novelraw Chapter 30 : Chapter 30
Chapter 30 : Chapter 30
Chapter 30. Night Raid and the Truth (5)
An aerial vehicle.
Its official name was Aerobile.
In simple terms, it was a flying car.
Its appearance was like a helicopter with its propellers removed.
It obtained its lift through a special engine using Magic Stones, which made it quite expensive.
Therefore, it was rarely owned by private individuals, and was mostly owned by governments, corporations, and some wealthy people.
Floating above Riman's head was an Aerobile owned by Ork Corporation.
And its arrival meant that Ork Corporation's support troops had arrived.
‘You son of a……!’
A curse welled up from deep inside Riman.
In front of him, Jade was approaching to kill him, and above him, Ork's support troops had arrived.
On top of that, one of Riman's arms was broken, and his stamina was at its limit.
He was truly cornered.
There seemed to be no way out.
‘No.’
Nevertheless, Riman quickly composed himself.
‘This is the world of
The game with notoriously difficult gameplay,
But despite its terrible difficulty, there was always a way.
Therefore, this time too, there must be a way out, Riman thought.
At least, until something fell from the Aerobile.
Whoosh-
Something fell from the Aerobile.
It was a person.
Not several, but just one.
After a fall of about 10 meters, it landed on the ground.
On its head.
Thud!
“Huh?”
Riman hadn't seen it wrong.
He had landed headfirst on the ground.
An unbelievable landing posture, almost like a fall or a suicide jump.
But—
“Ugh……”
The person who had fallen from the Aerobile didn't die and slowly got up.
He was alive.
For a moment, Riman looked at him as if he had seen a zombie.
He muttered with a long yawn.
“Hwaaaam… what's with the emergency duty so early in the morning. I'm so sleepy.”
The fallen person stood up, stretching lazily.
He was a man.
He was a giant over 190 cm tall, and his build and frame were not inferior to his height.
After getting up, he first looked at Jade and asked.
“Are you Leman White by any chance?”
Jade shook his head.
His lungs were shattered, so he couldn't speak properly.
“Hmm, then……”
He then looked at Riman and asked.
“Then you must be Leman White?”
The moment their eyes met.
Riman froze on the spot.
‘…What.’
His mind went blank.
The moment he saw that face, the strategy and determination Riman had built up were cleanly burned away.
‘Ork sent that guy here too? Why??’
Riman knew who that man was.
A massive body, green skin, and fangs protruding from his mouth.
His name was……
“Hello! My name is Kim Bong-sik!!”
Kim Bong-sik.
A person who should not be taken lightly for his rustic name.
He was the masterpiece of Ork Corporation.
Ork's strongest Enhanced Human, created by pouring resources and luck into him.
Ork Corporation's number one force.
Ork had dispatched such a person as support troops.
It was as if a disaster had fallen from the sky just after he had barely dealt with a formidable enemy.
Kim Bong-sik, a person whom the current Riman was completely incapable of facing.
Right now, no matter what measures he took, they would be lightly trampled by that man's power.
All plans and strategies became meaningless in front of that power.
‘…What do I do?’
Still, Riman had no intention of giving up.
He desperately racked his brain.
He thought of all possible situations and quickly listed the countermeasures for each situation in his head.
Plan A, fight back.
Rejected. I would die.
Plan B, escape.
Rejected. I don't have the stamina to escape.
Plan C, persuade through dialogue.
At least this……
‘No.’
Kim Bong-sik was different from Lancelot.
Lancelot was an extreme stickler for principles.
Therefore, within the framework of ‘principles,’ there was some room to probe.
But Kim Bong-sik's personality was extremely simple and brutish.
If the company told him to do it, he did it; if not, he didn't.
Therefore, if he had come with the order to ‘kill Leman White,’ it was impossible to cancel it.
‘Damn it.’
In the end, it seemed that no matter what he chose, it wouldn't work.
Just as cold sweat trickled down Riman's back.
Kim Bong-sik asked.
“Hey, why are you so nervous?”
Wouldn't you be nervous if you were me?
“Don't be so stiff. I'm just here to do my job.”
Of course.
The problem is that your job is to kill me.
“Alright then, let's see, the first thing I need to do is……”
Kim Bong-sik's gaze turned to Jade again.
Jade grinned.
Because he thought Kim Bong-sik would kill Riman for him.
But the very next moment, Kim Bong-sik snapped his fingers.
Crack.
Jade's Carapace shattered into pieces.
The absolute defense, the Carapace, on which he could barely make a fingernail-sized crack after projecting all kinds of magic.
It was shattered by Kim Bong-sik's hand.
“Guk… guk……?”
Thud.
Jade collapsed to the floor.
With an expression of mixed shock and confusion, he died without even knowing why he was dying.
And Jade was not the only one who was shocked.
‘…What?’
Riman saw it.
Kim Bong-sik curled his finger and flicked Jade in the abdomen.
A flick, and just one at that.
With that one flick, the Carapace had shattered into pieces.
The Carapace that could even withstand an anti-tank missile head-on.
Monstrous strength that far surpassed common sense.
That was the power of a corporation's number one force.
“Alright, with this, the first task is complete.”
Kim Bong-sik turned his gaze to Riman and said.
“First, I apologize.”
“……??”
“Today's night raid was not the will of Ork Corporation, but the unilateral act of a single employee. But… uh… that is……”
Stuttering, Kim Bong-sik took something out of his pocket.
A crumpled piece of paper.
He unfolded the paper and began to read what was written on it.
