Ch.580Chapter 22. The Price of Labor (12)

-Ah! Someone’s falling from the roof!!

The scream echoes from the TV.

The person who fell and created a crater in the middle of Hojeong Plaza didn’t move at all.

-Hey, hey!! D-don’t move the c-camera! They’re alive!

-It, it seems to be an ability user! An ability user fell from the Haeguneul building rooftop! Fortunately, their life doesn’t seem to be in danger…!

Perhaps this is what makes ability users so remarkable.

Despite falling from the Haeguneul headquarters building, which easily exceeds 100 meters in height, they don’t have a single scratch.

“My, what a pity.”

Chairman Choi Ho-jung shook his head as he watched the fallen man in the video.

“After receiving 200 billion, only to be defeated by some so-called Seonbital or whatever. How utterly disappointing.”

“Chairman, what are you taking out…?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

The chairman pulled out a fountain pen from his pocket with a refreshed expression.

“It’s extremely unfortunate, but what can we do when those who attacked the Haeguneul headquarters set off a bomb?”

“Chairman!”

“Haha, it’s truly regrettable. I don’t know what organization they’re from or how many people they sent, but to think they would terrorize our headquarters and try to collapse the building.”

Click, click.

The chairman began turning one end of the fountain pen.

“This is the last thing I wanted to use.”

Like opening a safe, the body of the fountain pen turned clockwise and counterclockwise before making a ‘click’ sound and opening up.

“There’s no choice. At this point, we have to give up on the headquarters.”

“What are you trying to do?!”

“Oh, my dear. It’s nothing.”

When the cap opened, a small button inside was revealed.

“It’s just that I feel troubled thinking about our headquarters in Busan, built over several years, collapsing.”

“The headquarters…?”

Though it was clearly suspicious with its red color, the only person who could say anything about it was Yang Da-rin.

“Don’t tell me that’s a detonator…?”

“What are you talking about? It’s just a ballpoint pen.”

The chairman shrugged nonchalantly and placed his thumb over the button.

“A building worth hundreds of billions is about to collapse. Isn’t this a normal way to cope mentally?”

“That’s a detonator, isn’t it?!”

“A detonator? You make it sound like pressing this would cause an explosion.”

Click, click, click.

“Does this look like a detonator to you?”

The chairman demonstratively pressed the end of the pen.

“It’s not me pressing this that will make the headquarters building explode, but because of the terror attack those villains caused…”

Rumble rumble.

Vibrations echo.

They come from both the TV speakers and the ground.

Eeeeeeeee.

Simultaneously, the Taeguk Watch blares loudly.

The ‘beep-beep’ sound is a disaster safety alert rarely heard.

[Earthquake of magnitude 3.2 in Yeonje-gu, Busan.]

“An earthquake, huh? Perhaps a bomb went off. They must have brought a bomb underground and detonated it.”

“…You.”

Yang Da-rin stepped back with a pale face.

“Do you know how many people are there?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re insane… completely insane!”

“Well, how preposterous.”

The chairman stroked his beard and smiled coldly.

“Didn’t you know all this when you married me?”

“What…?”

“You knew everything when you married me, and you remained silent even after finding out. Well, if you were to develop a hero complex and say something about bombs in the basement of the Haeguneul building…”

The chairman pointed at the child in Yang Da-rin’s arms and smiled broadly.

“The video of you and me singing the national anthem together to make that child would be uploaded worldwide.”

“!!”

“How about it? Are you confident, Yang Da-rin? Why? Afraid of becoming a demon?”

The chairman approached Yang Da-rin with leisurely steps.

“Go ahead, become a demon. Kill me and see what it’s like to be a demon. With the legal guardian dead, this child would become an orphan.”

“Y-you…”

“The child of South Korea’s worst scum, Choi Ho-jung, and a woman who became a demon and lost even her name—a C-rank child. The state might take care of a C-rank somewhat, but could they really grow up properly?”

“……”

“If you want to make them an orphan without parents, go ahead and betray me all you want.”

Yang Da-rin collapsed to the floor.

“Y-you’re… worse than a demon…”

“I’m human.”

The chairman casually clicked the button in front of Yang Da-rin’s eyes.

“I’m just someone with more greed for money than others… But why isn’t it exploding?”

Click, click, click.

“These bastards, don’t tell me they even…”

BOOM!!

With an explosion, the TV screen is covered in dust.

Uh, uhh, it looks like it’s tilting…

AHHH!! The building is collapsing!!

Run!! It’s exploding!!

“There we go.”

The chairman snapped his fingers.

“The biggest terror attack since the founding of Korea. Even America hasn’t experienced such an attack.”

Thanks to the cameraman who continued filming the building without fleeing the smoke, the entire nation—no, the whole world—was watching a dozens-of-stories building collapse in real time.

“Tomorrow it will be front-page news. That someone called Seonbital caused a terror attack. But you know what?”

