Where'd that come from all of a sudden?"
"Would you not consider joining me in gathering people and rebuilding a proper society? We need a hero like you."
"Isn't there a President right now?"
"Shouldn't new wine be put into new wineskins?"
He rambled on about this and that, but the long and short of it was a proposal to stage a coup. I kept playing dumb, pretending not to understand, until he finally got frustrated and said it outright—along with a promise that if I helped him, he'd reward me generously enough that I wouldn't feel shortchanged.
Once the drinking was over, I returned to our quarters and explained everything that had happened to the girls. But they ended up focusing more on something other than the offer of sexual favors.
"Heehee, I'm more touched that Oppa got angry for our sake, you know?"
I pulled Jia, who had come to nestle against me, into my arms and stroked her.
'The smell of shampoo...'
"Save the lovey-dovey stuff for when we're back. Did the recording come out well?"
In fact, I had gone in wearing a small camera on my body from the start, just in case things got unsavory. The footage captured both the proposal to oust the President and everything about the entertainment.
"This alone isn't enough. We need something concrete..."
'There's definitely more to this... something even his own inner circle doesn't know about...'
Back in the days when I was so weak a random passing bug could have killed me, my gut instinct had played a vital role in keeping me alive. Now, with my senses sharpened to a level of 'Divine Authority' that fell just short of transcendence, my intuition was practically a form of precognition.
He'd definitely been pretending not to be an Awakened, but I had sensed a slightly anomalous mana around him.
'Not just anomalous—it was profoundly foul...'
While I was lost in thought, someone spoke up from beside me.
"Anyway, what are we supposed to do to pass the time now?"
"If he's being this brazen about making an offer when we've only just met, the day is definitely coming when he'll try to pressure us to pick a side."
"So when that day comes, we just flip the whole board over?"
"That's right."
Jia, who had been listening to my exchange with Chaeyeon, suddenly asked me a question.
"By the way, Oppa, you have the ability to do whatever you want, so why do you always act this way?"
"Have you ever played a game?"
"Well... not often, but sometimes. But why bring up games all of a sudden?"
"Because using cheat codes when you play a game makes it boring."
"Huh...?"
"Is the analogy a little weird? Anyway, I just think I'd get sick of things pretty fast if I did everything I wanted all the time."
Getting everything you want without any process might be fun at first, but it's bound to get boring fast. At the very least, living among people and accommodating them a little is part of it too.
After chatting for a while, we all went to sleep. Morning came, and a knock on the door was soon followed by a voice letting us know that breakfast was ready.
Maybe because these were military barracks, the three of us all washed up together, changed clothes, and followed their guide to the mess hall—which, oddly enough, was a place marked as an officers' dining hall.
"By the way, where do the other survivors—or the soldiers—eat?"
"Ha ha, there is a separate dining facility for the enlisted personnel. Since the population is so large, they take their meals there."
"Hm... Do you have enough food to feed so many people?"
"Regrettably, we are not well-stocked. That is why, in addition to operating the enlisted mess, we distribute rations."
"Then what do the people here do to get by?"
What I heard from the Operations Commander was predictable. They scavenged for food, cleared the surrounding area, and rescued other survivors.
"Hm... That's going to get harder as your numbers grow. Any plans for becoming self-sufficient?"
"We are in the process of attempting it. We also have research underway."
Research. The moment the word "research" left his mouth, that odd, alien mana seeped out from him again. I'd felt mana like that before, but I could not for the life of me remember what it was.
'If I can't remember it, it probably wasn't something worth remembering.'
During the meal, he carefully brought up a favor to ask of me. He said there was another group, apart from them, that was a fairly large faction.
"We would like to have them eradicated."
"You want them dead?"
"For a soldier, killing one's own countrymen is a deeply heartbreaking matter, but it is an unavoidable necessity..."
His explanation was that these people had attacked their units on missions several times. In the process, most of the personnel had been killed, and the women had been dragged off.
"Do you know where their base is? No, actually—shouldn't this place have overwhelming firepower to begin with?"
Awakened ones at the current level were vulnerable to modern weaponry. Maybe I could understand if they had an Irregular like me, but even then, it wouldn't be enough to overwhelm military firepower.
"Dialogue was impossible from the start, and they have several powerful Awakened akin to yourself, Representative."
"Hm..."
I silently lifted spoonfuls of rice to my mouth and ate in silence. Seeing this, he dangled a carrot in front of me. Naturally, I pretended to be grudgingly won over. With this, his assessment of me was probably set in stone.
'An easy guy to handle, as long as you pay him well enough.'
"Yeah, well, going to meet them once isn't exactly hard. Anyway, is that friend from last time doing all right?"
