Chapter 77
I’ll Put This on Your Tab
***
Having reached that conclusion, Jin Geon drew his pistol.
I had known it would only be a matter of ti before I was discovered. No matter how perfectly I covered things up, the truth was still the truth.
I just hadn’t expected it to be today.
At tis like this, I had to appear calm.
Without being startled, as if nothing were wrong.
Ga-on raised both hands in front of Jin Geon, who pointed the gun at him without hesitation, and let out a small chuckle only after finishing that calculation.
“What are you even talking about?”
“You don’t have to hide it. I saw you wielding the sword clearly from afar.”
“You concluded that just from that?”
“If it’s Sword Demon Yang Hu, even being cautious a hundred tis wouldn’t be enough.”
Pretending to be fooled and acting as if I didn’t know who Yang Hu was would have been the worst possible move. It would only raise suspicion.
It might sound like boasting, but the cases I had solved in the past had left marks so significant that all of humanity talked about them.
So rather than clumsily denying it, the best course was to push forward boldly.
“You an that person when you say Sword Demon? The fixer who blew up the Millennium Code Gate. I’m honored. To think I’d be Yang Hu.”
“Coincidentally, you use the exact sa swordsmanship he mastered. And whether you know it or not, the majority of Yang Hu’s movents and your traces match.”
This wasn’t the worst outco.
He hadn’t seen the regeneration process with his own eyes.
The clue that allowed Jin Geon to identify Yang Hu was the abnormal vitality that defied common sense.
The fact that I was skilled with a sword was rely secondary information he obtained while tracking .
In this era, swordsn were uncommon, but not nonexistent.
Yes, like Amal Kam.
There was a way out.
I closed my eyes once and opened them again before speaking.
“I was wondering what you were talking about, so that’s what it was. So you’re saying the problem is the swordsmanship I use?”
“You heard correctly.”
“Then there’s no reason for to be suspected.”
“No reason to be suspected?”
“That’s because I only learned it from this guy.”
When Ga-on kicked the full-body prosthetic that had turned into nothing more than a hollow shell and answered like that, Jin Geon frowned.
“You learned it? That excuse is rather crude. Even the great Yang Hu becos flustered, and suddenly you show such a human side?”
Jin Geon found it utterly absurd.
With the implantation of devices, the range of human activity had expanded beyond imagination. Learning had beco more extensive than ever before. Martial arts were no exception.
Of course, that only applied to the acquisition process. To truly master it still required dedicating a long period of ti.
It wasn’t a field one could learn in an instant as Ga-on claid.
“Let summarize this. So you mistook for Sword Demon Yang Hu just because I imitated this guy’s swordsmanship, right?”
“It’s not a mistake. I’m certain.”
“I hate being treated as a suspect for sothing I didn’t even do.”
His tone didn’t sound urgent, but rather genuinely annoyed.
Under these circumstances, even Jin Geon couldn’t help but feel uncertain. If Ga-on were truly Yang Hu, he should have counterattacked the mont a gun was pointed at him.
When you thought about it carefully, the most suspicious one was X. Not only did he use swordsmanship similar to Yang Hu’s, he was also backed by a force that even the Ergency Disaster Response Unit couldn’t track.
Alright, let’s assu Ga-on was Yang Hu.
Then what about X?
How should his existence be interpreted?
Reading the confusion inside Jin Geon, Ga-on threw out a calculated move.
“Then let’s do this. Demonstrate the martial art you know. I’ll copy it exactly.”
“You’re saying you’ll prove what you just claid.”
Still, it would have been ridiculous for Jin Geon to imdiately lower the pistol and take a stance.
Without saying anything further, Jin Geon inhaled and exhaled.
This breathing thod was one of the techniques considered important by the Ergency Disaster Response Unit. One had to master it before moving on to the next stage.
Because of that, it wasn’t sothing that could be copied after seeing it just once. Only after studying the related theory for dozens of hours could soone barely understand the internal amplifying effects that occurred within the body.
There was a reason the curriculum lasted an entire year.
“Interesting.”
However, it was useless against .
There was no way the experience I had accumulated over hundreds of years of training would disappear. I didn’t even need to estimate the principle by sight. It shared many similarities with the ancient martial art, Arhat.
Without much effort, I could reproduce the technique Jin Geon used.
When the distinctive sound of breathing ca from Ga-on’s mouth, Jin Geon took a step back.
“You’re really copying it.”
“So just admit it already. The world has this kind of genius too.”
Ga-on’s attitude, which went beyond confidence and bordered on shalessness, only gave Jin Geon a headache.
There was now no way to determine whether Ga-on had copied the swordsmanship while fighting X, or whether he had been able to use the swordsmanship because he was Yang Hu.
This was a variable he should have anticipated from the mont he tried to use one enemy against another.
Falling into the circular logic of whether the chicken ca first or the egg, Jin Geon let out a sigh.
Judging only by circumstantial evidence, Ga-on was not Yang Hu.
The one who truly deserved attention was the suspicious swordsman.
“For now, we’ll recover X’s remains.”
“Do whatever you want. That was the request anyway, wasn’t it?”
Ga-on didn’t ddle by saying things like X might be Yang Hu or suggesting they investigate whether he belonged to the Mars Defense Force.
Just because an opportunity had appeared didn’t an he should recklessly steer things. That would have been an obvious blunder.
He had to give them ti to realize it on their own. So they could believe the judgnt had been entirely their own.
But he couldn’t simply let it pass quietly either.
But I had to remain an innocent victim until the very end. Acting like sothing was bothering and quietly letting it slide just because the persuasion seed finished would make no sense.
