Past Life Returner

Chapter 362

Jessica came into the living room after checking the stock price of the CVA (Chris Victory Agency), then she soon regretted it.

I shouldn’t have protected them like that.

No, she was right in protecting the group, but the way she did it was wrong. Even if she hadn’t stepped up, Odin would not have allowed the merger and acquisition.

Her husband, Gillian, kept calling her, but she didn’t answer. She had turned her phone on mute as she expected this would happen.

As Jessica was deep in thought with her hand resting on her forehead, she was interrupted by a female voice.

“Are you not going to answer?”

The person asking was Lucy, an Awakened Jessica had hired as a residential security guard. She had noticed a clear disparity in skill level among the Awakened, prompting her to seek assistance from the higher section.

Despite this, she couldn’t shake the feeling that bringing such an individual to her place was not quite right for her. Moreover, the Awakened in the high section were those who had led a group in the Stage of Advent. It was paradoxical, but they tended to miss those times a lot.

What Jessica despised most were their condescending gazes toward those who they considered beneath them. Although some were adept at concealing their true intentions behind courteous manners, she couldn’t help but penetrate through their veiled expressions because she was once like that before.

She was extremely sensitive and arrogant now, particularly due to the fact that a seemingly unimportant Wall Street figure had achieved enough success to dominate the global economy and marry her husband.

Therefore, she went through multiple interviews and employed Lucy. Lucy had a more subdued gaze compared to those from higher sections, as she was in the Bsilgol section. Although she had been through hell, she was clumsy and foolish enough that Jessica could grasp her thoughts. The purpose of the hiring was to make rumors spread in the industry that she had hired Awakened as a bodyguard, so there was no concern about choosing Lucy.

Lucy pointed out, “You keep getting calls.”

“I know.”

When she didn’t answer the phone call, Gillian sent her a follow-up text.

「 Why did you do that? Pick up the phone. 」

Jessica powered down her personal phone while keeping her other phone designated for business purposes on.

“You look different today,” Lucy said.

Jessica asked, “Even you can tell that, right? But why didn’t you leave for outer space? Do you want me to introduce you to an agency?”

“Then who will guard you, Jessica?”

Jessica blinked. “You seem very different from other Awakened. Umm… You seem relaxed.”

Lucy smiled quietly. Perhaps she had caught Jessica’s attention with her tranquil expression. Jessica beckoned to sit next to her instead of standing like that.

Jessica had many bodyguards, but her Awakened bodyguard was definitely different. Lucy sat down without hesitation, and Jessica looked at her with envious eyes. Well, of course, except for the hell she went through.

“Should we take a shot, Lucy?”

Lucy accepted her suggestion this time because she knew she wasn’t there to guard her. However, it was Jessica who hesitated when Lucy poured whiskey into her glass as she hadn’t even sipped a drop of alcohol in several years.

Lucy glanced at Jessica’s quivering eyes as she looked at the glass, and then pushed the glass close to her.

Lucy said to Jessica with a slightly playful tone, “You’re the one who first suggested that we drink.”

“Teach me how you can smile like that even though you have been through hell. You… You are…”

Jessica refrained from asking how Lucy managed to remain composed despite being in the Bsilgol section.

“What’s wrong? You are living in such a magnificent mansion.”

Lucy was actually curious. At first, she didn’t know who was employing her. She just thought it would be one of the rich, but that wasn’t true. In terms of the civilian world, Jessica was the most influential and richest woman in the world.

If Lucy hadn’t become a bodyguard, then she would have never been able to see Jessica.

Then, Jessica asked, “You don’t have kids, do you?”

Only then did Lucy realize that she had never seen a picture of a child in the mansion.

Lucy replied, “No, I don’t.”

Jessica stated somewhat bitterly, “We dedicated a lot of effort towards having a child, even undergoing procedures. Perhaps, God believes that we already had enough blessings.”

G…god?

Lucy was rolling her eyes inward cynically.

If there was a god, there would be no place like the Stage of Advent.

If there were a being recognized as a deity, then Lucy would say that she had witnessed such an entity in the Final Stage.

Anyway, Lucy realized Jessica was acting like she was in vain even though she had everything except for a child.

