Chapter 036
In short, every lottery ticket was a loser.
I had secretly hoped for sothing, since these were the n who had survived, but none of them were particularly useful. Still, there was at least one thing to take comfort in: they held absolute loyalty toward Kalmond.
In other words, if I could win Kalmond over properly, the picture naturally beca one where the rest would follow along after him.
“Why did only bastards like these have to be the ones left?”
My grand ambition of picking out only the aces and rebuilding the organization had gone up in smoke. Their potential and their Traits were pathetic. At this rate, I would have to make up for it with sheer numbers.
After checking the last mber’s hopeless Status Window, I rose from my seat.
Kalmond looked at with suspicious eyes.
“But what exactly are you doing? Why do you keep placing a hand on our shoulders without saying a word?”
“I am checking sothing for a mont.”
“And what exactly are you checking?”
He still looked suspicious, but there was nothing more I could explain to him. Telling him that I had been reading his Status Window would only waste my breath.
So I ca up with a plausible excuse.
“I was examining your bones and muscles for a mont. I thought that if any of you had talent for martial arts, I might teach you. Unfortunately, you are all total blanks.”
For a mont, a glimr of hope flashed across their faces, only to turn cold again almost imdiately. I had shown them Martial Prowess beyond common sense, so it seed they had imagined they might be able to learn it.
My apologies. It feels as though I raised their hopes for nothing.
“In any case, there is sothing I need to tell you. From this point forward, carve every word I say into your bones.”
All of them fixed their attention on . The atmosphere was not bad. That was thanks to the fact that I had used mana like Aura and had not bothered hiding it.
I politely refused the whole hiding-my-strength-and-enduring-quietly strategy. Even if one hid one’s strength, one still had to use it when the ti ca. Life beca much easier that way.
So I told them why I had co here.
“New wine belongs in a new wineskin. From this point on, the Scorpion Gang disappears from the record forever. You will erase the tattoos on your arms as well. In its place, I intend to start over with a new organization.”
After opening that way, I pointed to the one who looked easiest to deal with.
“You there. What do you think is the most important thing in an organization?”
“That would be......”
“Just say whatever you honestly think.”
“Money, maybe?”
“Wrong.”
Every one of them, except for Kalmond, had intelligence-related Traits that fell below even my modest expectations. Expecting anything at all had been my mistake.
“The most important thing in an organization is discipline. When discipline stands straight, the organization becos healthy, and as a result, it earns more money in the end. So I am giving you an order. From now on, you will not harm innocent people, you will not start fights, and you will not extort protection money from rchants. I will not tolerate any criminal act whatsoever.”
The secret base stirred uneasily.
“What do you an by that? Leaving everything else aside, what do you an, not even taking protection money?”
“I an exactly what I said. Let us try living a little more decently from here on. To put it bluntly, you committed cris worthy of death. You are mbers of the organization that kidnapped Young Lady Sapiela. So from this point on, let us be reborn as people who are useful to this territory. If you have spent your lives wallowing in a sewer, then surely it is about ti you breathed so clean air?”
Their faces twisted.
Well, naturally. I was forbidding the things they had been doing by force of habit all their lives, so of course they were going to feel restless.
“Then if so other bastards start sothing with us, are we supposed to just sit there and take it?”
“You need to know the difference between being decent and being a fool. If that happens, then strike back. Simply standing there and taking it is not decency. It is being a fool.”
The mood was still clearly displeased with my orders, and then Kalmond stepped in.
“Let us say we do that. Then how exactly are we supposed to make a living?”
“We are going to run legitimate businesses from now on. Trade, or rcenary work like guarding rchant caravans. The goal is to gather money steadily that way and build our strength.”
“Gather it steadily? Hah! By the ti our hair turns white, we might finally lay hands on a little pocket money.”
Kalmond sneered.
Look at this bastard. That did not feel especially good. I will let it slide once. I had not finished explaining yet.
“Of course, that is only the surface plan. In the end, we are going to hunt bad people.”
“Bad people? Explain what you an.”
“It ans that while outwardly we run legitimate businesses, behind the scenes we will build our strength by absorbing other organizations. There are plenty of organizations in these back alleys besides yours. The Black Pig Gang you ntioned earlier, for example. My goal is to unify every organization in the underworld.”
It must have sounded too much like fantasy, because they just stood there with their mouths hanging open and no reaction at all. The only one who recovered himself was Kalmond, who imdiately argued back.
“The five of us—or six, if we include you, Boss—are supposed to absorb other organizations? Hahaha! That joke goes too far. At this rate, forget unification. We are going to disappear from the underworld without leaving so much as a trace.”
“Ah, seriously. The more I listen to you, the more I wonder. Do you have a problem with ?”
“It is not a problem. I rely offered a reasonable criticism. The fact that it irritates you is proof that what I said is right to so extent.”
Kalmond made no effort to hide his negative feelings toward . His logic was sound enough too. If one excluded , only five of them remained, and with that number it would indeed be difficult to face other organizations.
When a ga is difficult, what does one do?
One spends money.
Reality is the sa. When faced with difficulty, the fastest and easiest solution is to throw money at it.
“I know we need operating capital. I will provide that capital, so focus on gathering n who can actually use so strength.”
“And where exactly do you intend to pull operating capital from?”
“I am going to make a few goods and sell them. Recruit so n with decent hands as well. Take this first as a down paynt.”
I pulled a money pouch from inside my Robe and tossed it to Kalmond. He opened it and imdiately looked startled. There was more inside than he had expected.
