The wedding attended by Suho and the others was reported on several news programs that day.
In particular, all sorts of speculative articles were published about what exactly the relationship between Suho, Danbi, and Joshua was,
and at the same time, various reports also appeared about who the bride and groom were, that such dazzling figures had come to congratulate them.
As Suho watched his every move being reported, he truly felt that he had shot to stardom overnight.
The day after Cheon Yangwon’s wedding,
sure enough, Yangwon called him again.
When Suho did not answer, the calls came a second time, a third time, continuing without giving up.
‘Hmm... Until now, I’ve been avoiding his calls on purpose, and now I’ve achieved everything I was aiming for... What should I do?’
As Suho looked at the incoming call and hesitated over whether to answer or not, Danbi snatched the phone from him.
“I’ll answer it.”
“Huh? Why would you, Danbi?”
Suho had not told her anything in particular about Yangwon, but Danbi had already grasped the situation from what she had heard from Seongsik and from watching Suho attend the wedding.
She gave him a playful smile and winked.
“Leave it to me.”
“Ah, no... I mean, leave what...”
Suho felt as though he could guess the hidden meaning behind that and tried to stop her, but Danbi was faster.
“Hello?”
- Uh...... Um, is this not Jeong Suho’s phone?
“It is. Please go ahead.”
- Excuse me, but... who is this...
“Ah, my name is Lee Danbi. Frost Sword Lee Danbi, clan leader of Sanarae. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
- Hah... O-of course. S, S-rank Admittee Lee Danbi... Th-thank you so much for attending my wedding. It’s an honor.
“Not at all. Suho was going, so I just followed along.”
- ......
“Suho is taking a quick shower right now, so if you have anything to say, tell me. I’ll pass it on.”
At Danbi’s smooth, lilting lines, Suho’s eyes looked as though they might pop out, and his jaw as though it might drop to the floor.
As Suho tried to snatch his phone back from her hand, Seongsik and Jiho giggled and restrained him.
Danbi, whose face had turned bright red even as she kept smiling from start to finish, also stood up to avoid Suho’s hand.
- B-but... wh-what exactly is the relationship between you two...
“Us? We’re just together twenty-four hours a day. But why is a married man so curious about someone else’s private life? Are you interested in Suho?”
- S-sorry for intruding... When Suho comes out, just... tell him thank you for congratulating me... and for giving so much congratulatory money... That’s all.
“I will.”
Click.
Danbi, who had answered the call in a firm tone from beginning to end, unilaterally hung up.
Jiho and Seongsik gave Danbi a thumbs-up, and Suho collapsed onto the sofa with a look as if his mind had completely left him.
Danbi, despite having caused the whole mess herself, let out a deep breath to calm her heart, which felt ready to burst.
Only the corners of her lips showed no sign of coming down.
* * *
After some time, Suho visited the construction site of the building for Suho’s family, [Elysium Heights].
Since houses were densely packed everywhere in Seoul and land prices were high, it was not easy to suddenly find a large plot of land, but fortunately, there was a decent place.
A district in the eastern part of Songpa-gu, where an eighty-story tower had risen and, as its capture ran into difficulties and even a tower break was predicted, residents rapidly moved out and housing prices plummeted.
Fortunately, the land mostly consisted of fields and greenhouses, so not much work was needed to relocate existing residents or demolish existing buildings.
Suho spent 1.4 trillion won to purchase a plot of land measuring three hundred meters across and three hundred meters long, totaling ninety thousand square meters, or roughly twenty-seven thousand pyeong, and chose it as the site where he would build the house.
He visited the construction site accompanied only by Jiho, excluding Seongsik and Narae.
Of course, the androids for security, Lee Danbi, and the Sanarae Clan guards assigned to duty that day were with them as well.
The architect and the site manager, who had not known Suho’s identity and had only recently learned it, came running out eagerly to greet him.
“Oh my... I had no idea you were such an incredible person...”
“Ah, sir, I didn’t make any mistakes, did I?”
“Haha, what are you saying? Could you guide me around the site?”
“Yes, sir, please come this way.”
Following the architect and site manager into a prefabricated building on the construction site, they saw a large monitor displaying various status reports.
