“This is it?”
I examined the medicine Edward handed me closely.
Small.
Cute.
That was my first impression.
A transparent candy the size of a fingernail.
That was the medicine Edward had offered me.
I’d asked him to make it easy to take, so it seemed he had made it in candy form.
“The effect of that thing is incredible. Once you try it, you won’t forget it.”
“Really?”
“I’m not kidding. I made it myself, but even I was shocked.”
“It’s that good? What does it do?”
“First of all, it tastes good. Then you’ll feel a refreshing energy surging up like crazy. Enough to make someone who’s on the verge of collapsing spring right back up. Enough to get someone who might die today or tomorrow back on their feet. After that, your concentration increases tremendously, your creativity, memory, and judgment improve, and your senses become extremely sharp. You gain the confidence that you can do anything in the world.”
“And then?”
“What ‘and then’ is there? The effects last like that, and once the medicine wears off, you just return to your original self.”
“Side effects?”
“Your original self?”
“Hm?”
“When you take this medicine, you’ll look incredible to yourself. But what do you think happens when the effect wears off?”
“You’d feel regretful?”
“Exactly. You’d feel regretful. And you’d be disappointed in your original self. There are no physical side effects, but conversely, I think there’ll be some psychological damage. We won’t know for sure until the drug has made its rounds.”
Should I call this good? Or bad?
He said there was nothing wrong with the body.
But mentally, you became more sensitive.
As if you had taken a pill that made you smarter.
If you took the medicine, your senses sharpened, your memory revived, you became more logical, and your judgment improved.
Your abilities improved to the point where you wondered, Was I capable of this too? and your concentration increased.
But once the effect of that medicine disappeared, the smart, proud version of yourself vanished without a trace, and you returned to your shabby old self.
What if I became Einstein, thought with his brain, reasoned with his mind, and then returned to being myself?
What if I became Messi or Ronaldo, played football, then returned to a weekend amateur team?
What if I lived as the world’s greatest singer? As a composer? Then went back to being a failed wannabe?
Could I endure it?
Wouldn’t that be worse than physical damage?
“So mass production is possible?”
“Of course. CEO Kang Jae-ho has finished building the factory, and we’re discussing the automated process now. Since you asked me to make it easy to take, boss, I made it in candy form. But because we have to make the candy too, the process got a bit longer.”
“Still, once it’s automated, we can do it all at once.”
“But boss. Can I name the medicine?”
“The name?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to call it?”
“ASCEND.”
“Ascend?”
“Yes. It means to rise, but beyond simply going up, it carries the meaning of awakening and ascending to a higher level.”
“Oh~ that’s good.”
“I also rose to another level because of this medicine, and the people who take it will definitely rise to another level too. Whoever takes this medicine will never be able to return to their original self. Once you’ve climbed up, you can’t come back down.”
“Fine, the name is Ascend. Let’s mass-produce it quickly. I’m dying to see what happens.”
.
.
.
I stayed in Darapanan and checked the progress of the factory.
In truth, because we had built the laboratory and the factory together, the factory itself was almost complete.
The placement of the automated machines was finished too.
Soon, we would begin trial operations.
Progress was faster than expected.
Then the issue now was how to target China.
The item was ready.
Now, how should I spread this throughout China?
How should I gnaw away at China?
I was drinking a cup of coffee while thinking about that when Simon came over beside me.
“It’s nice having you stay here, Alex. It feels like things are going well.”
“That’s just your imagination.”
“But Alex. There’s a Korean in Mindanao.”
“Huh? Really? Isn’t this a no-travel zone for Koreans? How did he get in?”
“It’s not like all of Mindanao is banned, so it’s not a huge problem if someone comes in. Still, it’s hard to see Koreans around here, so it was interesting that there was one.”
“Is he a YouTuber? Don’t YouTubers do that kind of thing a lot? Go to places they’re told not to go and stir up attention.”
“I don’t think he’s a YouTuber. First of all, he doesn’t have a camera, and his clothes are way too ordinary. Most of all, he was trying extremely hard not to stand out.”
“Really? Then he’s a criminal.”
“But he didn’t really smell like a criminal either. He looked like a model student.”
“Then what is he?”
“I don’t know. It was just interesting.”
“If he came here to hide, he came to the wrong place.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it. What if there was one white person or black person here in Darapanan?”
“They’d stand out like crazy.”