Right, the one here wasn’t Sword Demon Yang Hu, but the rookie fixer Ga-on.
At tis like this, the proper response was—
“I’ll put this on your tab.”
To draw a firm line.
“What do you an by that?”
“It ans I won’t forget that you tried to pick a fight and discard once you were done.”
“No, that’s….”
Jin Geon, who had been about to argue sothing, shut his mouth without realizing it.
From a third party’s perspective, this could easily be interpreted as intimidation through authority.
Moreover, if Ga-on truly wasn’t Yang Hu, then today’s incident was a serious mistake.
Even if they couldn’t beco partners with a fixer who might beco a major figure soday, becoming hostile toward him would be a foolish choice in many ways.
So he bowed his head without hesitation.
“It seems there was a misunderstanding. I’m ashad. I apologize. The matter regarding Yang Hu is also a case we’re treating with great importance.”
“I almost felt a little disappointed this ti. So conduct yourself well.”
After patting Jin Geon on the shoulder, Ga-on left the scene.
***
In 1980, a man went to get a dical examination because he couldn’t endure his headaches any longer. He believed sothing had gone terribly wrong inside his head. But surprisingly, there was nothing inside his skull that could truly be called a brain.
The weight of his head was also only one-fifth that of an ordinary person.
There was nothing inside but cerebrospinal fluid, and yet he was still capable of living a normal life.
Naturally, the doctors who found this astonishing began conducting research.
After long investigation, it was revealed that nerve cells spread throughout the body could take over the functions of brain activity.
To put it extrely, it ant a person could live even without a head.
Yes, even if a lead bullet were lodged in it—
“Huh.”
Croft, who woke up in the morgue, grabbed his temple as if his head were splitting apart from pain. At that mont, blood trickled down from his forehead.
A beat later, Croft realized he was lying on a stretcher cart and let out a sigh.
He had already experienced this several tis.
There was no need to panic, nor to feel bewildered.
Ryungyeong, one of the Four Great Underworld factions, was an old-fashioned group that sought to interpret the remnants of the past through modern knowledge. Because of that, under the pretext of strengthening their power, they had continued conducting bizarre experints for a long ti.
That was the reason they possessed information and knowledge that even gacorps did not have.
Croft was also one of the beneficiaries.
Through genetic manipulation and the loss of the brain’s domain, which drastically reduced the brain’s proportion, he beca able to store long-term mory within his organs.
Since even the very nature of his nervous system had changed, he could be considered a kind of enhanced human.
However, since the brain’s role had been transferred to the nerve cells, it was impossible to preserve even short-term mories that were prone to fading.
In simple terms—
“Why did I die again?”
It ant there was nothing he could recall.
Checking the CCTV might have helped, but the location was the problem. If he had ended up in a hospital in the first place, it ant the hidden underground facility had already been discovered.
There was no reason to stubbornly head all the way to Eden Park and place himself under suspicion, so Croft whistled as he got up from his seat.
In a way, dying had actually been fortunate.
Running here and there trying to escape wasn’t his style.
What suited him wasn’t blue-collar work but white-collar work.
Croft put on the white coat hanging over the chair as if it were his own and smiled brightly.
Once he returned to the organization, he would be able to roughly grasp the situation.
“Let’s move on to the next research.”
And just like that, the man with a hole in his head disappeared into the shadows.
***
Bar, Columbus’s reception room.
With a cigar in his mouth, Owen exhaled a stream of smoke.
“You made quite a spectacle.”
“Did I?”
Although Ga-on answered calmly, he already knew that chaos had broken out. Not only had the observation deck, Umbrella Tower, collapsed, but a drug factory had also been discovered underground.
It had been a long ti since one family’s estate had turned into a volcano for all humanity.
Those responsible, the managers, the owners.
Everyone without exception was being investigated equally.
The investigation was so strict that even Ga-on, who had solved the case, had to visit the Public Enforcent Corps several tis.
“So you figured out the source, right?”
“Ryungyeong is the most likely. We’ll probably learn more if we track the movents of Temper Parker, the owner of the Golden Film Association.”
After checking the information that ca through his device, Owen exhaled smoke again. It was such a perfect report that there was hardly anything left to ask.
“So you had a talent for paperwork too.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d just see it as working hard.”
“You worked hard, huh.”
Owen strangely dragged out the end of his words as he chewed on the cigar. After all, sothing peculiar had happened while Ga-on was carrying out the request.
“Actually, there’s sothing I wanted to ask about that.”
“What is it?”
“We got pressured by Nodetech, but the source seed strange. There were signs that information had leaked from inside.”
A trace of killing intent flickered in Owen’s gaze as he asked in a casual tone.
He must have already known everything and had co here, aning I should confess voluntarily.
“Oh, that. One of your executives leaked the source code that makes up the device operating system. And that wasn’t all. They even applied it to Eden.”
Ga-on casually smacked his forehead and added,
“It was really a big problem. If I hadn’t figured it out first and stepped in to negotiate, the trouble would’ve reached you too.”
In reality, I had rely fanned the desires of Maximus, who wanted to preserve his position, but disguising it as a good deed was effortless.
After all, Owen, a Mafia executive, wouldn’t go and et with a gacorp team leader to verify it.
Especially not just to confirm whether it was true or not.
If he intended to handle things cleanly and rationally through conversation, he wouldn’t have hired a fixer in the first place.
Ga-on subtly revealed his fangs and asked coldly,
“You’re not trying to hold responsible after all the effort I put in, are you?”
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