“You can sit over here. As you requested, the building we designed has considerable weight. It is twenty-two stories, but because each floor is tall, it is effectively one hundred twenty meters high, close to a fifty-story building. Please take a look here.”
When Suho and Jiho leaned toward the large screen, the architect continued his explanation.
“You said you planned to create parks here and here, but even excluding those areas, the building alone is one hundred fifty meters across and one hundred meters long. Of course, since the area is wide, the load will not be concentrated in a narrow region, but the scale is still so large that the total weight will easily reach three hundred thousand tons.”
“Aha... Is that heavy?”
Having always heard from Rabi only of units like ten quadrillion tons, trillion tons, or hundreds of billions of tons, hearing a unit of merely hundreds of thousands of tons made the weight feel relatively light.
“Oh my, of course it’s heavy! You know that 123-story building over there, don’t you? That weighs seven hundred fifty thousand tons. Seven hundred fifty thousand.”
“Oh... Then it’s quite...”
“That is why. If you look here, these are the results of the detailed geological survey, and the ground stability assessment is somewhat unstable. The alluvial layer is thick, but the bedrock layer is too thin.”
“Hmm... Then what should we do?”
“What we are planning is to compact the ground using dynamic compaction and reinforce it with a ground reinforcement piling method.”
“What is dynamic compaction?”
“Dynamic compaction is... a method where a heavy weight is lifted by a crane and repeatedly dropped to compact the ground. It is relatively simple and inexpensive, and it is also good for covering a wide area. But the problem is...”
“The problem?”
“It creates severe vibration and noise, so we may receive continuous complaints from nearby residents. It can also cause some impact to surrounding buildings. So for now, we absolutely need to install soundproof walls, and we may also need to hold a briefing session for the residents in the area.”
As he listened to the heated explanation on this part, Suho’s eyes began to sparkle.
‘Firmly compacting a wide area of land? That’s what I’m best at.’
It was a field he had some confidence in.
“Architect, site manager, I think I can solve that soft ground problem. If you just mark the construction area properly, I’ll have it done by today or tomorrow.”
At Suho’s words, the two men practically jumped.
“What? N-no, sir, this is not such a simple matter. For this to work, first...”
“Yes, yes, I know what you’re worried about. In any case, I’ll finish it. Instead, from today until three days from now, please clear the construction site completely so that no one is here. People and equipment alike. Someone might get hurt.”
“No, what on earth... Wh-what... What are you planning to do...”
“Once you’re an S-rank Admittee, you tend to become good at at least one thing. The detailed method is a secret. And also, that piling method? That means driving piles into the ground, right?”
“Th-that’s correct. For now, we plan to install about 250 concrete piles with a diameter of 1.2 meters and a length of 35 meters into the compacted ground to further reinforce the foundation.”
“Will those... concrete piles have enough strength? What if we replace them with steel piles?”
“O-of course, that would be stronger and better, but installing steel piles on that scale would add an enormous amount of cost in terms of production, construction, and various other expenses.”
“Okay. Then I’ll take care of that part too. I just need to get solid steel ones with a diameter of 1.2 meters and a length of 35 meters, right? 2.5 million of them?”
“...Two hundred fifty.”
“Ah, right. Two hundred fifty. Same difference. Anyway, I just need to make them like cylinders, correct?”
“That is correct...”
“Good. Thank you for telling me. The foundation should always be solid. Ah, right. By any chance, if the ground were bedrock, would the piling method still be necessary?”
“It depends on the case... Even if there is a bedrock layer, its thickness and distribution may not be uniform. And even if it does exist, if the upper soil layer above the bedrock is weak, the bearing capacity of the foundation may not be sufficient. In such cases, the piling method is used to connect the building’s foundation to the bedrock layer so that the building is evenly supported by the ground.”
“Hmm, so what if, hypothetically, it’s a straight, thick bedrock layer with extremely uniform thickness and distribution?”
“In that case, it may not be necessary... but naturally, such a bedrock layer is difficult to form, and more importantly, as I just said, the land where you requested the building be constructed currently has almost no bedrock layer.”
“Yep, understood. I get it. Anyway, I’ll have the ground all finished by the day after tomorrow, Thursday, so from then on, let’s start putting up the building nice and fast. Now, now, today and tomorrow are for rest! Rest! Take a nice three-day break and come back.”
