Laborer Mr. Kim Reaps Sweet Rewards with Auto-Hunting - Chapter 46

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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 46

“Sigh….”

Lani slumped to the floor after dropping that bombshell of a name.
This crafting session had been intense.
She looked more exhausted than ever before.
She could probably use some rest….

“So, Yongyongi…?”
“No, no. Not Yongyongi — it’s Yongyongi, Kwang!”
“What exactly is that ‘Kwang’?”
“Hm? Kwang is Kwang!”
“I….”

Her insistence was sharp as a blade.
Lani, really.
Take a look at your grandfather’s face.
What in the world is this….
He’s stuck in denial right there.
But I understand him.
Everyone reacted the same way at first.

“Arthur, I know. Arthur also had that look when we got Flare and Dantania.”
“……This is quite the ordeal.”
“I was wondering why the familiars’ names were like that….”

Right.
These names are ones they received.
From whom?

“Heh!”

From our little bundle of joy, grinning from ear to ear.
Still, well.
Everyone’s satisfied with them now.
This one will probably turn out the same.
So anyway.

“Hm….”

I’ll leave the shocked customer alone for now.
First, the name’s decided.
Now let’s open up the options.

[Yongyongi, Kwang!]
– A masterwork crafted by a skilled artisan.
– It holds the power of a legendary figure.
– Grants blessing to allied forces fighting alongside it.
– Reduces enemy defense through intimidation.
– Special skill ‘Azure Flame Dragon’ usable.
– Special skill ‘Flame Horse Summoning’ usable.
– When riding on the Flame Horse, every attack gains powerful cutting effect.
– Immunity to flame attacks below a certain threshold.

“Wow….”
“What’s wrong?”

Why, of course.
Take a look.
Let me show you the options first.
I blinked.
And looked again.

“Mm-hmm.”
“How is it? Satisfactory, wouldn’t you say?”

I ventured the question.
His response?

“Heh heh… I confess, I was already satisfied the moment I beheld the staff’s form.”
“Ha! Told you so?! The dragon Lani made — beautiful, right?”

See?
I told you you’d be pleased once you saw the options.
Now you should take the staff with you.

“Go ahead and grip it.”

I slipped it into his hands.
Whoosh!
The moment he took hold of it, light flared bright.

[You have obtained a weapon touched by Lani.]
[A Worker’s latent potential begins to awaken.]

Latent potential, awakening.
Arthur and Robin had shown marked changes in appearance when they received theirs.
What about Yun Jang?
Hmm…
The change looked about the same, maybe.

“Grandfather, you’ve grown taller!”

Had he?

“Indeed, a fine staff. My magical power has grown considerably.”

At least he’d leveled up somewhat.
Whether the magical power increased perceptibly, I couldn’t say.
But it was good news either way.
Now I needed to see how much stronger he’d become.
And how the weapon itself would perform.
A test run was in order.

* * *

A top-tier Worker with awakened latent potential, wielding a weapon touched by Lani.
I’d have wanted to send him into an S-Rank or A-Rank Dungeon…
But none were available at the moment.
Well, no helping it.

[B-Rank, Tomb of Fallen Warriors]

This will have to do.

“Wow… there are a lot of them.”
“Zombie bastards everywhere? They’re swarming!”

Dungeons typically fall into one of two categories.

1. A few strong monsters.
2. Many relatively weak monsters.

This one was the latter.
The moment I turned on the monitor, hordes of zombies filled the screen.
And our top-tier Worker was…?

“There! A hot steed, Grandfather!”
“A hot steed? Oh….”

The skill attached to Yongyongi, Kwang!
Flame Horse Summoning.
He’d used it right away.
There he was, astride a blazing horse, whiskers streaming in the wind, an ornate halberd held at an angle across his body.
The sight of him—

“Absolutely legendary.”

I’d seen this before, online.
A warrior on a red horse, wielding a green crescent blade.
Was he actually charging forward while mounted?

A faint whisper of movement.

No, that wasn’t it.
He drew the halberd from left to right in a single arc.

“Whoa… insane.”
“A dragon?”
“Heh-heh.”

It bloomed in midair.
A dragon wreathed in azure flame—the Azure Flame Dragon.
The result?

Kabooom!

It plunged into the swarm of monsters and detonated.
The devastation was complete—nearly every zombie vanished in that single blast.
Absurd.
At this power level, he could level an entire building without breaking a sweat.

“Whee! Grandfather the wizard! Kaboom!”

Ah.
Now I understood.
So that’s why it’s called Yongyongi, Kwang!…

A stray thought crossed my mind.
A Personnel Manager’s Awakening was like winning the lottery.
But among all those winnings, recruiting Lani might’ve been the real jackpot.
A thought like that…

* * *

Beijing, China.
Inside the Chairman’s office.
Zhang Zhian, China’s Chairman, smiled with satisfaction as he spoke.