“…But as it was clearly committed by an individual from Ork Corporation, I bow my head in apology.”
“Wait, wait, an apology? You're letting me live?”
“Yes. I came to save you in the first place.”
Riman was momentarily stunned.
He felt like all the desperate worrying he had been doing until now was collapsing.
“Well… that's good, but… why?”
“Do you know a man named Manager Ha In-soo?”
“I do.”
The person from Ork Corporation who had planned and commanded the recent Heosan Village Demonic Beast subjugation operation, Manager Ha In-soo.
“But why are you asking about him?”
“He's the one who attacked you. Not because of orders from Ork's upper management, but completely on his own. On top of that……”
Kim Bong-sik looked down at Jade's body and continued.
“…To even join hands with escaped convicts. No matter how important his performance review is, this crossed the line.”
“Wait, escaped convicts? Plural? There's another one besides this guy?”
“I heard there was one more. Seol U-seok or something.”
“……!”
Finally, the puzzle pieces began to fit together.
Manager Ha In-soo, the Demonic Beast controller Seol U-seok, and Jade.
If these three were on the same side from the beginning, a lot of things would be explained.
‘That Ha In-soo guy, was he using Seol U-seok from the beginning to let the Demonic Beasts escape and then push them all into Heosan Village?’
In other words, the Demonic Beast escape incident itself was a self-staged act from the beginning.
After massacring the people of Heosan Village like that.
He used the reward money as bait to lure the hunters inside to deal with the Demonic Beasts.
But Ha In-soo had no intention of paying that reward money.
By setting up a situation where the hunters would kill each other.
‘Come to think of it, it was strange from the beginning.’
Even bounty payments could be settled with a single photo.
But Ha In-soo had set the cumbersome condition that the reward would only be paid if the tags were brought.
On top of that, he had made Heosan a closed-off area.
This was……
‘It's no different from openly setting the stage for them to steal each other's tags.’
So that the hunters would first hunt the Demonic Beasts, and when the Demonic Beasts were gone, they would hunt other hunters.
And that wasn't the end.
To deal with the hunters who survived even after this, Ha In-soo had even deployed ‘Experiment Body 31’ and Seol U-seok.
If all the hunters died inside Heosan, there would be no need to pay the reward money.
In any case, to summarize.
He would dispose of the decommissioned Demonic Beast experimental subjects using the hunters' hands, and at the same time, prevent the expenditure of reward money by having the hunters annihilate each other.
A scheme of the century to achieve the maximum result with the minimum expenditure.
But the moment Riman entered the picture, the plan itself went awry.
Because Riman had caught Experiment Body 31, not enough hunters had died.
He had also killed Seol U-seok.
And crucially, Riman had brought back too many tags.
This had caused an expenditure that far exceeded the budget.
‘So he was trying to kill me and then recover that excess.’
He was trying to make up for the hundreds of millions in losses caused by Riman's actions with a night raid.
Of course, a few hundred million was not a large sum of money for Ork.
But it was enough to influence an ordinary company employee's performance review.
That's why Ha In-soo had carried out the night raid.
To make up for the mistake in his performance review by killing Riman.
However, even after deducing this far, there was still one question that remained unanswered.
“Hey, are you listening?”
At Kim Bong-sik's question, Riman nodded and asked.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“What is it.”
“What is the relationship between Heosan Village and Ork?”
The reason why Ha In-soo had specifically lured the Demonic Beasts to Heosan Village.
That was the one thing he still didn't understand.
“Well, I don't really know about that.”
“Hmm……”
“But I have heard that there was talk of building a new company building on the site of Heosan Village before.”
“……!”
With this, the last piece of the puzzle was in place.
Heosan Village was a slum.
It was a place where the interests of illegal occupants and actual landowners were sharply intertwined.
But Manager Ha In-soo had solved this problem in a highly efficient way.
By massacring the people of Heosan by disguising it as an ‘accident’ using the Demonic Beasts.
Riman couldn't help but be impressed.
It was like seeing how far a businessman could go when they abandoned ethics and became obsessed with efficiency.
“Anyway, Ha In-soo will be disciplined according to company regulations. And I'll leave this as a token of apology.”
Saying so, Kim Bong-sik nudged Jade's body with his foot.
“He's a 300 million bounty criminal. I think this will be sufficient compensation and hush money.”
Riman nodded.
Of course, Riman could only receive 5% of the 300 million, but he was just glad he hadn't been snatched.
Still……
‘That Lancelot bastard, 5%… it still pisses me off thinking about it.’
Anyway, the situation was resolved with this.
“Then I'll, hwaaaam, be going.”
“Wait a minute.”
Just before Kim Bong-sik left, Riman called out to him one last time.
Because there was still one unresolved question.
“What now?”
“Why… did you come?”
“Didn't I explain everything?”
“No, I mean, why did someone like you come in person? There are plenty of other people who could have done this job.”
Kim Bong-sik.
Ork Corporation's masterpiece, their number one force.
Naturally, he was not someone who moved easily.
But he had been dispatched for a job like this, which other people from Ork could have easily done.
And at dawn, while he was fast asleep.
It was an excessively high-level assignment for the weight of the task.
It was natural for Riman to have questions.
Kim Bong-sik scratched his head and said.
“Ah, it seems you haven't been told.”
“……?”
“The Sword Saint personally contacted our Ork's upper management.”
“Sword Saint……?”
“I'm talking about Lancelot Powell. That man personally called and asked us to save you.”
“……!”
Riman's expression went blank.