Chapter 299: Friend (4)

Translator: Dreamscribe

Jinwoo began to move in earnest.

He intended to start with New York, where the terror attack had happened, and comb through the entire world, cleaning it all up. Let's start with the bastard who leaked the FS Convention Center blueprints and the event information.

Finding him wasn't difficult.

Thanks to magic and Authority, he didn't have to run around playing detective. The research lab, along with the Magic Tower connected to the Soul Gate, ran massive computations to read the data and trace the direction in which it had traveled.

Click!

The Magic Tower organized the information on its own and transmitted it to Jinwoo. The Soul Gate, borrowing Jinwoo's Authority, displayed their locations on his Information Window.

Jinwoo was not currently inhabiting a Soulmate.

He was in Lee Jinwoo's own body, and Heina, too, had been given a Bio-Golem body he had constructed for her, so she could exert her original power.

Jinwoo tracked down the man who had taken money and handed over the information.

He was an executive at the construction firm that had worked on the FS Convention Center, and at the moment he wasn't at his office or at home but out in some remote place that looked like a warehouse.

He wasn't there alone, either. Quite a crowd had gathered.

"Now this is interesting."

Jinwoo used Spatial Teleportation to move there with Heina.

The briny stench of the sea hung thick in the air.

Arriving near a run-down warehouse at a quiet harbor, Jinwoo looked around.

Parked in front of the warehouse were luxury cars that didn't belong in a place like this at all. Men who looked like drivers and bodyguards waited around the vehicles, smoking.

When Jinwoo walked toward the warehouse, letting them hear him coming, the men who had been killing time trading jokes flinched and drew their pistols.

They recognized Jinwoo's face and their expressions turned to shock, but he gave them no chance to speak. He snapped his fingers, and every vehicle and every man in front of the warehouse was stored away into Subspace just like that.

Something entertaining seemed to be unfolding inside, so let's go in quietly.

Jinwoo entered the warehouse with Heina.

The lights were on, but they were dim, and the interior felt dark overall. The place had gone unused for a long time, so dust lay thick over everything, and it was piled high with fishing junk.

In the middle of the warehouse he could see people shaking violently. They were ordinary civilians, the kind found anywhere in America. They must have been held a good while; they looked like wrecks.

In front of them stood a middle-aged man in a crisp suit, surrounded by men with vicious faces.

They were mercenaries, all former special forces.

"P-please, spare me. I, I didn't s-say anything."

"M-me neither!"

"I'll keep my mouth shut, I swear. Please...!"

The bound captives began to beg, tears running down their faces. But the middle-aged man showed no intention of letting them go.

The mercenaries, dressed in work gear, expertly prepped the tools they would use to dismember the bodies. It seemed they planned to dump the pieces at sea using the boat moored at the harbor.

It was a silencing.

These people had passed along information, and that information had gone through a number of hands before flowing to terrorists steeped in religious extremism.

Whether the attack succeeded or failed, they had always been fated for disposal. The traces had to be erased cleanly, so all the preparation had simply pushed things back a little.

"You've got to think it through before you take big money. Well, live long enough and you get days like this, don't you?"

Saying that, the middle-aged man gave the cheek of a weeping man a few light slaps.

"Handle it without splattering blood."

At a jerk of his chin, the mercenaries pulled out wires and closed in on the captives.

VRRRRRRM!

Behind them, a chainsaw roared to life.

They looked like men who had done this many, many times.

"Ghh, gyaaaah! S-spare me, please!"

"N-no, don't!"

"Please...! Ghh, ghurrk!"

The mercenaries wound the wires around the captives' necks and began to pull them tight.

The middle-aged man stepped in very close, apparently intending to watch them die from arm's length. He hadn't had them shot precisely so he could savor a scene like this.

The captives thrashed and struggled to break free, but the mercenaries didn't budge an inch.

"Haaah!"

The middle-aged man shivered, clearly getting a thrill out of the sight.

