If it were up to him, Suho would have gone home alone in an instant through a dimensional gate.
But doing that would make things far too complicated to explain to Seongsik, Jiho, and Joshua.
Besides, they said the situation had already been cleanly resolved, so there was no urgent need for him to rush there.
Suppressing his shock, Suho returned by car.
Those few hours on the way back felt unbearably long.
But as he thought about it on the way, something seemed strange.
The intruders had possessed enough force to kill a bodyguard and destroy all the perimeter security androids, yet all of them had been subdued before they even made it inside the house. That made it even stranger.
They must have been powerful enemies—ones that could not be stopped by bodyguards or androids.
And the ones who had protected his family from such enemies were probably...
‘The Sanarae Clan...’
Suho thought of the S-rank Admiti he had met a few days ago, the clan leader Lee Danbi, known as the Frost Sword.
Was it really her and her clan? Or had the Administration Office made some other protective arrangements?
Unable to wait until he arrived, he immediately requested a call with the director of the Administration Office and was able to hear the whole story.
As expected, it had been the Sanarae Clan.
By the time the police special forces arrived, the situation had already been completely over.
They said that if not for the clan’s swift response, the bodyguards and his family alike would have been unable to avoid the worst.
The perpetrators’ affiliation was currently being investigated through interrogation, but for now, they said the intruders had all been Admiti.
Good heavens. Then stopping them with bodyguards or androids would have been impossible. What would have happened if Sanarae hadn’t come?
It was fortunate the police special forces had arrived late; if they had arrived before the Sanarae Clan, the only result would have been more innocent casualties.
After arriving in Seoul and transferring from the camping bus to his own car, Suho first headed to the hospital where the body of the dead bodyguard had been placed.
Of course, Minsu, Minji, and Joshua were with him as well.
“Ah...”
Several bodyguards who recognized Suho stood from their seats and bowed their heads.
He remembered them as members of the same team as the deceased bodyguard.
Suho bowed his head in return.
The funeral schedule had not even been set yet, and there was not yet a mourning altar, so the body was still in the mortuary.
And in front of the mortuary stood a young woman sobbing uncontrollably.
Beside that mother was a small child, standing there blankly.
His heart grew heavy, and at the same time, he was jolted wide awake.
While Suho himself had been going to and from the agency for work and roaming around doing whatever he wanted, the dispatched bodyguards had been risking their lives to protect him and his family.
A belated dose of reality hit him, and his chest ached with bitterness.
Not knowing how to approach the widow, who was all but collapsing as she cried, nor what words of comfort he could possibly offer, Suho turned back and came out, bowing his head to the fellow bodyguards.
“Thank you. You all went through so much.”
They bowed their heads in return.
“No, sir. We only did what we were supposed to do... In truth, we couldn’t even do that properly...”
As Suho left the hospital, he contacted the Administration Office and expressed that he wanted to personally compensate every bodyguard who had been in charge of guarding his home. He also requested information on the family of the woman and child who had suddenly become a widow and an orphan.
That family, who had lost a husband and father—
At the very least, he resolved that he himself would become their lifelong pension, so they would never suffer financial hardship as they lived on.
The next place he visited was the Sanarae Clan.
He owed Lee Danbi and the Sanarae Clan a tremendous debt.
He had been far too complacent.
If they had targeted him instead, he might have found some way to avoid danger, but to think they would concentrate high-ranking forces and target his family.
A chill ran down his spine at the thought of what dreadful things might have happened if not for the Sanarae Clan.
The home for Suho’s family, designed not only with amenities but also to be built like a fortress in terms of defense and security, was only now entering the construction stage. It would take at least a year to complete.
He felt he would have to think long and hard about their defenses in the meantime.
“Welcome, Admiti Jeong Suho.”
When he arrived at the Sanarae Clan building, Lee Danbi and the clan executives received Suho with courtesy.
As soon as he entered the executive conference room, having been guided there as an honored guest, and their conversation began, Suho repeatedly expressed his gratitude.
“To be honest... when I heard your proposal last time, Clan Leader Lee Danbi, I had no intention of paying it much attention. But now I realize painfully just how complacent that thinking was. Thank you, truly. Thanks to all of you, my family was protected. So... I would like to compensate the clan.”
Lee Danbi, who had been listening to Suho with a pleased expression, grew serious at this point and replied.
“No. Not at all. As I told you when we met before, we simply protected a person of national importance. And our clan is run with abundance, lacking nothing whatsoever, so it truly is all right.”
“But...”
“Still, if you really wish to do something... then I will ask you respectfully once again. Please become a member of our clan.”
“Ah, that’s...”
That was impossible.
For Suho, who was not a real Admiti, it was an offer he absolutely could not accept.
“...I’m sorry, but that will be difficult. I can’t tell you everything, but I have my own circumstances...”
At this second refusal regarding joining the clan, disappointment was clear on the faces of Lee Danbi and the clan executives.
For Suho, who had received such a great favor, seeing those faces was painful.
So he quickly took out the compensation he had prepared.
“Even so, I truly would like to repay you. It isn’t much, but please accept what I’ve prepared.”