“Yes, the accord has been concluded.”
“Indeed, sir. I’ve just heard the report that Arthur Brent has accepted it.”

Arthur Brent.
Britain’s number one Hunter and a member of Parliament.
By other measures, the second strongest man in the world.
The accord he brokered is straightforward.

When an S-Rank Dungeon appears in China, he will come to assist.
In exchange, China will compensate him accordingly.

“The amount he’s demanding is considerable, but…since Chen Wei is expected to climb above the sixtieth floor soon, it seems we need only maintain the accord until then.”
“How absurd. That a great power should be reduced to this.”

It was Britain who accepted the accord.
But he had sent proposals to other nations as well.
America, Germany, Russia….
They all refused.

China, begging for help?
What is this?
And what infuriates him most…

“Personnel Manager, have you no news of that small nation’s Hunter?”
“Only what I reported before, sir…. Numerous covert operatives from the Special Operations Unit have been killed….”
“The world has turned upside down.”

China was the center of the world.
A conviction he had held his entire life.
Surely that was true….
But somewhere along the way, it began to shift, bit by bit.
A small nation’s Hunter.
Ever since the Personnel Manager appeared.

At first, he thought nothing of it.
A man who conquered an S-Rank Dungeon and crafts fine weapons too?
Then he should be naturalized.
Of course.

“Historically, small nations have always given us everything.”
“Indeed, sir.”

But then….
He dares ignore a directive from the capital?
So he sent agents to acquire the weapons.
That too failed.
Even when the Party itself pressed Korea….
He was refused.
The Awakening Management Bureau, they said, flatly opposed it.

“Does he dare trample the pride of a great nation?”

Zhang Zhian, the Chairman, was eighty-seven years old.
In his youth, such a thing would have been unthinkable.
And yet he had endured.
Because of that unknown S-Rank Dungeon.
Now that danger was resolved….

“Is Liu Hao currently the head of the Special Operations Unit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him that our government will spare no support from our end. Have him push forward with the plan again.”

The objective was singular.
Finding out who the Personnel Manager was.
That alone would suffice.
Once they had that information, they could apply far greater pressure based on it.

“The Personnel Manager.”

His abilities were exceptional.
He’d astonished the entire world.
But.
At the end of the day, he was just one man.
How could he possibly dare raise a blade against China, a great power?
At best, he might voice some complaints.

A show of force?
Impossible without losing his mind.
If he so much as attempted a terrorist act on the mainland, he’d be arrested immediately—or perhaps they should even thank him for the excuse.

“No matter how much you thrash about, this is where it ends.”

Time to show the pup.
What happens when you stand against the power of a nation.

* * *

[This morning, a statement from China’s ambassador to Korea has become the subject of discussion. Ambassador Zhang Xiao stated that the Personnel Manager, a Korean Hunter, should bear moral responsibility and assist China—.]

“Huh?”

A news report drifting from the TV I’d turned on without really paying attention.
What the hell is this nonsense?
I tilted my head and listened more carefully.

“So apparently, because the manager cleaned out the warehouse and it’s slowing the growth of Chen Wei, an up-and-coming ranker, he should take responsibility?”
“Seriously.”
“They certainly have a talent for presenting bullshit creatively.”
“No kidding.”

There really is no old saying without truth to it.
Pull someone out of the water and they ask for their bundle back, or so the saying goes.
Save them and now they want you to cough it up.
Does that make any sense?
I ignored it and checked the internet instead.

“Hm?”

It’s a mess here too.
It started with the Chinese ambassador’s statement.
But then….
It spread everywhere from there.
Some politician jumped on the bandwagon.

– Why should the Personnel Manager help those bastards lol
└ Then why did he help India and Egypt? He should help China too.
└ Who asked him to help?
└ Since China and Korea are like family, shouldn’t he naturally help them?
└ I don’t know about family, but it does feel wrong.

– If you’ve received that much, you should at least take moral responsibility for it;;; I’m embarrassed as a fellow Korean.
└ They gave it to us, so what’s the problem?
└ Question: Is the person who wrote the original comment actually Korean???

The comments are an absolute mess.
They’re tearing each other apart…
No.
Is this even worth debating?

“I don’t understand it.”
“The politicians backing that statement—there’s definitely China behind them.”
“Excuse me? How did Todd figure that out?”
“These days you can find most things if you dig, Director. And when you combine it with the information from the Eye of Truth, it looks like this—”

He shows me a bunch of stuff while he’s at it…
Good grief.
I still don’t understand what I’m looking at.
Something about proposed legislation and whatnot.
If anything, he seems more of a modern person than I am…
Anyway, to sum it up.