Jinwoo watched the scene for a moment, then flicked his hand.

TWANG!

The wires broke, and the mercenaries staggered back a step.

"Kuh-hurk! Kaugh!"

"Ugh, urgh!"

He hadn't spared them out of any concern for their lives.

It was that dying this easily would be no fun at all.

Whether they had done it knowing an attack was coming or not, their sin was by no means light. Their souls were thoroughly stained with evil.

It wasn't only the FS Convention Center; all sorts of information related to FS Games was already in terrorist hands.

Beginning with the FS Convention Center, a broad wave of attacks was scheduled. Among the planned attacks were schemes to stage them as the work of Soulmates and reap political gain from it.

They pulled out fresh wires and tried again, but those broke too. Face twisted in irritation, the middle-aged man tapped the mercenary captain, and the captain drew his pistol.

The middle-aged man sighed and stepped back.

Click!

The captain squeezed the trigger without hesitation, but the round jammed and the weapon malfunctioned. This wasn't even the middle of an operation, and not once, from the very beginning, had anything like this happened to him.

He always maintained his gear meticulously.

"Now what?"

At the middle-aged man's irritated snap, the captain worked the pistol over and pulled the trigger again. Still it wouldn't fire.

The middle-aged man checked his watch, clicked his tongue, and gestured to the mercenaries.

"Just cut them up."

"While they're alive, sir?"

"Sure. They'll be dead either way."

Hearing that, the captives screamed and pleaded. When the captain looked at his men and nodded, they dragged the people toward the worktable.

Everything needed for a clean job had been laid out around the table. It looked less like a slaughterhouse than an operating room.

Sinners begging for their lives.

Beasts ready to carve people apart without a flicker of hesitation.

And the villain who moved them all with money.

Truly a fantastic collaboration.

CLAP, CLAP, CLAP!

Jinwoo applauded the sight.

The sound of that applause reached every ear with perfect clarity.

JOLT!

Every one of them jerked and turned to look at Jinwoo. The machine that had been grinding away noisily stopped in that same instant, and the screaming captives fell silent.

THUD, THUD, THUD.

Jinwoo walked toward them out of the darkness.

In the silence that had dropped so suddenly, his footsteps rang out unusually loud.

Getting a clear look at Jinwoo's face, the middle-aged man couldn't help but be stunned.

"Lee Jinwoo...?"

Why on earth was Lee Jinwoo here?

And the woman standing beside him was Heina, from Arsilan Saga.

Was she a Soulmate?

Countless questions tangled together in every head. The mercenaries swiftly leveled their guns at Jinwoo. The captain tried to raise the men outside, but nobody answered.

"Don't worry. There's nobody outside. It's just the two of us."

The middle-aged man could not make sense of this at all.

Every muzzle in the room was trained on Lee Jinwoo. And yet Lee Jinwoo stood there as relaxed as if he'd come out for a stroll.

"Heina, subdue them."

"Yes."

Heina moved to his side, bowed her head to Jinwoo, and stretched out a hand. Space rippled, and a sword was summoned.

The instant Heina took hold of it, blue Aura burst from the blade and lit up the room.

It was skin-crawling.

The moment they saw that Aura, their whole bodies trembled and a terror washed over them that made them feel they might wet themselves.

"Shoot! Shoot her!"

The captain howled the order like a man possessed.

RATATATATAT!

The firepower pouring out of the rifles was tremendous.

It could turn a human being into a sieve with absurd ease. But not a single round reached Heina.

There was no need to stop them at all, yet Heina swung her sword in a blur and cut down each bullet one by one. The moment a bullet touched the Aura-wreathed blade, it evaporated into nothing.

The mercenaries emptied their magazines and faltered, at a loss.

Heina looked at them for a moment, then flicked the blade clean. Then she quietly slid it back into its sheath.

SHNK!

In that instant, the rifles in the mercenaries' hands came apart and clattered to the floor, and every weapon on their bodies fell into two pieces.

