Chapter 6: Guilty (6)

Abnormal brain waves have been observed.

Please stop at your current location and receive permission from the Hansan Security Team.

“Oh, this is happening again…”

As they passed through the facility that resembled an airport metal detector, a loud alarm sounded.

“How long do you plan on keeping this piece of junk?

Get rid of it right now.

It’s not just once or twice, it’s starting to feel bad.”

It was a world where you could change your appearance.

If you had completely subdued your opponent and were given enough time, you could forge anything you wanted through pattern recognition and skin grafting.

You could even forge your voice through vocal cord implants, so passwords weren’t really a safe measure.

The security measures at Hansan Tower were one step ahead of that imagination.

They checked for brain waves that would never occur in your own body, and sounded an alarm if an ‘unlikely’ brain wave was observed.

“Ha, President Hansanwoo!

Excuse me.

Let’s go right now.”

Even if the password was hidden somewhere in your head, you could eventually find out whatever it was by kidnapping and ‘tearing’ your head off.

However, if safety is checked not by the presence of specific information but by the absence of specific brain waves, a ‘real intruder’ like me cannot easily pass through.

“Okay.”

I confidently entered the Hansan Tower, showing off my bad temper.

“If this rings one more time, I will really destroy it with my own hands.

Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes!

I understand!”

It was an incredible thing, but even with this incredible future technology, this security device was a test.

It had clear limitations.

It malfunctioned frequently, so it would sound the alarm on a normal person about once every two days.

I could tell that something was wrong, but I couldn’t easily find out why the alarm sounded or announce it.

It was just a device for security.

If I were to look into the mind of the Hansan family’s VIP, it would be like putting the cart before the horse.

Furthermore, it wasn’t a device that Hansan’s technology lavished on.

If it weren’t for a lawless area like Stella City, they would have used more sophisticated, classic, and efficient methods than this outrageous surveillance device.

“Be careful next time.”

As I got on the elevator, I could feel the sweat on my face reflected in the mirror.

It was such a flimsy device, but I couldn’t help but feel nervous whenever I entered Hansan Tower.

It felt like the cold machine was constantly reminding me of my identity.

I was just a possessed person who had fallen into this world, and I wasn’t the real Hansanwoo.

They said it was a machine that malfunctioned a lot, but that only happened once or twice.

It rarely malfunctioned repeatedly with the same person, and even when it did, it was fine after a few readjustments.

If ‘Hansanwoo’ hadn’t been so vicious and beggarly before I came, I would have had to come up with a reason not to get tested repeatedly.

“Whew…”

This quiet and clean elevator was nothing more than an incredible luxury that only Hansan could show.

By luxury, I don’t mean it was studded with jewels.

It was an elevator that looked ordinary, with two mirrors facing each other.

Of course, a lot of money had been invested in safety, materials, and making the elevator comfortable and fast, but that wasn’t all.

There are no advertisements.

In the game, most people live somewhere between the poor and middle class.

You can only live a rich life right before you clear the game.

And those elevators were covered with advertisements that were so loud that your ears were tingling.

To the point where ordinary people couldn’t even have small talk in the elevator.

Every single thing you bought in an apartment cost money.

The prices of privatized water and electricity were not kind to the poor.

No matter how you think about it, it’s hell.

There must be more than one or two people who think of this city as hell, the companies, and me as the devil.

I was barely able to return to my room.

In a place where there was no surveillance or wiretapping, the only safe zone for me.

“Let’s talk.”

I called my secretary over and looked her in the eye seriously.

It’s not good for all my actions to be done through one secretary.

However, you need to have at least a minimum of knowledge to do something.

Ironically, Hansanwoo wasn’t that different before I came.

But for now, I had to eat at ease.

No, even if I didn’t eat at ease, there was no other way.

Her life was tied to mine right now.

As long as you don’t openly antagonize the Hansan Group, the connection will continue.

“The place we were connected to… was Macheonpa?”

Hansan is a Korean company.

They hire local people locally, but there are still many Koreans in the executive ranks.

Naturally, they are accustomed to Eastern culture.

They are good at giving them what they want and shaking up what they fear.

“That’s right.

But… they are too low-level for you to handle.”

It was typical of Hansan to be talking about rank rather than law or ethics here, but her words were not wrong.

Macheonpa is a gang.

They call themselves samurai, sects, and chivalrous people, but even so, they are nothing more than a criminal organization focused on Asians.

Dealing with such people should be done by someone who can be thrown away at any time.

Someone at the top of the organization who would not mind being handed over to the police or getting involved in a fight between gangs.

Having a lot of knowledge was not always beneficial.

It was not good for someone like me to know about trivial matters like who the criminals who had been recruited by us were.

Maybe they were intentionally hiding it from me.

“Hansanwoo’ wasn’t a very tight-lipped person.

Rather than leak important information while drunk, it might have been better not to tell me such sensitive information.

