- Did you say... the space industry?
"Yes, hasn't Cheonghwa Group yet to venture into the space industry?"
- Th-that's... true, but...
"Then why don't you try venturing into the space industry this time? I'm opening up a great opportunity for you."
At Suho's out-of-the-blue proposal to jump into the space industry, Chairman Baek momentarily forgot what he was about to say.
But,
"For starters, I'm planning to build an artificial space habitat, and I'll fully support you. Both technically and financially."
Hearing this, Chairman Baek's eyes changed.
Holding the receiver, he slowly blinked, then spoke in a single breath.
- Yes, effective immediately, I will establish Cheonghwa Space Technology, Cheonghwa Space Resource Development, and Cheonghwa Space Service as affiliates of Cheonghwa Group.
It was quite an unreasonable demand, yet Suho found Chairman Baek's wholehearted support and immediate acceptance astonishing, so he asked.
"Oh? You're not saying it's difficult?"
- Who mentioned safety? Market research and strategy establishment, technology research and development, infrastructure construction, workforce training and recruitment, international cooperation and partnership building, government and private investment attraction... The space industry requires long-term investment, so we'll need a long-term plan spanning more than ten years. In any case, I will earnestly establish space-related industry affiliates and participate immediately.
"Good. I have some doctors I pulled from NASA here, so it would be good if we formed a team together."
- I will do so.
"Thank you for agreeing so readily. I'll send you a gift, so please use it. Then, I'll send you the contact information for Dr. Barrett, who is leading the NASA research team, so please meet and talk with him."
- Understood.
Chairman Baek of Cheonghwa Group hung up the phone and, tapping the luxurious desk of his large office with his fingers, fell into thought.
Park Yongtae, the chief secretary who had been called in for other business and unintentionally overheard the conversation, cautiously spoke up.
"The space industry... Isn't that far too unreasonable a demand..."
But Chairman Baek only smiled.
Chairman Baek, who possessed insight that allowed him to read not just business but the overall tide of the times, was quick to calculate.
And he was someone who had properly seen through Suho's potential amidst the endless stream of news and incidents.
Secretary Park, believing he had correctly read Chairman Baek's smile as a bitter one, added more words.
"Forgive my presumption, but the space industry requires enormous initial capital investment... Moreover, the investment risk due to technological failure will also be significant. And since many American and Chinese companies have already entered the space industry, in global competition..."
"Secretary Park."
"Y-yes, Chairman."
"Investment risks are only a valid concern when there are replaceable competitors."
"Yes...? Yes..."
"There is a rumor going around. That Jeong Suho, who has already become the biggest player in the business world, will soon become a ruler who conquers the world. What do you think?"
"Th-that might be too much of an exaggeration... To become the ruler of the world with mere financial power..."
"Tsk tsk... You still haven't seen the essence. I don't think so. Ruler of the world? The very idea of measuring him by that level is laughable. I guarantee you, Jeong Suho will become nothing short of a divine being."
"D... divine..."
Secretary Park's eyes widened greatly.
"Yes. Therefore, no matter what, we must remain connected to him. He is the center and the standard of the world. He will twist all the standards and systems of the world, you see. For now, we should simply be grateful that our group has caught his eye."
* * *
"Uryahyahyahyahap!"
Kkuuuuuk-
Several minutes after they had begun a pushing contest, clasping each other's hands and meeting eyes, having exerted force enough to dent the floor, the man before him didn't budge an inch.
"Huff... huff... Wh-what on earth is this..."
Han Taeung, breathing raggedly, released the hand he had been gripping with Suho and flopped down to sit.
"Wh-what, did you implant some kind of Aetherium in your body...? H-how can this strength..."
Suho was clearly in his bare body. A bare body clad in a comfortable tracksuit, without any powered armor.
Taeung's pupils shook violently, utterly unable to understand how Suho could surpass the strength of an S-grade tanker like himself.
Suho was just as surprised.
He quietly looked down at his own hand, clenching and unclenching his fist.
Now that he had actually experienced the ability of the Giant's Elixir, it was more satisfying than he had imagined.
He had contested strength with Han Taeung, who had a bear-like physique, but it felt no different from competing against an elementary schooler.
This time, S-grade assassin Katerina Ivanova stepped forward. Nicknamed 'Moonlight Shadow', she was an agility-focused character with incredibly fast movements, unrivaled within the team.
"Will you be alright, Clan Leader? Strength and agility are very different attributes."
Ivanova spoke as if she were worried about Suho.
"I'm fine. Please don't worry about me and go all out. What kind of event should we try? Please recommend anything."
She scratched her cheek for a moment, then signaled Emilia Rossi with her eyes and said.
"Rossi, could you bring the training ball box?"