"Th-that's impossible."

"Monster...."

The mercenaries froze.

They were men with no shortage of battlefield experience, but they had never witnessed anything like this. All the more so because their souls had been steeped in evil from the start, which meant they had never even been allowed to experience Arsilan Saga.

"Are you done?"

Jinwoo asked, looking them over.

The middle-aged man backed away in terror and dropped onto the floor. The mercenaries stole glances toward the entrance, minds racing for a way out.

But leaving this place without Jinwoo's permission was impossible. Their ankles had sunk deep into the floor.

"Wh-wh-what, what the hell is...."

"Hurgh!"

"Ugh!"

The mercenaries panicked and tried to wrench their feet free, but that only made the pain worse.

Jinwoo walked over to the middle-aged man. Heina fetched a chair that was standing nearby and set it down in front of him.

Jinwoo sat and looked down at the man.

A glance at his information showed someone who had walked the elite path faithfully, step by step.

"Charlie, forty-three. Graduated from Georgetown University and went straight into politics. Six murders, thirty-two murder cover-ups, sixteen contract killings, bribery, drug trafficking..., doing every filthy thing in the dark while working your connections upward."

Jinwoo recited the man's sins in an easy, offhand tone.

"And you're in church every single week. Do you think God is going to forgive you?"

Jinwoo asked, eyes on Charlie.

Terrified, Charlie had no idea what answer to give and could only roll his eyes around. Heina stepped over and brought her foot down on his.

"GYAAAAAH!"

His foot crumpled in a single instant.

"Answer."

"N-no! I c-can't be f-forgiven!"

At Heina's icy command, Charlie choked back the scream forcing its way out of his mouth and barely managed to reply.

"I-I'll tell you everything. All of it..., th-the Convention Center attack, it...."

"Don't bother. I already know all of it."

"Th-there's a superior who gave me the order. He...."

"George McCall?"

Faced with a man who already knew everything, Charlie lost his voice entirely.

Charlie's superior was Senator George McCall. He had personally handed information to foreign powers and reaped all kinds of political benefits from it. He had also taken heavy bribes from the conglomerates researching robotics and cutting-edge technology.

"Guess I'll bring him in too."

As it happened, the man was alone in his shower, and since Jinwoo knew both his name and his location, there was no need to go in person.

Jinwoo snapped his fingers, a Magic Circle carved itself into the air, and George McCall was summoned. Fresh out of the shower, he dropped out of midair stark naked.

"Guh, gwaaagh! Huh? Wh-what the hell!"

Sprawled on the floor, George McCall jolted upright in shock and looked around him. Lee Jinwoo and Heina. Mercenaries with their feet buried in the concrete. Charlie drenched in sweat and shaking through the pain. And a cluster of people who had soiled themselves and were on the verge of blacking out.

None of it made the slightest sense to him.

"D-do you know who I am?! I am a United States...."

That was his opening move, and it was a very poor one.

THWACK!

Heina cracked her sheath across George McCall's mouth. His head whipped to the side and teeth scattered across the floor.

"Mind your manners."

"Ughhuurr, uwaah!"

Heina drove the sheath into George McCall's lower back. The bone fractured and he collapsed to the floor.

"GYAAAAAH! S-shorry! I'm shorry!"

A very clean start.

Every key figure in New York was gathered right here. If they weren't villains, if they had helped without knowing an attack was coming, Jinwoo had no intention of touching them.

"You people obstructed the progress of Arsilan Saga. That's the same as putting the Dimensional Realm in danger."

It was a monstrous sin.

Enough to rank alongside the Kalsus Dimensional Empire or the Erosion.

"So pay it back by becoming content."

Every one of them was from Earth, so their souls were whole.

There was one thing Jinwoo had learned from the Kalsus Dimensional Empire. It was the method of wringing a soul dry to extract enormous quantities of Dimensional Energy.

