Chapter 25

It took three days to fully absorb the single medicinal pill.
It was markedly different from a monster’s inner core, which dissolved in his karmic flames and was absorbed immediately.
But the results were more than satisfactory.

As the powers of the Thunder Bead and Water integrated, the sensitivity of his five senses increased dramatically.
Along with them came improvements both physical and internal: his precision in moving his body, his ability to finely control his muscles, the thickness of the Qi meridians through which his internal energy flowed, and the minute control with which he could draw upon that energy.

At a time when he couldn’t cultivate his internal energy normally, the pill had been an enormous help.
It was good that the powers of the Thunder Bead and Water had merged, but from now on he needed ingredients that could strengthen them further.
For that, he needed to meet the goblin alchemist.

After finishing his morning workout, which now felt almost effortless, Jun-gyeong called Seung-ho.

“I need to meet that alchemist.”
-Of course. I’ll arrange it right away and let you know.

It wasn’t long before Seung-ho contacted him to say the appointment had been arranged.
Along with a message saying he had already sent a car.

Jun-gyeong descended the hill with a light heart and equally light steps.
A black sedan was already waiting, with Seung-ho standing beside it.

“Hyung-nim!”

Jun-gyeong was not particularly fond of the form of address, but he was grateful for how freely Seung-ho gave him everything he could, so he decided to let it slide.

“Get in.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
“It’s nothing. This much is hardly worth mentioning.”

The three of them, with Hyeon-seok driving, headed toward Gwanghwamun.

“You saw this area last time, right? Sajik-dong is over there. We’re heading to nearby Hyoja-dong. That’s where the goblin alchemist’s laboratory is.”

Construction was underway at the entrance to the Sajik-dong neighborhood Jun-gyeong had taken an interest in.
It was not a large-scale project. They appeared to be erecting several long stone structures.

“Do you know what they’re doing there?”
“Ah, those? I heard they’re putting up some kind of symbolic monuments. Mayor Han is behind those too. No idea what they’re supposed to be for, though.”

Jun-gyeong slowly nodded.
The stones were simply long, narrow structures pointing toward the sky.
There were five in all.
They stretched toward the sky and Sajik-dong like the ribs of an open fan.

He looked away and toward Hyoja-dong as they entered the neighborhood.
It was nothing like what he had expected.
According to his modern knowledge, goblin alchemists were usually money-grubbers who established themselves around the glittering districts of Gangnam Station or Samseong-dong.
They amassed enormous fortunes by producing illegal narcotics or selling muscle-enhancing steroids without side effects.
Some signed legitimate contracts with major pharmaceutical companies and stepped into the light, but sooner or later they tended to return to Gangnam in pursuit of even greater profits.
They instinctively knew where the surest money was.

Yet here was an alchemist with a private laboratory near Gwanghwamun, producing expensive medicinal pills with no mass-market appeal.
He was clearly nothing like the typical goblin alchemist.
That had worked in Jun-gyeong’s favor by providing him with excellent medicine, but the price was equally extraordinary.
The pill he had just absorbed had also cost far more than its actual cost would warrant.
Of course, Jun-gyeong himself had extracted every last bit of medicinal benefit from it, more than enough to justify its value.
But an ordinary person like Seung-ho would be different.
At most, it would probably make his body feel a little lighter, no more effective than an extraordinarily expensive restorative tonic.
Beyond that, there would only be the placebo effect of knowing it had been made by a master goblin alchemist and the Veblen effect of assuming that something so expensive had to be good.
It was an absurd price for a restorative tonic.
His sense of money might have dulled since meeting Seung-ho, but one billion won for a single pill still didn’t feel real.

The laboratory stood in a quiet residential area of Hyoja-dong, an ordinary-looking three-story building.
But its interior was lavish to an almost grotesque degree.
The moment they stepped inside, light poured from chandeliers and reflected off the gleaming marble floor until it dazzled the eyes, while statues that looked cast from solid gold lined the walls without a gap between them.

A woman standing behind the enormous marble counter at the center bowed politely.

“Welcome.”

There was no explanation of the establishment, no ordinary sales pitch, only a simple greeting. It was proof that anyone who came here already knew exactly why they had come, or that the establishment served only clients so elite that marketing was unnecessary.

“He’s waiting for you on the third floor.”
“Thank you.”