The one whose ear I'd cut off in a fit of rage after he'd mouthed off to the girls. I hadn't seen him at the breakfast table, so I asked about him offhandedly.
"My apologies. That man has been reassigned to other duties. I will ensure nothing of the sort ever happens again."
'So he wasn't disposed of... just sent somewhere else?'
Digging any deeper would raise suspicion, so I just waved a hand dismissively and said it didn't matter.
"I'm not the type to drag things out. I'll go pay them a visit today."
"We would be nothing but grateful if you could resolve this swiftly. I will have a man compile the relevant information and deliver it to you shortly."
I finished the meal and went back to the room to rest. Barely any time had passed before someone came to deliver the documents. I gave them a perfunctory thanks and then leafed through the papers together with the girls.
"Oppa, it says these people's base is near the Jung-gu Office."
"It's a distance that's far... yet also close, at the same time..."
While going over the documents, I spotted a peculiar phrase written in bold letters: 'When engaging, identify yourself as personnel from the Operations Command and initiate dialogue.'
"Why would they write this down?"
"Maybe they need to establish some kind of pretext? They are the military who protect the people, after all, at least in name."
'Is there really a need to write it in a way that emphasizes it so strongly?'
I let the girls know we'd be departing tomorrow morning at the earliest, and by evening at the latest. I asked for their opinions, but they said they'd sit this one out and rest, so I decided to go alone.
'Well... whatever comes up, I should be more than capable of handling it.'
At any rate, I had nothing to do until tomorrow's departure, so I wandered around and took in the sights. It was plain to see that the faces of the people here held no hope at all—only a day-to-day struggle for survival. The Operations Command was situated next to the sea, with a view of Busan Port and Yeongdo across the water.
Perhaps because there were a fair number of civilians and soldiers alike, no one paid any attention to me no matter where I went. That was when I spotted the Commander heading off somewhere with his inner circle. Out of curiosity, I tailed them discreetly.
They entered a building that looked like it hadn't been maintained for quite a long time. Someone was standing guard at the entrance, and the Commander went inside alone, leaving his close aides and the rest of his men outside. Moreover, he gave the guards a vicious order to shoot anyone who approached, no matter who they were and regardless of the reason.
I stepped back a little and examined the building more closely. There wasn't even a signboard with a name on it like you'd normally see on a building. Just a structure whose purpose was completely impossible to guess.
'At the bare minimum, it's not human trafficking. If it were, he would've brought his aides along... So that means it's something only he is allowed to know about...'
Making a mental note to find time to come back here secretly later, I turned on my heel.
***
"Sihu, today's the day you're heading to that place, right?"
"I have to set out today. I doubt anything will happen, but just in case—contact me if there's danger. I'll come running right away."
I stepped outside, seeing them off. The Operations Commander, his close aides, and our own party were all standing near the entrance. Since I'd hidden the fact that I could use a subspace, the Commander had packed various items into a backpack and handed it to me.
"Go carefully, Representative. Those people are exceedingly dangerous. Perhaps a preemptive strike..."
"Well, there's no point in worrying. See you..."
I'd sensed it since last time, but the Operations Commander seemed to be angling relentlessly for their unconditional elimination, though I couldn't pinpoint the exact reason why.
Waving off their farewells, I stepped outside the base. Unfortunately, Busan's base stations hadn't been restored yet, so there were a lot of inconveniences.
'If I just run in that general direction, I'll probably spot it eventually.'
They'd said it was near the Jung-gu Office, so I just ran flat-out in the direction they'd pointed. After I'd put some distance behind me, Kkamangi, who had been staying outside, glided down and landed on my shoulder.
― Beep! Bwee-bweep!!!
'I completely forgot about her...'
"Sorry..."
I gently stroked the feathers of the highly sulking Kkamangi to soothe her. Alternating between walking and running, I crossed the sea, and before long I had arrived in the vicinity.
"They said near the Jung-gu Office... but this isn't just 'near'—this is the Jung-gu Office..."
With barricades set up using cars and traps laid around, it was obvious to anyone that survivors were entrenched here.
I had no reason to be furtive and felt not the slightest sense of danger, so I walked straight in through the front gate. When I suddenly appeared in the parking lot, the startled occupants were already aiming bows and firearms at me.
"Where the hell did you come from?!"
"I'm a survivor. I came because I wanted to talk."
I raised both hands in a gesture showing I had no will to fight and complied with their instructions without resistance.
"Talk? Where are you from?"
"I'm from the Operations Command. Who is the person in charge here?"
At the mention of the Operations Command, a flood of negative emotions—killing intent, rage, grief—began pouring out of them.
'Hm... I didn't see this coming...'