[The characters, places, organizations, events, and other elements appearing in this work have no relation whatsoever to reality, and are entirely fictional products of the author’s imagination.]
The moment Henry opened the report Joshua handed him, his jaw dropped. The thickness of the stack of documents had already been ominous, but the numbers written inside were even more outrageous.
‘This makes sense in 1979? There are 900 mouths to feed living on this land alone?’
This wasn’t a family. It was a small city. Originally, there had been over a thousand, but because the younger generation had gone off to the cities to live independently, the number had only just barely(?) dropped to 900. The calculator in Henry’s head screamed as it spun. If the number of people inside the mansion grounds alone was this high, then adding in the connections and retainers active on the outskirts would easily put them in the thousands.
‘Ah, I’m screwed. When the hell am I supposed to meet all of them?’
The interview plan he’d thought would be over in a day or two was creaking before it had even begun. If he drank tea and chatted with each one of them individually, forget business—he’d spend the whole 1980s just saying hello. But the shrewd Henry quickly came up with a trick.
‘Right. I’ll tour the sites myself. Stamp my face in front of everyone at their workplaces, then call in only the middle managers for separate meetings. I can finish at light speed.’
The reason Henry, a safety-first absolutist, made such a bold decision to go out was because he had something he could rely on. Joshua, who outwardly was the head of his security team, but inwardly was “my precious backup life,” and whom he had absolutely no intention of sending into danger.
Henry rose to his feet and stretched.
‘I’ll find Bart and coordinate the schedule, and while I’m at it, I should properly take a look around this enormous fortress. It’s my land. I ought to know what’s attached where.’
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The next morning, Henry finally tasted the true pleasure of possessing a chaebol.
After enjoying a refreshing morning swim in the indoor pool, he sweated out all of the previous day’s fatigue in his private sauna. The highlight was the Roman-style bath. After washing himself in a tub larger and more luxurious than most big public bathhouses from his previous life, he came out to the first-floor dining room, where a personal chef immediately served dishes tailored perfectly to the palate of Henry’s current body.
He’d have to mention it and get it changed later. It was too salty, he thought, though he still ate it with relish.
‘Wow… I should’ve come out of my room sooner. This is how a person’s supposed to live.’
It was a luxury that made him regret all the time he’d spent shut away in his room, wrestling with documents until mold practically grew on him. Of course, all this leisure came from the comfort provided by the clone system’s reassurance that “even if I die, I have a backup life.” Henry cheered inwardly. Long live the clone, long live the system!
However, the mansion exploration that had started at lunch yesterday had been temporarily suspended after hitting an unexpected obstacle. Even after diligently walking around until late at night, he still hadn’t managed to see “all” of the house.
Yesterday, when Henry ran into Bart in the hallway, he had brazenly made an excuse: “After returning for the first time in six years, the house feels unfamiliar. Now that I have developed an eye for such things, I’d like to take a proper look around. Guide me, if you would.”
But throughout the guided tour, Henry had to sweat bullets maintaining his expression. Outwardly, he maintained his composure like a “dignified family head,” but inwardly, screams of shock never stopped.
‘Is this a house or a museum?’
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The vast “DeVenger Estate,” spanning 6,000 acres. At its heart stood the mansion known as “The DeVenger Manor,” whose grandeur surpassed imagination.
The building area alone was around 71,000 square feet. It was over 2,000 pyeong in size. An international-standard soccer field was 7,140 square meters, meaning a single building occupied the equivalent of 90% of one.
The three-story mansion, combining eighteenth-century English Palladian style with American Georgian style, was an enormous work of art in itself. Its exterior harmonized red brick and white marble, and the portico supported by four colossal Corinthian columns reminiscent of the White House overwhelmed anyone who saw it from the front.
Upon entering, Henry was greeted by a ceiling that opened up refreshingly all the way to the height of the third floor. A huge ceiling painting depicted the eastern coastline of America as it had been in 1776. Above Westchester in northern New York, the family’s estate, the crossed sword and shield crest of the DeVenger family had been inlaid in exquisite gold leaf.
“This painting is a still life from the Renaissance, and that one over there is an Impressionist landscape. Madam was particularly fond of…”
Bart enthusiastically explained the masterpieces hanging on the walls, but to Henry, who was an utter layman when it came to art, it all just sounded “expensive.”
‘One of those frames is probably worth a Manhattan building. Better not spit on it.’
In the most prominent spot hung a historical painting depicting the moment one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. Bart recited the family history solemnly, but Henry only stared blankly at the painting. He was more curious about its auction price than its honor.
At the center of the living room, a “Y”-shaped marble staircase like something out of a movie spread out magnificently. From Henry’s perspective, it was an absurdly inefficient structure to go up and down. On either side of the staircase were the golden Grand Ballroom, where 300 people could dance at once, and an enormous dining hall with a long table seating sixty.
When they went up to the second floor, they arrived at the grand library, the largest space in the mansion. To Henry, it was closer to a library and museum combined than a study. Inside bulletproof glass cases were displayed a first edition of Thomas Paine’s [Common Sense] and a copy of the draft Constitution personally corrected by the Founding Fathers. Pride colored Bart’s voice, but Henry’s attention was elsewhere.
‘Oh, this is kind of fun.’
When he pulled a certain book on the shelf, the wall opened to reveal a secret passage. Henry’s eyes gleamed, but his excitement quickly faded when he was told the passage only led to the mansion security team’s situation room.
‘What the hell, not a vault or escape passage… Ah, maybe it used to be used that way and got changed?’
Aside from that, the second floor also had twenty guest rooms for state-level VIPs and the “Master Suite” reserved for the family head. The Master Suite was a “house within a house,” equipped not only with a bedroom but also a private living room, office, dressing room, and enormous bathroom.