They had been directed upstairs, yet there was neither a staircase nor a door in sight. Seung-ho casually walked down the corridor beside the counter and stopped before a marble wall, making Jun-gyeong narrow his eyes slightly.
At that moment, the wall split apart, revealing an elevator covered entirely in gold.

“What a waste of money.”
“Doesn’t that just mean he’s good enough to have plenty of clients?”

Jun-gyeong clicked his tongue at Seung-ho’s amused response.

“It means there are that many suckers. Do you get your medicine made here too?”
“…No. My father and grandfather are the ones who mostly use this place.”

Jun-gyeong sighed.
If the man wasn’t selling bad medicine at inflated prices, it was none of Jun-gyeong’s concern how the wealthy chose to spend their own money. Even so, the blatant luxury designed to exploit the so-called Veblen effect left a bitter taste in his mouth.

When they reached the third floor, the doors opened onto a spacious office.
A raised wooden floor for sitting occupied the open space beside the windows, while an antique wooden desk stood in the center of the office.
Behind it sat a green-skinned goblin wearing glasses and a hanbok. The moment Jun-gyeong saw him, his eyebrow twitched.

Ordinary humans were not very good at distinguishing the faces of other races.
Even humans often struggled to distinguish unfamiliar ethnic features, such as Westerners with East Asians or the reverse. It was even harder with races that had crossed over from other dimensions.
Elves at least resembled Western humans and could be differentiated to some extent by their varied eye and hair colors, but orcs, dwarves, and goblins were almost impossible for most humans to tell apart.

But with his sharpened five senses, Jun-gyeong recognized the goblin sitting before him at a glance.
The goblin seemed to recognize him as well, jolting in surprise and shooting to his feet.

“G-Grim Reaper…”
“Grim Reaper, you say.”

A smile appeared on Jun-gyeong’s face.
The goblin immediately rushed around the desk.
Then, eyes shining, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

“No, Benefactor. It was a slip of the tongue. My apologies.”

Seung-ho stared back and forth between them with wide eyes.

“You know each other?”
“We met once in Incheon.”

He was the goblin who had been locked in a cage when Jun-gyeong raided the warehouse in Incheon.
The one who had told Jun-gyeong where the Saenara Gang had gone.

“Do you need medicine? I-I’ll make as much as you need.”
“Yes. I need good medicine.”

A broad smile spread across Jun-gyeong’s face.

The goblin, who introduced himself as Barkan, sat with Jun-gyeong on the wooden floor beside the window and took his pulse.
It was a strange sight, an alchemist rooted in Western traditions taking a pulse like an Eastern physician, but Jun-gyeong let him work.
He knew little about the peculiarities of goblins, and after experiencing the effects of Barkan’s pill himself, there was no reason to doubt his skill.
If anything, the familiar method of diagnosis put him at ease.

Barkan concentrated with his eyes closed for a long while before slowly opening them and nodding.

“I’ll prepare medicine perfectly suited to you, Benefactor.”
“How long will it take?”
“Not long. The most important ingredient is nearby.”

Jun-gyeong’s expression twisted slightly at the mention of the ingredient being nearby.
He had heard the pills required wild ginseng and all manner of precious ingredients, yet he had never heard of wild ginseng growing on nearby Inwangsan.
Barkan continued.

“There’s an ingredient in Sajik-dong that is perfectly suited to you, Benefactor.”

Jun-gyeong’s expression hardened instantly.
The strange movement of Qi he had sensed in Sajik-dong flashed through his mind.

“Tell me everything.”
“Yes. Actually, I nearly died because of it. Those bastards… That’s why I was kidnapped in the first place. It was a tremendous discovery, something found on Earth for the first time, and they tried to kill me so they could monopolize it.”

Barkan met Jun-gyeong’s eyes and lowered his voice.

“I survived because you dealt with them, Benefactor, but the real power behind them is still out there. The Saenara Gang were nothing more than errand boys. The ones who had me kidnapped and bought the information were the real force behind it all, China’s Taehwa Pharmaceutical.”

Seung-ho flinched violently and looked at Jun-gyeong.

“Taehwa Pharmaceutical? Hyung-nim, that’s the pharmaceutical company Wang Jo-young ran. The one behind that Jiangshi virus incident…”
“A virus? Ah! That would make sense. They have a secret laboratory beneath a building in Sajik-dong. I set up the main laboratory for them. I don’t know what they ended up creating there, though.”

