“My goodness... Suho. You haven’t shown your face for six months, so I wondered what you were up to...”
“Good heavens...”
“Oppa really operates on another level...”
Seeing the completed Bigyeongdo, the family was left speechless.
Their faces showed even greater shock than when they had first laid eyes on Elysium Heights.
Honestly, the scale wasn’t even comparable. After all, this was a city, even if a small one.
Still, Elysium Heights had far higher density of security and luxury.
That was why it had taken longer to build as well.
Jiho, who had recently purchased an island near Shinan and was enjoying it, wore the most entertaining expression of all. He looked exactly like someone who had run himself ragged to buy a lottery ticket, only to find out he’d won fourth place.
“Uh... Hyung, my island... compared to here, it’s kind of...”
“Your island possesses the purity of primordial nature itself.”
“It’s a countryside where primitive people might live.”
Suho had started to say something nice to boost his younger brother’s spirits, but their father’s simultaneous remark completely drowned him out.
The look Jiho gave their father was colored with utter disbelief and betrayal.
“Hahahaha!”
Only then did their father thump Jiho’s back heartily and burst into hearty laughter.
“Boy, what kind of man gets discouraged so easily? I’m joking, joking! Suho’s right. Your island has the charm of untouched nature! This is an artificial island. Totally different, completely different.”
“R...right?”
“Of course, of course, absolutely. By the way, Suho. I suppose there are accommodations here, right?”
“Of course. There are a ton. Hotels, resorts, pensions—every type, and all of them are high-class.”
“Good, good. Let’s enjoy our eldest son’s success. I intend to spend the rest of my days here.”
“Sigh...”
Jiho’s face twisted with disappointment once again.
Regardless of what the men in the family chattered about, Mother and Suji couldn’t tear their eyes away from the buildings filling the island, clearly fascinated.
“Wow... this is so fascinating. Honey, I mean, this was an island that didn’t even exist before, right?”
“Right, Oppa Suho built it.”
“It’s amazing enough that he made an island, but when did he build a city, too? The more I see of what that boy does, the more incredible it gets.”
Suho abruptly cut in between the two.
“Do you like it? You two?”
“Yeah... Oppa, but it’s strange.”
“What is?”
“How should I put it? The city is built up and glamorous, but... should I say it’s... quaint?”
“Haha, right? Since it’s not exactly enormous, it feels that way. Around... the size of Gyeryong City? About that, or maybe slightly bigger. Anyway, I really packed the city into a mini-version, densely and efficiently. Compared to an average big city, it has pretty much everything you’d expect.”
“Whoa...”
“Oh, right. There is one thing it absolutely doesn’t have.”
“What?”
“People. There are no people here.”
“What... isn’t that too much? It is a city, though? So... is it a ghost city?”
“Not exactly. Every function of the city is fully automated and autonomous, 24/7, 365 days a year—always active. AI, drones, androids, and other robots firmly hold every position.”
“But if there are too few people...”
“Think about the location. If you come here, you pretty much have to settle down long-term, and employing people turned out to be a hassle. Commuting to and from here is difficult.”
“So you automated all the simple stuff with AI, and installed androids everywhere for things that require more hands-on work?”
“Exactly. Smart girl.”
In fact, everywhere the family looked as they moved, there were people in the buildings, yet they seemed alien—stationed quietly at their posts like NPCs in a game.
Only after learning they were androids did the scene finally make sense.
“Wait, then how many androids are there in total on this island?”
“Well... roughly around thirty-five thousand?”
“*Cough*... The android population is huge. And not a single real person...”
Jiho shook his head back and forth, while Suji opened her eyes wide.
“All of them are high-end models?”
“No. Making all of them high-end...”
“Would be too expensive?”
“Price is price, but ordering that quantity takes too long to deliver. High-end models are produced in limited numbers, after all. So I mixed high-end and premium models. Places that didn’t strictly need top-tier units got the premium versions instead. Even so, acquiring them by the tens of thousands was tough. Chairman Baek had a hard time getting them.”
“Chairman Baek?”
“There’s a man like that.”
The family simply assumed he was some figurehead of an android manufacturing company; they never imagined it might be Chairman Baek Seungjae of Cheonghwa Group, one of the nation’s largest conglomerates.
After traveling for about ten minutes on the electric monorail circling the island’s outskirts while taking in the endlessly stretching East Sea, a department store building located in the city center gradually came into view in the distance.
Craning her neck to stare up at the massive structure boasting tremendous grandeur, Suji muttered.