“When would you like to move your residence to the Master Suite?”
At Bart’s question, Henry nodded. The room he was currently staying in was already luxurious enough, but from a “safety-first” perspective, the family head’s private suite, with its strict security and concentrated conveniences, was far better.
“I’ll move as soon as it’s ready.”
The third floor, to borrow Bart’s phrasing, was the “Amenities” floor—or by Henry’s standards, the “Entertainment” floor. Past a fifty-seat private theater decorated in 1920s Art Deco style were an antique cigar lounge and private bar.
The highlight was the indoor pool and spa facilities, where one could swim beneath sunlight pouring through the glass dome ceiling. In addition, there was an observatory near the bell tower, a trophy room displaying the family’s glory, and endlessly stretching storage rooms for furnishings. Henry increasingly began to feel that this mansion was less a house and more a “city.”
“This is the wine cellar. In addition to wines produced at the winery within the estate, it mainly stores several thousand bottles of vintage wine brought over from Europe.”
At Bart’s matter-of-fact explanation, Henry was left speechless.
‘They have a separate winery, and this is stuff they bought separately? Did these people seriously live their lives worrying because they didn’t know where to spend their money…?’
Deep within the first basement level, the atmosphere was quite different. There was a dedicated passage leading to staff quarters where dozens of employees resided, as well as the security team’s situation room boasting airtight protection. But what seized Henry’s attention in an instant was the space beyond a massive steel door.
A huge underground bunker built in preparation for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 1979, it was a place where the tension of the Cold War could be felt on the skin.
‘For a safety-first guy like me, there’s no option more perfect than this. Sure, a nuke probably won’t actually go off, but you never know what might happen, right? If something like a zombie outbreak or a gate suddenly opens later like in a novel, this will become my final bastion.’
The environment was so perfect that he even had an ominous feeling that this story might not end as a mere American chaebol tale, but have at least one unrealistic incident mixed in.
It took a full day just to make one circuit through the mansion’s interior. Before he knew it, darkness had settled thickly outside the windows. Henry patted his aching legs and gave Bart his schedule instructions.
“Bart, let’s adjust the interview schedule. Sitting in the office while people come and go is inefficient. Starting tomorrow, I’ll go to the sites myself. I’ll combine it with an inspection, and I need to see with my own eyes how they work.”
“A wise decision, Henry.”
Henry threw himself onto the bed and pictured the route for tomorrow. A 6,000-acre estate, and the 900 members of the household living within it. Though the family was like a vintage liquor bottle that looked splendid on the outside but was slightly empty within, when he thought about all they possessed, a grin naturally slipped out.
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All morning, Henry was buried under the mountain of documents Bart had brought in. Four hours was nowhere near enough time to grasp the family’s current situation and draw up a grand design.
Places like [The Time], in which they held a 69% stake and which they managed indirectly through a board of directors, were a headache too, but the real homework lay in the unlisted subsidiaries the family owned 100%.
Starting with [DeVenger Resources], with a history spanning over 200 years and approaching 300, there was also the winery within the estate, the brandy distillery, [DeVenger General Construction], and [DeVenger Hospitality], which handled hotel operations. Henry tried to dig through every detail of their profit structures, fixed expenditures, and the debts cleverly hidden within the ledgers. It was high-intensity labor incomparable to the company work of his previous life, but Henry worked with even more passion than he had back then. Because now, all of this belonged to him!
Under the creed of safety first, Henry never trusted only one person’s report.
Even for the same company, he had reports submitted through at least three channels: the CFO, the family office accountant, and even a secret informant inside [DeVenger Resources]. It was so-called triangulation.
‘Reports for the chairman are bound to be prettied up. I have to comb through things from the bottom myself. Right now, I’m not used to grasping it all yet, but once I shove this information into my head, later I’ll be able to cut down the rats siphoning off money in a single stroke.’
His body was exhausted, but his mind was clear. However, he did have one concern.
‘I was prepared for it, but there’s way too much work. And how the hell do I get these points? If I had just a few more clones, work would be so much easier.’
After coming out of his room, he had started working in earnest and even exercised fiercely, but the points didn’t budge. Because he had scraped together and poured in everything down to his soul when creating Joshua, his current points were “zero (0).” If the system level went up, the stat cap and number of clones he could create would probably increase too, but as long as he didn’t know how to acquire points, it was all pie in the sky.
‘When I checked yesterday, it seemed like the points changed depending on shifts in perception or historical revisions… The next clone shouldn’t be for insurance. I should make a talented practical worker who can help me with actual work.’
Henry’s hand stopped for a moment as he turned the documents. It was because his twenty-two-year-old body, blessed with a giant physique, had sent him an instinctive signal.
‘Come to think of it, has this body been starving too much lately? The call girls in the memories had quite the figures…’
Memories from his previous life and current life intersected. Just what had the original owner of this body been so dissatisfied with, to leave such a fine environment and wander outside? Long-haired hippie fashion, drugs, and shameful histories of utter debauchery.
‘Marijuana and hard drugs too, he really did a whole assortment. Beyond a threesome to a foursome? Hey, you enviable bastard. No, you lunatic. You made it so I can never attend a class reunion for the rest of my life.’
The sporadically resurfacing memories of debauchery instead stimulated Henry’s desires.
‘Damn it, I want to make my next clone a secretary packed with all my sexual fantasies! Then I’d be truly happy.’
While sipping coffee, he would sink into happy fantasies of being surrounded by four women, only to sigh again when he saw the deficit reports from the subsidiaries. And so Henry’s dazzling yet arduous morning passed by.