Anyway, I stayed till the end to watch the death of Kim, who was infused into Captain Lim's body.
"Khuuuuuk!"
But there was another scream in addition to Kim's scream. It was Jihye Suh's.
However, unlike Kim, who showed a mixture of pain and regret on his face, she had a smile on her lips. Watching her smile, I could understand how long she had been tormented by Kim.
I also realized how stupid Kim was, who not only neglected her who was more valuable than any other treasure, but also made her his chief enemy.
Anyway, I just spent the day like that.
At the small conference room of the Myongjin Shelter.
"I will now brief you about Kitaek Yu, North Korea's second strongest man. The question is how to deceive him?"
"Do you think one week of practice is enough to deceive him? He is Kim's close aide, so he has been helping his boss for more than ten years."
I had no choice but to express my doubts about Director Sok's words.
Then Director Sok nodded and said, "Of course, the dominant view of our guys at the Strategy Department is that it will be very hard to do so. So we considered the option of you killing him quietly. However, according to the information we have obtained so far, all of Kim's instructions were carried out by YU. So much so that the link between Kim and North Korea would completely disappear without Yu."
"Then, do we have any solution?"
"Well, we have to deceive him by all means."
"Hmm..."
In the end, I had no choice but to frown slightly because in the end, according to Sok, we had to deceive Yu by all means to take control of North Korea.
"Got it, Director Sok."
I talked with him for almost 30 minutes after that, then left the Myongjin Shelter in the late evening.
Then I moved quickly to the north with Captain Lim.
At 2 am early in the morning.
Yuljung Kim knew several secret passages that could take him to North Korea, or more precisely, to Pyongyang, its capital city. Since we already secured the travel routes in advance from interrogating Kim, I had no problem entering the North Korean President's Jusokgung, or official residence and workplace.
After that, I headed to Kim's office inside the Jusokgung through a secret passage. However, although the lights were off, someone was already seated there.
It was none other than Kitaek Yu.
"Welcome back! You are later than expected."
Of course, Yu spat out such words to Captain Lim who looked like Kim on the outside. But I instantly had a strong feeling that Yu didn't think he was actually Kim, and his next words confirmed my suspicion.
"Well, I like your body. By the way, why don't you reveal yourself, Juyoung Hong? I guess you must have realized during the past week that you should not kill me. Am I wrong?"
When he said that, I revealed myself and walked toward him.
Yu was so confident in what he said that I could not hide my identity any more.
Instead, I had no choice but to ask, "How did you know about me?"
"Didn't Kim tell you that it was me who designed the whole plan?"
"…"
Having heard Yu, I realized that Kim was Yu's puppet, after all.
And I also realized that I had wasted the past seven days.
"Take a seat first. We have a long night ahead of us."
So I sat in the seat right in front of him.
Yu said, "Alright. Since you are the guests here, let me speak first. As you know, everything in North Korea is under my control. That's why I'm running North Korea without any problem even after my boss Kim has disappeared for more than a week. But what if I disappear this time?"
"…"
Surely North Korea will collapse.
That's why I could not simply kill Yu which was the simplest way.
As if he also was aware of this, Yu continued without any change in his expression.
"Can you take responsibility for the consequences after you kill me? One million or even several million people will be exposed to monsters. And some of the commanders under my command will even ignore the monsters and attack each other to take over my position. Of course, if you and Myongjin join hands together, you will be able to control the situation. But you know the saying that too much is as bad as too little, right?"
To be honest, there was a lot of discussion within Myongjin about whether to take over North Korea because there were clear advantages and disadvantages to it. What's more, just taking over North Korea would solve the problem once and all.
Somebody needed to manage North Korea, and it might require the Myongjin Guild to invest all their resources to manage it.
North Korea was so large that it was incomparable to Myongjin, and so many players belonged to the North, too.
However, I decided to give it a try because of the favorable circ.u.mstances.
"So, what do you want to say?"
I asked him directly because he was just beating around the bush.
He replied "I will take over North Korea. Of course, I have no intention of ignoring the Myongjin Guild and you, Juyoung Hong. I am hesitant to call it a bonus payment, but I will continue to pay you compensation. I'm not as stupid as Kim. I don't treat treasure carelessly, and I don't treat workaholics recklessly, either."
"Well, I feel like you are even deceiving me too."
"Well, it depends on how you think of me."
So although I had to think about it for a while, I concluded that it wasn't a bad situation.
"Good. I have no problem with that. By the way, I want you to take good care of the workaholics. Of course, I don't mean you have to treat them like kings. That's just a dream in this day and age. What I mean is you have to make sure that those who live under your jurisdiction can make a decent living as a human being. Got it?'
I said that because I had no choice but to recall what Jihye Suh said during her last moments.
Yu replied, nodding slightly at me, "Of course, I will do so. I know that I can live like this thanks to their help. Without them, North Korea would have collapsed a long time ago. May I ask you a favor instead?"
"What is it?'
"I would like to get help from the guy over there," he said, pointing to Captain Lim who was infused into Kim's body.
"Sure, no problem."
Since I knew what kind of favor he was going to ask me, I agreed right away.
Then I talked with him for a while before finally exiting Jusokgung.
Of course, I had recorded my conversation with Yu using the Memory Bead.
I handed it over to Director Sok, and took my hands off this matter of North Korea.
Why? Because there were a lot of people who could deal with North Korea better than me at the Myongjin Shelter, and I was too busy to pay attention to it.
So I went back to hunting, as usual.