More precisely, it was 8 gold. Out of the 10 gold I had set aside from my reward money as business seed capital, this was everything left after the cost of the mask and various incidental expenses.
I had not been settled in this world for very long yet, but 8 gold seed to be worth sothing like eight to ten million won in terms of the world I used to live in.
“Do you need more?”
“No, this is enough. But are you really all right with throwing around this kind of money so casually? What if I take it and run?”
“If you were the sort of bastards who would do that, then it would be better to cut ties with you here and now. If I can use 8 gold to weed out the yellow-hearted ones, that is a damn bargain. So go ahead. Do as you please. In the end, only the ones who remain to the finish will be the ones who taste the honey.”
Just as Kalmond said, there was every chance he might take my money and run. So yes, I was a little nervous. Even so, I suppressed it and answered as coolly as I could.
Perhaps it had so effect.
The look in Kalmond’s eyes changed as he looked at . There seed to be a trace of interest now.
“Hm...... then what about the contact thod? Tell us where we should reach you.”
“I will co here again exactly one week from now. We will speak further then.”
“Understood.”
The truth was, I had an endless supply of items with which I could strike it rich through legal business. Was I not an engineering student from South Korea, one of those people said to create sothing from nothing?
If I simply added fragrance to soap or used carbon dioxide to produce carbonated water, I was confident I could beco rich overnight. Or I could make ballpoint pens or fountain pens.
My only regret was that this world did not have Bitcoin.
“Then take care of your necks. Do not get them cut off for no reason.”
“Boss.”
I had been about to leave when I turned back. Kalmond had stopped .
“You never told us the organization’s na.”
Ah. I had almost forgotten the most important part.
“It is the Avengers.”
“Avengers. An unfamiliar na. Understood. But what exactly do you intend to do after unifying the underworld?”
“And why are you curious about that?”
“A passenger can only travel in peace if he knows where the captain ans to steer the ship.”
I let out a short laugh. If he had simply said he was curious, I would not have answered him, but he was making quite the effort.
“I need information.”
“Information?”
“That is right. Information. Beginning with common sense that everyone knows, and extending all the way to high-level information that ordinary people cannot obtain. My first goal is to lay my hands on all of it.”
“May I ask why you need information?”
“Because information is power.”
That single sentence, sothing this era could not yet understand, left behind a quiet resonance. I pulled my hood low and walked outside.
***
After founding the Avengers, I returned to being an ordinary Butler Apprentice once again.
“Good morning, Training Officer. I have co to report before the start of today’s duties.”
“Yes. Have there been any particular problems?”
Training Officer Vesper looked at with favorable eyes. My spar with Beron had already impressed him, and since I had gone on to rescue the Young Lady as well, the result was only natural.
I answered honestly.
“I still have not grasped what exactly I am supposed to do. It is difficult to understand the work.”
“That is the difficult part. This is the first ti a Butler Apprentice has ever been given the grave duty of attending a Young Lady.”
“So there is truly no precedent at all?”
Training Officer Vesper nodded.
“I was curious myself, so I looked into it, and that is what I was told. So rather than feeling burdened, you ought to feel pride.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
It felt good. But then again, I had lived for a long ti in that filthy world where only first place was rembered, so perhaps that was only natural.
After paying my respects to Training Officer Vesper, I left the Training Officer’s Office.
As I walked down the corridor, all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind.
Were my subordinates doing well? I had acted cool enough, but if they ran off with the down paynt, then I really would chase them to the ends of the territory and beat them senseless.
There were exactly five days left until our appointed contact date.
But then a minor problem arose: in five days, I might not be able to leave the mansion at all.
Because my posting had suddenly changed.
When I worked under Butler Stewart, I was confident I could smooth-talk him into giving an outing pass, but now I was serving Young Lady Sapiela, who was famous for being exacting and cold.
In simple terms, expecting so convenient crumbs to fall into my lap was probably bad for my ntal health.
Even so, so thod would turn up.
Keeping my thoughts positive, I stepped into the Young Lady’s residence.
“Good morning, my lady.”
Today as well, I would probably do nothing but stand around blankly inside the Young Lady’s residence. Since Arwen handled all the tasks that actually required busy hands, life was easy.
The Young Lady’s daily routine was simple.
Eat, study, drink, rest.
It could be summarized in those four words.
That was what a day looked like for soone born with a diamond spoon in her mouth.
But although the other three made sense, the word study was a little unexpected.
I had assud the Young Lady was studying etiquette or the sort of knowledge used in high society, but in fact, she was learning practical studies through a private tutor.
For example, she would pose problems that could arise in fields like mathematics and science, then work out thods of solving them. It was sothing only possible because she herself had wished for it.
Suddenly, curiosity arose in .
To what level have mathematics and science advanced in this world?
“Why are you staring like that?”
“Ah, my apologies, my lady.”
Without realizing it, I had been peering at the book the Young Lady was studying. She looked at with clear displeasure, but did not actually rebuke .
Even from a little distance, there was no difficulty in reading the contents once I raised my Heightened Sight with mana.
The Young Lady was working on a very easy mathematics problem, one that even people who gave up on math had probably heard once or twice.
— The area of the square constructed on the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the areas of the two squares constructed on the other two sides.
The Pythagorean theorem.
This theorem was so widely known that there were hundreds of different proofs for it alone. The fact that such proofs were already organized into books ant that mathematics in this world must have achieved a certain academic structure.
Wait.
Could I not make use of this well?
As I looked at the Young Lady grappling with a difficult problem, an excellent idea ca to for securing another Overnight Leave Pass.
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