“Anyway, if you want to enjoy the atmosphere of a natural island, you go to Oppa Jiho’s island, and if you want to enjoy a refined, comfortable smart island life and scenery, you come here.”
Suho nodded.
“Yeah. Airplanes, helicopters, quadcopters, octocopters, cruise ships, yachts—we have all kinds of transportation. Come and rest whenever you want.”
“What do you usually take, Oppa?”
“Me? I just use the dimensional gate.”
“Ah... that must be convenient.”
“Anyway, take whatever you want, come whenever you feel like it, and rest as long as you want. Helicopters and copters can depart directly from the Elysium rooftop, too. And since this island city operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you can really come anytime. Hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés, department stores, amusement parks—everything runs 24/7. Use it like a rest stop or a playground anytime. I’ll register our family, of course.”
Mouth agape, Suji nodded at Suho’s words before asking another question.
“Register? Uh... do we need to be registered?”
“Of course. Unauthorized personnel can’t enter this island, so it’s a given.”
“Uh... then what if someone comes without permission?”
“They’d get an all-channel warning as they approach, right?”
“What if they ignore the warning and keep coming?”
“Well, they’d probably sink. Or get shot down.”
“What the... look at this Oppa.”
“What? Isn’t it obvious? I have absolutely no intention of leaving Bigyeongdo’s defense to busy Navy or Coast Guard personnel. I have to handle my own affairs.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Then what?”
“Why do you immediately jump to attacking after a warning? There should be plenty of other methods...”
“Other methods...? Like what...? A warning should be enough. What more do you need?”
“Haah... I think your head is getting weirder and weirder, Oppa. You’re excessively belligerent.”
Suji frowned, and Suho briefly reflected on himself.
Have I become belligerent...?
Perhaps I was influenced by Lavi.
Or maybe it’s because this life itself keeps feeling like a game.
“That’s the spirit! Warning, then straight to shooting!”
Their father and Jiho raised their thumbs, calling it the right answer, an excellent choice, while Mother and Suji opposed them, insisting that an attack was too extreme. The topic divided them.
Regardless, Suho had already set all of the island’s defense systems to “automatic response.”
When the electric monorail circling the island’s coast stopped at a station near the downtown area, everyone disembarked under Suho’s guidance. From that point, he called an electric vehicle with his smartwatch.
Receiving the signal from the shortest distance away, the vehicle stopped in front of Suho’s family within mere tens of seconds, picked everyone up, and headed toward the department store Suho had set as the destination.
Mother’s eyes sparkled at the mention that the destination was a department store.
“A department store? That was a department store, Suho?”
“Yes, Mom. Since you’re here, let’s look around the department store, do some shopping at the luxury boutiques, and have a meal there. There are plenty of restaurants at hotels and other places, so we don’t have to eat there. Still, after trying it, the department store restaurant turned out to be delicious.”
“What do we—no, we’ll just go wherever you recommend.”
“Wait, Oppa, a department store when there are no people? Luxury boutiques? Who’s running the stores, stocking the goods, and who’s even earning the profits?”
“Haha, it is a bit strange, isn’t it? Still, I’ve brought in pretty much everything you’d find in a high-end department store on the mainland. If anyone buys something here, the profit comes to me. I already purchased everything in advance and put it here.”
“So you just made it for a shopping spree.”
Suji let out a snort of laughter.
That was exactly the case. They were real items, luxury goods, but none of the people who could come here actually lacked such things. Besides, who would come all the way to this remote island just to acquire such goods?
Entering the department store, a neat yet splendid interior immediately caught everyone’s eyes. And everywhere, people in clean uniforms stood smiling brightly.
While most of the artificial island’s various infrastructure operated unmanned under the control of high-performance AI, androids were deployed wherever a human touch was needed.
In particular, luxury boutiques had high-end androids wearing neat suits, serving as sales assistants in charge of brand and product guidance.
Employing human staff everywhere people were needed would create too many troublesome issues.
One would have to take care of their housing, meals, regular trips back and forth to the mainland, medical care, psychological support, leisure activities, safety, and so on—basic welfare. If they came with families, the problems would grow even more complicated, requiring attention to things like educational support.
Since this island wasn’t created as a workplace or living space for diverse people to begin with, he hadn’t wanted to expend effort on such matters. Hence, the island was filled to the brim with androids.
“Whoa... Oppa, are these all high-end androids too? Or just premium models?”
Suji, who had been walking around the luxury corner of the splendid department store, blankly stared at a handsome male employee at a luxury bag boutique and asked.
