Laborer Mr. Kim Reaps Sweet Rewards with Auto-Hunting - Chapter 48

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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 48

China, Beijing.
The Chairman’s office.

“I—I… what in blazes. What have you done.”

Chairman Zhang Zian shot to his feet, his face contorted with shock.

[Apologies. We are experiencing technical difficulties with the broadcast signal. Please bear with us—.]

The television that had been showing Guan Yu just moments before now displayed nothing but a fractured feed.
Looking at Vice Chairman Zhang Tian’s face,
his jaw hung slack.
The pathetic fool.
Was this the time to stand there gaping?
First, he needed to understand what was happening.
That was where to begin.

“Zhang Tian, what are you doing! Get in touch with someone on the ground right now—I need to know what’s happening out there!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Hah….”

This was maddening.
He wasn’t even young anymore.
Why did calamities keep piling on him like this lately?
His head throbbed.

“What in heaven’s name is Guan Yu doing—”

Just minutes.
In that span, could his entire world truly crumble like this?
Perhaps…
an angel he’d believed in all his life was actually a demon.
If it ended with a headache, he’d count himself fortunate.

“I cannot believe it.”

Guan Yu.
The idol of his childhood.
When he’d heard that a savior had descended upon the heart of Beijing, he’d cheered like a young man, forgetting his age entirely—
and now he was being told that they had not come to save them?

“I thought, at last, the world would turn right again.”

A conviction he’d held for eighty-seven years.
China was the center of the world.
But lately, that certainty had begun to waver.
Perhaps
China was no longer the master of the world.
Perhaps it was a sun already setting on the horizon—
such doubts had crept in, unbidden.

Bang—!

“The… the entire building was destroyed, you say…”

Yes.
I saw it on the broadcast.
That lunatic Guan Yu.
No, a demon wearing Guan Yu’s mask suddenly summoned the Blue Dragon.
And drove it straight into the building.
The problem is.

“Isn’t that the Special Operations Department building?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The whole thing was destroyed?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“Sigh….”

If the entire building’s been flattened, nobody who was in there would be left alive.
Well, that’s fine.
They’re disposable anyway.
I can always raise new ones.
But the cleanup has to be thorough.

“Deploy Public Security immediately to sweep the area. Lock down all access points, and confiscate every recording device. Wipe every scrap of data. Nothing that happened there can leak out.”

At least I don’t have to deal with eliminating the Special Operations Department personnel myself.
Guan Yu wiped them all out for me anyway.
Oh.
Wait, no.

“Eliminate all the Special Operations Department operatives who were out on assignments as well.”
“Yes, understood!”
“Go.”

Handle it as fast as possible.
Before this spirals out of control.

Everything else—I can manage.
I can overcome anything else.
A Ranker?
Given enough time, I can cultivate another one and be done with it.
A Dungeon breach?
Throw enough money at it and it’s solved.
But if word gets out about what the Special Operations Department was doing….
The fallout would be beyond my control.
The whole world might turn its back on me.

“First, I’ll clean up everything….”

Then build it back up.
Humans are everywhere anyway.
With enough time, I can replenish disposable assets as much as I need.
In the meantime, though.
I need to plunge the international situation into chaos.

“Russia, North Korea, Iran… Turkey….”

Several nations come to mind.
I’ll provoke them.
Drive the world into a pit of disorder.
And in that chaos.
China will rise again.
By my hand.

Crash!

What?
What is this….
The last moment of life.
What flashed before Zhang Zian’s eyes was the Blue Dragon smashing through the wall and charging inside.

* * *

[Breaking News: Terror attack erupts in Beijing, China. Multiple deaths reported including the Chinese President. Casualty count ongoing.]

The perpetrator was believed to be Guan Yu—a mysterious assailant.
Damage: one building and portions of Zhongnanhai.
Multiple fatalities.
The Chinese President among them.
The news spread across the globe in an instant, leaving the world in shock.