The dimensional natives who had been sacrificed there possessed souls that were mere fragments compared to those of Earthlings. Even so, they had radiated staggering amounts of Dimensional Energy through the Dimensional Barrier.

What if he ran these villains through the same process?

He could pull Dimensional Energy out of them on the scale of a large generator.

Dimensional Energy was the purest force that made up a dimension. Using it, Jinwoo could manufacture the Experience Points supplied to the Heroes.

'Leveling up has gotten pretty rough for the Named Heroes by now.'

Past level 250, Experience Points simply stopped piling up. Unless they were bringing down something on the order of a high-tier Erosion entity, the exhilarating rush of explosive leveling they'd known before was out of reach.

The Heroes' souls had already grown vast, so filling them demanded a correspondingly vast price. Varied experience could make up the difference to a degree, but that too ran into a wall as the levels climbed.

Level 300.

To become a transcendent being, a Hero needed not only rich experience but a colossal flood of Experience Points to fill the vessel of the soul to the brim.

'Give it a century or so and they'd break through level 300 on their own, but....'

There was no time for that.

It was the very problem Jinwoo had been turning over in his head, and the answer was sitting right in front of him.

Earth's most heinous villains.

Beings whose continued existence was itself a crime.

If the souls of villains like these could be put to work for the Heroes and the Dimensional Realm, few things could be better.

Jinwoo's lips stretched into a long, tearing grin.

Jinwoo extended a hand, and an Information Window rose before everyone's eyes. Listed inside it were all manner of monsters. Monsters that would grant the Heroes enormous Experience Points.

The setting was that they were Test Subjects born in the bio-labs of the Kalsus Dimensional Empire's army, on the final stage of Episode 6.

"Pick whichever one you like."

Charlie, George McCall, and the rest of the villains had no idea what he meant. At that moment, a Quest Window appeared before their eyes.

[Villain] Become a Test Subject.

Choose the Test Subject you will become.

The process of becoming a Test Subject involves considerable pain, and the degree of pain will differ for each Test Subject.

First come, first served, so choose quickly!

Condition: Villain

Reward: Horrific agony for the sake of Arsilan and the Dimensional Realm

"P-pick one?"

"Hnnnghh!"

The forms of the Test Subjects displayed in the Information Window were horrific. They doubled as a device for demonstrating the cruelty of the Kalsus Dimensional Empire, after all.

The quicker-witted mercenaries hurried to grab the Test Subjects that at least looked survivable.

"This is a nightmare, a nightmare.... Ha, hahahaha...."

George McCall muttered that and made no selection at all.

In the end, time ran out and the choice was made for him automatically. He was assigned the role of a colossal lump of flesh that glowed as acidic fluid endlessly welled up inside it.

Their role now was Dimensional Monster.

They would be used as Dimensional Monsters until the strength of their souls was worn away to nothing, and at the very end they would drop into the Underworld inside the Soul Moon.

"Plenty of your colleagues will be joining you, so you won't get too lonely. It'll hurt quite a bit, though. But hey, what can you do?"

They had only themselves to blame for turning into villains.

Jinwoo used Bio-Golems to create Bio-Golems identical in appearance to the villains. When people identical to themselves appeared before their eyes, every one of them screamed in fear.

Jinwoo converted the villains' memories into data and loaded them in, then generated virtuous personalities and granted them. From now on, they would work to make the world a more hopeful place.

"Ho ho, come by my house tomorrow."

"Understood, sir."

"Let's put our heads together on what we can do for the world."

The fake Senator George McCall and the fake Charlie said this with bright, beaming smiles.

The villains, who had been clinging to a vague hope that someone would come rescue them, lost that hope the moment they laid eyes on the Bio-Golems imitating them.

SNAP!

Jinwoo snapped his fingers, and every villain was stored away into Subspace.

"This is...."

Jinwoo felt his anger slowly thinning out.

"This farming is a total jackpot."

Earth was, unexpectedly, an excellent farming spot.

*****

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