Sinuiju Free Market (17)

“What?”

“What the hell is that lunatic talking about?”

The black-market enforcers who had suddenly been pointed at by Hyeonseong all looked baffled.

“This fire alarm right now! It’s all because of those bastards!”

Whether they were dumbfounded behind her or not, Hyeonseong kept shouting. In a scam like this, seizing the initiative was what mattered.

“What nonsense are you spouting!”

“We’re down there too, and it’s complete chaos because we feel like we’re going to burn to death…!”

“These bastards are trying to pin it on us…!”

The enemies chasing after them immediately flared up and protested Hyeonseong’s words.

“Don’t be fooled! We saw everything! Those bastards are the arsonists!”

Hyeonseong immediately countered their rebuttal.

“Don’t be ridiculous! We never even went down to the basement in the first place!”

“If a fire broke out down there, then it must’ve been you bastards crawling out of there who did it!”

They sounded genuinely wronged. Considering the way the staff were glaring at them, that reaction was only natural.

“Are those people really the arsonists?”

One of the office-center staff members asked Hyeonseong’s group.

“Yes, it’s them.”

“Y-you…!”

Several of them pointed furiously at Hyeonseong as she answered without hesitation. Judging by how even their fingertips were trembling, they seemed utterly dumbfounded and enraged by the situation.

Seeing that, Hyeonseong thought this was working out nicely.

‘The moment they start acting like this here, they’ve already been dragged into the situation.’

They should have either attacked Hyeonseong’s group and the center staff right away, or simply fled as they were.

A forced false accusation like this could have been brushed aside that way.

But instead, they were pointlessly bickering with Hyeonseong here like children.

They were so flustered that the option of simply crushing the issue and leaving had not even occurred to them.

‘They fell for such an obvious trick… Well, I guess that makes sense.’

The number of enemies Hyeonyeong had thrown down the stairs on the way here flashed through Hyeonseong’s mind.

If they had seen someone hurl that many people around without tiring in the slightest, then from the enemy’s perspective, they would have been intimidated whether they realized it or not.

In short, it meant they were hardly in a state to keep a cool head.

“Hurry up and report those bastards!”

Hyeonseong urged the office-center staff.

“Y-yes!”

A few staff members fumbled to pull out their phones. Whether it was to file a report or make some other contact, they were genuinely trying to call someone.

“Tch…!”

“Forget it! Hit them!”

Perhaps thinking it would be bad if they really got reported, the men raised the weapons in their hands again.

But their attempt to attack came to nothing.

“Unni, should I stop just pushing them back now?”

Hyeonyeong stepped forward and leveled her sheathed sword at them.

At Hyeonseong’s words telling her to do it, Hyeonyeong thrust out her sword without hesitation. Following that motion, white aura burst forth and shoved all the enemies in front of her back into the stairwell.

“Ugh!”

“Ack!”

The enemies who were blasted back screamed loudly as they were shoved down the stairs. Before they could recover their senses and come back up, Hyeonseong’s group quickly fled with the office-center staff in tow.

“Th-thank you…”

Once they got farther away from the stairwell at the far end, several staff members thanked Hyeonseong’s group.

“I never imagined the fire had been caused by arson…”

“They’re really terrifying people.”

“They looked scary even at a glance…”

The staff each said a word or two while glancing back toward the stairwell.

“Haha… Yeah, so we were pretty scared too. Those vicious-looking bastards were chasing after us in a whole pack…”

Hyeonseong laughed as if agreeing with the staff member’s words and replied in kind. For now, she needed to go along with their conversation appropriately.

‘If we act even a little strange, they’ll definitely get suspicious.’

She had thrown the arson charge onto the other side by striking first, but there was no telling how long such a shallow lie would hold.

‘A lie like this can be exposed in no time just by checking the surveillance cameras.’

Hyeonseong thought there was no way the basement maze where the transfer room was had no surveillance cameras.

There had been none installed openly where they could be seen, but it made no sense for a place like that to have no cameras at all.

And the footage stored on those cameras could make its way into the hands of the office-center staff under any pretext whatsoever.

There was no way Hyeonseong could have considered the existence of surveillance cameras while they were busy escaping.

And now that they had at least a little breathing room, the others were probably already in a position where they could have gathered the footage.

‘It’s impossible to look for the surveillance cameras and tamper with them now. In the first place, even back then, I’m not sure whether it would have been easy to breach the cameras and servers.’

It might not have been on the same level as the transfer room, but that did not mean the basement maze’s security would have been weak.

If she tried to have Nemesis infiltrate and manipulate it, it surely would have taken some time.

‘If they decide to pull the surveillance footage to find out who started the fire…’

“They seem like they started to come after us, but stopped.”

While Hyeonseong was continuing her thoughts, Hyeonyeong spoke.

“Those bastards from before?”

“Yeah. They tried to come out, then went back in.”

“A tactical retreat, huh.”

“So what are we going to do now?”

This time, Haesu asked in a small voice.

“For now, we should keep following these people.”

“Is that really okay? If things go wrong…”

At Hyeonseong’s answer, Haesu trailed off. She looked worried that the identity of the real culprit who had started the fire underground might be exposed.

“That’s exactly why we have to keep following them.”

If they came out later looking for the real culprit after Hyeonseong’s group had left, that would be even more troublesome.

There was no way to control events happening outside her sight the way she wanted.

‘If it comes down to it, I’ll just have to scam them in real time. So it’s better to stay until they find the arsonist.’

“…Then why on earth did you do something like that in the first place?”

Haesu reproached Hyeonseong in a voice thick with displeasure.

“What’s the point of picking apart something that’s already been done?”

“That’s not some ordinary thing! If you get caught…!”