– What are you saying? Guan Yu’s the terrorist? That Guan Yu from the stories?
└ Yeah, that Guan Yu.
└ Did the whole Chinese government take some kind of drug? How could Guan Yu actually exist?
└ Surprisingly, it’s real. China’s trying to control the footage, but if you dig around, you can find it all.

– What is Zhongnanhai anyway?
└ It’s complicated to explain, but just think of it as where the President’s office is located.
└ Oh, so that’s why the President….

How could the news be like this?
None of it made sense from beginning to end.
First of all, why was Guan Yu even in the real world?
He belonged in fiction.
And, assuming by some miracle he existed—
But still….

– Why would he launch a terrorist attack?
– Right? Guan Yu’s practically a god in China, isn’t he?
– He’s the symbol of loyalty—betrayal is supposed to be out of the question. Why would he do this all of a sudden?

Even foreigners couldn’t make sense of it.
What about the Chinese themselves?
Their reaction was pure shock, nothing else.

“Why would the General do this….”
“That’s not General Guan. It’s a demon, a demon!”
……
…

Denial of reality.
And shock.
Some of the elderly who heard the news even collapsed.
No wonder a theory like this emerged.

– Could it be that it wasn’t actually Guan Yu?
└ Then what?
└ Well, maybe a monster that came out of a Dungeon…. Or some new type of Dungeon.
└ Do you think that makes sense?
└ So what, you think Guan Yu suddenly went insane and terrorized China makes more sense?

That’s right.
A Guan Yu who’d already died wouldn’t suddenly lose his mind this late….
Unless it wasn’t a monster—did it even make sense?

– True enough….
– Yeah, it really is.
– Hell, so we’ll have to watch out for monsters like that in reality too?

It wouldn’t be Guan Yu—it’d be an actual monster.
I need to be careful.
Just as the mood began to settle into something heavy.
A shocking piece of news shattered it entirely.

[Breaking News) China’s Dark Secret Exposed: A Government Department Specializing in the Kidnapping and Murder of Awakeners Worldwide—the “Special Operations Department”—Revealed by British Public Broadcasting!]

* * *

The story broke on British public television:
China’s secret department, the “Special Operations Department.”
What was it about?

“Truly, it is hard to fathom something so horrific. A department that specializes in coercion, kidnapping, and murder? Can such a thing actually exist?”
“It strains belief, and yet it is real. We will now air interviews with the victims of these kidnappings.”

It was shocking.
My God.
Coercion, kidnapping, murder.
A department that specializes in such things actually existed?
Not in some film—but in reality?

“Hello, I’m Kim Yun Joong, an Awakener from Korea. My Unique Skill is Buff Potion Crafting. After being lured in with a high daily wage and kidnapped, I was locked away for two years manufacturing potions—
“Farhad. I’m from Iran. Because I could manufacture armor, they locked me away and made me craft nothing but defensive gear.”
“These monsters are demons. They threatened to kill our families.”
“There was another Awakener from a different country who tried to expose them on Awakener Net, but eventually….”
……
…

The atrocities committed by China, as revealed in the interviews with kidnapping victims.
The reality was horrifying.

Coercion and violence were merely the baseline.
The moment any sign of escape or exposure appeared.
The consequences were unspeakable, they said.

– Anyone curious what was edited out of the interview? It was too gruesome—
└ Hand raised
└ They kidnapped even the families of those who tried to expose them on Awakener Net, and right before their eyes—.
└ Fucking monsters.
└ They’re not even human.

There had always been whispers circulating just beneath the surface.
You know….
Something about China kidnapping people, that sort of thing?
Urban legends, really—just rumors.
But it was all true?

The entire world condemned China simultaneously.
And yet?
Even Chinese citizens themselves began condemning them.
Because.

– You hear about that? Those people were found in the basement of the building Guan Yu threw down.
└ Yeah, I heard
└ They say he toppled the whole structure and yet somehow the basement was left completely intact
└ So…. Could it be they deliberately caused that terrorist attack?

