I Bought the Villains With Money - Chapter 22

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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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Episode 22.
The conditions for finding a proxy weren’t hard to identify.
First, they’d need to be wealthy enough to buy a bank.
Second, they’d need to follow my wishes precisely.
Third, they must never betray me, not even in the final moment.
Each condition alone was manageable, but taken together,
‘they’re like some creature that only exists in legend.’
No matter how carefully I examined it, I doubted such a person could exist.
I’d become that foolish adventurer who set out to find a legendary unicorn, and I crumpled the paper and hurled it into the corner.
Then I reconsidered the conditions.
Wealth I could grant, but a wealthy person willing to obey me without betrayal? That was the contradiction.
Solve one problem, and the other two remained.
‘No, I can’t give up. Let me think harder.’
I retrieved the crumpled paper, smoothed it out, and stared at it intensely.
First condition: who was rich enough to buy a bank?
‘Not many. What about someone with power instead of wealth?’
A bank could be bought with money, but power could crush and coerce the owner to sell just as well.
But I rejected that immediately. Most powerful people were too busy watching Julia’s moods to think of anything else.
‘They’d never stand by my side.’
“Wait.”
After staring at the paper for some time, I spotted an unnecessary condition.
“Why do I need a wealthy person if I can provide the money for the bank myself?”
I straightened my spine against the chair’s back.
“These conditions are completely wrong!”
I pulled a fresh sheet of paper and began rewriting the requirements.
First, they must have a weakness. Money can solve it—problem solved.
Second, they must be able to convincingly play the role of a wealthy person.
Third, they must be unknown to others.
Once written down, the conditions weren’t difficult at all. If I held their weakness, achieving the third condition would be easy.
‘They wouldn’t betray me if I have their weakness.’
Once I shifted my thinking, everything became simple.
Now that the conditions were set, I just had to find someone who met them.
This would be easy.
I lost myself in thought, and then it came—something surfaced!
A name appeared to me, followed by a face. And then a nickname they carried.
“Jennis!”
I rang the bell on my desk excitedly and summoned Jennis, who arrived shortly.
“You called for me, young mistress?”
“Yes, Jennis. Bring Aunt Cho here right now.”
***
“You’ve got some money and suddenly you treat your aunt however you like?”
Cho, summoned again soon after being dismissed, grumbled as she plopped onto the sofa in an unladylike posture and lit a cigarette.
“Right now I’m calling you as a client, not as family. I have work for you.”
I left unspoken the implication that she should conduct herself with proper decorum. Cho adjusted her posture on her own, reading from my serious demeanor that this was no ordinary request.
“Why are you suddenly being so formal?”
Because this task would not be simple.
What I was about to ask of her might be the first failure in the experience of Cho, who had known nothing but success since founding Jorni.
‘Can aunt pull this off?’
I quietly calculated her chances of success.
‘She doesn’t have talented people to help her.’
Jorni was a fledgling organization. So it was filled more with passionate people than skilled ones. As a result, Cho was drowning in work. Everyone relied on Cho; no one was there to support her.
‘The location worries me.’
If things went wrong, I could lose her.
The odds of failure seemed greater.
I studied Cho carefully.
In those eyes that watched me intently from her crooked posture, I glimpsed the future of Jorni—where it would command the Continent as the greatest intelligence network, where Cho would reign supreme.
‘It’s something that will actually happen.’
I decided to bet on her future rather than her present. I would believe in her, trust that she would achieve Jorni’s glory.
“Come on, speak. Why the hesitation?”
“Can you get into Bultah Prison?”
“Bultah Prison?”
Jorni’s eyes narrowed. Suspicion flooded her gaze. She seemed startled by a word she hadn’t expected to hear from my lips.
Jorni didn’t answer right away. Watching her hesitate, the infamy of Bultah Prison suddenly felt very real.
They called it a rehearsal for hell itself.
“Why Bultah Prison?”
Bultah Prison, known by the alias of hell, was a place that housed only the most notorious criminals on the Continent.
Bultah Prison was a place from which no one could escape until their sentence was served in full. It held only those who had received life sentences or death sentences.
Serial killers, habitual drunk drivers, those who had plotted rebellion, soldiers who had fled the battlefield, and legendary con artists among them—people who had committed crimes too terrible to forgive.
In short, Bultah Prison was a place you could only leave by dying.
And here I was,
“saying I need to get someone out.”
“So they’re wearing a false accusation and locked away. If our niece cares enough to think of them, they must be innocent.”
Jorni believed I was just like my mother—righteous and naive and kind. It was about time she saw my real self.
I’d always thought blinders clouded only lovers’ eyes, but it seemed they could cloud family’s just as easily.
I shook my head and spoke.
“No. They’re a bad person.”
Jorni dropped her cigarette with a flick.
“What? You’re trying to sneak a bad person out? Why? Surely not because they got a life sentence? Are you planning to break them out just to execute them yourself? Are you playing righteous crusader?”
She has such a keen sense for finding the right answers when she’s working, yet why is she so oblivious when it comes to my affairs? I can never quite figure Jorni out.
“Why? Why that person?”
When I didn’t answer, Jorni pressed urgently. “Tell me.”