The chairman picked up a glass from the table.

“Will it be followed by ‘Haeguneul Headquarters Collapse’ or ‘Several Deaths’?”

“……”

“Again, my hand goes to the Taeguk Watch. What? Whether thousands or tens of thousands die in Busan, is that even a problem? They’re not our Haeguneul consumers, just black consumers with complaints against Haeguneul who got caught in a terror attack and died.”

Yang Da-rin tightly embraced her child.

Covering the child’s ears with her clothes and arms, she stood up with a trembling face.

“Trash…”

“Hehe, I’m just a victim of terrorism. And at the same time, a person with the power to quell South Korea’s chaos.”

-Uh, uhh?!

The camera captures the shocked voices of those fleeing.

-Th-that direction it’s falling…?

“From the beginning, it was very well designed.”

Gulp.

“Do you like dominoes, by any chance?”

In the direction of the collapsing building, there was another high-rise building.

“I told them the government building should have been built quietly in a place with nothing around it. In the place we offered to sell at a low price. Tsk tsk.”

At the end of the chain of buildings, there was a place everyone knew.

* * *

“I never thought I’d see something like this in my lifetime.”

Rumble rumble.

The vibrations grow louder.

Though about 5km away, the tremors from the collapsing multi-story building shake all of Busan.

“My goodness.”

“Mr. President!!”

The secretaries point out the window in shock.

“You need to evacuate!! Right now!”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere!! Ah, seriously!!”

The confused secretaries clutched their heads.

“If the Haeguneul headquarters collapses, the buildings will fall like dominoes and reach here!!”

“Ah, I see.”

President Tae Chae-jin calmly reclined in his office chair.

“If it collapses, this will become my tomb.”

“Mr. President!!”

“Yes, I am the president. My hearing is fine, so you don’t need to call me multiple times.”

“Uh, uwaah!!”

One secretary screamed and ran out.

As one fled with a terrified expression, the other secretaries looked back and forth between the open door and the president, waiting for cues.

“To flee first in a national disaster. That one needs to be fired when this is over.”

“…Um.”

One secretary swallowed hard and stepped forward.

“You have some plan, right? Right?”

“A plan?”

“If, if not…”

“Isn’t that what the Haeguneul Daily always talks about? Like how Admiral Yi Sun-sin died on the battlefield, the head of state must remain composed in the face of death and not leave their post.”

“No, that’s just them being unreasonable and trying to criticize you!”

“Well…”

The president sighed deeply as he looked at the secretaries.

“My biggest concern is whether people might die if that building continues to collapse, but you all are worried about it attacking this government building in a chain reaction.”

“Of course—”

“Of course, that won’t happen. This isn’t some disaster movie.”

BOOM!!

The explosion sounds even louder.

A potted plant on the office windowsill falls and breaks from the vibration.

“Ah.”

The president frowned.

“Yi-rin gave me that as a gift.”

“…Why are you so calm—”

“Well, naturally.”

The president raised his left hand.

“I’ve already taken all the necessary measures.”

The display on his Taeguk Watch was glowing white.

“This is Busan, not Seoul, people.”

* * *

It finally exploded.

The devices embedded in the H-beams from the moment the building was constructed all detonated simultaneously in the Haeguneul basement.

[I wonder if he’s dead.]

The floor of the chairman’s office tilts.

The slope gradually increases, and the sofa slowly begins to slide down.

The explosion didn’t just happen randomly.

They probably had double or triple safety measures that weren’t really safety measures, so the pillars supporting the headquarters would explode from both inside and out.

Inside, conventional physical explosives.

Outside, ability-based explosives from the era of great change.

[Did he trade his life for it, or was he scammed?]

I’ll never know.

He’s probably dead by now.

[What to do.]

The building is collapsing.

In movies, when buildings collapse like this, they usually show the protagonist sliding down the building floor and “definitely” surviving with the US military, but in reality, people inevitably die in such disasters, knowingly or unknowingly.

AAAAHHHHH!!

Screams echo more violently than the tremors.

In this scene filled with the fear of death, I calmly tapped my Syndicate Watch from the middle of the tilting chairman’s office.

-That’s Seonbital’s doing!!

[There are still leeches around.]

Nick, I remembered.

[Ah, Tavern Owner. This is Goblin. Those guys claiming on the live feed that Seonbital caused this terror attack—please track their IPs.]

-Hey.

Rumble rumble.

-If people die, it boosts Haeguneul’s funeral service sales. Surely… that’s not it, right?

[Of course not.]

How could I give even a penny to Haeguneul, which sees even the dead as money?

[This building will become a landmark of Busan.]

Not the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but the Leaning Tower of Yeonje.

No.

The “Ice” Tower of Yeonje.

[It’s here.]

In an instant.

In the blink of an eye.

[…The angle is quite artistic.]

Winter has come.

[…Why does this angle feel familiar?]