Chapter 603

"I have to say... this is a pretty terrible idea."

The moment Salorathis heard Evenson’s proposal, she delivered her verdict without hesitation.

"Sending fishing boats into the South Pacific isn’t a big deal. It wouldn’t cost much, and deep-sea fishing isn’t exactly complicated. I refuse to believe one fishing boat could break Cthulhu’s seal. But if they actually haul something up..." She hesitated. "Well, ordinary fish, shrimp, or crabs would be fine. But if they catch something else..."

She trailed off.

Olesys picked up where her sister stopped.

"Who knows whether they’ll pull up something like a Deep One—or something on the level of a Faceless One?"

"That should be easy enough to tell," Evenson said.

The Eredar twins stared at him, clearly expecting him to elaborate.

He shrugged.

"If it gets caught in the net, it’s a Deep One. If it’s a Faceless One, the boat will probably be at the bottom of the ocean."

"Bullshit."

Salorathis rolled her eyes.

"Forget about the boat sinking and us getting dragged into some ridiculous compensation lawsuit. A single fishing boat searching such a massive stretch of ocean could take who knows how long to find what we want. And personally, I wouldn’t bet on your luck."

What’s wrong with my luck?

Evenson almost argued that Deep Ones weren’t exactly legendary loot. If one didn’t show up on the first cast, they could always cast again.

Unfortunately, Olesys continued before he could defend himself.

"A proper deep-sea fishing fleet would improve the odds, technically. But it would also make people curious. Why would a company that publicly sells medical equipment but secretly researches biotechnology suddenly become obsessed with commercial fishing?"

"And the fleet can’t remain at sea indefinitely. They’ll need to return for supplies. That means enormous operating costs and terrible efficiency. We could spend years searching without getting anything."

"Then what about a permanent offshore research station?" Evenson asked after considering it for a moment.

"Something similar to an offshore oil platform. We could eliminate the constant trips back and forth, and if we actually pull something out of the water..." He rubbed his chin. "I’d rather study it there than drag it back to headquarters."

"Ha."

Salorathis immediately laughed at him.

"Building a research station would solve quite a few problems. The problem is that we’d be establishing a permanent facility practically on top of Cthulhu’s prison. There’s a very real possibility that our staff would become... strange before they ever managed to retrieve what we’re looking for."

"That would save us some trouble."

A sinister smile crept across Evenson’s face.

"We could stop fishing and study the staff instead."

"Excellent idea. Build the research station."

Olesys gave a light clap.

"I can invent the justification in about five seconds. We can claim we’re conducting advanced research on shark brains to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s."

She paused.

"But..."

Her tone abruptly changed.

"The biggest problem is that we can’t afford it."

Silence.

All three of them lowered their heads.

Evenson’s dropped the lowest.

His original startup capital had come from the six billion dollars he’d managed to squeeze out of Justin Hammer. He hadn’t added another cent since then.

Under normal circumstances, six billion dollars was absurdly large. An ordinary person could work their entire life and never come remotely close to earning that kind of money.

Unfortunately, they weren’t operating under normal circumstances anymore.

Running a company cost money. Buying buildings cost money. Hiring employees cost money. Research cost money. Permits cost money. Government connections cost money.

And then there were the Eredar twins’ somewhat unhealthy hobbies.

Their enormous startup fund had already been whittled down to the point where it was barely enough to keep the company operating normally.

An offshore research station wasn’t a neighborhood restaurant you could throw together in a weekend. Even with unlimited funding, constructing something like that would require an enormous amount of time and infrastructure.

And even if they somehow managed to build one, they’d still have to maintain it.

They had recently closed several deals with the United States government, but their customer was, unfortunately, the world’s largest capitalist government. Getting paid on time and receiving the agreed goods without some bureaucratic disaster was already a blessing.

Advance payment was a fantasy.

"Ugh..."

Salorathis sighed.

Just thinking about their financial situation gave her a headache. At this rate, her quality of life was going to suffer.

She looked hopefully at Evenson.

"When are you going to strike it rich again like last time?"

A windfall? Easy money?

Evenson wanted one too.

He rolled his eyes.

Robbing a bank would certainly be fast, but setting aside the legal problems, what bank in America was sitting on sixty billion dollars in cash?

"Let’s put this project on indefinite hold."

That was the only conclusion he could reach.

The Deep One research project would have to wait.

The Eredar twins immediately agreed.

Money. It always came down to money.

"Still... I’ll think about it."

Evenson clearly wasn’t ready to let the matter go completely.

"Maybe there’s some way to find a land-dwelling Deep One. That would eliminate a lot of the trouble."

"Sure. Do whatever you want."

Olesys nodded without much enthusiasm.