“That is why I’m estranged from my husband. We have so many conflicts with our opinions. Come to think of it, you have never seen him, have you?” Jessica asked.

She was talking about Gillian, the CEO of Gillian Investment Finance Group. Lucy answered that she had not.

“It’s your turn, Lucy.”

“About what?”

“Are you going to pretend that you know nothing?”

Lucy smiled in a way that Jessica envied again, then she said slowly, “You will have a smile like mine once you have a child. That’s the only thing you feel like you are missing, isn’t it?”

“Are you saying that you have everything?” Jessica asked curiously.

Lucy shrugged. “Not as much as you, Jessica, but I have a lot of things. Of course, I don’t want a kid.”

***

Jessica was lying on the bed.

“You will have a smile like mine once you have a child. That’s the only thing you feel like you are missing, isn’t it?”

Lucy’s voice kept ringing in Jessica’s ears. These were thoughts that she was already aware of, but hearing the confirmation from someone else felt like a sharp blade piercing her lungs. She desperately wanted a kid with her own eyes and her husband’s hair color, but it was too late.

Both she and her husband were too old. Individuals who had already attained success and still had the potential for further achievements tended to forget their age and concentrate only on their goals. However, she solely gazed at the summit. Looking back, she didn’t let go of the hope of having a child when she disclosed Mossack Fonseca, the Panama tax avoidance factory.

That must be why I did such a thing.

As she ascended to the pinnacle and looked down, she realized that the world was terrible. She discovered what she had done under Odin, and she didn’t want her kids to grow up in that world where the fate of billions of people hinged on the judgment of a single authoritative individual. Especially in situations where the propensity of the absolute could not be distinguished by good or evil.

Did a good end justify any and all means employed in achieving it? And conversely, how should one judge a situation where the means employed were good, but the end pursued was evil?

Also, as long as the person with power wasn’t a robot, that tendency could always change from evil to good and vice versa.

A quick look at .com will leave you more fulfilled.

Apart from such a philosophical problem, the world crafted by absolute authority had surpassed even the dystopian setting depicted in the book [1984]. Nevertheless, the authority held only economic power, lacking physical force until that point.

However, he shouldn’t have touched the Carl and Jane Accounting Law Firm! That was a detonator! Jessica couldn’t have kids and didn’t even think about adoption, but that was the last straw for her.

She groped around the floor in the darkness, then swallowed a pill of Moclobemide with a sip of water. She knew that taking antidepressants wouldn’t help because the world wouldn’t change because of a few pills.

“What is wrong with you? Jessica. Is it just because of kids?”

She felt like she could hear her husband scolding her.

“Yes! Only because of that!”

Her shouting at him also rang in her ears.

Jessica was sobbing without realizing it. She had heard that the Stage of Advent was akin to hell, but she had also been enduring a living hell for the past several years. She couldn’t discern whether her inability to conceive or the terror induced by the world shaped by absolute authority was the source of her turmoil.

She seemed to have cried herself to sleep because her pillow was wet when she woke up.

“Are you okay? I was debating if I should wake you up or not.”

It was Lucy. Jessica was in a bad mood. She had forgotten about her nightmare, yet the lingering sentiment of weeping persisted within her. At that moment, Lucy’s attention shifted toward the medicine case on the floor.

Lucy said as if taking antidepressants was nothing, “Jessica, this won’t help you at all.”

“How did you go through the Stage of Advent, Lucy?” Jessica suddenly asked.

Lucy shrugged. “I drank monster blood sometimes.”

“Monster blood?” Jessica widened her eyes.

Lucy’s lips quirked. “But the effect was only temporary. This is the pill I brought from the United States.”

Lucy took out a red pill from her jacket.

“Don’t even talk about it if it’s an addictive drug.” There was a distinct edge to Jessica’s voice.

“A drug?” Lucy laughed it off.

“This is the only one left, so what should I do?” Lucy said with a sweet smile as if she was talking to her old friend while waving her hand that held the pill.

She continued, “Give it a try. The pill itself isn’t addictive, and I’m sure you will feel less depressed. It’s not something that causes hallucinations. This isn’t a drug. It’s beyond that.”