Suho pushed the dazed architect, site manager, and countless technicians and laborers out of the site.
After a few hours, all personnel and equipment had left, and the construction site became quiet. The vast plot of land even gave off a desolate feeling.
Jiho had a rough idea, but Danbi, unable to guess what Suho was about to do, asked.
“No, Suho, what are you planning...? Foundation work is extremely important. When we built the Sanarae Clan building, compacting the ground alone took considerable money and time.”
“That’s right. Normally, that’s how it is.”
Suho walked around the twenty-seven thousand pyeong of land he had purchased, closely examining the place where the building would stand.
Among it, the site for the building was about one hundred fifty meters across and one hundred meters long, roughly 4,500 pyeong.
Since the remaining land excluding those 4,500 pyeong was to be turned into a park, Suho set the rest aside and decided to focus on compacting this 4,500 pyeong.
Suho immediately crossed into the subspace and cut out a chunk of Obellon measuring one hundred seventy meters across, one hundred twenty meters long, and ten meters thick.
It was to leave a little extra margin compared to the building site.
Obellon had a specific gravity 2,016 times higher than water, and when he cut out a piece of that size, its weight easily exceeded three hundred million tons.
He had considered dropping it from a height of several dozen meters like dynamic compaction, but when he ran a computer simulation in advance, it said powerful seismic waves of magnitude six or higher would occur, so he skipped the drop.
“If I’d just let it fall straight down, that would’ve been the end of it...”
It would not do to shake up every other building just because he wanted to firmly compact his own land.
Fortunately, if he placed it gently on the ground without any fall impact at all, it would act only as a static load and would not generate seismic waves.
Unlike impact loads, static loads are transmitted slowly, so they do not create sudden vibrations or waves.
Suho took the black metal weighing over three hundred million tons out of the subspace and gently placed it on the spot where the building would be constructed.
Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble.....
Then, with a terrifying sound, the ground began to slowly subside under the pressure of Obellon’s weight.
It was an overwhelming sight.
“Woooow...!!”
“Unbelievable...”
Feeling the slow yet enormous vibration transmitted through the ground, Jiho shouted, and Danbi covered her mouth as she let out an exclamation.
The ordinary, soft soil sank more than twenty meters under astronomical pressure.
The subsided ground was compressed, its density increased, and it became tremendously solid.
In particular, because the massive load had been evenly distributed, the ground had likewise been evenly compressed.
It looked as though a neat rectangular pit, one hundred seventy meters across, one hundred twenty meters long, and roughly twenty meters deep, had been dug out.
“Good. Now I need to make a solid bedrock layer here.”
Suho stored the Obellon back in the subspace warehouse.
Once the ten-meter-thick chunk of Obellon was removed, the depth of the sunken ground increased to a full thirty meters.
Suho crossed into the subspace warehouse again and received “granite” from Raviro as his thirty-fourth item.
Since granite was extremely cheap, when he received one yangwon’s worth, the quantity amounted to a staggering six hundred quintillion tons.
An amount equivalent to about 8.16 times the total mass of the moon.
“Ugh... It’s way too much, but... can’t be helped.”
From the six hundred quintillion tons of granite, he cut out a rectangular prism measuring one hundred seventy meters across, one hundred twenty meters long, and thirty meters high, and manifested it in the empty space of the subsided ground.
Then a granite mass of 1.427 million tons filled the empty space perfectly.
As though it had been there from the very beginning.
“Done. I’ll have to ask again whether the steel piles will still be necessary.”
Watching Suho mutter, Jiho and Danbi stared blankly at him.
Had it been twenty or thirty minutes?
In that short span of time, on land compacted to the extreme, a tremendously large granite bedrock layer had been formed, creating an incredibly solid foundation in an instant.
“Just... what are you, Suho...”
Danbi could not find the words to express it.
She had thought he was merely an S-rank Admittee who could obtain astonishing items and rare materials from the tower, but she had never imagined he could display such godlike power.
What kind of human being could possibly do something like this?
Looking back at the two of them, who stood there in a daze, Suho smiled.
“Let’s go now. There was no need to push it back three days. It ended this quickly.”
Now all that remained was for the building to rise, floor by floor.
Imagining the completed house, Suho smiled with satisfaction.