Storm Warrior - Chapter 331



Only Noblemtl

#331, The Master of the Heart

In the paragraphs of text that filled my laptop screen, there were keywords that I could immediately recognize.

“Is this what you were looking for? The Simgang Guild?”

Joo Ja-heon nodded as he scrolled through the contents using the mouse wheel.

“Yeah. Where did this come from?”

“A girl named Inaeun gave it to me. A classmate from Cheongsong… Oh, now that I think about it, I know. When you guys came to take my neck in the past, you had a picture of her too.”

“He is Chairman Shinsung now. How could he not know that that never happened?”

Joo Ja-heon snickered at the mention of his dark past, but he didn’t take his eyes off the screen. He looked at several other files and images before taking his hands off the mouse.

“How could I know…?”

“Stop mumbling to yourself and tell me why you’re doing this. They’re not some secret organization, so there’s no way you’d be struggling to find this information.”

Just now, on the screen that Joo Ja-heon had flipped through, he saw a table analyzing financial statements and shareholding structures. If you just searched the Internet, you could find something like that.

Because Simgang was a superhuman organization officially registered with the Republic of Korea Yeopin Association.

Of course, I already knew the hidden secret of the heart.

It was a record of a report that Simgang had been mobilized several times for the illegal activities of ‘Tetrio Istoria’, which was part of the memories transferred to Echion from the tower.

But they were literally just tools to be mobilized and utilized.

There was no reason to pay attention to Echion, who was a true villain, since he was already at a standstill and had figured out his evil plan.

“If it was information that could be tracked domestically, it would have been found out already. Simgang was a guild that had been active in South America even before the domestic portrait business began.”

“Well, Taekwang and many other guilds started out with overseas activities.”

Although monsters and superhumans first appeared in 2012, in Korea, portraiture business was only possible in 29 years.

“But unlike Taekwang, Simgang was already taken over by foreign capital before it entered the country. It was just a Korean guild with a signboard and personnel. Hmm… This data says that wasn’t the case.”

“Or what?”

This time, I rolled the wheel myself and looked at the document in more detail, but all I could see was that the names of multinational companies and their holding companies had been rolled and twisted.

“If you unravel that complicated web, the real owner of Simgang was the former chairman of Shinsung from the beginning. Now, your classmate will be the owner. This is the content that personally reveals that.”

“Oh. That’s what it was about? … Well, even before the creation of the Shinsung SCT, there’s no way Lee Geum-hwan wouldn’t have gotten involved in that delicious mercenary business.”

It wasn’t particularly surprising since Lee Geum-hwan himself was under Ekion’s control.

It turns out that Simgang was not a hyena that moved around receiving dirty requests, but a dog that Lee Geum-hwan had raised from the beginning.

Joo Ja-heon suddenly sighed deeply, shrugged his shoulders, and said.

“… I thought that in order to know what their purpose was, I had to first find out who they really were. I finally found out who the owner was, but it’s mind-boggling to hear that this USB came from that owner.”

“Ah! What I mean is, why did you suddenly start digging up the heart?”

“I caught them hanging around your brother and Ivy.”

Knock knock!

“What are you doing?”

Joo Ja-heon gestured for me to calm down as I stood up abruptly.

“That’s all. It’s not like they’re stalking us, and we can’t do anything about it if we run into them a few times. But they probably noticed that we’re watching them, so they’ll be careful for the time being.”

“You, Inma! If you had something important to say, you should have said it the first time we met!”

“It’s obvious that there will be chaos. If I were to answer your questions, I would have to know at least ‘who’ and ‘why’ before I can speak.”

“… … .”

“So I just found out who it was. I’m saying it’s hard to tell because it was revealed on its own.”

“So you know where Seongyoon and Ivy are right now?”

Joo Ja-heon shook his head.

“I only know that he is in Korea now. The Owanguk has confirmed his entry records. The Shim Gang guys were circling around your sister and Ivy when they were still in Spain. They were caught in photos several times, just passing by.”

“A photo? What photo?”

“Your sister is an influencer. She is the sister of the Mad Dog Saint and the future sister-in-law of the princess.”

“What… Who is your sister-in-law?”

“What matters is that people see it that way. Anyway, if two people go out together, dozens of photos of them are posted on SNS along the way.”

“crazy….”

“You didn’t know that until now? You just weren’t interested.”

“No, even if they’re interested, they don’t usually search the Internet for their younger siblings’ current status. They don’t even search for my name because it’s too embarrassing.”

“Anyway, Angel’s information team reported to me that they were reviewing photos of the two people and found an Asian with overlapping facial features. I ran around and confirmed that he was a member of Simgang. The problem is that in Korea, it’s a guild so clean that even Director Park or the Oh Kingdom wouldn’t find anything.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that you just checked everything on your own? That they noticed and fled?”

“Ah, Casas later assigned a security team to the two of them. Although the two of them kept refusing close protection and trying to shake it off. At least the birdmen team sent by Angel continued to be with them.”

“Well, that was true when we were in Spain. If the kids had escaped through coordinate movement, we would have missed the Join Team, right? Then who knows what they might be doing now.”

“… That’s true, but Korea is relatively safe. There are almost no blind spots for CCTV and patrol drones. If you really look for it, you’ll be able to find it now. No, I’ll find it in two days.”

At the end of his speech, Ju Ja-heon pulled the chair that had been pushed behind me and placed it close to my calf.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at those words and actions that tried to appease me, fearing that I might do something rash.

