17. Three ways to kill your boss (14)
***
A taxi with a Seoul license plate pulled up in front of a villa located on the slopes of Gangwon-do. Min-jun grabbed a 50,000 won bill with his gloved left hand and handed it over.
“I got the change back.”
The knight’s face brightened. Only after the taxi had driven down the dirt road did Minjun turn his head to look at the door.
Although he was about ten meters away, he could clearly see the magic lock on the door. It was a steady seller released by the Witches’ Cooperative two years ago.
The fact that it sold well means that its basic performance is guaranteed, but…
‘You can’t really call it high-end.’
The intention behind choosing that place was probably to make people think of this place as nothing special.
Perhaps this was the expectation of the owner of this place, Jang Tae-jun.
Whew!
Spring is still on the threshold. The mountain breeze is chilly. Minjun walks with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He climbs a few stairs. He looks at the lock.
Crunch!
As if welcoming the owner, the front door of the villa opened wide on both sides. Minjun walked at a steady pace without taking his hands out of his pockets or slowing down his pace. As he passed through the front door and entered the interior, the door closed quietly.
After easily disabling the lock, Minjun looked inside. The interior displayed the sophisticated taste of the villa owner. It was modern but not cold, neat but not shabby. At least that was the part that was visible from the outside.
Okay, now we have a good look at Jang Tae-jun’s tastes as a human being. So how would he decorate his real treasure trove?
Hurrah!
White sparks flash in both eyes.
‘Hmm.’
He looked at the spiritual landscape that overlapped the same coordinates indoors. At the end of his gaze thrown into another dimension, a fluorescent shape stretched out, burning roundly, and rippling like a wave. Minjun searched through the magical faults that had been deposited over time. He could see that most of the traces were less than a week old.
‘That’s all the traces of the Society guys who searched and searched.’
When they couldn’t find anything at the Hannam-dong house, it was clear that they had sent other people besides the arrested man to ransack the place as well.
‘If you go back more than a week, it’s been very clean since then. Strangely enough.’
So the searchers could not even imagine Jang Tae-jun’s true identity.
But Minjun tries to see what they couldn’t find. He has to show more concentration and strength than usual since he guessed the identity of the opponent. A rare drop of sweat even flows down his forehead.
After much effort, Minjun finally found it.
‘There was an attempt to erase traces of the spirit world.’
Just like straightening the footprints left in the mud, it is possible to do something similar in the spirit world, but the difficulty is by no means easy. It is even harder to figure out what was erased. Minjun has done that. He approaches the vaguely disconnected traces.
The entrance to the secret passage was neither deep in the basement as was commonly believed nor behind a hidden wall in the bedroom.
Minjun stood in front of the fireplace, proudly located in the middle of the living room. It was a location that could be reached by opening the front door and taking a few steps straight. The owner of this villa seemed to have prioritized convenience over secrecy when installing the secret door. It must have been because he was confident that he would never be caught.
‘The space is vaguely distorted.’
It’s like a landscape where a super high-resolution photo that is indistinguishable from reality is superimposed on a fireplace. However, those with very good eyesight will be able to find something strange by looking at the edges of the photo.
Minjun said so.
Swish!
Carefully, he put his hand into the hidden space. It seemed like a simple gesture, but it was covered with several layers of spells. Several fingers disappeared as if they had been cut off, and he turned the angle as if he was opening the door.
Shhh!
The air was torn apart. A passageway that the Society had not found appeared before them. It led to the bottom of the mountain range, and Minjun knew that if he followed it, he would come across a hollow space large enough for a giant creature to rest in its original form.
So instead of just going in, I recited the spell again. I figured it would be empty, whether it was a fake villa or a real residence, but it was a precaution. The remaining black magic created a small speck of dust on my finger.
“Hoo!”
Like a dandelion seed, it fluttered and disappeared into the darkness. Information poured into his brain along the path of the moving dust, and after a while, he was sure that the inside was empty.
approach.
He walked while avoiding various traps and boundary spells. When he finally came across a fork in the road, Minjun turned left without hesitation. According to the unique residential style of the race, it was not the homeowner but the small creatures that served him. If Jang Taejun had conducted his research alone, he would have done it in a state of disguise to make it easier to use the experimental equipment on Earth.
‘Then that’s right.’
His guess was right. Finally, Minjun encountered the hidden laboratory.