“Exactly. In the same sense, there are no Koreans in Mindanao, so a Korean stands out like crazy. Even if he acts like he’s trying not to stand out, he has no choice but to stand out. If he doesn’t come out of his hotel room, he’ll look even more suspicious. If he wanted to hide, he should’ve gone to a tourist area like Cebu or Bohol and blended in with other Koreans.”
“Oh~ I learned something useful.”
“Is that really something you have to learn? Isn’t it something you just understand naturally?”
“There’s nothing you know naturally. You have to learn everything.”
“Just in case, check up on that Korean. Seeing as he came all the way here, I don’t think he’s here for tourism, and I feel like there’s something else going on. It bothers me for no reason.”
“Okay. Understood, boss. I will monitor his every move.”
Simon spoke playfully.
“Not that much. Just enough to know whether he’s alive or dead.”
“Hehe. Got it.”
********
The factory began preparing for mass production.
The raw ingredients had been placed in the ingredient tanks and were standing by,
and the mixing tank contained the Ascend we had prepared.
All we had to do was add a little Ascend, just a very little, to the raw ingredients used to make delicious candy.
Anyone who ate it would grow by one level.
I also had to get ready.
Now that the item was ready, I had to prepare to occupy China.
The method I had in mind was simple.
Just spread it.
Spread it blindly.
Scatter that medicine all across China in enormous quantities.
Fortunately, the production cost of Ascend was miserably low.
So low that the electricity bill cost more.
That meant there was no burden in printing out and producing massive quantities.
By introducing an automated system, I had also eliminated issues regarding quality and manpower.
I planned to win with sheer volume.
To do that, I needed a few more forged passports.
Even though I had the title of a travel agency CEO, entering and leaving too frequently could arouse suspicion.
I had to rotate through several identities.
“Sandro, make me some forged passports.”
“Simon, can you get me cover identities?”
“Dennis, can you make forged passports by any chance?”
I asked everyone I could see to make passports for me.
And so, I obtained forged passports.
There were especially many Pakistani and Cambodian passports.
Pakistan and Cambodia had unusually good relations with China, so I thought they might arouse a little less suspicion, and I asked for those whenever possible.
Those were also relatively easy to forge.
Now it begins.
********
NIS Overseas Team 2.
“Have you located Shin Jung-gi?”
“We confirmed that he entered the Philippines illegally, but his trail went cold there.”
“What about the local police in the Philippines?”
“We requested cooperation, and they say the Philippine police are searching too, but they aren’t very reliable.”
“As if those bastards would work hard.”
The head of Overseas Team 2 rubbed his thin face with his palm.
This was bad.
A researcher working at the ADD, the Agency for Defense Development, had disappeared with the blueprints for a next-generation radar that had been successfully developed in secret.
After tracking him, they had followed him as far as his smuggling route into the Philippines, but his trail had been cut off completely there.
“Why the hell did that crazy bastard Shin Jung-gi take the new radar blueprints and vanish, causing this mess... What about surveillance on the people around Shin Jung-gi?”
“That bastard was an orphan, so there’s no one who could be called someone close to him. He has no family, he isn’t married, and it seems he doesn’t have anyone who could be called a friend either.”
“No one he was close to at work?”
“Apparently not. They say he was the type to just quietly do his work, so the place most shocked when this happened was the ADD.”
“Still, dig deeper into the people around him. Something might turn up.”
“Understood.”
“And do we have any HUMINT on the Philippines side?”
“You know, don’t you? After the list of black agents was leaked, the HUMINT network itself collapsed.”
“I know. That’s why it’s frustrating. I was just wondering if there might be someone left, or someone who has gone in.”
“I looked into it too, but there’s no one at all. It’s completely collapsed.”
“What about the Koreans? Let’s ask the Korean association for cooperation.”
“We’ve requested cooperation there too. But the Korean side doesn’t cover a wide area... They’re in the dark too outside the Koreatown areas, aren’t they?”
“We don’t know where Shin Jung-gi went. Since it’s familiar, he might have crawled into a Koreatown.”
“That’s the kind of thing gangsters who can’t speak English do. Shin Jung-gi is good at English, Japanese, and Chinese too, isn’t he? Would he really need to go to a Koreatown?”
“That’s true too.”
“Isn’t it a characteristic of people on the run to head for remote places with no people? Not realizing that they stand out even more there.”
“That’s true.”
“What about asking Gong In-bae?”
“Gong In-bae? The Gong In-bae in the Philippines?”