I took a deep breath and sat back down.

“I don’t blame you. I’ll have to find it myself. It’s just so obvious. I’m just a little annoyed by the way those guys think of taking hostages. And what I’m worried about isn’t Seongyoon’s safety, but that he might commit his first murder without me.”

“… … Now that I hear it, that makes me worried too.”

Perhaps if Seongyoon’s eyes were rolled back, he would be on par with Casas?

Even if he lacks experience and skill, the magical power he has accumulated in Rak-Vishya is far superior, and the advantage of his talent itself and the help of the numerous artifacts he received from Maru cannot be ruled out.

Then, a thought suddenly occurred to me, ‘Could it be that there is an artifact that searches for Maru?’

I didn’t think that Seongyoon, who was looking for her husband, would have naturally gone to Rak-Bishya.

But since the guy came to Korea, I had a feeling that he was probably moving around as if it were an ‘underwater dungeon’.

The home of artifacts, Yushindo possesses all kinds of artifacts.

There was no way that a less mature dragon living in captivity like Maru wouldn’t have his location tracking artifact ripped off by his wife.

‘Come to think of it, the reason Ivy didn’t come that day was because she was moving around with Seongyoon.’

That day, when the first-term student council members gathered in the academy parking lot, there was only one person who did not show up: Ivy.

There’s no way Cha Yu-ra wouldn’t have contacted me.

At the time, I just thought he was in Spain and busy so he couldn’t attend.

If you think about it again…,

‘Unless something really big happens, there’s no way Ivy would miss a meeting called in my name.’

So, it would have been more natural to assume that Cha Yu-ra had left a message but had not checked it.

A place where contact is impossible… .

“Tsk… .”

“Anyway, shouldn’t you go to Korea right away?”

“Whew! No, I’ll trust her husband for now. But I have to finish what I saw. When Inaeun gave me this, she said it was information related to the player. Now you’ll know how the heart is connected. From what I saw earlier, the capacity before unzipping seems to be around 50 GB.”

I closed the window of the opened document and checked it carefully, and it was well over 120 GB.

“Whatever’s inside hasn’t even started yet.”

Let’s take a quick look through the subfolders of other folders. There were also a lot of videos and recorded files.

“Sigh… I guess I’ll have to watch them all eventually, but I don’t know the criteria for organizing them. Where should I start looking at this?”

“Wait a minute… this.”

When we came back up to the upper folder, Joo Ja-heon spoke while touching the screen.

“Ah… haha. So Inaeun has this kind of kind side to her.”

Among the various file formats, there was a txt file that simply said ‘Must Read’.

I just clicked on it and opened it.

As expected, what was written in the file was a guide to this vast amount of data.

“It’s data accumulated in chronological order, so you can just sort it by date and look at it.”

So I started going through the files one by one.

It contains video footage and recorded interviews of direct contact with players.

As I had already heard verbally from Inaeun, every encounter was linked to a quest.

A series of linked quests that range from simple requests to grand conspiracies.

In the video and interview, Ina Eun expressed her strong hatred towards me and my father to the players.

Of course, it was a play to lure the players.

These materials are, so to speak, a project-oriented experimental journal.

The moment a quest is accepted, and the moment it is confirmed to be completed, multiple high-definition cameras capture the direction of the player’s pupils and even the subtle movements of their facial muscles.

A way of observing, thoroughly assuming that they see something else.

Even if you leave out the content, since I know where the windows and messages in the UI are, I can confidently tell that they are players on the screen.

Of course, more important are the quest content and the information obtained from it.

Joo Ja-heon let out a loud noise.

“… Did what you just said mean that you would give me the heart as compensation?”

“What’s more surprising is that they were looking into buying out a non-player guild in the first place. They’re just hiding behind NPCs and playing the backroom game. Inaeun Lee just offered a reward that fit their needs.”

In the end, the overall picture of the quest was that players with the same goal as Inaeun’s insane(?) desire for revenge were responding one by one, but Inaeun split it up like a linked quest and made them build the conspiracy from start to finish themselves.

In other words, the ones who are moving Simgang right now are the players, and they actually had a plan to kidnap Seongyoon.

I believe that if it had really gotten to a dangerous point, Inaeun would have taken action.

On the other hand, I also thought that if Cha Yu-ra hadn’t called Lee Na-eun that day, would this USB have ended up in my hands?

Anyway, the core of this material was the various side information that was revealed during their build-up process.

“I guess the number of community posts has decreased a lot. Those guys must have noticed it too.”

“At least the ones who survived the tower would have known that the investigation team had made up their mind to come. And Seo Beom-jin and his gang had been directly capturing and beating up players.”

If you think about it, Gu Chang-soo said that he had asked for help from various places, but he had not received a response from anyone.

“I never thought you’d abandon the community… It looks like you’ve gone completely into the dark web.”

“In short, it means that only the idiots remained, so how could they have known the information about the sealing stone?”

In fact, in one future experience, I left most of the community monitoring to people like Joo Ja-heon or Oh Wang-guk.

If they hadn’t known that fact until the end, they might have used the community in reverse to deceive people with false information. They could have released as many false information as they wanted with the reduced number of users.

“Anyway. Rather than dealing with those hidden guys, I should meet them in person.”

“What do you plan to do when we meet?”

“You have to give them what they want and let them use it.”

“After all… they’re after you, right? Didn’t you say that Marduk would be swayed by something bigger than that quest?”

“No, who would continue to believe and use it? I just had a good idea.”