Hiding a Logistics Center in the Apocalypse - Episode 15
(The Tilted Scale (3))
“…W-What?”
Jin Seong-hak, the Chief of the Internal Medicine Department, gaped.
An unbelievable sight was unfolding before him.
The group led by Kim Jeong-gyeom that had arrived last night.
At first, he had thought nothing of them.
If he used food and other Awakened as leverage, he would be able to manipulate and dominate them.
But the bastard had rejected the offer.
The fact that he was the younger brother of Kim Ju-yeon, the nurse who had consistently opposed him, amplified his anxiety.
Because his mind was hasty, he had attempted to brainwash the driver who looked like a dimwit.
Even if he couldn't use drugs, there had been a few people who fell victim to his brainwashing while asleep.
The result was a half-success.
Though it wasn't perfect, just as the brainwashing he had placed on the driver was about to take effect…
[The connection with your minion has been severed.]
A message on his status window delivered the ill omen.
“…Who is it? What, who got freed?”
He couldn't even check whose brainwashing among the minions had been broken.
And when he discovered the second message not even ten minutes later…
[The connection with your minion has been severed.]
“…!”
Jin Seong-hak lost the last thread of sanity he had been holding onto.
He didn't know what method they were using, but they were breaking the brainwashing.
At that moment, he thought:
“I have to… kill them.”
That was why.
He had suddenly issued an eviction order to Kim Jeong-gyeom.
If he resisted, he would make him a public enemy under the pretense of neglecting his duties; if he complied, he intended to pursue him and take his life.
But watching Kim Jeong-gyeom walk outside on his own, Jin Seong-hak also moved quickly.
He hastily gathered the brainwashed Awakened and pursued Kim Jeong-gyeom…
“…What the hell is that ability?”
He was watching the result with his own two eyes.
Song Hyeon-gu, one of the brainwashed Awakened, leaped out from a portal that had opened in the air.
Next were the remaining thirty Awakened.
They went in and out of the portal as if passing through a department store revolving door, and the moment they came out, they began glaring at Jin Seong-hak with contemptuous expressions.
Meanwhile, Jin Seong-hak was on the verge of foaming at the mouth at the rising messages.
[The connection with your minion has been severed.]
[The connection with your minion has been severed.]
[The connection with your minion has been…
The messages that rose repeatedly.
He knew exactly what they meant.
It was then.
Song Hyeon-gu, who had come out last, strode up and spat in a low, cave-like voice.
“…Mr. Jeong-gyeom says you should come in.”
His heart dropped.
“Fuck, why would I go in there!”
It was literally a demon's lair.
The Awakened he had worked so hard to brainwash had become that bastard's subordinates the moment they passed through that gate.
Kim Jeong-gyeom's portal was now terror itself to him.
Like the abyss of the deep sea, it was impossible to know what was contained within.
And he was a man of quick action.
Swish.
He turned his body and began sprinting toward the hospital with all his might.
The Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs beside him called out in a bewildered voice.
“Uh, where are you going? Hey, hey!”
Jin Seong-hak didn't look back.
***
Fwoosh!
Thud!
Song Hyeon-gu dragged Gu Min-cheol, the Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs, in through the portal.
He too was an Awakened, but he couldn't shake off Song Hyeon-gu, who boasted transcendent strength.
I left the suppressed Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs behind and stepped outside the portal for a moment.
I could see Jin Seong-hak fleeing far in the distance.
Judging by the direction, he seemed intent on hiding in the hospital.
“That won't do.”
I immediately used the
A red crosshair drawn in my vision.
The distance to him was displayed in real time.
[41m 19cm…]
[43m 56cm…]
[44m…
My current Shipping skill's maximum range was 50 meters.
Before he could get out of range, I quickly used the skill.
“Shipping.”
Swhooooosh!
What flew past me was neither an axe nor a dagger.
It was Gu Min-cheol, the Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs, whom Song Hyeon-gu had subdued.
Like a swift flying squirrel, he shot out at an unbelievable speed, and…
Boom!
He soon crashed into the back of the fleeing Jin Seong-hak.
Thwack! Crash!
The two of them flew over ten meters together as if mutually assured destruction, shattering the glass window of a nearby store as they crashed into it.
I wondered if this was what they meant by “two heads are better than one.”
“Nice shot.”
Lee Yong-su added from beside me, as if praising a boss's nice shot.
It was an attack applying the principle that people inside the subspace could be expelled via
Of course, there would be almost no opportunity to use it in actual combat, but…
Because of that, a thought occurred to me.
If
If that was the case, there was one thing I wanted to test.
Thud, thud.
Song Hyeon-gu was returning, carrying the two fallen men slung over his shoulders.
Thud!
He dropped the two of them, letting out a hollow laugh.
“He tried to brainwash me even then. He's quite something.”
“You've worked hard. Then…”
I asked him to throw the two into the portal again.
Then, I aimed at the outer wall of a nearby building with
From a slightly different perspective,
my portal could be called a magic mirror that made people good.
The thirty Awakened who had passed through this door had regained their sound minds.
Who knew?
Maybe these two would regain kind hearts after passing through the portal dozens of times?
I chanted the command with earnest hope.
“Shipping.”
Swhooosh!
Jin Seong-hak and the Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs split the wind at high speed, and…
Baaaang!
They crashed violently against the building's concrete wall.
And…
“Product Retrieval.”
Swhooosh!
They returned to the portal like telekinesis.
Thus, the “personality test” using the portal was repeated several times.
Bam!
