The Chairman of Pharmaceutical Company is a Poison King - Chapter 11

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 11: Growing Interest

The method for dealing with a pair of Red-furred Wolf monsters is basically a war of attrition.

You have to face both at once while continuously draining their strength.

For as long as possible.

That way, when you kill one, you can easily kill the other too.

If you kill one too early, the other will launch life-or-death attacks driven by madness and vengeance.

A berserker state.

It becomes even harder than facing two at once.

The reason the remaining one isn’t charging now is because of Tae-ju. The killing intent emanating from him was temporarily suppressing the remaining Red-furred Wolf’s attack.

The wolf monster is probably deliberating.

Should it attack the human who looks strongest first, or should it take out the weak ones first?

Tae-ju stared intently at the monster with killing intent.

Wolves are dogs too, so they need their hierarchy sorted out.

How dare you challenge me?

Then he turned his head again.

“Didn’t you come to Jirisan to hunt monsters? Where did all that confidence from before go?”

Kwon Dong-seok and Jang Won-jun looked into each other’s eyes.

Should they run? Or should they fight?

They too knew the terror of a wolf that had lost its mate.

Five combat personnel.

If they rushed in recklessly, they’d be annihilated.

But they couldn’t ignore that suspicious porter either.

How on earth does he have such power?

There weren’t even any tattoos visible on his face.

A situation where they could neither advance nor retreat.

Clang clang.

Only the sound of coins could be heard at the scene.

“Good! I’ll eliminate your dilemma of choice.”

Whip!

A single coin shot out like a silenced pistol bullet.

“Kyaaaah!”

This time it sliced past Jang Won-jun’s left ear.

“Ah, it hurts! I said it hurts!”

Simultaneously!

“Grrrk!”

The Red-furred Wolf leaped high into the air.

It seemed to have made up its mind when Tae-ju’s attack was directed at another human.

If it attacked the strong human first, it might not be able to kill the other humans.

Let’s kill the weak ones first.

As many as possible.

“Aah! G-get away…”

While biting through the struggling Jang Won-jun’s neck.

Crunch!

“Guk?”

It pushed Kwon Dong-seok down with its front paw.

Crunch!

With its huge mouth, it chewed Kwon Dong-seok’s head like candy.

Crunch, crunch crunch!

There wasn’t even a scream.

The Awakened ones fled in terror without looking back.

“S-save us!”

“Aaaaah!”

“D-don’t come!”

But they couldn’t escape the enraged wolf’s attack.

Crunch!

“Aak!”

Crunch!

“Kek!”

Snap!

“S-save me…”

The wolf that had bitten five people to death in an instant threw its head back to the sky and howled.

“Awoooooo!”

A victory howling.

In that moment, a coin from Tae-ju’s hand flew in a silver streak.

‘You lowly beast…’

The target was the Red-furred Wolf.

Thunk!

The coin was half-embedded.

The wolf flinched but didn’t fall.

It seemed to have pierced the hide but not the bone.

‘Tsk, coins really are inadequate.’

Even in the Gangho Murim, there are techniques that use coins as hidden weapons.

Gold Coin Darts.

However, even the coins used for Gold Coin Darts need to be specially crafted as hidden weapons to be effective.

Ordinary coins didn’t work on monsters.

In that case?

I’ll have to subdue it with my body.

Thud!

The wolf kicked off the ground and leaped high, charging at Tae-ju.

Swoosh!

Tae-ju’s form blurred like a mirage.

A combination move practiced countless times.

Phantom Step followed by Blood Mark Poison Palm.

He already knew the essence and secrets of the technique perfectly.

The only problem was his insufficient internal energy.

Before anyone knew it, Tae-ju had moved beneath the leaping wolf’s belly.

His crimson palm struck the soft underbelly of the Red-furred Wolf, left completely defenseless.

Thwack!

“Kyaeng!”

Simultaneously, bloody plasma scattered through the air.

Countless palm strikes appeared and disappeared.

Thwack! Thwack-thwack-thwack! Thwack-thwack!

The wolf couldn’t land on its own feet.

It had already died in midair from the Blood Mark Poison Palm imbued with powerful poison.

Thud!

‘How many strikes did I need to kill this thing?’

Even if it’s a monster, it’s just a wolf.

If it were Danggumak, one glare would have finished it.

He could do it too.

If he raised his level in Honweonmusangdokryeongong, that is.

Now only one person remained.

The middle-aged colleague porter collapsed as if his legs had given out.

“Tae, Tae-ju, please spare me.”

Tae-ju scratched his head and replied.

“Come on, why would I kill you, hyung?”

“…Really?”

