I Became a Black Market Tycoon with an Inventory - Chapter 18

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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018-Operation
18.
Static crackled through the earpiece wedged in my ear.
“Report personnel status and casualties.”
“Explosives—all clear.”
“Firearms—all clear.”
“Medical—all clear.”
“Communications—all clear.”
“Logistics—all clear.”
“Good. Communications, request support from headquarters. We’re going after this bastard. You’re cleared to engage.”
“Roger.”
We crouched low,
methodically sweeping through the grassland.
“Don’t rush in recklessly. If anything looks suspicious, put a round downrange first and ask questions later.”
“Roger.”
We advanced in search formation, slowly herding them toward the riverbank.
Whenever doubt crept in, we fired a warning shot.
The enemy had fired first.
And even after we began our sweep, they stayed hidden, refusing to emerge?
No innocent Congolese would act this way.
If it were truly a mistake—
if I’d fired by accident, I could claim it was a mistake afterward.
I’d face an investigation and be cleared.
But this one didn’t do that.
Firing first meant there was a very high probability they were a rebel.
Yet after that single gunshot, they vanished like a ghost.
It was strange.
No follow-up action.
No return fire.
I pushed forward slowly, parting the grass with each step.
Bang, bang.
When anxiety took hold, I fired.
I’d trained for this dozens of times, yet tension gripped me.
Real combat was different.
The dread of not knowing where bullets might come from froze my body.
Still, I pressed on methodically, deliberately.
Step by step, we eventually reached Lake Tanganyika.
????????
Nothing.
No one.
They definitely shot at us, didn’t they?
I heard gunfire, but those bastards are gone.
I’m not the only one who’s shocked.
The faces of my teammates searching nearby are filled with bewilderment.
“Stop searching and gather here for a moment.”
We checked the surrounding area for hazards and headed toward the Captain.
The moment we arrived, the medic spotted me and jumped back in alarm.
“Hey!!! You’re bleeding!!!!”
“Sir? What bleeding are you talking about?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“This, sir?”
In that instant, all my teammates’ eyes fixed on me.
Blood was trickling from my left ear.
It was dripping steadily.
The medic urgently pulled out a hemostatic agent.
“Sit down. Come on, sit. Get comfortable.”
I sat. The medic gripped my ear firmly with the hemostatic agent and began applying pressure.
“You didn’t notice you were bleeding?”
“No, sir. I didn’t realize. I heard the gunshot right past my ear, but I didn’t know I was bleeding.”
“That’s a ghost hit.”
The Captain spoke.
“A ghost hit, sir?”
“Even if a bullet doesn’t strike you directly, if it passes right beside you, the air pressure can create a wound. Especially the ear—it’s delicate, so it tears more easily.”
“So you’re saying the bullet passed right next to my ear?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
What?
A bullet passed right next to my ear?
I was about to radio in at that moment.
If I hadn’t turned my body then, I could have died.
A chill suddenly runs down my spine.
I live thinking death doesn’t matter much anyway.
But dying like this wasn’t in the plan.
Damn it. I almost became a war hero on the first day of the operation.
The Captain spoke with fury in his voice.
“Damn bastard. He aimed and fired. He was trying to buy time to escape. If I had gone down, we would’ve focused on me instead of searching.”
“That’s right. These bastards tried to kill someone just to escape?”
“Let’s find these sons of bitches and take them down.”
“Absolutely. They touched our team? We’ll chase them to hell itself.”
“Don’t get worked up. Wait a moment. When is the communications support arriving?”
“They said about twenty minutes earlier, so they should be here by now.”
The medic who had been stopping my bleeding touched my ear a few more times.
“The bleeding has stopped.”
“It appears to be a grazing shot. However, it’s unusual that the wound is somewhat deep for a grazing shot.”
“The wound is deep?”
“Yes.”
The Captain’s face flushed red with excitement.
“What the hell kind of gun were those bastards firing? Is that an anti-materiel rifle?”
“It appears so.”
“We’re finding that bastard today no matter what. Youngest.”