“All the luxury stores in the department store are high-end.”
“Whoa... wouldn’t buying so many high-end models be way too expensive?”
“Well... as I mentioned earlier, money isn’t a big problem. Whether it’s two to three hundred million won for a premium model or nine hundred million to a billion for a high-end one, isn’t it all the same? The issue is supply volume, not price.”
“It’s not the same at all. Even if you’ve lost your sense of money, try to do some basic math.”
Suji chided him, but Suho was completely serious.
By simple calculation, one hundred million won to someone with one thousand trillion won is no different from one won to someone with ten million won.
Moreover, what Suho possessed was wealth amounting to several thousand trillion won.
And even now, massive income was coming in by the second from various sources: TDM, the auction house, Etherium supply, and the numerous investments managed by his asset management team.
To Suho now, one hundred million won was more trivial than the one won he had treated carefully just a few years ago when he was living in a goshiwon.
Back in the goshiwon, he had never even seen money in the tens of millions.
In any case, currently, the only humans in the Bigyeongdo city center of considerable size atop the East Sea were Suho’s family.
Even in the luxury corner where they now stood, there were hundreds of sales staff, but they were all androids, and the only real customers were Suho’s family.
“Wow, for real, you bought all of this to fill the place?”
“Did you think I stole it? I bought it, obviously.”
Looking around the massive luxury corner where almost no famous brand was missing, Suji clicked her tongue in amazement.
“Oppa, since when did you know luxury brands in such detail? How did you buy them by category like this?”
“Nothing special. I contacted each luxury brand, told them I’d buy all their goods generously by category, and asked them to come fill the designated spots while delivering the items. So they all came, stocked up, and left.”
“Whoa...”
Suji loved all sorts of accessories, bags, shoes, and the like, so her eyes had been sparkling ever since entering.
The same went for Mother.
Only Father and Jiho desperately wished to move on to the next course, sending passive signals by yawning, but to no avail.
It was all futile. As if those two could ever overcome the two women of the household.
“Suho, who else is going to buy all this besides us? It feels like a waste to have such excellent goods just sitting on display when no one else is purchasing them...”
At Mother’s words, Suho revealed his future plans.
“Guests? Tourists will keep coming from now on, I’m sure. For the time being, only people I’ve approved will be able to land, though. First, I’m thinking of letting the residents of Elysium Heights come whenever they want. Whether it’s for a personal vacation or a family trip. The same goes for the Sanarae Clan members.”
“Oppa, then what about the people from Ultimate Line?”
“The clan members of Ultimate Line and their families are basically Elysium residents too.”
“Oh, right.”
“But hyung, to be honest, Elysium is overflowing with cultural spaces too, isn’t it? There’s nothing it doesn’t have. So who would bother coming all the way here?”
“Well, that’s true, but… you can think of this as a slightly large vacation home for the Elysium family and a few extra VIPs.”
“That’s one insanely huge vacation home…”
“And there’s something here that Elysium doesn’t have. For one thing, Elysium doesn’t have scenery. Wide-open scenery like this. Even if you look out the window there, all you see is the cramped city center of Seoul and the narrow Han River.”
“Then you can just go see the ocean.”
“The ocean on the mainland doesn’t have this kind of infrastructure. Luxury smart resort infrastructure.”
“Doesn’t it…? I mean, there’s Busan…”
“Come on, how can you compare it to Busan? Busan’s ocean is just a suffocating kind of ocean. More than anything, it’s not a luxury smart city.”
“Whew… this really is incredible.”
Suho smiled faintly and led his family to the next course.
At sunset, as the sky was dyed in an ecstatic blend of crimson and violet, it created the illusion that the boundary between sea and sky had vanished.
The whole family stopped sightseeing in the city and stared at the sunset in a daze.
By the time the sun finally disappeared beyond the horizon, they had all gathered on the terrace of a department store restaurant overlooking the sea.
Beyond the vast windows, the endless blue ocean and the crimson-stained sky mingled together, and an AI-equipped android that had intensively studied culinary information brought out a variety of dishes.
After polishing off food as astonishing as its lavish plating, everyone moved to the hotel.
By the time they had changed clothes briefly and immersed themselves in the sky hot spring on the hotel’s rooftop terrace, the calm sea spread out before their eyes, and thousands upon tens of thousands of stars revealed themselves overhead.
It was early summer, but thanks to the influence of the maritime climate, surrounded as they were by the sea, the weather was far cooler than on the Korean mainland.