"Ah! Yes."
Soon, the ball box Rossi brought was full of soft, tennis ball-sized balls.
"We'll hang it on that lift and pour the balls from above; the person who catches more faster and puts them in their own box wins. Only catching them while they're falling is valid, and picking up ones already on the floor is invalid."
As Ivanova placed another box beside each of them and spoke, Suho smiled slightly.
"This sounds fun."
Suho hadn't felt for himself how much his agility had increased, just as was the case with his strength.
With the comfortable feeling that he wouldn't be at a disadvantage in any match or test anyway, he stood facing Ivanova.
With expressions showing they had found an exciting match, all the clan members gathered around the two.
Having already witnessed him overwhelming Taeung, a strength-focused character, with his bare body, their eyes sparkled with anticipation.
Haruto Takeda moved a lift as tall as a basketball hoop between the two, hung the box there, and shouted loudly.
"Ready!"
Ivanova lightly bent at the waist to lower her center of gravity, and Suho followed suit.
"Start!"
Warrurururu-
The moment the balls poured from the box hung on the lift, Suho resolved to move quickly and stretched out his arm.
Then, something astonishing happened.
Everything around him slowed down.
'Whaaat...?'
The cheering faces, the laughing faces, the clan members with various expressions surrounding them were frozen, and the balls fell slowly as if filmed by an ultra-high-speed camera.
He could count each and every one of the falling balls.
Yet what was surprising even then was that Ivanova, with wide eyes, was stretching out her hands quite quickly to snatch the falling balls.
Compared to the people around him who were nearly frozen, Ivanova's movements seemed three times, no, five times faster.
Even so, to Suho's eyes, it looked like slow motion all the same.
He could clearly see Ivanova's cheeks wobbling and her arm muscles twitching as she quickly flicked her waist left and right, stretching her arms to snatch the balls—slow movements in his perception.
'Hmm...'
It felt like about five seconds had passed; the balls had fallen roughly one-sixth of the way from midair to the floor, and in that time, Ivanova had grabbed three balls and put them in her box.
'Hup.'
Suho also began grabbing the balls that seemed suspended in midair and putting them in his box.
'Hup. Hup.'
Thinking that he should work hard quickly since it was a match, he diligently grabbed balls with both hands and put them in the box.
About thirty seconds later by his senses,
Fwooooooong-
The air pushed aside by Suho's tremendous movements belatedly surged back, creating a huge gust of wind pressure.
Ivanova, who was right in front of him, nearly fell over from that wind.
"Huff! Huff! Huff!"
Ivanova panted with wide eyes, as if she couldn't believe it.
While Ivanova's box contained fourteen balls, Suho's box was filled with more balls than could be counted at a glance.
"Wh-what is this, how many are there..."
"Two, four, six, eight... thirty-eight, it's thirty-eight! The Clan Leader wins!"
"Waaaaah....!"
"H-how on earth are you moving like that?!"
"Whoa, what on earth is happening..."
"C-c-could it be... a 3rd Awakening..."
"R-right. The Clan Leader already awakened a second time from Item Collector to Crafter...?"
"Then there's no rule saying he can't do a third...? But a second awakening already didn't make sense..."
Amidst everyone's excitement, one person raised a hand and asked.
"Then Clan Leader, what happens if you wear powered armor in your current physical state?"
Oh, he hadn't thought about that.
What would happen if he wore powered armor in this state?
Surely...
Since it was based on a reinforced exoskeleton suit, one could choose between two technical implementation principles: one that detected the wearer's input movements and amplified them proportionally, and one that exerted a preset fixed output. Suho had designed it to allow swapping between these two.
As such, the Extreme Powered Armor was an item brimming with potential.
Until now, because Suho's strength had been so meager, he had only used the fixed-output mode, having sensors detect the user's movement intent to control the suit's movements independently. The necessary power was then supported by EX-grade Aetherium, providing a fixed high output.
But correspondingly, it had to rely absolutely on EX-grade Aetherium energy, and because the suit provided fixed output, there was the disadvantage of it being difficult to control delicate movements.
But now there was no need for that. It was more efficient to use a proportional amplification control algorithm that detected the wearer's strength in real time through EMG sensors and pressure sensors, flexibly adjusting output according to that strength.
Unable to contain his curiosity, Suho immediately went to his subspace warehouse, donned the powered armor, and returned.
Due to the time ratio, on the outside, it looked like Suho had changed from his tracksuit to powered armor in 0.0001 seconds, but because they had seen it so many times, no one was surprised by this anymore.
They merely gulped, imagining how much stronger Suho had become.
He lowered his visor and gave an order through the AI.
"Switch from Fixed Power Mode to Adaptive Boost Mode."
