At some point, whenever Suho entered the subspace warehouse, he began heading straight for the hills of gold, platinum, silver, and diamonds.
He had dug out a space in the middle of the mountain-like hill of treasure, then piled up gold ingots and platinum ingots in the center to make one large chair. It looked pretty decent in its own way.
Suho sat there imposingly atop the throne built from gold and jewels, talking with Rabi.
He listened to how Rabi had been doing, and told her what kind of day he had had as well.
Then, while talking with Rabi, he suddenly realized something.
The money he had spent that entire day amounted to only 2,000 won.
Other than what he had spent drinking coffee with Taeyun, he had not spent a single thing.
A laugh suddenly escaped him.
He had wealth piled up that he could not use up even if he spent 1,000 trillion won every day for a thousand years, and yet—2,000 won.
“Will you not decide on more items for Cheonyangwon? There are still 987 categories remaining.”
At Rabi’s question, Suho thought for a while, then shook his head.
“I’m still not sure. Nothing really comes to mind.”
“Yes. If you tell me at any time, I will prepare it immediately.”
“Thanks.”
Suho thought of his classmate Taeyun, who was full of worries about making a living right away, and of his own circumstances, which had been no different from Taeyun’s until just a short while ago. Then he suddenly looked around and smiled.
Gold, platinum, silver, and diamonds were still piled up like mountains on one side.
The mountain of treasure before his eyes did not amount to even one part in tens of billions of what Suho actually possessed, but this was about the right level for Suho to perceive emotionally.
And was that all?
Though they were not piled here with the rest, there were Etheriums stacked somewhere in the warehouse in overflowing quantities.
It was not merely that his wallet was secure.
It was as though he possessed stars made of gold and treasure.
“Ughhh... Time to go back now.”
His sense of security lasted only a moment. Suho soon grew bored again and rose from his seat.
As he got up from the place that resembled the throne of Midas, gold coins rolled here and there with a clattering sound.
“Ah, man... they all got in here.”
Large ingots or gold bars were not a problem, but relatively small gold and platinum coins—especially diamonds—had gotten into his pockets in large quantities, so he had to shake them out.
There were also many diamonds caught in his socks and the soles of his shoes, so he had to shake those out too.
“Haha, if dozens of carats’ worth of diamonds started falling out of my shoes every time I walked, that’d get kind of tiring.”
Just as Suho was about to leave the subspace, he suddenly noticed something curious.
“Come to think of it, Rabi. Whenever I decide to come into the warehouse and enter, I’m always in this spot, aren’t I?”
Rabi flew about adorably as she spoke.
“Ah, that is because I fixed the coordinates that way. If you would prefer another location, I can change it for you.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m used to this spot, so I like it. The moment I come in, I can see that mountain of treasure right there. But can I leave through a different place?”
“Yes, that is correct. I have separately saved every location where you have entered the warehouse so far, Suho. You may choose any of those places as your exit point.”
Oh, what an interesting function.
Anywhere he had opened the warehouse and entered became coordinates he could use to enter and exit again at any time.
Didn’t that mean countless dimensional gates would be created?
“That’s incredible...”
“It is an insignificant function. Rather, I am sorry, as it is a function with many restrictions. You cannot go to places you have never visited, Suho, or locations where you have not opened the warehouse...”
“No, no. I don’t even want that. This alone is amazing enough.”
“Is that so? Thank you.”
Rabi smiled happily and did a somersault in the air.
“Oh, right, Rabi. There’s something I’ve been curious about for a while.”
“Yes, please ask!”
“You said there’s no restriction on materializing objects from the warehouse outside, right?”
“That is correct. Anything that exists inside the warehouse is possible. There are no restrictions whatsoever on size, form, location, and so on.”
“Then if, for example, I asked you to take out one trillion tons of gold high up in the sky outside, you could do it?”
“Yes. Of course that is possible.”
“...But then... wouldn’t that be way too dangerous...?”
“It may be dangerous. Therefore, for the user’s safety, I recommend storing and retrieving objects appropriately.”
“No, not my safety. I mean the Earth’s safety. Something like that would probably bring about the end of the world, wouldn’t it?”
“Is that so? However, the safety of Earth is not among my considerations.”
“Huh...? Wow, I see.”