Jessica narrowed her eyes. “What’s inside that pill?”

“You will find out when you take it. This is my gift to you for being kind to me. This is so hard to get, and if you like it, you could get some more? I will pay for them. Nothing is impossible for you, right?”

Jessica recalled a scene from the movie [Matrix] as she looked at the pill in Lucy’s hand. In the movie, the pill was a medicine that told the world the truth.

I already know the truth.

Jessica smirked and picked up the pill, then swallowed it with a cup of water that she didn’t finish last night. She had taken stimulants multiple times before, and she thought the pill would be one of them.

However, as soon as the pill hit her stomach…

Huh?

She could sense the presence of the pill in her stomach. Then, she distinctly felt the effects spreading throughout her body like a spiderweb, even reaching all of her blood vessels.

Lucy said as if she had been waiting until Jessica widened her eyes, “That drug is called Spider-Web. Don’t you get why it’s named like that? I heard it’s more effective for civilians.”

Jessica found it difficult to describe the efficacy of the pill. It provided more energy than any stimulant and, as Lucy had claimed, completely eradicated any melancholic emotions she had been experiencing as though they had never existed in the first place.

When Jessica tried to get up from the bed using one hand for support, the bed couldn’t withstand the force exerted by her. The bed suddenly collapsed, causing her to lose her balance. Although she was expected to tumble with the bed, her reflexes enabled her to regain stability, which was a skill that the average civilian would not possess.

“I knew it, but I guess you really don’t socialize with anyone. Isn’t it hard to just work?” Lucy asked.

“This is…”

“There’s a trend among the rich women to secretly call Bsilgol men over after taking the pill.”

“Then?”

Lucy snorted. “Come on. What other reason is there for a woman to call a man secretly?”

However, Jessica actually didn’t know what she meant. A wave of energy unlike any she had ever experienced before hit her, and it was a recollection of searching for new companies, driven by her pursuit of changing markets.

She didn’t only look for private military companies and agencies like Brian Kim. The research of inventing new medications from monster carcasses and blood was underway in the pharmaceutical industry, and one company sponsored by the U.S. government grabbed her attention.

“Lucy! Is this synthesized from the monster’s blood?” she asked.

Jessica opened her laptop instead of listening to Lucy’s reply. She tracked the relevant information on the spot.

I found it.

A new drug was on the verge of being released by a pharmaceutical company sponsored by the U.S. government. They were listed by a financial firm and, unsurprisingly, were one of the companies under Jeonil.

The equity structure of the pharmaceutical companies was simple. Twenty percent were equally distributed to each of the three corporations and one individual investor running the company. The remaining twenty percent was left out for sponsorship and listing in the future.

What stood out was the assumption that the two corporations belonged to the absolute ruler. If this were true, then the pharmaceutical company’s true owner would be Odin, since even firms believed to be funded by the U.S. government were subject to his influence.

Right, the world has been like that for a long time.

Even now, there were many elites in the world who were active without knowing who was at their top and whose money they were dealing with. They might be proud to think that they were smarter than anyone else, but they didn’t know who they were working for. The shares of pharmaceutical companies secured by the absolute were the result of such blind elites’ hard work.

Jessica had been helping Odin to build the system, so she could see through the situation quickly. Brian Kim was impatient to acquire RMC of Rothschild and CVA of Chris, but Jessica still didn’t think that was a smart suggestion.

If you look into the equity structures of the company, it might turn out to be the property of Odin.

She was confident that the absolute wouldn’t be able to fully grasp his property. It was meaningless and impossible. He probably only knew that he had dominated the Earth. The Earth belonged to him, and the same applied to anything that originated from it.

Jessica got up from her seat. The world was still the same even though she looked at it with eyes full of vitality. However, she wasn’t depressed anymore due to the pill.

This is…

It was an undeniable truth that Odin had saved mankind from the Day of Advent. However, his presence and the order he had entrenched during the process were extremely dangerous.

Jessica sat down again after checking that Lucy was out in the living room. Then, she put her hands on the keyboard. She appeared determined as she contacted the person through the encrypted channel.

She wanted the public to realize the truth of the world.