“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

“No, I’m not, not at all. Even if I were, I’m not.”

Tae-ju grabbed the middle-aged colleague porter’s shoulder and helped him up.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Just say it.”

“What you saw today…”

“What happened? I didn’t see anything.”

The middle-aged colleague porter spoke while trembling.

He must have been really shocked.

No matter how much rough stuff porters see in their line of work, he had just watched five people die right before his eyes.

By the way, the greatsword was broken.

Now the only weapon he could use was coins.

Though it was military-grade, it should have been a weapon mixed with monster byproducts.

Tae-ju threw away the greatsword and returned to Gurye City with the middle-aged colleague porter.

The monsters would take care of the corpses.

Just like back at Seorak Mountain.

He hadn’t killed them directly, but he had caused their deaths.

However, he felt no pangs of conscience.

Neither as Danggumak, the Absolute Poison Master.

Nor as Kim Tae-ju, the Absolute Poison Master.

Those bastards who used the weak as shields just to save their own skin. He hated that type the most.

They were just like those Zhuge family bastards.

* * *

Gurye City had countless drug shops.

As a result, competition was fierce.

They would throw in vitamin supplements when you bought medicine, exclusively sell specialty drugs, adopt membership systems to give mileage based on purchase amounts…

But all these drug shops’ sales policies became completely useless.

It was because of Baek’s Drug Shop’s release of the Variant Three-Striped Mosquito antidote.

Now people only went to Baek’s Drug Shop without exception.

There was a brief lull when sufficient stock was released, but when word spread outside and people from other cities came on expeditions, the buying fever became even hotter.

Though there was a limit of 2 purchases per day, people still did opening runs to get there.

Once you bought them, there were plenty of places to resell.

Even when people needed other medicines besides the mosquito antidote, they went to Baek’s Drug Shop.

Other pharmacies’ sales dropped dramatically.

YJ Pharmacy, which once boasted the top sales in Gurye City, plummeted to less than half.

At this rate, they would all die.

They needed to come up with countermeasures.

So they gathered.

The pharmacy representatives belonging to the Gurye City Pharmacist Association.

But only 3 people showed up.

YJ Pharmacy representative Jo Hun-seok, Gurye Nuri Drug Store owner Lee Gil-ho, and Saejipyeong Drug Store’s Oh Nam-bok.

There were about 200 pharmacies in Gurye City. But these 3 people practically owned 70% of all pharmacies in Gurye.

With their massive financial power and influence, they strengthened price-fixing, dumping, and monopoly policies to kill off small and medium pharmacies and steal their ownership.

In Gurye Free City, this level wasn’t even illegal.

It was simply divided between winners and losers in the survival-of-the-fittest competitive society.

The Autonomous Committee had no interest in pharmacy ownership either.

As long as the number of properly operating pharmacies remained at a certain level, that was the end of it.

So what about the remaining 30%?

Direct stores of Cheonwang Bio Pharmaceutical Company based in Gurye.

Using the loose drug sales permit system to test the effects of new drugs related to monster raids while also making profits.

Just one place.

Only Baek’s Drug Shop was an exception.

Actually, they had tried to swallow this place up too.

However, Baek Hong-pyo was a person with deep trust in Gurye City.

He was someone who took in orphans created by monster waves, fed them, and even found them jobs.

The Autonomous Committee had warned them not to touch this place.

So they left it alone.

It was just keeping one place alive – what big deal could happen?

But that was a miscalculation.

That small Baek’s Drug Shop was currently shaking up the entire Gurye pharmaceutical market single-handedly.

“Are you sure the component analysis results came out properly?”

“We compared them together. They all came out the same.”

“Then why are the results different?”

“That’s what I want to ask.”

“This is so frustrating I could go crazy.”

Mosquito poison antidote component analysis.

They hadn’t commissioned just one place.

As soon as the large pharmacies in Gurye City heard rumors about the antidote, they each obtained one and sent component analysis requests to famous research institutes within the Empire.

Blue-faced mushrooms, silk ferns, grandmother’s bitter herb roots, marsh water parsley… there were substances extracted from poisonous plants, as well as medicinal herbs like medicinal aster and evening primrose.

They distributed them in proper ratios and diluted them in purified water.

Then shouldn’t the medicinal effects come out similarly?

“The animal experiments were a complete failure too.”

“When I held it up to a test rabbit’s nose, it died on the spot.”

“I took a drop and nearly died myself.”

The people gathered here were pharmacists and owners of major pharmacies renowned in Gurye City. Each establishment had simple pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities.

They put in the same components, but what came out wasn’t an antidote but poison.