{Switching power transmission and control algorithm to Adaptive Boost Mode}
Giiiiing-
For a moment, an internal structural change occurred, but externally, nothing appeared different.
Shhhik- Shhhik-
Only Suho, briefly moving his arms and legs, could vaguely sense the change.
Opening his visor, Suho spoke to the clan members.
"Then, shall we try the second test? This time, let's do tug-of-war. Wire tug-of-war."
"Tug-of-war...?"
"Wait, you're in powered armor; who could possibly win..."
Suho said to the clan members who were looking at him with dumbfounded faces.
"Come on, it's obviously not one-on-one. Let's have me against everyone else."
* * *
"Refreshing..."
Baek Yuri, having returned to her home assigned in Elysium, thoroughly washed her body covered in sweat and dust, turned on music, and reclined her body in the zero-gravity chair installed in the living room.
Training with the clan members—all of them S-grade Admitties—was always tough.
She had to squeeze every last drop of Aether from her body just to barely keep up with the other clan members.
It was a high-intensity extreme training she had never experienced in any other clan.
"Huu..."
But on that day in particular, the mental blow felt greater than her physical fatigue.
It was all because of Jeong Suho, the Clan Leader of the Ultimate Line, the owner of Elysium Heights.
Being surprised by that man was not a matter of just yesterday or today, but today, the degree of shock was different.
Whether in the past or now after his 2nd Awakening, he was strictly a production and support class Admittie, yet he had overwhelmed S-grade melee Admitties with strength and speed while in his bare body.
That wasn't the end. Next was the tug-of-war match using Black Steel wire.
It was a contest between all thirty-nine Ultimate Line S-grade clan members and Suho alone, and the thirty-nine lost.
This is insane.
“At this rate... what need do we even serve...?”
Never before had she felt so powerless.
To think that thirty-nine S-ranks were no match for a single person.
Not to mention the dozens of super-enhanced androids he had at his disposal.
A sigh escaped her involuntarily. The other clan members probably felt the same way.
On a day when the family had gathered, her grandfather—the chairman of Cheonghwa Group—had kept going on about “how wonderful it would be to have someone like Jeong Suho as a grandson-in-law,” subtly applying pressure.
As Suho’s influence had grown even greater, such remarks had completely vanished by now.
Her grandfather knew it, too. That she and Suho were not of the same standing...
‘Noblesse Union.’
When Baek Yuri’s parents had registered her with the nation’s largest, most prestigious matchmaking agency catering exclusively to the uppermost echelon, she had received the highest grade from the very start.
Wealth, economic background, social status, family lineage and connections, education and global experience, appearance and health—she had scored at the very top in every category, earning the Royal Grade above even VVIP.
Targeting the top 0.01%, she was of course a specially managed grade member even within the company.
There had been a time when her grandfather and those around her had praised her as being in the top 0.0001% of marriage prospects in South Korea, and she had simply taken it in stride.
Education, beauty, background, and even an ability called S-rank Admittis. Even she had thought there was no one quite like her.
Perhaps she had unconsciously come to consider such praise only natural.
But now, as one of countless clan members beneath Suho, she felt infinitely lacking.
Sometimes she felt like a beggar standing before a conglomerate heir,
or like one of the stones kicked along the roadside.
“How could someone like me...” Such complaints slipped out unbidden.
And so, another sigh.
“Huuuu...”
She had been applying body lotion, sighing so deeply it felt as though the ground might give way beneath her, when she blankly stared out the window and the phone rang.
It was her grandfather.
“Hello.”
— Hahahaha! Yuri, how have you been?
“Yes, I’m doing well. I’ve just finished training and am resting.”
— Oh my, this old man has interrupted your rest. Is there nothing you need?
“What could I possibly need? This is that famous Elysium. Everything is simply here. This place...”
— Well, that’s a relief. Hahaha.
“What brings you to call? You seem to be in a good mood, Grandfather.”
— Good? I’m in excellent spirits. Why, this old man has become decades younger.
What kind of nonsense was this now? Baek Yuri raised one eyebrow, ending her reply on a questioning lilt.
“Yes...?”
— Lord Jeong Suho sent a gift today. Do you know what it was?
“What did he send that you’re talking about becoming younger... Did he send some kind of anti-aging elixir?”
— Yes, you know it well! Lord Suho sent two whole bottles of a miraculous elixir that money cannot buy! Is this not proof that our group basks in Lord Jeong Suho’s favor? Wahahaha!
Baek Yuri’s head swam.
To think she would live to see her grandfather, the illustrious Chairman Baek who had commanded South Korea as if it lay beneath his feet, so overjoyed at receiving someone’s favor...
Truly, she thought, one sees all manner of things if one lives long enough.