“Haesu-ssi, I think you acting like that is going to make us get caught even more.”

At Hyeonseong’s remark, Haesu fell silent.

“Don’t worry too much. I’ve already thought of a way out if it comes to that.”

“…Really?”

“Well… whether it’ll work the way I planned is a separate issue.”

At Hyeonseong’s answer, Haesu stared at her without a word. Her expression could not be seen because of the gas mask, but she was probably glaring at Hyeonseong with doubtful eyes.

Still, that answer was the best Hyeonseong could give.

No matter how much she tried to plan while accounting for every possible situation, there were limits to Hyeonseong’s knowledge, ability, and imagination.

If things went wrong beyond those limits, then there was nothing even Hyeonseong could do.

“Let’s just follow those people down for now.”

Right now, leaving the building by following the staff came first. At Hyeonseong’s words, Haesu kept her mouth shut and nodded.

The group was soon able to get outside the building.

The moment she got out, Hyeonseong checked the signboard first. Just as she had confirmed from the internet line name, it really was the Free Market Office Center.

“So it really was…”

Haesu muttered in a hollow voice while looking up at the sign.

“What do you mean?”

One of the staff members who had come down with them asked Haesu.

“Oh, we were so busy running frantically underground that we didn’t even know where we’d come out.”

Hyeonseong answered in her place. Since telling the truth here would not really cause any problem, she did not bother making up pointless lies.

“Um, by the way, how is it down below? Did they put out the fire?”

This time, Haesu asked a staff member.

“They say it hasn’t been easy to put it out. They said it doesn’t seem like an ordinary fire…”

The staff member answered with a troubled look.

‘Well, sure. If you think about it, setting that place on fire was basically like throwing fire into oil.’

From Hyeonseong’s experience, if there was no karma worth burning, the ‘Fire of Judgment’ would go out in an instant no matter how many flames it poured out.

But if there was enough karma to burn, then it became a flame more tenacious and more powerful than anything else.

‘Illegal transactions, illegal gambling, the kinds of fraud, injuries, and killings that would happen along the way… There must be more than enough karma here to burn.’

Even by a conservative estimate, hundreds of people had probably committed hundreds of different sins.

Given the nature of the place, most of those sins would have been committed voluntarily, without any outside interference.

‘It must have made pretty decent fuel for the Fire of Judgment.’

‘…Now that I think of it that way, I understand even less what the hell was going on with that lich we dealt with last time.’

As she continued thinking, Hyeonseong narrowed her brow.

By any common-sense standard, the sins that lich had piled up while alive had absolutely not been minor.

And yet the ‘Fire of Judgment’ had not judged that creature’s karma to be especially heavy.

‘If that judgment was made according to the standards of common social sense, then in that bastard’s case it must mean outside interference played a major role in his karma after all…’

“Um…”

One of the staff members spoke to Hyeonseong, who had been lost in thought. Hyeonseong turned her head.

“But… are you going to keep wearing that?”

“That? Ah.”

Having asked back reflexively, Hyeonseong quickly realized what the staff member was referring to.

‘Come to think of it, I don’t really have to worry about a respiratory debuff anymore.’

Unless the black-market forces had gone insane, they would not try a biochemical attack in a place like this.

There was the issue of public justification, but there was also a practical problem.

If they accidentally wiped out all the staff, would it not be a nuisance to have to refill those vacancies afterward?

‘And they probably want to figure out what exactly happened here too. To do that, they’ll need to know who we are.’

There was no longer any particular reason to hide her face.

Hyeonseong took off her gas mask and tossed it into the Infinite Corridor. Seeing that, Haesu also removed the gas mask she had been wearing and handed it back to Hyeonseong.

“Do we have to stay here? We have our own schedule too.”

Before the staff could react, Hyeonseong asked first.

“Huh? Ah, well…”

“We’re going to need to ask for your cooperation for a moment.”

The reply came not from a staff member, but from an unfamiliar voice. Hyeonseong turned toward the direction the voice had come from. Several people in police uniforms were approaching.

“Are they real?”

Hyeonseong asked Hyeonyeong in a low voice. Hyeonyeong replied that they probably were.

‘At least judging from their life signs, there’s no issue.’

For the moment, Hyeonseong decided to recognize the group before her as actual police.

“What exactly do you mean by cooperation?”

“By any chance, do you know what happened down below?”

One of the police officers asked, pointing at the ground.

“Yes.”

Hyeonseong answered briefly. At a time like this, there was no need to tack on unnecessary elaboration.

“If you know, that makes things easier. The thing is, we have some questions to ask because of the fire that broke out down there.”

The officer stated the real reason. As expected, there had been no need for Hyeonseong to bring it up first.

“I don’t really mind answering questions… but are we doing it here? I heard the fire still hasn’t been put out.”

Hyeonseong asked while putting on a worried expression.

“We’ll have to move locations. As you said, the fire still hasn’t been put out.

They say they managed to stop it from spreading farther somehow, but the fire that already caught is apparently very hard to extinguish.”

“Was it really a fire started by magic or an item?”

“What kind of magic could have started it?”

One of the center staff members asked.

“We don’t know that much for certain yet. However…”

Another police officer lightly tapped the arm of the officer who had been continuing the explanation.

At that, the officer who had been speaking widened his eyes and shut his mouth. It seemed this was an area they still should not explain directly to civilians.

“…In any case, it definitely did not look like an ordinary fire.

The details will be reported through the media after the investigation into the truth has progressed, so we would appreciate it if you could check then.”

The officer quickly wrapped up the explanation. The staff still looked curious, but they did not ask any more questions.

“Then let’s leave the fire to the experts and move.”

With that, the police led Hyeonseong’s group and the center staff away from the area.