Perhaps because his interest in me had cooled, Aaron turned away immediately after shaking my hand.
Before he left the building, I asked him one question.
“Is the Venus exploration still ongoing?”
At my question, the space entrepreneur gave a wry laugh.
“Of course not. Venus is a hell where the temperature exceeds 400 degrees and the pressure is 100 atmospheres. Technology has advanced a great deal, but equipment can’t last long in a place like that. You wouldn’t believe how much equipment broke during the exploration… At the moment, we’ve withdrawn everything except the surveillance devices.”
Though he lowered his voice slightly, he had given me the answer I wanted.
Leaving those words behind, he went outside.
I had heard the answer I wanted, but I did not feel good.
It was not because he had lowered his voice.
Seeing him had simply put me in a foul mood.
My mood had soured out of nowhere, but it was not strange.
There had been people before who simply made me feel bad for no reason.
But I knew why this disgust had arisen.
[It is a more impressive magic than I expected.]
[It is not forbidden magic for nothing.]
The reason my mood had worsened was because of the mental magic I had placed on Aaron.
Now that I had used it, I understood.
This was not magic that should be used carelessly.
And I was not the only one whose mood had worsened.
“I never had a good feeling about him, but the impression he leaves gets worse and worse.”
“It must be because of his continued excessive behavior. In any case, since he left first, we’ll have to take a different plane back.”
Maxwell and Catherine seemed to have felt the same thing from him.
However, neither of them found their own emotions strange.
Maxwell rose from his seat and shrugged.
“Well, my backside might ache if we take a transport plane, but it’ll still be better than riding that man’s private jet.”
After standing up, he extended a hand to me.
“I’ve heard there is an Eastern saying, ‘ilsin uilsin.’ Like those words, you change every time I see you. Please continue to take care of Margreta.”
It was not a proverb but an idiom from an old story, but I took his hand and nodded.
Now, he was no longer worried about Margreta returning.
Because he understood that staying by my side as I grew would be better for her than going back and taking his place.
After Maxwell left with the bag containing the brooch, it was now time for the others to leave.
“You’re both going straight to the Baekdu Mountain base, right?”
At Catherine’s words, I shook my head.
“Only Margreta will go.”
At my words, Margreta looked at me with surprised eyes.
“You’re not coming with me?”
“I have to stop by the warehouse.”
At the word warehouse, Margreta nodded.
She had remembered the generators stored there as well.
However, I could not separate her from me as I had intended.
“Then let’s go together.”
Her words that she would come with me put me in a very difficult position.
Because I was not planning to stop only at the warehouse.
When I looked troubled, Margreta gave me a small laugh.
She let out an exaggerated sigh and said,
“Hmm… It seems there’s some business only a man can attend to. All right. I’ll go first.”
At Margreta’s words, Catherine looked at me with a peculiar expression.
She clearly knew what she was doing.
I sighed and waved my hand dismissively.
Leaving behind words that could easily cause a misunderstanding, Margreta boarded another helicopter with Catherine and flew north.
I also took a helicopter back to Seoul.
The apartment residents were startled by the helicopter landing on the rooftop, but no one saw me get off it.
After the helicopter left, I went inside my home and rested properly for the first time in a while.
A day later, I received a message from the aide.
It was a notice with the warehouse’s location, saying that all the generators had been filled into the warehouse.
I ate the food I had ordered for delivery and left home.
With the backpack containing the box and the invisible spear slung over my back, I took one last look around the empty house.
Once I left, the house would be covered in dust again, but since there was a robot vacuum, I would probably be able to rest here the next time I came as well.
I closed the door and left the apartment.
To get to the warehouse with the generators, I needed a car, but this time I did not call Jeong Il-su.
Going to a warehouse prepared by the ruling party leader together with a CIA agent was not a good idea.
I called a taxi.
The warehouse was in a somewhat remote location, so in the past it would have been difficult to catch a taxi, but now I could call one with an app, so I did not worry about that.
Instead, I had to listen to the driver’s endless chatter the entire way.
“The yellow dust has finally cleared, and now this heat again. How is this supposed to be late autumn?”
He grumbled about the lingering heat.
“The war is over, but it feels even harder to make a living. All that nonsense about finding ruins that lead to another planet is just the government’s trick to keep from losing power.”
He poured out complaints about his tight livelihood and the government.
Thanks to that, I spent the whole ride regretting that I had not bought a car.
[It feels as though we have been put under noise magic. Buy a car at once.]
Soph seemed to feel the same.
The warehouse the aide had told me about was in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, close to Seoul.
After going a little north along the Han River, I saw a warehouse among abandoned buildings.
It was a fairly large-looking warehouse.
Beside the warehouse was a temporary building made from a container.
There was someone inside the temporary building.
I had the taxi stop in front of it.
When I got out of the taxi, the driver turned the car around while grumbling until the very end.
Vrooom.
After watching the car leave, I knocked on the door.
“Is anyone here?”
A person came out from inside.
He was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man.
Coming outside, he asked with an annoyed expression,
“What is it?”
“Assistant Kang sent me.”
The man looked me up and down, then took a key from his pocket.
“You’re early. Good thing you didn’t have to wait long.”