She clearly expected nothing to come of it. As far as she was concerned, Evenson was chasing another impossible idea.

By then, the three of them had reached the command center of the Black Chapter.

The department’s headquarters had been established inside Umbrella’s facilities. That was the obvious choice. The entire department was funded and staffed by the company, and Umbrella already had extensive experience dealing with superhumans.

The U.S. government wasn’t stupid enough to hand them complete freedom, of course. It had assigned an official overseer to monitor the department and ensure its authority wasn’t abused—or that Umbrella didn’t quietly ignore its promise to fully share the results of its research with the government.

Unfortunately for the poor man, his first day on the job had gone rather badly.

Salorathis had offered him a cigarette.

He’d accepted it.

He’d immediately collapsed, foaming at the mouth.

Fortunately, Salorathis had been prepared and managed to revive him before he actually died.

Before he could start collecting evidence against the Eredar twins, however, they offered him a generous supply contract and an even more generous kickback.

He promptly decided he’d forgotten everything.

Around the same time, he’d fallen desperately in love with one of the maids who had been serving the twins since their days at the Void’s Legacy nightclub.

It was the sort of love that left a man completely irrational.

If he weren’t worried about attracting suspicion, he’d probably have abandoned his wife and children already.

So these days, he wasn’t much of an overseer at all.

Mention the Black Chapter, and he’d be the first person to jump to its defense.

Evenson pushed open the command center’s door.

Before he could step inside, he heard a frivolous voice coming from within.

"Do you know how serious tax evasion is in the United States? My God, you should’ve seen the look on that guy’s face when I finished talking. He looked like I was charging him with murder. I guarantee you that pain was real."

Evenson’s mouth twitched.

McNa was standing with her back to the door, gesturing animatedly as she told someone the story.

"Ahem."

"Hmm?"

McNa froze.

She turned around stiffly.

When she saw Evenson standing there, an awkward smile spread across her face.

"Boss! What brings you here?"

Damn it.

She’d been talking behind the boss’s back, and now the boss had caught her.

There went her bonus forever.

Then again...

Did she even have a bonus to lose?

"Good to see you, boss."

Someone emerged from behind McNa.

Moira was sitting casually in a swivel chair, watching the main command console.

"Wow," Evenson said. "Maya Hansen. You really are a completely different person now."

The woman before him looked nothing like the person he’d met once before.

Her hair was cut short and practical. She wore a black trench-coat-style combat uniform, and her extremely lean frame made her cheekbones look especially prominent.

"Moira."

She politely corrected him.

"Please call me Moira. Maya Hansen was a foolish woman who no longer exists."

"All right, Moira."

Evenson shrugged.

"I don’t come to the company often, and this is my first time visiting the Black Chapter. So aside from catching people talking behind my back and docking McNa’s vacation time..." He gave McNa a meaningful look.

Her face immediately fell.

"...I wanted to know whether anything interesting has happened lately. Something unusual. Something I wouldn’t already know about."

"There is, boss!"

McNa jumped at the opportunity to prove herself.

"I don’t know much about the company’s internal affairs, but everything has been running normally. A few nights ago, though, something interesting happened."

"Interesting?"

Evenson immediately perked up.

There weren’t many things that happened inside his company that could genuinely qualify as interesting.

"Remember my penthouse office?"

Salorathis had pulled over a chair and sat down beside him. Like her sister, she rested her feet casually on the command console.

"Technically, that place is mostly for appearances. I barely ever go there."

That, at least, was true.

The office was boring.

Why would she spend her time in there when the Void’s Legacy nightclub existed?

Thinking about that place alone explained a great deal about why the company’s finances were currently in such terrible shape.

"But the office has been maintained properly," Salorathis continued.

"Especially the exterior windows. They’re kept spotless. I paid the window cleaners quite well for that."

She paused.

"And then a few nights ago, someone tried to ruin all that hard work by leaving a handprint on the outside of the glass."

Evenson frowned.

"A handprint? On the outside of the windows on the top floor?"

He rubbed his chin.

"Some kind of extreme parkour enthusiast?"

"Not exactly. But close enough."

Salorathis shrugged.

"There were several people dressed like ninjas. Unfortunately for them, their little act of vandalism triggered the defensive magic we’d installed around the building."

"They were all swallowed by the spatial maze."

She smiled.

"Their souls have now been added to our reserve stock."

Evenson rubbed his chin.

Ninjas.

Handprints.

Could these people be... from Konoha?

"What happened to their bodies?"

Moira produced a surgical scalpel from somewhere and smiled with unmistakable delight.

"Science requires practical experience."

Evenson stared at the blade.

"Where the hell did you get that?"