After making sure there were no devices, he opened the door forcefully.
And his expression hardened slightly.
***
‘······This is bigger than I thought?’
Inside, it was packed with solutions in glass tubes, freezers for storing samples, experimental equipment, monitors, etc. It was hard to believe that he was controlling all of this by himself.
The experiments here would not have relied solely on scientific civilization. Reassembling magical events was not difficult. There must have been a reason why magic was used so often that it was impossible to erase all traces, and there must have been a reason why it was a safe place.
“······!”
After a while, Minjun got a rough idea of what kind of experiments Jang Taejun was doing here.
First of all, what was inside the glass tube was a large amount of hemolysis.
‘It was magically collected and well preserved, so it’s very fresh.’
How could an ordinary human being obtain such a large quantity of dragon blood on a consistent basis?
The answer was simple: Jang Tae-jun was not human.
Its true identity was that of a race that could ‘self-procure’ the blood needed for experiments.
‘That’s a more serious problem.’
My gaze shifts to the freezer next to me. There, the prototypes that Jang Tae-jun produced are stored.
Min-jun was able to understand why Kim Yeon-joo’s blood was needed, and why Jang Tae-joon had to study the reaction between Yong-heol and it… through the traces of ‘sorcery’ left here.
It is common knowledge that dragons do not catch infectious diseases and are invulnerable to poison.
So is there really no substance that can affect the dragon’s body?
no.
‘The blood of the ISP manifester that tempts the dragon!’
The dragon tribe, which is completely unaffected by external chemicals, strangely reacts to that hormone. Jang Tae-jun, who noticed this characteristic, studied the reaction between the two substances and seems to have succeeded in synthesizing a catalyst that only affects the dragon tribe.
Up until this point, it was a dangerous research, but he didn’t stop. The next thing Jang Tae-jun started was a magical experiment that seemed to combine the weapon that could penetrate the dragon’s chemical immune system with something else.
An attempt to insert a different substance into a missile warhead instead of the ‘love potion’.
And to Minjun, it seemed unlikely that the gunpowder would be of a type that would help the dragon’s health.
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Ultimately, what he wanted to create was a bomb that would only react and work on dragons.
After figuring that out, make a call without delay.
“Yes, Agent, hello. I’m calling on behalf of Chairman Jenkinson.”
This was supposed to be a direct line, but the elf secretary answered. This means she was leaving the phone behind and concentrating on something important.
But Minjun didn’t have the luxury of waiting for him to finish his work.
“Please change the chairman right now.”
Then, the voice of the secretary expressing her discomfort rang out from the other end of the receiver. But Minjun didn’t even blink.
“It doesn’t matter if the guest you’re meeting right now has flown in from the other side of the world or has leaped from the edge of the dimension. You need to come out and take this call immediately.”
The elf mumbled a few more words, but Minjun didn’t seem to be listening to them all.
He interrupted, speaking in a firm voice.
“Please mention that this is a story about an illegal immigrant with the same ancestors as the chairman. I will come running out immediately.”
Now, instead of voices on the other end of the phone, the sound of urgent footsteps was heard.
***
In less than an hour since Jang Tae-jun’s hidden laboratory was discovered, much has been figured out and sorted out.
As a result, a luxury black sedan stopped at the entrance to Sokcho’s small port. The passenger seat opened and Minjun came out. The humid sea breeze lingered on the tip of his nose. While he was grimacing slightly, the driver’s seat door, which was facing away, also opened.
Minjun didn’t come alone. The man who followed him out of the car was a man with neatly cut blond hair. Judging from his appearance, he was a Westerner who was probably in his late teens at most, and more like a boy than a young man.
The two did not exchange glances or words. They walked silently toward the breakwater. From their position, there was no one in front of them, adjacent to the sea. However, as Minjun continued walking, the air began to ripple. The two crossed the invisible line almost simultaneously.
Then, a scenery that had not been seen from outside appeared.
A middle-aged man sitting with his fishing rod facing the sea.
Minjun called out to the other person in a low voice.
“Mr. Jang Tae-jun?”
A long day was coming to an end. The man with the sunset on his back slowly turned his head.
There is a calm, almost inorganic light in that gaze.
“······.”
After a brief silence, Jang Tae-jun spoke in a tone that was almost colorless.
“Oh no, this isn’t the guest I was waiting for?”