“Yes. Still, among the information we’ve gathered, isn’t he the biggest figure in the Philippines? No, isn’t he close to the big figures?”
“That’s because it isn’t certain. And even if that were true, it’s a problem. If we ask for cooperation, we’d have to tell him that we’ve been marking Gong In-bae until now. Could we do that?”
“That’s true.”
Gong In-bae had once been on the NIS surveillance list.
While investigating and tracking funds headed to North Korea, the NIS detected signs of a large amount of money continuously flowing into Korea from the Philippines and launched an investigation.
It began with the suspicion that the money was being laundered and used as funds for North Korea.
But as they investigated, absurdly enough, a casino site came up, and that money had been sent to Korea so the casino site could provide payouts.
Under Korean law, it was obviously illegal, but it was not something for the NIS to step in over.
The NIS has no authority to investigate domestic politics or crimes.
Since the NIS couldn’t do it, they had to inform the police, but that was ambiguous too.
First of all, the casino itself in the Philippines was legal.
To be exact, the server was in the Philippines, but it was a legal site licensed in the Cayman Islands.
So they couldn’t crack down on it.
In other words, even if they told the police, the only people they could catch—
the only people they could punish legally—were ordinary users who had used the casino.
People who deposited fifty thousand won, a hundred thousand won, and played games.
Only those people could be arrested and put away.
It was the kind of situation the police hated most.
They couldn’t touch the body of the operation and would just have to keep arresting users endlessly, day and night.
Even if they struggled to catch them, they’d just pay a fine and walk out.
So they gave up on telling the police too.
If they said something for no reason, they would only be cursed for creating pointless work with no payoff.
Couldn’t they just not do it?
If the NIS told them, and the police sat on it, then later, if a problem erupted, all the blame would fall on the police.
The NIS had known in advance and informed the police, but the police had neglected their duties and failed to investigate, resulting in this mess.
The media would roast them alive.
So they had to at least pretend to investigate.
That was why, with cases like this, if they couldn’t wipe it out completely, it was better not to start at all.
But the strange thing was that the deeper they dug into the case, the more a person named Gong In-bae appeared.
There was talk that the real boss of the Daehoon Faction, which was connected to GoGo Casino—the source of the funds—was Gong In-bae.
The funds entering Korea were also said to be part of a process to move the money Gong In-bae had earned in the Philippines into Korea.
In reality as well, the Daehoon Faction and the Seoul office of Candy Tour, where Gong In-bae was the CEO, had a close relationship.
But there was a limit to gathering information in Seoul, so two agents went to the Philippines for an operation.
Disguised as tourists.
But on-site, there was only Gong In-bae, working diligently as a guide day and night.
Wearing a Hawaiian shirt, driving hard from morning on, welcoming customers and doing his best in his role as a guide.
Wasn’t it just for show?
You can tell at a glance.
Whether that behavior is something done for show, or something ingrained in his body.
They could distinguish at least that much.
Stories that Gong In-bae was the owner of GoGo Casino.
That he was the owner of Emerald Resort and Vicente Palace.
That he was the leader of the rebels.
That he was the invisible hand of Philippine politics.
All of those stories were nonsense.
The owner of GoGo Casino was Alex,
and the owners of Emerald Resort and Vicente Palace were Sandro and Alex.
The leader of the rebels was Simon,
and the new power in Philippine politics was a man named Patrick.
None of them had anything to do with Gong In-bae.
If anything, the man named Alex seemed like the real big shot.
Wherever they asked, everyone was utterly devoted when it came to Alex.
That Alex truly seemed like a major figure in the Philippines.
At the very least, it was not Gong In-bae.
On top of that, the funds that had been flowing into Korea had stopped.
To be exact, they hadn’t stopped, and seemed to be entering in scattered bits here and there, but it was impossible to find them.
It seemed an expert had gotten involved, and their skill was no joke.
The money had vanished in an instant.
Now there wasn’t even a pretext to continue the investigation.
They had surveilled and marked a civilian without any evidence,
and now they were supposed to ask him for help?
It was absurd.
The NIS was second to none when it came to shamelessness,
but this was shameless, ineffective, and uncertain.
It would only inform him that they had been doing something wrong all along.
“If he’s gotten attached to a local broker, this is going to become a real headache. Is there no way?”
“How are we supposed to find a way from here? We’ll have to go there first.”
“Fine. Let’s go to the Philippines. Put in a cooperation request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and move out.”