“To me, the safety of Jeong Suho, master of the Cheonyangwon subspace warehouse, is the most important thing—and the only important thing.”
“...Right... I’m grateful, but that’s a little scary.”
“......?”
With her cute and adorable appearance, Rabi said something chilling as if it were nothing, then tilted her head at Suho’s reply, her face showing that she had no idea what he meant.
Her brain structure definitely seemed a little different from a human’s.
* * *
Instead of memorizing the agency’s work all night, Suho stayed up messing around on the OnTower auctions.
“What is this... Just what is Star Dust...?”
The OnTower auction house bulletin board was full of inquiries about something called Star Dust.
He did not know what it was, but it seemed urgent. As for matters related to Admittees conquering the Tower, most of it was talk Suho could not understand.
Since it clearly did not seem to be about defensive tools, it did not draw Suho’s interest.
Rather—
“Ooh, this is it!”
At last, an accessory item Suho had been searching for caught his eye.
[Forged Ray Ring]
A B-rank Hero-grade ring that automatically generated a shield of light upon detecting an external attack.
It was a useful accessory that was not disposable. After activating once, it would go on a five-hour cooldown before entering standby mode again.
There were three of them listed in total, and the starting bid was set at 1 million points each.
“Jackpot...! That’s cheap. Real cheap. I’m definitely taking them all!”
For the first time in a while, Suho burned with fighting spirit.
* * *
The quiz he took at the agency the next day was a complete disaster.
He had thought he would do decently since he had memorized the general concepts, but he had not expected the questions to be cunningly twisted five-choice multiple choice problems.
No matter how he looked at it, the quiz seemed to have been made from the start to fail the new recruits and give them hell.
The questions were full of petty traps, the kind where one could not get the correct answer unless one had perfectly memorized even the most needlessly trivial details.
Suho’s score was 14 out of 100.
Out of 50 questions, he had gotten only 7 right.
Since they had threatened that the score would be reflected in their performance evaluation, groans rose here and there.
But Suho did not care in the slightest.
It was not a test he had considered important to begin with, and above all, the online auction time for the [Forged Ray Ring] was drawing near, so he had no time to concern himself with some petty quiz.
The one thing that bothered him slightly was that the man calling out the scores—the team leader named Han Sincheol who had come in earlier as the quiz supervisor—somehow looked familiar.
“This batch of new recruits in particular does not seem to show much enthusiasm. I am disappointed in your test results.”
Here and there, he could see his fellow recruits covering their faces in despair.
“With this level of concentration, with only this much tension, it will be difficult for you to survive in this industry. Basic items like these must be deeply ingrained in your minds, and you must be able to bring them out as naturally as breathing. Among our Admittee clients, there are some truly demanding people. If you act clueless at times like that, it’s over. Over. Do you understand?”
“Yes...”
His classmates answered weakly.
The man called team leader swept his gaze over the room with an arrogant expression, then looked at Suho and said,
“I hope you will all put in more effort. You may leave now. Oh, Employee Jeong Suho, please stay behind for a moment.”
“......?”
The new employees poured out of the room, and soon only Suho and the team leader remained in the seminar room where they had taken the quiz.
“Suho, you’re Yangwon’s friend, right?”
At those words, Suho immediately understood why the team leader had looked familiar.
‘No wonder... So this is that guy. The boyfriend Yangwon bragged about.’
In that instant, he remembered the day Yangwon had shoved a photo of that man in his face. It was a face that was like trauma to him.
But Suho pretended not to know.
“By Yangwon, do you mean Cheon Yangwon? Do you know Yangwon?”
At that, the man put on a greasy smile.
“You must have heard from Yangwon. I’m her boyfriend. Is your head so bad that you can’t remember?”
What the hell was with this bastard’s attitude?
“Yangwon told me. She said you’re drifting through life, Suho, and that someone needs to scold you sharply and set you straight, but you haven’t met anyone like that yet. She asked me to make a proper person out of you.”
Come on, Yangwon said that? Sounds fabricated.
Even if it was fabricated, it was worthless. And even if Yangwon truly was that kind of person, it was not especially surprising anymore. In truth, he had noticed the signs long ago.
“When I first heard it from Yangwon, I didn’t really understand what she meant, but after seeing your quiz today, I think I get it. Suho, don’t live like that. You’ll be in serious trouble.”