“So you’re saying there’s a high probability this is China’s doing?”
“It’s not just probable—it’s certain.”
“I was wondering why it got so quiet…”

An out-of-nowhere statement from the Chinese ambassador to Korea.
Politicians echoing it.
Comments and media defending it without rhyme or reason.
All of it their handiwork…

“Didn’t you help those people, Director?”
“Yes…”
“Well, they’re certainly ungrateful wretches, aren’t they?”

That they are.
But, you know.
It’s fine.
I can just ignore them anyway.

Politicians? Journalists? Comments?
What are you all going to do?
You don’t even know who I am.
Instead.

“Todd, no matter how much money they throw at you, don’t take any jobs from China.”
“Understood.”

He was already working on it anyway.
Todd mentioned it to me—
since Lani loves making items as a Worker,
we should upgrade them to luxury goods and start taking commissions.
For now we’re calibrating them to our own Workers first,
and once everything’s ready, we were planning to take custom orders from top-ranked Hunters across the globe…
China?
You’re out.

“Anyway, let’s leave it at that for now.”

Ignore it and it’ll go away anyway.
I was ready to call it done.
If it weren’t for what Yun Jang said.

“Sir, there appears to be suspicious activity outside.”
“What? Again?”

He’d said the same thing the first time we met.
Back then, I’d been skeptical.
But…
He’d turned out right about that suspicious character after all.
Now?

“There are roughly three presences like the ones I felt in China. They seem to be from that Special Operations Unit.”

You again?
After failing last time, why come back?

“Probably intimidation. Or bait, maybe.”

They splashed a scandal in front to apply pressure.
While operating like this from behind.
If the Personnel Manager doesn’t step in…?

“Then they’ll handle it like they tried to before. Whoever survives that will be the Personnel Manager.”
“Ha…”
“Boss, are you angry?”
“Hah… Don’t be mad at me.”

Yun Ha-jun. Twenty-three years old.
Not the type to get angry easily.
Most things I can just laugh off with a casual shrug.
But this? Not this.

“I went and saved the country from collapse…”

Sure, I did pick up a little extra along the way.
But isn’t that better than the nation falling apart?
The materials I collected—well…
They were what they’d originally promised as compensation anyway.
But now this?
What infuriates me most is this.

“If I just ignore this, innocent people on that list will die for no reason.”
“Yes, probably everyone whose name was on that list along with you, sir.”

The Chinese Special Operations Unit.
Todd had done a sweep with the Eye of Truth…
They were horrible people.
Extortion, kidnapping, murder.
Things they did as casually as eating breakfast.
And since they’re a secret organization, apparently they only managed to dig up part of what they do.

I knew and said nothing.
I knew what would happen if I sent Yun Jang after them.
But.
I can’t hold back when they push like this.
I could let it slide once.
Twice, though? No.
Before hesitation leaves innocent casualties in its wake.

“Yun Jang, I’m sorry, but it seems you’ll need to go once more.”
“I was waiting to hear exactly that.”

* * *

A dispatch to China.
And not for any noble purpose—we’re sending them to fight.
I’d wanted to send everyone at once.

“It’s fine. This time, I prefer to go alone.”

Yun Jang refused.
And Todd as well?

“Manager, trust me and Yun Jang—just this once.”

That’s what he said.
To be honest, I was worried.
Even a top-tier Worker isn’t invincible.
But still…

[Worker Dispatch]
– Office (Eye of Truth, Beijing, China)

At least I have this.
The advantage of a dispatch.
No matter how far the distance, you can reach it.
And then?
Return is possible from that very spot.

“If it gets dangerous, don’t hesitate—come back immediately.”
“Heh, understood. Don’t worry.”

Well, yes.
Todd and he’ve already planned it all out.
Should be reliable enough.
Still, just in case.

“Take this—it’s called the Recovery Ring.”
“Heh, much obliged.”
“Grandfather! Take this too! This one Lani made! It’ll help block some of the pain!”

When did she even make something like that.
Anyway.
Preparations are done.
All that’s left is to open the door and go—

“Shin-in?”

Arthur suddenly called out to Yun Jang.
What’s he holding…
Coffee?
When did he brew it.

“Nerves make you lose. Have a cup of coffee—calm down before you go?”

Seems everyone was getting a little embarrassed from all the fussing.
A cup of coffee isn’t bad.
Eases the tension too.

“That’s nice. Have a cup before you go.”

She offered it casually enough.
Yun Jang, solid as ever today, the Worker.
He smiled faintly and spoke.

“No need. Leave it there. I’ll be back before that coffee gets cold.”

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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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