abcnovels
Chapter 278:
Chapter 278:
Chapter 278:
It was a surprising situation that something suddenly happened, but they were skilled tellers.
Rather than complaining about what had already happened, their top priority was to prepare for it.
“It was nice to meet you today. I have something to do, so I’ll be going now.”
“Yes. Take care, Teller Kang Yu-hyun.”
Yu-hyun immediately got up from his seat and said goodbye to Romulaxis.
Romulaxis scratched his helmet as he watched Yu-hyun leave.
“Hmm. This is the second time I’ve seen him, but he’s amazing no matter how many times I see him.”
When Director Celestina first told him to help Yu-hyun, Romulaxis didn’t think much of it.
It was annoying to have to take care of a teller, but he thought he could just do a few things to help him out.
However, after meeting him for the first and second time, Romulaxis had to adjust his evaluation of Yu-hyun.“I wondered why the director was interested in him.”
Well, I can’t help it.
Romulaxis shrugged his shoulders and moved to his supervisor’s room.
He immediately contacted Director Celestina through the Genesis Network.
[Oh, is that you, Romulaxis?]
“Yes. It’s your cute Romulaxis~!”
[I’m hanging up.]
“Ah! Wait a minute! Director! Don’t you think that’s too harsh for a joke?!”
[So why did you contact me? Didn’t I tell you not to bother me unless you have something important to report?]
“Hey. We’re close, right? It’s okay to just contact you to see your face, right?”
[…I’m hanging up. For real.]
“Ah, okay! Okay! I have something to report. That’s why I contacted you. So please listen to me until the end.”
[Sigh.]
Celestina let out a huge sigh as if she wanted the ground to swallow her up.
It was always like this when she talked to this guy.
He said he had something to report, so she decided to listen to him for now. Romulaxis smiled as he saw her attitude.
“Director. Don’t be surprised when you hear this. I think I found out something important today.”
[So what is it?]
“The culprit who released Shamat Manager, I have a clue.”
[What?]
Celestina’s eyes glowed fiercely as she heard Romulaxis’ words.
She was about to dismiss his words lightly, but they caught her attention.
[…Tell me more.]
***
When Yu-hyun returned to the office building, Baek Seo-ryeon greeted him anxiously as if she had been waiting for him.
“Yu-hyun! Did you hear the news?”
“Yes. I checked it briefly. What exactly happened?”
“They say there are signs of a mental realm appearing in Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul.”
“Signs?”
Yu-hyun asked if he had heard something wrong.
The mental realm does not give any signs of where it will appear. It just appears suddenly, like a mirage, in that place.
But according to Baek Seo-ryeon, the mental realm had not yet been completed, and only showed signs of appearing.
“Yu-chan gave me the information. Please check this out.”
“This is…”
Yu-hyun narrowed his eyes as he looked at the data with a picture of Gwanghwamun.
It was as Baek Seo-ryeon said.
There was no mental realm in Gwanghwamun yet. But the movement of space and the small letters gathering in the air looked similar to the signs of a mental realm appearing.
“The scale is… at least 10 times that of a normal mental realm?”
“I think it’s the same thing that happened in Japan.”
“I see.”
“…Did you expect it?”
Baek Seo-ryeon asked with wide eyes at Yu-hyun’s reaction. He didn’t seem very surprised, but rather like he expected it to happen.
Yu-hyun nodded his head.
“I thought something big would happen here someday.”
“But it’s strange. Even if Japan’s case was like that, Korea has the highest progress in clearing the mental realm. Why did such a mental realm appear?”
She still believed that the five-layered mental realm was naturally occurring.
Baek Seo-ryeon thought that the multiple mental realm incident in Tokyo was due to the aftermath of not clearing the mental realm.
Yu-hyun corrected her thinking.
“It’s not simply natural.”
“What?”
“Multiple worlds of ideas never occur naturally. Unless someone forces them to be created.”
“Someone forces them? Who would…”
“Unleashed. They are the ones who are sponsored by the Exodus Tellers. They use the seeds of stories that can forcibly create a mental realm to carry out their terrorist activities.”