I answered briefly.
“I need their help with my work.”
“Isn’t there anyone else?”
“No. You’re not exactly going to step into the public eye and work yourself, are you?”
Jorni hated stepping forward in front of people. So when Jorni grew large, she immediately found multiple proxies to take her place and carry on her work.
Even when meeting me, she often sent a proxy and caused me trouble. The only time she appeared before the public was when my execution was carried out.
Jorni wasn’t going to sell her face for just one bank. And looking ahead to the expanding scope of Jorni’s operations, I had no intention of putting her prominently forward either.
Jorni exhaled a long breath and asked.
“Who on earth is it?”
“Rumdracks.”
Jorni’s jaw fell open. She would know of Rumdracks well enough. His reputation had spread far across the Continent.
The most legendary con artist of all.
Rumdracks’ con work was diverse in both method and target. Just listing the major cases alone could fill three days and nights of conversation.
But putting him in Bultah Prison was extreme. It was the first time anyone had locked away a mere con artist—especially one whose schemes had never killed a single soul—in Bultah Prison.
Moreover, unlike other con artists, Rumdracks occasionally preyed on bad people. The problem was that his criteria for identifying them were deeply personal.
In any case, thanks to Rumdracks’ targeting of villains, he had supporters among the public. So whenever he was caught, petitions for sentence reduction flooded into the courts.
In every way, Rumdracks was a con artist both difficult to catch and problematic once caught.
Yet he ended up locked in Bultah Prison because of a single painting.
The Smiling Face of Naflax, owned by the Joseph Royal Family.
A portrait depicting the serene smile of Naflax Joseph, the founding king of the Joseph Royal Family.
Thanks to the masterful brushwork of an exceptional painter, the work was praised as a masterpiece in which the figure seemed to breathe with life.
Depending on the light and the angle from which it was viewed, the painting would appear sorrowful to one observer, stoic to another, and joyful to yet another—so it was called the bewitching portrait.
The Smiling Face of Naflax was Joseph Kingdom’s greatest treasure. It became famous partly because the Joseph Royal Family revealed it only when illustrious guests arrived.
Rumdracks stole that painting. Or more precisely, he received it from the Joseph Royal Family.
King Joseph, convinced that the disguised Rumdracks was a genius painter and a major art dealer, handed it over without hesitation.
But Rumdracks was a con artist, and what he sent back to Joseph Kingdom was a forgery.
The Joseph Royal Family didn’t discover the truth until a year after receiving the painting back. The forgery was that convincing.
‘There are even rumors that Rumdracks painted the copy himself.’
To Rumdracks’ fraud charges was added the crime of impudence. He earned the hatred of all Joseph Kingdom’s people.
The entire kingdom launched a massive campaign to capture Rumdracks. Then nations in friendly relations with Joseph Kingdom moved as well.
‘That’s how he was finally caught.’
Continental coordination.
The case of Rumdracks’ arrest was recorded in history as an unprecedented event—when kingdoms that had only growled at each other while fighting over territory united as one.
‘He really pulled off something remarkable. He unified the squabbling Continent, at least for that moment.’
In a word, Rumdracks was skilled with his hands, quick of mind, excellent at acting, and operating on a grand scale.
‘He’s perfectly suited to be my proxy.’
The more I thought about it, the more Rumdracks appealed to me. What had started as a tentative consideration had now become a conviction that it had to be him.
“What are you planning to do by calling that person, anyway? Ah, never mind. It’s none of my business.”
I pushed aside my wandering thoughts and looked at Jorni, who had asked the question.
And though Jennis said it wasn’t necessary, I took the time to explain what I intended to do.
Her expression darkened throughout my explanation.
“Can I really trust you and do this? The work just keeps getting bigger?”
Finally, the words came pouring out—she wanted to wash her hands of me. But it was already too late to back out. Besides, Jennis’s complaint was merely a form of petulance. Knowing that, I laughed it off.
“We’re already in the same boat. If you still want to jump ship, just say so—I’ll drop you off. Though I can’t promise the shore I leave you on will be safe.”
“All you do is add more threats to your repertoire.”
Jennis clicked her tongue and listened to the rest of my explanation.
“So there’s no one else like Rumdracks—someone that dangerous.”
“There isn’t. Especially not someone as useful.”
Common swindlers are a dime a dozen. But no ordinary con artist could deceive a bank director and Julia.
Julia was a brilliant woman, though she hated to admit it. And cruel. Her purpose was crystal clear.
She wasn’t the type who could be easily fooled. You cannot fell a strong tree with a dull axe.
To counter Julia, the person I send must be her equal.
They need boldness, the ability to flee if discovered, and above all, ambition.
Quite demanding conditions. Of everyone I know, only Rumdracks meets them.
I Bought Villains with Money (Serialized)
Author │ Yi In-hye
Publisher │ Kim Joo-hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd. – Tiramisu
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyuk
Address │ 1101, 11F, Ace Techno Tower 8th, 33 Digital-ro, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong)
Email │ [email protected]
Homepage │ http://blog.naver.com/jayplemedia1
ⓒ Yi In-hye 2021
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder,
and the contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
Violation of this may result in criminal and civil legal liability.

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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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