At Barkan’s confirmation, a smile began spreading across Jun-gyeong’s face.
But it was a vicious smile utterly devoid of warmth, one that seemed to freeze the air around him.
Barkan flinched and shuddered.
Jun-gyeong’s calm voice settled over the silence.

“So this is no longer merely a human affair.”

CRASH-!

Though he could easily have dodged, the man allowed the flying porcelain teacup to strike him in the head.
He knew it was the fastest way to bring the situation under control.

“How did you handle things so badly that he got arrested there?”
“My apologies.”
“Apologies? You fucking bastard! You think ‘sorry’ is enough for this?!”

Red blood welled from the man’s temple and ran down his cheek.
But the large man did not so much as flinch. He kept both hands clasped before him and his head bowed.

“Who was it?! What bastard stopped it?! How is there not a single article in the newspapers or anywhere in the media?!”

What enraged the chairman was not his son’s detention.
It was the silence of a world that refused to react despite the enormous amount of capital he had set in motion.
To this cold-hearted old man, his son being taken into custody by the Korean government was hardly a priority.

“Damn it! Pull the money out of the inverse positions immediately. If not even one article is coming out, we’ll lose the margin too if we keep holding them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And who is he? You must at least have the basic information.”
“He’s said to be someone accompanying the youngest son of Samo Group. Nothing else is known about him.”

The old man’s brow twitched.

“Nothing is known? About someone who attended the Pavilion auction?”
“We were informed that he arrived carrying a Three-Legged Crow Card. Beyond that, Samo Group is blocking all information about him.”
“Samo… Samo… What was his name? The Seoul mayor. Mayor Woo or Han or whatever. Put pressure on him and get my son out. How dare some little company from a pathetic little country…”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do everything I can.”

The old man’s face was covered in age spots, but his eyes gleamed like a serpent’s.

“What about the laboratory site?”
“We’ve raised the consent rate to thirty percent.”
“Too slow. Push harder.”
“Yes, sir. We’re buying up as many buildings as possible that show even the slightest Mana response. The secret laboratory is also operating without issue.”

At the mention of the laboratory, irritation deepened across the old man’s face.

“Are we still nowhere close to extracting and refining the Mana from that stone?”
“Yes, sir. Not yet…”
“Tsk, tsk. Nothing is going right. What the hell has Wang Jo-young been doing all this time? The idiot went and got himself arrested.”

His son’s name had finally come up, but not out of concern. It was nothing more than an insult laced with contempt.

“Forget that. Did you dispose of the goblin bastard who found the Mana Stone?”
“Yes. We were told the Saenara Gang took care of him.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can’t expect good luck to last forever just because things went your way once. Keep a tighter grip on this.”
“Yes, Chairman. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Is that Saenara Gang bastard Jeong Dong-hyeok still managing the area?”

The man’s expression stiffened.

“Well… we can’t reach him.”
“What? You can’t reach him?”
“Yes. He suddenly disappeared without a trace.”
“…No one’s caught wind of this, have they?”
“I don’t believe so. No outside forces have approached Sajik-dong yet.”
“Then who’s managing it now?”
“A new organization called Beast.”
“Beast? Ah, those animal bastards?”
“Yes. It’s an alliance of beastfolk and human organized-crime groups.”
“Haah. Idiots. Whatever. Tell them to keep the place under control. And don’t put too much faith in those animals.”

The old man’s face twisted grotesquely.

“Damn it! Why did the Gate have to appear in some insignificant little country like that?”
“Mayor Han is accelerating the redevelopment of the area. With the next election right around the corner, we should see results before then. I also heard the barrier stones are scheduled to be installed today.”
“Did the Maoshan Taoists go?”
“Yes. The Maoshan Sect selected its finest Taoists and dispatched them to Korea.”
“Then tell them not to waste money on anything else. Just stuff that mayor’s pockets instead. That’s the cheapest and fastest way. What politician in Korea doesn’t like money?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get out.”

After the man left, the old man’s gaze deepened as he stared at the documents on his desk.
He tapped the papers with one finger and murmured,

“Under Samo Group’s protection… Just who the hell are you?”

His unanswered question settled hollowly over the office.