At that laughable threat, Suho let out a small snort.
“You’re laughing? You can laugh with this score? I know very well how hard it was for you to get into our agency. Do you think the agency is a joke?”
In truth, Suho’s mind was occupied with something else entirely.
The [Forged Ray Ring] auction that was about to begin had a starting bid of 1 million points, and he was wondering whether he could win all three items with the 17 million points he currently had in the OnTower auction house. He was also thinking about where he could place the bodyguard androids Minsu and Minji so that it would look natural.
He was so absorbed in all sorts of miscellaneous thoughts that he was only half-listening to the man called team leader.
In the past, the things Yangwon supposedly said would have deeply wounded him, and he would not have been able to recover mentally.
But now, such things did not matter at all.
If there was one advantage to the farewell-to-Earth mentality that Cheon Yangwon (Gold) had brought him, this was it.
To the team leader glaring at him while waiting for an answer, Suho returned an unfiltered reply.
“The agency? Well... it is kind of ridiculous.”
“What?”
“Isn’t it? It’s not like you become an Admittee, nor do you become part of an Admittee clan. You don’t become a civil servant at the Tower Management Office supporting Admittees, either. It’s not even management. Isn’t the agency just an institution for creating slaves who do cleaning and the like under that management? What’s so impressive about that? It’s laughable. No, it’s pathetic. Still, you’ve even become a team leader here, so I guess you’ll have to work hard. Since you went through the trouble of climbing all the way up there, you should get your money’s worth, right? As for me... I’ll just take it easy.”
The team leader’s face twisted with rage, and his whole body trembled.
“You... you bastard. Your company life isn’t going to be easy.”
At some point, his speech had turned informal.
Suho returned it in kind.
“Yeah, my life’s already a cheat-code life, so everything’s boring. If you’ve got the ability, try raising the difficulty of my life a little. If you do, I’ll reward you handsomely enough.”
“What... what the hell...? This lunatic...”
Suho shrugged, then brushed past the team leader and left.
* * *
“Suho, what are you doing? Why did the team leader tell only you to stay behind?”
In the break room, Taeyun offered Suho vending machine coffee as Suho stared fixedly at his phone.
“Oh, thanks. Dunno. I guess he said I’m so outstanding that he wants to make things fun for me.”
“He wants to make things fun for you...?”
Taeyun frowned as if asking what kind of nonsense that was.
Looking over Suho’s shoulder at the phone he was still staring at, Taeyun asked again.
“What are you doing? Stocks? Crypto?”
“Uh... no. A game.”
“A game? What game? It looks incredibly boring.”
“A mobile auction house game.”
“Good grief... Fine, work hard at it. Just don’t spend too much cash.”
“I can’t. It’s a game where cash spending is the foundation.”
“We haven’t even gotten our first paycheck yet... I don’t know anymore. Do whatever you want.”
Shaking his head, Taeyun lightly tapped Suho’s shoulder and left the break room first.
Suho’s gaze was fixed on the OnTower auction house screen he had accessed through mobile.
When he switched to subtitle mode, letters appeared on the screen.
Perhaps because it was a B-rank defensive accessory, it was quite popular, and a considerable number of auction participants were visible.
— We will begin at 1 million points. As the starting price has already been set quite high, the race will proceed in increments of 50,000.
— 1.05 million.
— 1.1 million.
— 1.15 million.
...
The bidding race for the [Forged Ray Ring], which had begun at 1 million—that is, 10 billion won—rose by 500 million won at a time.
Suho had never intended to drag out a tedious race from the beginning.
Break time would end soon, so he also had to return to work.
So he immediately entered the price he had in mind.
Tap tap tap.
[5 million!]
— ......
— ......
For a moment, the auction window was filled with silence.
— F-Five... 5 million, 5 million has been offered. Is there anyone who will offer a higher amount?
— ......
— ......
— One, two, three. Sold.
The next race began at 5 million, and in that way, Suho won all three rings for 5 million, 5.05 million, and 5.1 million points, for a total of 15.15 million points.
He had worried about what he would do if he did not have enough points, but it was a success.
Now all that remained was to wait for them to be delivered properly.
The problem was—
“Phew, I’ve almost run out of points...”
Perhaps because he had spent so freely, he did not have as much cash left as he had thought, either.
It was time to convert something else into cash.