“I’m not interested in gangs either.

What I’m interested in is mercenaries.”

“Mercenaries?”

“I want to ask you to investigate this case.

They covered it up on TV, but… isn’t this incident not a normal one?”

In fact, there was something suspicious about it.

It was one of the hypotheses that came out among people who had played the game for hundreds of hours.

And if that hypothesis was true, it wasn’t something that a normal mercenary could figure out no matter how hard they tried.

“It would have been better to use Hansan’s employees to find out…”

“They’re all busy people.

I can’t eat it all by myself when the information comes out.

It’s too expensive to satisfy just one curiosity.”

“Curiosity… is it?”

Her expression distorted very slightly.

To the point where I wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for her.

She seemed a little disappointed when she heard that she wasn’t seriously working for the group or the company, but was simply curious.

Well, I didn’t care.

“But, they’re mercenaries.

They’re only slightly better than the Macheonpa… No, maybe not even that.

Would that help?”

The secretary wasn’t wrong.

The gang’s perception was much better than what the upper class like me and her saw.

It wasn’t that there weren’t any bad people in mercenaries.

There were some mercenaries who took on plausible requests in order to implement justice, but most of them just took on any request they could for money.

Crime, theft, and terrorism were the norm.

There were plausible requests to save people or punish criminals, but mercenaries didn’t take on requests themselves in the first place.

Most of them took on requests through prestigious brokers.

The more difficult a request was, the fewer requests the mercenary could take on, and the lower the pay.

Unless a mercenary was prepared to take on money far below their ability, being a mercenary was essentially a criminal.

Naturally, the perception was bad.

“I don’t know.

I’ve lived in this city for years, so I know a little bit.”

Gangs basically start out as vigilantes.

Most of them were like that, even if they were notorious gangs that committed human trafficking, drug smuggling, violence, and murder as if they were eating their daily bread.

Naturally, they had no choice but to be friendly with the local residents.

The reason Hansan always suffered from a shortage of manpower was because there were few people who did not receive protection from such gangs.

The Macheonpa was no different.

Asian immigrants who came to Stella City dreaming of the American dream had to receive help from the Macheonpa, whether they liked it or not.

“They are at best individuals, a group of about ten people.

You don’t need to worry about them, Master.”

“Well.”

Her words were reasonable for someone living in this world.

An individual cannot defeat an organization.

That was a fact that has not changed in the East or the West, past or present.

“Compared to those gangsters, they will bring about pretty good results.”

But she was wrong.

It was just a thought formed within the wrong way of thinking that people in companies often have.

The ‘organization’ that Hansan means is different from the organization of a normal gang.

Most mercenaries have a desire to improve.

In other words, they are just completely crazy.

Unlike gangs that enjoy immediate pleasure and are tied to the people they are supposed to protect.

They do things without fear.

Those who blew up General Machina’s aerial vehicle in broad daylight with an anti-tank missile without hesitation were also clearly mercenaries.

Gangs have things to protect.

No matter how much the gang is protected by the corporation, if the Macheonpa did something like that, Hansan cannot protect them.

Of course, most of those crazy mercenaries die.

They leave behind nothing and become cold corpses.

However, the corpses of countless people who are prepared to die like that leave behind one successful person.

A person who leaves behind an achievement that will be a drinking snack for the rest of their lives.

Even in vain, it cannot be said that that is moral or desirable.

However, it is strong.

“I do not doubt you, my lord, but you have never met them in person, have you?”

“Well, that is true.”

That does not mean that they are stronger than Hansan.

The quality of the person who accepts them is different in the first place.

The equipment, support, and training that person can use are different.

Even if hundreds or thousands of ordinary people rush in with rifles, they won’t be able to beat one Hansan employee who is covered in implants.

Even that one employee is one of the few thousand or tens of thousands of people who have hired an incredible talent.

However, if you’re lucky, you might be able to hire one of those successful ‘ones’.

The player may not have appeared yet, but there are other mercenaries who have experienced brief success.

You won’t be able to use the ‘original protagonist’ among them.

However, there may still be legendary mercenaries like the Doris mercenary group that appears in the side story, or other mercenaries that exist only in the setting.

“Anyway, look into it.

In the long run, making one broker… will it take too long?”

A broker requires trust.

A mercenary who has worked in that field for a long time or one of the trustworthy businessmen often becomes a broker.

There had to be an escape route when things went wrong, a force to subdue the real clients or bad mercenaries, and a system to punish the person who lied and said the request was canceled and then split the money without the middleman.

More important than anything else was the expectation that this person would be able to do it when I entrusted him with the job.

In the end, it was a strategy that couldn’t be used without using Hansan’s name.

“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with that, but… Okay.

I’ll do that.”

Fortunately, the secretary agreed with what I said.

“…Okay.”

Then it was time for me to trust her and do my job.