“Xin-hwaaah shii...”
“Just call me Sinhwa. No tones needed.”
It was one of Redhat’s VIP rooms, but not the one where I’d been talking with Jeokdu a moment ago.
“Ugh—long time no see...”
Park Gwangrim crawled out from under the wide table.
“What is he even saying?”
Since getting trapped in [Cthulhu World], I’ve learned to read and write about fifty languages. It was all study for decoding grimoires, so actual conversation isn’t my forte.
Still, I can catch the gist.
“You’re saying it’s good to see me? Ah, you said you missed me?”
“Ah—my head is spinning—but I’m f—feeling... pretty good.”
He was mumbling a slurry mix of Korean and Chinese, but nothing important—just whining that he was dizzy and saying he felt good.
I turned my head and asked Jeokdu, “How much did you pour into him?”
“The booze here packs a punch.”
Jeokdu was leaning against the doorframe as he answered.
It sounded like evasion, but the room where Park Gwangrim was rolling around was littered with bottles—every one of them over 50 proof. Forcing him to keep drinking until he blacked out, then.
“Got a problem with it? I’m ‘treating’ him like you asked. He doesn’t much like being sober.”
Jeokdu shook with a silent laugh at whatever he found funny.
Watching him wriggle with his head bowed like that—mildly nauseating.
“...”
I pulled up Gwangrim’s sleeve. The self-harm scars were vicious.
“I don’t know what Jung Hyuna showed that Chinese kid, but he’s going to need time before he can manage daily life. If you want, brother, I’ll even take charge of his rehab.”
Annoying, but fair.
He hadn’t recovered from Busan yet, and then he got grabbed by cultists wielding surreal power—his mind’s allowed to be broken.
Out of his delirium, Jeokdu had offered his own kind of ‘kindness.’ Alcohol gifts you forgetting and pleasure, anyway.
“Heh... well, hin—hin...”
No idea what that meant. Didn’t sound like he wanted to say anything meaningful.
“Mr. Gwangrim, it’s fine now. Just sleep.”
I bent at the waist and cast a spell.
[Ka’s Golden Sand]
Golden sand poured over his head. A sleep-inducing spell.
“Mmm... little brother...”
Just like last time, he came looking for a kid brother in me. He resisted for a heartbeat, then dozed off.
And a few more things.
Vvvvvmm—
Spell formulas seeped into his body.
“You’re thorough. Is that Chinese guy that precious to you, brother?”
“No.”
I straightened up with a short answer.
“I’m helping out of simple pity. We worked together, too.”
At this point, laying a few spells is as easy as breathing.
I suddenly remembered telling Tudor something very different—but so what? Humans are contradictions.
“A saint among us. You even treat a conman who traded on your name this well. If my life ever goes to hell, do I get your precious pity too?”
What is this unhinged thug even talking about?
I tapped his chest lightly with my mana-charged left hand.
“Better pray that situation never comes, client.”
Jeokdu snickered silently again, pleased with himself.
“Alright, fixer. Now that you’ve sobered up a bit—shall we get cozy and make progress?”
The nightclub kitchen.
Food smells pressed in from every direction.
In that hectic space where cooks bustled in a swarm, Jeokdu’s men in neat suits and a mask-wearing mage stepped through in lockstep.
Everyone looked used to it.
It wasn’t new to me either. In a sense, it’s a cliché scene—and a route I’d already seen in the game.
Right there.
Now Jeokdu would strike a stylish pose and open that freezer door.
“Brother. This way.”
Like a magician presenting a trick.
“...”
I offered no comment and stepped into the freezer.
Naturally, it was a secret passage.
Beyond the freezer stretched a bleak corridor.
“Not much of a marvel to a mage, huh?”
“Instead of wasting this zeal on weird things, why not get a job at a TV station?”
Jeokdu shook his head with a silent smile at my jab.
“Mmm~ I’m a diligent gangster, and this is a hobby that helps the trade. Charisma—comes from surprise.”
“Ah. Sure.”
Grinning, Jeokdu kept leading me on.
Unlike the nightclub’s gaudy lights, the lighting here was intentionally dim and ominous.
Steel doors at regular intervals along a narrow corridor—very prisonlike.
He opened one of the rooms, gestured to a seat, and spoke.
“This is where we talk about important things. People get honest in here.”
The thump-thump of cheerful nightclub noise vibrated through the walls.
And from the next room, a faint moan.
Dirty bloodstains everywhere.
A secret space for torture or hardball negotiations.
Even so, the sofa and table marked this one as a room meant for conversation.
As soon as I sat down, Jeokdu started talking.
“Brother, it’s not my place to say, but—that thing isn’t normal. You saw how she shook your hand and betrayed you right away?”
By “that thing,” he meant the person I’d been calling “Jung Hyuna.”
How many betrayals had fit into a single day?
Jeokdu proposed handing me over to Hyuna.
Hyuna, having taken that offer, attacked me while simultaneously striking at Jeokdu.
I’d anticipated her betrayal, so I’d laid bone golems in the expected attack routes.
“And we’re the ones who provoked that betrayal.”
“What matters is she broke a pact in less than a full day. I’m saying this as someone with lots of cultist friends...”
In the clammy basement that had seen torture moments ago, Jeokdu smiled too brightly as he went on.
“Don’t mistake those who sold their souls to monsters for ‘people like us.’”
Contradiction, dressed in honeyed words.