“Sergeant Kwon Jong-o.”
“You go rest in the vehicle for a bit.”
“No, it’s nothing serious. The bleeding has stopped and I can still function.”
“No. Go rest. That’s an order.”
Just then, Team 2, who had been conducting operations elsewhere, received the call and arrived.
They came because there was a request for support,
but when the team members heard that the youngest had been shot, they were even more furious than I was.
“I’m going to catch those bastards and chew them raw.”
“I’m going to eat their insides.”
“I won’t let this slide.”
Of course, even if we actually caught those bastards, we wouldn’t actually eat them,
but I felt oddly good.
It was like having reliable older brothers.
Was this what it felt like to be protected?
Was this what it felt like to have someone angry on my behalf?
I had always known only being driven to the edge of a cliff.
Even if I fell off that cliff, there was never anyone who cared.
But hearing them say such things felt good.
It felt reassuring.
“Kwon Jong-o.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“You take Inbae to the armored vehicle. He doesn’t seem like he’ll go alone.”
“Understood.”
“We’ll rest for a bit, and once the support team arrives, we’ll resume the search.”
“Yes.”
The medic Sergeant Kwon Jong-o and I moved to the armored vehicle,
and in the meantime, the support team from headquarters also arrived.
We explained the situation to the support team and entered the armored vehicle.
Looking outside, they had reorganized the team and begun the search.
“Surprised?”
“No.”
“Impressive. Getting shot on the first day of the operation? I haven’t managed that yet.”
Kwon Jong-o spoke with a playful tone.
“It wasn’t a direct hit, sir. It didn’t even graze me.”
“That’s what makes bullets dangerous. You didn’t even get grazed, yet you’re wounded. You must have been tense—rest up. The search outside will be handled by the others, so leave it to them.”
“Yes, understood.”
But I couldn’t rest.
I’d said it before: in the military, you have to do the opposite of what you’re told.
If you rest when ordered to rest, you’ll never get to rest again.
I simply looked around outside from inside the armored vehicle.
I couldn’t participate directly in the search, but my heart wanted to be part of it.
So I eagerly joined the search with my eyes from the vehicle.
After staring intently at the grassland, my eyes grew tired, so I turned my head toward the village.
That’s when I saw someone carrying a rifle.
But… that rifle.
Isn’t that an anti-materiel sniper rifle?
They said the rifle that shot me was an anti-materiel sniper rifle.
But how did they get from that hiding spot to the village in one go?
The order was Lake Tanganyika—Grassland—Dilapidated House—Road.
We heard gunfire when we entered the grassland from the dilapidated house.
We searched from there all the way to Lake Tanganyika but couldn’t find anyone.
Yet these people suddenly appear from the road side?
Something felt very wrong.
To be safe, I asked Kwon Jong-o beside me.
“Sergeant, isn’t that an anti-materiel sniper rifle over there?”
I pointed with my finger, and Kwon Jong-o looked carefully.
“You’re right. Let’s report this to the team leader.”
“Yes.”
“Team leader, we’ve spotted personnel carrying an anti-materiel sniper rifle near a residence by the road. I repeat: personnel carrying an anti-materiel sniper rifle spotted near a residence by the road. It’s the brick house next to the utility pole. Please confirm.”
“Roger, confirmed. All units cease search and move to the road.”
The team members searching in the grassland moved stealthily toward the road.
I watched the scene unfold from inside the vehicle.
The team moved covertly, checked for threats around the brick house, then breached it in seconds.
Bang.
Bang.
Radio chatter came through with several gunshots.
“First floor clear.”
“Second floor clear.”
“Operation complete.”
“Seven captured. Three wounded. Requesting ambulance support.”
The operation ended in seconds.
We breached simultaneously from the front and rear entrances,
and since the enemy was completely unprepared, we subdued them in an instant.
That we sustained casualties
was because our team didn’t leave the one wielding the anti-materiel rifle alone.
We aimed precisely at both knees and fired.
Both kneecaps were completely shattered.
