WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 336: The past (15)
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"Do we have results yet?"
"No. They've only just set out."
The fight with Dok Su-hee had been a kind of jolt for Zetter. Her fierce resistance, the hostility burning in her eyes, had planted a seed of doubt: "Maybe I was wrong."
A rational person who recognized their own mistake would naturally want to hear out the person who'd disagreed with them. Zetter wanted to talk with Dok Su-hee again.
If Zetter showed up himself, Dok Su-hee would obviously run, so he'd left the persuasion to the other Team Alpha members instead. His calculation was that a familiar face might at least get her to listen.
"Is everything prepared?"
"Yes."
For a "conversation" with Dok Su-hee, meeting her in person was obviously out of the question. Zetter's body itself was a weapon, and there was a real chance his mere presence would feel like a threat to her. So he intended to speak with her remotely, and sat waiting in a room already fitted with broadcast equipment.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Twenty. An hour. Two hours.
"..."
Mahesh walked into the room, his face rigid. Zetter sensed immediately that the negotiation had gone badly, not because it had taken too long, but because it had ended too fast. If persuasion had actually worked, it should have taken far longer than this.
"...What went wrong?"
Was it the personnel he'd sent? The content of the conversation? Or was it something else entirely?
Zetter puzzled over the cause of the failure. But there was one part even the embodiment of efficiency himself had failed to consider. Between his schedule with the President and everything else, Zetter hadn't managed the personnel assignment closely enough.
"It's just that... the 'Young Master' who took our task got greedy, and..."
"...What?"
Not all humans were rational. That was the truth of it.
* * *
The members of Team Alpha were currently active all across the globe. No one could deny how much their help contributed to maintaining the current order.
Ordering such busy, valuable people to "stand by on Floor 26 in case Dok Su-hee shows up" made no sense. So Zetter had instead assigned the task to players who had time on their hands and were already spending it on Floor 26. Something along the lines of, "Report to the Association if Dok Su-hee comes to Floor 26."
And the player on duty the moment Dok Su-hee happened to enter Floor 26 was the one they called "Young Master." He was a player who'd gone around publicly declaring he'd beat Michael Zetter using his excellent trait, but after nearly dying on Floor 25, he'd given up climbing the Tower altogether. Since then he'd been spending his time as a kind of "insurance policy" for the government, and it just so happened he'd picked up Zetter's task.
Under normal circumstances, an opportunity like this would never have gone to such an unreliable player, but there simply hadn't been enough manpower to spare.
'...Report it if Dok Su-hee shows up?'
The problem was that Young Master turned out to be far stupider, more arrogant, and more vicious than anyone expected. Maybe it was because his father was a cabinet minister and he'd been spoiled his whole life. Or maybe it was simply his nature.
As mentioned, Young Master had felt a certain rivalry toward Zetter. Every time he saw Zetter praised as a hero on the news, it stirred up his inferiority complex. And in the middle of all that, out of nowhere, came a task saying, "Report it if Dok Su-hee appears on Floor 26."
He didn't know the details, but he could tell something had gone wrong between Zetter and Dok Su-hee. He could even tell that the Association was desperately searching for her.
Naturally, he thought to himself. If I win Dok Su-hee over, couldn't I get leverage over the Association?
So the moment she happened to walk in while he was on duty, he moved immediately.
"Hey, Dok Su-hee. Look at this..."
Young Master's plan went like this. First, seal a "non-aggression" agreement with an Escape Contract. Then explain the situation, and help Dok Su-hee bring down the Association. (The reason he'd bothered preparing an Escape Contract was that, on the surface, he was technically a government-affiliated player, and he was worried he'd lose if Dok Su-hee ever betrayed him.)
"Die."
"...What?"
There were two things Young Master had failed to consider here. First, she was a member of Team Alpha, which meant she'd already signed an Escape Contract before, and she mistook the one Young Master was shoving at her for that same contract.
'Now? Tomorrow? When can I see Jun-ho oppa? When? This is exhausting. I'm so lonely. I want to die. If I'd known it would be like this, I should've smuggled out a mask. I could've gone out pretending to be someone else.'
Dok Su-hee had been holed up on Floor 1 for a long stretch of time, and her mental state had deteriorated badly.
If she'd been in her right mind, she probably would have at least heard him out. Or at least considered it. If she'd had even a little breathing room, she would have realized the contract wasn't the one she'd actually signed. She would have noticed that mana wasn't circulating through it at all, since an Escape Contract that had never been activated wouldn't have that.
"Gahk...!"