Jeokdu loves to ally with cultists—because they can betray at any time.
‘This is why I don’t like Jeokdu.’
As a sociopath, he’d score higher as a cultist than a TV producer.
But he is also a raging narcissist—so he became not a producer or a cultist, but a crime boss.
“Brother.”
“Yes.”
“Drink?”
Sigh.
“As I said earlier, I’ll pass.”
“I’ll drink more, then. Hyeongsik. A glass. And that thing, that—what do you call it? The flat thing. That one. Bring it.”
The one-eyed giant behind him nodded and stepped out.
Meanwhile Jeokdu was surely calculating who he could really sell me to—and for how much.
They threw around words like alliance, brotherhood, client—but none of the cast trusted anyone. A pure brawl.
Well, I’m hardly innocent in this brawl either.
‘It’s not like I’m moving for Park Gwangrim or Jeokdu—or Hyuna.’
I’m planning a future completely different from the one any of them dreams of.
“Really not drinking?”
“What disaster are you hoping to experience after getting a mage drunk?”
“Mmm~ fair.”
Soon the one-eyed giant—Bang Hyeongsik—returned with a glass, a bottle, and the “flat thing” Jeokdu wanted.
“Yeah. This. What the hell is this called?”
Bang Hyeongsik doesn’t talk, so I answered for him.
“A tablet PC.”
“Mm-hmm—”
Mumbling around the rim of his glass, Jeokdu handed me the tablet.
“Brother. Start with this.”
A photo filled the screen.
Clouds tangled in a grotesque pattern. Lightning flickering within. And a short-haired woman, small between them.
“A rare shot.”
A natural disaster that occurs only in [Cthulhu World], the [Yang Seho Storm].
The storm itself is easy enough to observe, but a clean shot with Yang Seho in it is very rare; tip it to a paper and you’ll get paid well.
If a player had taken it, they’d earn an achievement. So who shot this?
“A reporter named Kap took it. It’s old—shot in Mokpo.”
Kap...
“But Mokpo? So it was taken during the fight with Mannse Ilwon Church?”
“You know about that? Right. Yang Seho arrested Dokgo Gyeom in Mokpo.”
Because of that arrest, Dokgo Gyeom was ferried to Sejong City—where I later sprung him somewhere around Buyeo.
For the record, by the time I got back from Busan, he’d already vanished.
“What does that—ah.”
I remember. Park Gwangrim brought me intel then.
“Yeah. At that time Mannse Ilwon Church was smuggling something out of Egypt.”
“I see.”
“Brother. Yeah. Hit that to go to the next page.”
He spoke roughly and sipped again.
Per his instruction, I flipped. A large wooden container in the photo.
“This is intel I bought from a broker named Pureumir. A Mannse Ilwon Church underling passed this container to Jung Hyuna. See—Mokpo is marked.”
So that’s the trail.
“What was inside?”
“I asked the Cheongho boys who paid us a visit today. Said there were four statues in it.”
“Statues?”
“Yeah. Animal statues, apparently. They were honest kids, but they didn’t know much. Waste of effort.”
He smiled bright as he tilted his glass—meaning he tortured them until they became honest.
Animal statues...
That alone narrows a lot.
If the story features artifacts, not people, smashing them can solve a lot.
“Brother, next page.”
The next photo was a wide shot of some landscape—not something you see in Korea, wherever it was.
“Where’s this?”
“Cheongho’s house. He completely redid the interior. There are a few more; flip through.”
“Huh—what a mess.”
Even before, it was too unusual to call a “normal mansion.”
“There were watchtowers with autocannons mounted.”
Now it was worse.
I packed the details I could glean from the photos and handed back the tablet.
“That’s all I’ve secured. The guys I sent went dark right after that last shot.”
“This is enough. I’ll wrap it tomorrow—don’t worry.”
“Stylish. Hyeongsik, hair tie.”
A tiny hair tie appeared from the one-eyed giant’s coat.
“What can we do to help?”
Jeokdu asked while clenching the hair tie between his teeth and gathering up his hair.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t need us?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmmm—”
He tied up his vivid red hair tight, shook his head a couple of times, then continued.
“Didn’t you used to prefer running with a crowd?”
“I never did.”
“In Busan—”
Gods, the man has no tact.
“Correction. My tastes have changed.”
“Since they’ve changed, how about changing them a bit more and playing with me? Let’s do lots of fun things together.”
[‘Jeokdu, head of the Jeokdu Crew,’ invites you to join the Jeokdu Crew. Do you accept?]
Not a short-term job—this was a full-on offer.
I haven’t even completed the current contract, and he’s already horse-trading shares... Is my Charm stat too high now?
I shook my head.
“Like I said earlier, you’d better hope that situation never comes up.”
This time, I’m doing it alone.
I’m done dragging other people in, and I don’t want more cast members.
Jang Hyundeok?
I can hire any number of drivers to replace him. As for Park Gwangrim, whatever he is, he’s just Tudor’s downgrade.
And in Paju I can even find someone to replace Tudor.
“That so? Can’t be helped.”
He still wore that breezy smile—
[Because you refused, Jeokdu’s Affection drops sharply.]
I’m curious what stunt he’ll pull the next time we meet.
It doesn’t matter; I’ve already arranged insurance.
“I’ll get going. Lots to prepare.”
“I’ll see you out.”
“No need.”
Tomorrow I’m slated to meet Jung Hyuna.
I hope there aren’t any big variables...