“Wh, what, really?”
Baek Seo-ryeon felt a headache from the overwhelming information.
But she realized that Yu-hyun was not the kind of man who would lie about such things, and her face turned pale.
“Th, then the thing that is about to happen now is also…”
“Yes. It’s a terrorist act by Unleashed.”
“Th, then it’s dangerous!”
“It is. That’s why we’re here.”
Yu-hyun thought he had to tell his companions this fact as soon as possible.
‘But this time it’s a bit different from Japan’s case.’
Maybe because it was a 10-layered mental realm instead of a 5-layered one?
In Japan, it appeared and ran wild right away, but this time it seemed to take a lot of time for the mental realm to appear.
Maybe it was because it was much bigger and more dangerous than the one that appeared in Japan, so it needed more work accordingly.
No, that was likely.
‘If this explodes, terrible things will happen.’
He didn’t even need to calculate it.
If he thought about how much damage the 5-layered mental realm that happened in Japan had caused in just one day.
The 10-layered mental realm that would happen this time would be at least more than that.
Seoul was already in an emergency because of that.
[Do you have to use that thing called a shredder?]
‘Probably. It’s dangerous if I don’t.’
But the problem was, collectors and ordinary people were heatedly arguing about the text shredder at the moment.
The emotions between the two sides were already intensified, and the fact that this situation happened was nothing but a blatant intrusion by Unleashed.
Yu-hyun quickly put on his mask and headed to the Wonderland.
“Are you all training hard?”
As soon as he entered, he saw three women wiping their sweat and resting.
“Young-min?”
And Yoo Young-min crawling on the floor like a bug.
“Hyu, hyung.”
Yoo Young-min was literally exhausted and his soul was half gone.
Yu-hyun’s eyes naturally turned to Seo Sumin, who had a relaxed expression on her face.
“Sumin.”
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
“Come on. You were too harsh on him. You should have done it moderately.”
“I just taught him close combat because he shouldn’t be complacent with long-range combat. Besides, unlike reality, you always maintain good condition here, so I used a little more strength for a change.”
“Kuhuk.”
Yoo Young-min lowered his head as if he remembered the hard training he had just gone through.
It was physically very painful and hard, but Yoo Young-min felt some sense of accomplishment while resting (?) now.
He didn’t deny the possibility of encountering enemies in close combat, either.
He was grateful for Seo Sumin’s teaching, which was very useful no matter how he looked at it.
It was hard to say that it was abuse disguised as training, since Seo Sumin taught him properly even though she was harsh.
He could even see her as a kind teacher who gave him a chance.
But he couldn’t help feeling pain and injustice, so Yoo Young-min couldn’t continue his words.
Yu-hyun looked at him with sympathetic eyes.
“…Hang in there.”
“…Thank you. Hyung.”
After comforting Yoo Young-min briefly, Yu-hyun got to the point.
“Well, since it seems like you’re done with your training today, let’s all go outside. There’s something important.”
***
The news that a 10-layered mental realm might occur made them all tense.
Of course, the most important thing was not who would enter the 10-layered mental realm or something like that.
“Did you call that thing we saw a text shredder? Hyung. Who’s going to detonate it?”
“We don’t know that yet. That’s why I’m saying this.”
“…That sounds like a big deal. Who would dare to do that?”
As Yoo Young-min said, whoever detonated it would lose more than half of their power. Who would do such a thing?
The mental realm had not fully appeared yet, but eventually someone had to go inside and detonate the shredder when it did appear. That was a fact.
Collectors were already playing a game of chicken with each other.
“The good thing is, we don’t have to gather all the domestic collectors and stick together like in Japan.”
Japan had to deal with it after the mental realm exploded, so the damage increased exponentially.
Looking at the situation in Gwanghwamun now, the mental realm had not been fully created yet, so it seemed possible to replace it with a small number of people.
But still, it was a suspected 10-layered mental realm.
To enter the inside and detonate the text shredder, one had to be at least a high-level collector.