But Dok Su-hee, no longer thinking straight, sprayed poison gas without hesitation. She was cornered enough that she'd even forgotten violence was banned on Floor 26.
"Wh, what is this?"
"Yo, what the hell. Isn't that Dok Su-hee?"
To onlookers who didn't know the details, this looked like the government-Association conflict made physical. However you sliced it, Young Master stood for the government, and Dok Su-hee stood for the Association.
And so Dok Su-hee was expelled from Floor 26, Young Master barely escaped with his life, and word of it finally reached Zetter.
"..."
Only then did Zetter fully grasp his own flaw. Ever since his emotions had vanished, he'd assumed every human would act as "efficiently" as he did.
Old memories surfaced only now. How many senior soldiers had done something insane back when he was a fresh recruit? How many fellow trainees had broken and bolted, unable to endure the brutal training? How many criminals had he shot dead during his special forces work, men who couldn't overcome their own desires and got caught in the act?
Humans were foolish animals, by nature. Why had he forgotten the essence of humanity? Why had he judged everyone else by his own yardstick? Zetter mulled it over, then decided he should at least finish what he'd started, and returned to the laboratory.
"...Zetter."
And waiting for him when he returned was—
"You... no, you bastard. What have you done."
The President, his face gone pale, his lips nearly blue.
* * *
Anyone who's followed the story this far might have a certain question.
'The United States Government and the Association get along awfully well.'
The relationship between the Association and the government should have been the worst it could be. So why were the President and Zetter cooperating so closely? Why were they helping each other move forward?
The reason lay in the arrangement between Zetter and the President that had been mentioned all along.
Michael Zetter did not like the current state of the Association. That much was undeniable fact.
The Player Association wasn't actually an organization with player experts sitting in its leadership. To begin with, players made up an infinitesimally small fraction of humanity as a whole, and the chance that any of those few players also happened to be government officials was even smaller.
On top of that, the Player Association had been thrown together in a hurry. Of course its members were "administrative experts" rather than "player experts."
When the Association was first established, these administrators had an enormous influence on laying its foundation. Zetter had no intention of denying that part. Building systems, setting up frameworks, making everything run smoothly, that was the bureaucrats' area of expertise.
But the problem came afterward.
"This part really needs support."
"Yes. We'll look into it."
"...I've heard that instead of investing manpower into player support, you're investing it into player classification and analysis, and legislative reform."
"Well, it's an unprecedented power that just emerged. Isn't that exactly what the Association is supposed to handle?"
"What we need more urgently is a new education program."
"We need to lay down the infrastructure first before we run welfare programs like that. That's how government work is supposed to be done."
The Association, as Zetter understood it, was "an organization that supports players who risk their lives climbing the Tower." The Association, as the bureaucrats understood it, was "an organization that manages and oversees players." With each side looking in a different direction, conflict was inevitable.
Zetter wanted to cut these people out. Even if he couldn't touch the administrative staff, he at least wanted every core executive position filled with actual players. That was how Zetter genuinely felt.
"...It might become impossible to control."
At the same time, the President had his own headache. He was worried about the collapse of order.
Word had reached him that in South America, there was a player bullets couldn't touch, living like royalty. And Michael Zetter had told him that, given enough time, guns would no longer be able to restrain players at all.
What if a case emerged where a player's power overthrew a nation? What if people started believing that whoever held power was entitled to take whatever they wanted? Order would collapse like dominoes.
"Mr. President. What if we staged our conflict?"
Zetter's proposal here was exactly to the President's liking.
The Association president, Michael Zetter, would "stage" a conflict with the government. Both sides would spread negative rumors about each other, clash over every little thing. (This was why the rumors Kim Jun-ho heard leaned heavily toward the Association's side, making the government look like trash, while the information Choi Ji-won gathered from meeting with government officials suggested the Association was the one out of line.)
Then, once the conflict reached its peak, once it escalated all the way to an armed standoff, Michael Zetter would surrender. The President would graciously show mercy and restore the existing order. The United States would demonstrate its strength by overcoming the threat of players, and Zetter, in exchange for losing a bit of influence, would secure justification to purge and rebuild the Association. A win-win, in other words.
So the current conflict was entirely staged. A trap set to sort the wheat from the chaff and force a renewal. (Young Master's little stunt had simply stumbled into that same trap.)
"...Association president. No, Michael Zetter."
Yes. It had been an act. Up until this point, at least.
The President trembled, shaking uncontrollably. During the two hours Zetter had spent waiting for Dok Su-hee.
"You bastard, did you offer American lives to the Book?"
He had landed, startlingly, right on the truth.
Footnotes:
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