He handed me the key and said,
“The goods are inside. I’ll come back in the evening, so you can move them before then.”
He was saying that while I took the goods out, he would go somewhere else altogether.
It was a sloppy method, but it seemed decent enough for keeping each other’s secrets.
However, the situation around us differed from what he had said.
After quickly scanning the surroundings, I asked the man who was about to leave,
“Are there people other than you guarding this warehouse?”
At my words, he frowned.
His ordinary atmosphere changed completely.
As expected, this man was not ordinary either.
“No. There’s only me. Did someone…”
He looked around.
Seeing that, I waved my hand.
“No. I was just asking.”
At my words, the man stared at me intently.
“You’d better not say things like that carelessly.”
With those words, his expression returned to normal.
He walked away with a bored expression, plodding along.
Soon, the man was no longer visible.
Even when I checked with my senses, the man did not stop and kept walking.
It seemed I did not need to worry that he would remain behind and watch me.
I opened the warehouse door with the key and went inside.
As the aide had said, the warehouse was filled with solar panels and generators.
“These aren’t twenty each.”
On one side, solar panels were piled high, and beside them were more than forty sets of generators.
“And the oil generators aren’t civilian models.”
All of the more than forty oil generators were military-use.
“I can’t tell whether he brought in too many to curry favor or to show off his power.”
[Both, I imagine.]
In truth, it did not matter either way.
All I had to do was make good use of them.
After taking the box out of my backpack, I put all the generators piled inside the warehouse into it.
Inside the box, the things I had bought at the department store were already piled up like a mountain.
Before, I would not have been able to put all the generators in.
[It has grown again.]
“Yes. I think everything will fit.”
If things went well, there would be quite a bit of space left even after putting everything in.
While I was putting in the generators, Soph muttered,
[I do not know when your abilities will stagnate. If you were human, there is no way you would continue growing like this…]
Honestly, I found that strange as well, but since it was helping me for now, I decided to pretend not to know this time too.
After packing away all the generators, I came out of the empty warehouse.
The man who had been guarding the warehouse had gone beyond the range of my senses, so I could no longer feel him.
Now, excluding myself, there were only two people I could sense.
Two people hiding in the grass a short distance from the warehouse.
They were the people secretly watching this place—the ones I had asked the warehouse keeper about.
“Then shall we check?”
After casting magic to hide my presence, I placed acceleration magic on my body.
The world slowed.
My body slowed as well, but it was still faster than ordinary people moving.
Cutting through the wind and running toward the grass, I reached the side of the hidden people in no time.
The two men watching the warehouse door from their hiding place did not even realize I was standing beside them.
[It is someone we saw before.]
As Soph said, one of them was someone I knew.
The sharp-eyed man beside the awkward man holding a camera was the person I had seen in Itaewon yesterday dawn.
He was the NIS agent who had moved the other agents to arrest the Russian agents and saved the female university student.
[Why is an NIS agent here?]
[You can ask him, can you not?]
Soph was right. I decided to ask the man.
I moved again while still accelerated.
Moving behind the two of them, I pressed hard on the neck of the man holding the camera.
“Kuuugh.”
With a drawn-out groan, the man holding the camera fainted.
This time, it was the NIS agent’s turn.
I stood behind the agent and grabbed the nape of his neck.
Unlike the cameraman, the agent’s body flinched the moment I seized his neck.
Not that it meant he could escape from my hand.
I turned off the acceleration magic and asked the agent,
“Who are you?”
A low, deep voice.
Now, changing my voice did not even require magic.
The agent answered,
“Just someone passing by.”
“A lie. I know you’re an NIS agent. If you lie again, I’ll kill you right away and ask the unconscious man instead.”
“Tch.”
At my words, the agent clicked his tongue.
Even as he did, he moved his body.
He was trying to find an opening.
I said to the agent,
“Rolling your eyes won’t help. You probably didn’t even see me until your colleague passed out and you were subdued by me.”
At my words, he sighed and raised both hands.
“Whew, I surrender. I surrender. What do you want to know from me?”
“Name.”
“Han Seong-jae.”
“Affiliation.”
“You already know.”
“Affiliation.”
“NIS.”
“Is the unconscious one NIS too?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to die?”
I was using magic right now.
As long as he was caught in my hand, he could not lie to me.
“Tch. He’s a reporter.”
“Why are an NIS agent and a reporter watching this place?”
“If I tell you, will you spare the reporter?”
“Why do you think I hid myself?”
“All right. Things upstairs have been strange lately, so I was secretly investigating.”
“That is true. Are you some kind of champion of justice?”
“As if. I’m just taking out some insurance.”
Hearing that, one thought occurred to me.
If the worst happened, I also needed a thread through which I could inform people.
I woke the reporter and stood behind the two of them, then told them what I had experienced.
I told them everything up to what the ruling party leader knew.
After hearing me, the two looked at each other with dumbfounded expressions.
“Is that true?”
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it. And you know, don’t you? This is not something you can reveal.”
“Then why are you telling us?”
I returned to the agent what he had said earlier.
“You could call it insurance, in case something happens.”
Leaving the bewildered pair behind, I left the warehouse.
Everything I had to do on Earth was finished.
Now, it was time to go to Venus.
Origin (3)