“Maybe, it’s a foregone conclusion that it will explode. They already finished evacuating the Gwanghwamun area, and they say they have control within a radius of 1km.”
“…What about the collectors?”
“Well, at least the mid-level ones were warned to retreat at least 4km away. They have no reason to fight, and they would only waste their power anyway.”
“The problem is…the high-level collectors.”
Yu-hyun nodded at Kwon Jia’s words.
The expressions of the group naturally became heavy.
There were only two high-level collectors in White Flower Management, Kang Hye-rim and Kwon Jia.
If they were unlucky, one of them might have to take the responsibility of detonating the text shredder.
No one had any opinion to offer as time passed as usual.
The TV was already covering the situation in a big way.
The civic groups pressured the collectors to decide who would blow up the shredder, and the association said to wait a little longer since there was still time left.
No matter which channel they turned to, they only heard the angry voices of the citizens.
[What do we pay taxes for? We support all the collectors, and make them successful, right? If you received everything you wanted, you should pay the price!]
[Oh, come on. People used to call them heroes and stuff, but they don’t look like heroes at all right now.]
In fact, the association also had a hard time deciding who would do it without their consent.
Not all collectors belonged to the association, and some belonged to managers or clans, so they had to listen to their opinions too.
If the state forced someone to do it, there would be a lot of trouble after solving it.
If all the high-level collectors boycotted, then it would be a real disaster.
***
‘Phew. I’m going crazy.’
Choi Jung-mo wiped his face with a weary expression in his personal office, which had grown much larger than before.
From the deputy director of the Seoul Collector Association, he had climbed up the ranks and now held the position of vice president.
No, considering that the president had almost no authority at all.
He was practically the president of the Korean Collector Association.
‘The president is incompetent enough, but he’s also a parachute who got his position through connections, so I have more trouble.’
The president had been caught by internal inspection for committing corruption through various secret deals with clans in the past.
Because of that, he lost almost all his authority as president, and he was just maintaining his position as a hollow president for the duration of his term.
The board took away all his real power.
But they didn’t kick him out or anything.
If they replaced him, it would be admitting that he had committed corruption, and there was a high possibility of a lot of rumors. The current president was literally a scarecrow.
As a result, Choi Jung-mo had a lot of heavy work as vice president.
He was technically vice president, but he was actually doing all the work.
And then, just at this critical moment, a 10-layered world was about to explode in Korea.
‘Sigh. How am I supposed to handle this?’
He couldn’t ask Yu-hyun for help with this either. His position was also his position, but Yu-hyun probably had a lot of worries about this too.
‘I’ve contacted everyone who could volunteer for this, but who would respond?’
He didn’t expect any of the high-level collectors to volunteer for this willingly.
The hero image that people had of collectors was just an illusion that they created themselves. The actual collectors were just ordinary people who gained some special power.
They couldn’t hold them accountable for their power.
‘But at least I got permission to use the text shredder. I just need one person before the 10-layered world opens completely. Just one person.’
It would be fine if someone stepped up without thinking or felt responsible for it.
Just one person would be enough to end this situation without any damage.
The worst-case scenario would be that no one stepped up and they had to force someone to do it.
But they had no choice but to take that option in a situation where they didn’t know how much damage would occur.
Soon after, Choi Jung-mo received another report.
“The words of Military God?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Military God Wimohyuk.
The man who was ranked first in Korea suddenly opened his mouth and Choi Jung-mo felt anxiety rather than relief.
The man who had been quiet until now spoke up when the situation was getting worse?
There must be something going on.
“What did he say?”
“…That.”
The subordinate hesitated to speak. As soon as he saw his reaction, Choi Jung-mo lamented that his bad imagination had become reality.
“…Just say it. I think I know it’s not good news anyway.”
“…Military God said, don’t use the text shredder this time.”
“What?”
He didn’t expect him to go as far as to stop the use of the shredder.
“…He said he would use any force if we don’t.”
The undisputed rank 1 opposed and stood against them.
That was a disaster for the association.