Of course.
The General would never commit terrorism without reason.
He came down to punish them.
Damn these wretches who deserve the heavens’ wrath.

– But the Chairman is dead. Who takes power now?
– Probably the ones below him.
– Looks rough. The atmosphere’s been pretty ominous lately.

The Chairman, Zhang Zian, was already dead.
Those beneath him sought to seize power and stabilize the situation.
Impossible.
The backlash was too severe.

“Scum, get out of our sight!”
“How do you have the nerve to disturb the General’s well-deserved rest?”
“Haven’t you learned your lesson after heaven’s punishment?”

Normally, such a thing would be unthinkable.
If Public Security stepped in, they’d be beaten to death—who’d dare resist?
But.
The General would protect them.
This conviction is what set them in motion.

Not just the common people.
Even the awakened Hunters.
All had turned their backs. How could they possibly manage?
Zhang Zian’s faction?
They fled to save their own skins.
And thus China descended into chaos.

* * *

“So…. in short, there’s a high probability the Director of Personnel Management is behind this turmoil.”
“An accurate summary.”
“You’re certain?”
“Based on our investigation, yes.”

China, plunged into chaos and reeling.
Yet some nations had grasped at least part of what lay beneath.
The United States, and Britain.
True to their reputation for swift intelligence.
They had long since detected China’s reaching hand toward the Director of Personnel Management.

“They failed once, then started approaching again. And this incident broke out right at that moment?”
“The targets just happened to be the Special Operations Department that had approached the Director, and Chairman Zhang Zian who spearheaded it. Isn’t this too remarkable a coincidence?”
“It can’t be coincidence.”

Remarkable intelligence.
But.
Highly credible.
And what this information suggested was.

“If it really is the Director of Personnel Management….”
“Then he doesn’t want anyone approaching him.”

Yes.
The Director of Personnel Management, as they understood him so far.
An exceptional Hunter and crafter.
The sort of person you could exploit if you offered the right compensation.
Or so I thought—but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“A dangerous figure who could, if things went wrong, plunge a knife into an entire nation….”

And we still don’t know their true identity.
Thanks to China.
We’ve narrowed the scope down to a rough range.
But that’s all.
Push closer?

“We’d be in danger too.”

Then we should keep our distance.
Absolutely.
And Britain reached a similar conclusion.

“Withdraw all reach toward China, and for the time being, don’t even look in Korea’s direction.”
“Yes, ma’am.”

Especially on their end, they grasped the situation faster than America.
Why?
Because it was Britain who sent Korea’s recent Awakener roster to China.
It was Britain who offered the proposal—to help with the S-Rank Dungeon to spur on a senile old fool.
So they responded quickly.
This thing.
If we ended up entangled in it, it would be catastrophic.
In any case.
The conclusion is the same as America’s.

“The Personnel Manager—we’ll have to keep our distance. Approaching would be too dangerous.”

China.
Dropped from the ranks of the Five Great Powers, but still clearly one of the world’s superpowers.
Now?
Chaos itself.
If our guess is right, it’s because of the Personnel Manager.
So.
Until we pinpoint their identity, we keep our distance.

* * *

And around that same time.
The one who had turned the whole world upside down.
The Personnel Manager was?
Bok Dung-i.
Having a conversation with Rani.

“Rani should rank up too—get stronger!”
“Huh? But Rani isn’t a combat worker.”
“Still…!”

No, wait.
If she ranked up, that’d be good.
She’s already pulled off so much at Superior Rank.
If she reached Highest Rank?
Just imagining it is insane.
But….
There’s a way, right?
Highest Rank worker, rank up.
I only tested it with Arthur.
The conditions are Experience Points, and equipment that Rani has touched.
Does Rani have such equipment as well?

“Mm… Rani can do it! Rani knows the way!”

Oh, really?
What is it?
Let me hear it.

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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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