Swoooosh!
Bam!
Swoooosh!
Thanks to that, the building's outer wall used as the target point was smashed to pieces, but…
the same went for Jin Seong-hak and the Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs.
However, in the end, the two did not become good.
Their bitter end was nothing short of tragic.
.
.
.
Meanwhile, the fact that people could be pulled in via
“…Now even people are treated as products?”
From the moment I put a logistics center into the subspace, it was clear that all my skills were designed from the perspective of PAX, a bloodless, tearless AI.
Of course, that didn't mean there was no difference.
[However, humans cannot be copied.]
[Because, like magic stones, there is an unreplicable energy within them.]
That was rather fortunate.
Because even I didn't want to see a human-cloned Lee Yong-su.
Anyway, what was important was the utility of that discovery.
Even thinking about it right away, its applications were limitless.
Most notably…
“…I can use it when running away?”
[That is correct.]
Both my big sister and Lee Yong-su were Awakened, but their combat capabilities were nothing special.
Inside the subspace it might be different, but outside they could be in danger at any moment.
And that also applied to…
‘Me too.’
But if I used
In conclusion…
“It's basically a cheat, isn't it?”
[That is correct.]
Wow… at this point, even I didn't know what to think.
My own safe subspace.
That place had become even safer.
***
Surprisingly, Jin Seong-hak seemed to have taken my words about making a “bet” seriously.
Song Hyeon-gu told me,
“He probably took out the food at the promised location by now. It wasn't just once or twice that he deceived people by pretending that food he already had was newly obtained. It was all for show.”
Following the Awakened, I arrived at the “promised location” they spoke of,
Tak.
and came face-to-face with Park Jong-hyeon, the Nutrition Team Leader, who had dropped a box of canned goods.
There were still about ten brainwashed Awakened around him, but…
“…What is this?”
After passing through the magic revolving door, everyone had come to their senses.
Park Jong-hyeon fell to his knees.
“S-So… I mean…!”
He confessed everything that had happened during this time.
Why he had controlled the food, and how he had been able to brainwash people.
He said he had never dreamed that Jin Seong-hak and the Director of Pharmaceutical Affairs would go to kill me.
In a fluster, he even told me the location of the magic stones Jin Seong-hak had collected.
After sorting out the story, he asked me,
“…Are you really going?”
I answered,
“Do you think you can stay at the hospital after doing all that?”
He stared at the Awakened surrounding me.
Then he let out a sigh and hung his head.
He knew it himself.
That it wasn't possible.
As he moved his feet, I shipped him one item.
[Orion Choco Pie Jeong, 12-pack, 468g, price: 4,320 won.]
It was the price for telling me the location of the magic stones.
He had once controlled all the food at the hospital.
Receiving the incredibly light box of Choco Pies, he let out a hollow laugh with a bewildered expression.
Shuffle, shuffle.
Then he slowly left into the city fraught with danger.
He was an exile.
One who had once been at the center of the system.
***
“…!”
The hospital lobby had become extremely noisy.
The hospital staff who had been waiting for the bet's results all gaped at the massive amount of food I had brought back.
The winner was me, and the loser, Jin Seong-hak, had not returned.
That wasn't all.
The Awakened who had been under Jin Seong-hak's brainwashing.
Most of them were someone's family, like Song Hyeon-gu.
“Dad!”
“…Honey!”
As they reunited with their families who had come to their senses, they exposed in detail the atrocities committed by Jin Seong-hak's gang until now.
Clunk.
Meanwhile, I flung open the small warehouse door at the end of the hospital's basement corridor.
It was the location Park Jong-hyeon, the Nutrition Team Leader, had told me about.
Screech…
When I opened the inner distribution panel,
Rustle.
a pouch filled with magic stones was discovered.
Counting through PAX, the number was 227.
Combined with the amount collected at the Gwacheon Government Complex and on the way up, which was nearly 400, over 600 magic stones had come into my hands.
“…How should I use them?”
I had even thought about this when I first arrived at this hospital.
About putting this very place, Gangnam Severance Hospital, inside.
If I hunted nearby and gathered 1,000 magic stones, it wouldn't be impossible.
But this place housed over 800 people.
No matter how much I prioritized myself and my family, I wasn't shameless enough to devour a hospital like that.
Besides…
“There was no need to go that far.”
Even if someone got hurt somewhere, I could just use my big sister's healing ability.
Rather than going through the trouble to obtain the hospital, it was better to use those magic stones to help my big sister level up.
In the end, I decided to think slowly about what to put at Level 3.
Since I hadn't yet gathered enough magic stones.
Having roughly finished my thoughts, I slipped back out to the hospital lobby.
Lee Yong-su was checking the condition of the vehicle we had come in, and my big sister was also busy moving around to gather useful medicine from the pharmaceutical affairs department.
While there were things like first aid kits in the logistics center, they were probably lower quality than what was used in an actual hospital.
The midday sun was still shining into the hospital lobby.
The time was now 3 PM.
Considering we had arrived last night, a full day hadn't completely passed yet.
Next, it was time to head to Euljiro.
Just as I was preparing to hurry off, someone approached me.
It was Song Hyeon-gu.
“Mr. Jeong-gyeom, I heard you're going to Euljiro. I think there's something I must tell you.”
Come to think of it, I remembered that he had fled from Euljiro.
The fact that he had come looking for me urgently meant there was something there.
Indeed, it was a truly astonishing story.
“…A wall is being built in Euljiro. And a very tall one at that.”