Then what about larger pharmaceutical companies with better technology?

“I heard Cheonwang Bio Pharmaceutical Company is also analyzing the mosquito poison antidote.”

“What do they say?”

“It’s no different from us. They say copying it is difficult at present.”

“They’ll make it soon. It’s just a matter of time anyway.”

“Who doesn’t know that? The problem is right now. We’ll all die waiting.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do. We have to do what we’ve always done.”

“Sigh, we’ll see blood after a long time.”

Right.

They had always done this.

That’s how they had conquered the Gurye pharmacy market.

“Let’s begin. What about information on the antidote developer?”

“Kim Tae-ju, we obtained basic information from the Autonomous Committee.”

“A military veteran. From Paju Domain… Hm? His father is General Kim Woong-bang? He’s a Master. This is too big league.”

“He’s not big league.”

The Gurye City Pharmacist Association representatives looked puzzled at the words of Jo Hun-seok, owner of YJ Pharmacy which once boasted the highest sales in Gurye City.

“No, if he’s the eldest son, he’s the domain heir, right? Then he’s big league.”

“That’s surface-level information. Here, this is hot content I investigated separately. Take a sheet each and read it.”

“Hmm, huh? A mana rejecter? The reason he enlisted in the military was because he was kicked out of his house, is that really true? This kind of family matter isn’t something just anyone would know… How did you find out?”

“I have an informant in Paju who looked into it for me. He’s quite famous over there, apparently.”

The father is a general, but the son is a mana rejecter.

“His birth mother is dead, and the new wife General Kim brought in is a Japanese woman named Honda Mitsui, and she has two children of her own. She’s probably hoping for Kim Tae-ju to die.”

“Ho! I see. It’s a common story.”

“After his discharge, he didn’t even stop by home and even cut off contact.”

So what if he has connections?

This is Gurye, a free city.

Paju and here are very far apart.

“Let’s meet with him first. I don’t know how much Baek Hong-pyo promised him, but if we offer a higher supply price, we might be able to secure the distribution rights.”

“What if he refuses?”

“Then we’ll have to get to work.”

Jo Hun-seok continued with a sinister smile.

“Whether we secure the distribution rights, or get the drug manufacturing recipe, or if that doesn’t work, prevent him from making the antidote – any one of those three would do, wouldn’t it?”

If negotiation doesn’t work, then threats.

If deals don’t work, then robbery.

If none of that works, then eliminate him entirely.

That was the method that had led them to success all this time.

* * *

The Jirisan Monster Defense Corps under the Samhan Empire’s Imperial Forces.

The corps headquarters is located in Sancheong City.

Master Oh Jin-hyeong, the lieutenant general responsible for the corps, received a report from his aide in his office.

“So, did you find out?”

“Yes, we received information from the Gurye Autonomous Committee.”

“Who was the developer again?”

“Name: Kim Tae-ju, male, 29 years old. Here’s the detailed information we looked up through his Empire citizen number.”

The developer of the mosquito poison antidote that’s currently explosively popular.

The military had also requested supply.

Until now, the Defense Corps’ strategy against the monsters of the great Jirisan Wilderness had been limited to constant surveillance and suppression to prevent waves from occurring.

But then an antidote appeared.

If things went well, it could be an opportunity to consider a major extermination operation.

However, they were refused due to insufficient supply.

They said to wait a little, but looking at the current supply to Gurye City alone, it seems tight.

This is a region where public authority cannot be used to pressure.

In other words, a region where forced execution is impossible.

Gurye, the free city.

Because it’s a place where His Imperial Majesty personally issued an edict to minimize state interference and guarantee free economic activity.

Lieutenant General Oh Jin-hyeong slowly read through the report.

“Kim Tae-ju… Wait! A discharged military veteran? And he was an Imperial Forces officer? Then he’s an awakened?”

“No. He was a mana rejecter.”

“That doesn’t make any sense… Ah!”

Oh Jin-hyeong understood after seeing the family relations written at the bottom of the report.

“He was General Kim Woong-bang’s son. I heard rumors too. That his eldest son was a mana rejecter. But why did he discharge?”

“The reason isn’t listed, but it was probably military life maladjustment, wasn’t it? A mana rejecter without qualifications holding the rank of second lieutenant…”

“Hmm, that could be it.”

Anyway, this worked out well.

“Contact Paju Domain. Tell them I want to speak with General Kim.”

“Yes sir!”

If he handled the antidote supply through Kim Tae-ju’s father, it would end simply. Maybe he could even secure more supplies at a cheaper price.

They’re father and son, aren’t they?

Unless the two of them have severed ties.

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