Suho began taking something out of empty space, and at the astonishing sight, all the clan executives’ eyes widened.
“Ah, this is a subsidiary ability of my class, Item Collector... um... it’s like a subspace that forms when I collect items...”
Rambling with excuses that sounded like flimsy pretexts and didn’t quite add up, Suho took out wooden boxes.
They were splendid solid-wood boxes he had made himself in the workshop.
They were wooden chests that even Ravi had praised generously.
As he took out six chests of varying sizes one after another, the gazes around him gradually shifted from astonishment to curiosity.
They had said they did not need compensation, but had anything Suho had presented at the OnTower auction house so far ever been an ordinary item?
No one could help but have expectations.
After taking out all the boxes of various sizes, Suho stepped slightly back and told them to open them and check.
Lee Danbi and the clan members approached and opened the boxes one by one.
Inside each box were:
- 10 highest-grade healing potions,
- 100 high-grade healing potions,
- 200 high-grade regeneration potions,
- 10 highest-grade disease-curing potions,
- 50 S-grade Aetherium,
- 150 A-grade Aetherium,
all neatly arranged and filling each respective box.
Neither the types nor the quantities were in any way ordinary.
Most of them were items that could not be obtained even by scouring the global OnTower auction house.
In truth, these items were only an extremely small portion of what Suho had, and he could have given them plenty more, but he had restrained himself and taken out only this much.
As he had already experienced himself, wealth beyond one’s capacity to handle was not always a blessing.
He could not know for certain how much wealth the OnTower auction house systems, the economic network surrounding the Admiti, or this clan called Sanarae could digest.
So he intended to hand over a limited amount for now and, if necessary, give them more little by little.
“......”
“......”
Not a single person from the Sanarae Clan who saw the items in the boxes could find words.
They were items like imperial gifts bestowed by an emperor.
The same was true even for Lee Danbi, who had said compensation was unnecessary.
Who could have imagined he would take out rewards like this? She had never imagined that an ability called Item Collector could gather such rare materials as if producing them.
Lee Danbi thought she would have to revise her evaluation of Suho. She had believed she was already valuing his ability highly enough, but that had been a misconception. She had vastly underestimated him.
An awkward, long silence flowed.
“Oh, right.”
Breaking that silence, Suho offered something else. It was a lump of shining mineral, not packaged separately.
“I forgot this. It’s Starlight. I heard your clan needs a lot of this... If you need more, I can give you more. I have plenty.”
Everyone drew in a stunned breath at the thirty kilograms of Starlight Suho had taken out.
Lee Danbi, who had been staring blankly at the many items of compensation and reward, barely managed to speak.
“Um... Suho, by any chance, would you need protective clothing made of Elastrin Silk? It’s not much, but...”
The Elastrin Silk protective clothing was something Danbi had impulsively offered to give, but none of the clan members objected.
Elastrin Silk protective clothing was an A-grade high-class item that not only possessed physical resistance but was also easy to wear, with excellent elasticity, fit, and breathability.
It was something that would trade at quite a high price, but in truth, it could hardly compare to even a single highest-grade healing potion Suho had given them.
And even if it possessed resistance to physical force, protective clothing in the form of innerwear had limits to its defensive power.
It could block bullets, sure, but that was all.
For an attack team that had to battle high-ranking monsters in high Towers, they would have to wear much thicker armor with superior defensive power in layers anyway, so Elastrin Silk protective clothing was only a supplementary item worn in addition.
But Suho was deeply moved by this.
As if protecting his family had not been enough, they were giving him such a rare item as well...
They seemed like a clan made up only of angels.
With the gifts each side had brought placed between them, a warm and friendly conversation passed back and forth.
To state the conclusion of that long discussion:
Suho did not join the Sanarae Clan, but he decided to form a partnership with them as a freelancer.
They would establish a close cooperative relationship and form an alliance in which they helped each other where needed.
Suho promised that, to the best of his ability, he would procure the goods the Sanarae Clan needed as his top priority.
And the Sanarae Clan resolved to continue dispatching clan members in rotation to protect Suho and his family.
At this decision, Lee Danbi and every clan executive were grinning from ear to ear.
In truth, that much was a great success—more than satisfactory. After all, they had not originally tried to recruit Suho into the clan because they needed his combat power.
* * *
“Ravi.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know about something called Elastrin Silk?”
“Of course. It is a fabric that can be extracted from plants native to the planet Elantra. Cloth made from it is thin, light, and stretches well, yet surprisingly, it possesses resistance to physical impact.”
“There’s nothing you don’t know.”
“That is not necessarily true. I merely know a great deal about substances in the universe.”
“There must be many fabrics in the universe with resistance options like Elastrin Silk, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then teach me about fabrics that possess resistance.”
“Oh-ho, is this a lesson after so long?”
Ravi flew around in circles, seeming pleased.
“Yeah. There’d be too much to learn if we tried to cover everything, so let’s limit it to fabrics with resistance and study that today.”
“Very well!”
Right. He had to ask the right questions.
Suho, too, was gradually learning how to make use of Ravi.