With the wind blowing without pause, it was hard to feel the heat.
Their father stayed in the hot spring the whole time, saying he liked how warm it was, but the others came out of the outdoor bath and huddled together on the terrace benches.
“Waaah…”
“Look at that. What is that?”
“That’s the Milky Way.”
“Ah…”
Watching the Milky Way flow between the showering starlight, everyone was overcome by a sense of rapture. It was a sight they had never been able to see while living in the city. In fact, for most of them, it was their first time seeing it at all.
After lying there for a long while, gazing only at the sky, they lowered their eyes and found another breathtaking sight there.
The ocean seen from the hotel’s rooftop terrace stretched endlessly through the darkness, glowing softly in the moonlight.
The waves, in whispers far quieter than during the day, constantly stroked the shoreline as they came and went.
“It’s really quiet…”
“This is so nice… My goodness. Such a beautiful, peaceful sea…”
When their mother and Suji shrank in on themselves as if they had gotten cold, Suho brought blankets and covered them.
Beneath the starlight, the family wrapped themselves in warm blankets and chatted softly, sinking into a tranquil peace.
The splendid hotel, with lights on in only a few places, had become part of this quiet night, and no matter where they looked, there was only the sea spread out like black silk.
Even in the darkness, the sea conveyed an endlessly deep and vast sense of space, making them realize anew that this was an island cut off from the world.
The wind brushed their faces, and with every breath, they could feel the refreshing scent of the sea mixed with a salty tang.
“Hyung, you know…”
Jiho opened his mouth while staring blankly at the sea.
“Remember when our family had that party on the water before? We rented a yacht.”
“We did.”
“I really loved that time too. I was genuinely moved. What I felt back then was, ‘Ah, will there ever be another day in my life when I feel like this?’ I wondered if a better day than that could even exist. But then we moved into Elysium, and I thought that was truly the end… I never imagined an even newer experience would be waiting for us…”
“Our whole family is living in luxury thanks to our son, really.”
“That’s right. I was truly shocked even after we moved into Elysium, but wow, this is really… wow…”
Having lost the words to say more, Jiho’s gaze was once again stolen by the deep, black sea glittering and dancing along the moonlight.
“It feels like a dream…”
At Suji’s quiet murmur, their father objected.
“It doesn’t feel like a dream to me.”
To Suji, who looked at him with a face that said, “Ah, why again?” their father said,
“My subconscious probably couldn’t create a dream on this scale, you see. In any case, it’s a scale I can’t handle.”
At those words, Suji let out a small laugh and once again took the stars into her eyes.
As the night grew deeper, one by one, they headed to their rooms.
The top-floor suites were like observatories, with a 360-degree view of the sea no matter which direction they looked.
Some were astonishing places where, if you sat in the living room, you could see both the sunrise and the sunset from the same spot.
Each person entered the bedroom they wanted and closed their eyes.
Suho also found a room to sleep in and lay down, and noticed an opening mechanism in the ceiling.
Whirrr—
“Wow…”
When he operated the touchpad by the head of the bed, the ceiling slowly opened. Like a car’s sunroof, the ceiling above the bed parted, revealing the shower of stars he had seen from the outdoor terrace.
Though it belonged to Suho, Bigyeongdo was a city built by an enormous workforce over a considerable period of time, and there were still far too many facilities here that even he had yet to fully enjoy.
A resting place, playground, resort, and vacation home with a different flavor from the subspace warehouse or Elysium.
Suho liked this place, filled with sea and stars.
* * *
Not long after Suho’s artificial island, the smart island city of Bigyeongdo, was completed, the government contacted him.
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries had determined that a lighthouse needed to be installed on Bigyeongdo and sent a recommendation for lighthouse installation for the sake of maritime safety.
Since the artificial island was located in the middle of a shipping route, the IMO also issued a recommendation to install a lighthouse.
Suho readily agreed, and after reviewing the technical details in cooperation with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and the Korea Institute of Aids to Navigation Technology, they proceeded with the installation.
Most of the lighthouse’s construction and installation was left to government agencies, but Suho made some adjustments to the light and power systems himself.
Thus, the [Super-Powered Aether Lighthouse] was completed.
Specially designed to be powerful, this lighthouse was not only installed in a high location, but was also built with high-output lighting reaching several million candelas and a Fresnel lens, allowing its light to reach distances of up to 150 kilometers.
Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year,
a lighthouse that shone its powerful light toward the Pacific took its place on the eastern side of Bigyeongdo.