He’ll likely never walk again for the rest of his life.
We bound the captured men with cable ties, then stepped outside where my teammates smoked cigarettes.
The support team that arrived was guarding the captives.
“What is this from day one?”
“Tell me about it.”
“Congo doesn’t suit us, does it?”
“If it didn’t suit us, we’d all be dead. Would we be alive like this?”
“Consider it bad luck averted. Aside from Inbae being slightly injured, no one else was hurt, and we executed the operation flawlessly—that’s a win, isn’t it?”
I climbed out of the armored vehicle and approached them.
“Captain. Thank you for your hard work.”
“Hard work? This doesn’t even count as a warm-up. We’ve still got our skills. Haha.”
Now that the operation had concluded safely, the Captain’s handsome face had returned.
“But Captain, I… would it be alright if I examined the grassland a bit more?”
“The grassland? Why the grassland?”
“No matter how I think about it, something feels off.”
“What feels off?”
“The shots fired at us clearly came from the grassland, yet we found them here. We were in between—doesn’t that seem strange?”
“It does seem odd…”
“Just give me twenty minutes. I’ll take a quick look and come back.”
“Hmm…”
“Woo Won.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Take Deok-soo, Jae-beom, and Inbae with you for a moment.”
“Understood.”
At the Captain’s command,
the Vice-Captain took the lead, and the four of us—demolitions specialist, communications specialist, and myself—headed toward the grassland.
The place I suspected was where they seemed to have vanished.
We pushed through the brush with our rifles and kicked at the ground with our feet as we passed, but found nothing unusual.
I wondered if I was just being paranoid.
“There’s nothing here, right? Should we head back?”
“Don’t head back yet.”
“Inbae, let’s go.”
“Yes.”
As we turned to leave, piles of trash suddenly came into view.
Garbage drifted to the lake’s edge from various places, accumulating into heaps of refuse.
But something about this particular heap seemed off.
“Vice-Captain, would it be alright if I took a closer look at that garbage pile?”
“Sure, go ahead and check it out. But I can’t go near that trash.”
“I can handle it alone, sir.”
“Alright, go. We’ll keep watch from here.”
I was grateful that he’d considered my suggestion, made time for it, and followed me this far.
Asking him to dig through garbage would’ve been shameless,
but I hated this nagging feeling of unease.
With my team watching from behind, I headed toward the garbage heap.
Before I even reached it, the stench assaulted my nostrils.
Plastic bottles, plastic bags, snack wrappers, beverage containers, glass—
all manner of refuse lay scattered across a wide area.
I picked up a stick from nearby and poked and prodded through the garbage as I advanced.
Was this pointless?
I wondered while continuing to jab with the stick.
Then suddenly, the stick sank through something.
I nearly lost my balance.
Barely catching myself, I examined where the stick had gone.
It looked like bare earth.
But looking closer, it wasn’t earth at all.
Thick fabric had been covered with mud to resemble the ground.
Following the seams carefully, I found something resembling a handle and lifted it.
What the hell is this?
The moment I saw it, a curse escaped my lips.
What I’d discovered was an underground tunnel.
.
.
.
The situation had escalated.
Support teams from our unit arrived as reinforcements.
The UN Peacekeeping Force from the nearby area came as well.
Government Military, Police, and local politicians all appeared on scene.
We checked whether there were booby traps inside the tunnel,
but the tunnel was clean.
Instead, numerous weapons were discovered.
It appeared to be a smuggling tunnel.
According to the analysis, weapons were brought in through Lake Tanganyika, moved through the tunnel, and then gradually distributed elsewhere.
The tunnel connected to a dilapidated house,
or rather, it seemed the tunnel had been constructed first, and the house built above it as camouflage.
The incident had escalated, but there was nothing more for our team to do here.
Scene cleanup and contraband disposal—those were tasks for the personnel remaining behind.
We simply needed to return.
And so we left the scene behind and made our way back to base.
It had been a long, grueling first day of the Congo operation, marked by incident after incident.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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