WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 9: The Invisible Thing
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Brrring!
“Hm?”
The sudden ringing pulled Rimon from his thoughts.
He fished the smartphone out from where it had sunk into the sofa, then frowned at the name on its screen.
[Yoo Na-gyeong]
What’s gotten into her, calling me?
After tilting his head for a moment, Rimon pressed the answer button.
“Hello, Team Leader?”
Yoo Na-gyeong’s cheerful greeting came through the moment the call connected.
Rimon gave a lukewarm response to the voice of the team member he probably heard most often throughout the year.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“I have something to tell you. You’re home right now, aren’t you?”
“So?”
“Oh, good. I’ll come over now.”
“...What?”
Rimon blinked.
It was not that he did not understand her sudden remark.
On the contrary, he understood exactly what Yoo Na-gyeong meant, which was why he was flustered.
“Hey, wait!”
Click!
Unfortunately, Rimon was too late to stop her.
The call had barely been cut off when the air in front of him began to distort.
The instant that distortion vanished, as though she had dropped from the sky, a woman appeared before Rimon.
“Hiya! Special Agent Yoo Na-gyeong report...!”
Slip!
“...Ing?”
There was one problem.
She had appeared right where Rimon had tossed the comics he had been reading.
The price of attempting the incredibly difficult feat of striking a cool entrance pose atop a spire of books was miserable.
Crash!
“Huh? Aah!”
“Tch.”
Rimon clicked his tongue as Yoo Na-gyeong twisted her ankle and fell backward with the collapsing tower of books.
He grabbed her flailing wrist and pulled her toward him.
Thanks to his quick reaction, she dove into Rimon’s arms instead of smashing the back of her head against the corner of the table. Yoo Na-gyeong let out a relieved sigh.
“Whew, I almost died.”
“What kind of dying are you talking about? You’re a high-level player in the seventies. Do you think cracking the back of your head would kill you?”
“Players can die too, you know?!”
“You won’t die from twisting your ankle and hitting your head.”
Rimon snorted.
A high-level player above level seventy had a body practically made of steel.
It varied according to their Vitality stat, but even if they fell backward, they could smash a stone with the back of their head without even breaking their nose.
Yoo Na-gyeong puffed out her cheeks at his cold observation.
“Is that something you should say to a subordinate who just barely escaped sudden death?”
“Who told you to teleport in without warning?”
“I didn’t know your house was such a mess!”
Rimon looked at the indignant Yoo Na-gyeong as though she were pathetic.
She was not even a novice player.
Yet this fool who had twisted her ankle by teleporting badly was one of the country’s foremost spatial-type players.
To Rimon, who remembered an age when even the most capable witches had raised all sorts of fuss just to attempt spatial teleportation once, it was absurd.
Players these days, honestly...
Sighing at the sense of how much times had changed, Rimon suddenly remembered something he had forgotten.
“Hey, when are you going to get off me?”
“Pardon?”
As though he had said something completely nonsensical, Yoo Na-gyeong tilted her head.
Then she blinked.
Only after noticing Rimon’s unusually close face and the arm around her waist did her face turn bright red. She hurriedly scrambled backward.
“Hahaha, sorry. I was so out of it.”
“You’re always out of it.”
“Tch...”
Yoo Na-gyeong shot Rimon a sharp glare at his continued lack of consideration.
Rimon did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. He merely sat back down on the sofa and asked casually.
“So, what is it?”
“What is?”
“Didn’t you come here because you had something to tell me?”
“Oh, right. That’s what it was.”
“...”
Rimon’s golden eyes instantly turned cold.
“Hey! Why are you looking at me like that? Someone can forget things after barely escaping death!”
“What a thing to be proud of.”
“Don’t be so harsh. I came all this way with good news.”
Perhaps she had decided that, since she had no excuse, she might as well be shameless. Rimon looked puzzled at Yoo Na-gyeong’s brazen declaration.
“What, did you find the winning lottery numbers?”
“Come on, it’s better news than that. And what kind of comparison is that? Lotteries were ruined by prophecy-type players ages ago.”
“Then what is it?”
“Um, something like winning the lottery.”
“...Did you come all the way here because you want me to hit you?”
“Wait! Wait a second! I’ll tell you, okay?”
Yoo Na-gyeong recoiled at Rimon’s questioning, his fingers curling into a fist. After glancing around as though afraid someone might hear, she lowered her voice.
“I found the Liberation Brigade’s headquarters.”
* * *
The Liberation Brigade (解放旅團).
Despite the word “brigade” in its name, it was obviously not any sort of military organization.
If anything, it was closer to the opposite.
An organization that claimed it sought to free oppressed and exploited players from the government and build a world where everyone could live freely.
That was the Liberation Brigade.
Like any organization, the Liberation Brigade’s ideology sounded plausible enough.
But those who had actually encountered the Liberation Brigade generally summed up their assessment in a single phrase.
“You found those psychos’ headquarters?”
“Yes.”
Yoo Na-gyeong answered readily.
The idea that the Liberation Brigade was full of psychos was practically common knowledge.
Players were among the highest earners in modern society to begin with.
The notion of liberating such players was nonsense.
The decisive issue was their goal.
They called it a world where everyone was free, but examined closely, their claims amounted to making it so players could commit any crime without punishment.
So not only ordinary people, but players as well, considered the Liberation Brigade psychos.
The only exceptions were those who agreed with its ideology.
In other words, criminals desperate to commit murder, rape, and arson, or genuinely insane people.
“How did you find something even the National Intelligence Service couldn’t?”
Rimon’s confusion was natural.
With so many members coming from criminal backgrounds, the Liberation Brigade was quite skilled at avoiding pursuit and surveillance.
Their headquarters in particular had been so thoroughly concealed that no one had ever caught a trace of it.
“Heh heh heh! I have my ways.”
“I’m asking what those ways are.”
“I can’t tell you that, but I guarantee the information is solid.”
“Hm...”
Rimon eyed Yoo Na-gyeong’s triumphant expression with suspicion, then nodded.
She might be a fool at times, but Yoo Na-gyeong was still a Player Administration Bureau agent.
If she was confident enough to guarantee it, the information had to be credible to some extent.
“But why are you telling me this?”
“Why else? So you can finally get promoted, Team Leader.”
“Promoted?”
Rimon blinked as though he had heard an alien language.
Yoo Na-gyeong passionately explained it to a superior who had spent the last several decades being demoted and had never had anything to do with promotions.
“Wouldn’t wiping out the Liberation Brigade’s headquarters be an enormous accomplishment? Your suspension would be lifted immediately, and a promotion would practically be guaranteed!”
It was a reasonable point.
The Liberation Brigade was a national headache, committing every kind of crazy act while keeping itself thoroughly hidden.
The credit for subjugating its headquarters would be no small matter.
Especially within the PAB, where the Liberation Brigade was regarded as a thorn in everyone’s side due to its many vicious high-level players.
But Rimon was not fooled by Yoo Na-gyeong’s sweet talk.
He merely asked flatly.
“So what do you really want?”
“They have bounties on them.”
“So you want to make some money while you can?”
“I should save up a marriage fund while I have the chance.”
“Aren’t you being a little too honest?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I said anything nice, would you?”
“Well, that’s true.”
Rimon chuckled at Yoo Na-gyeong’s forthright answer.
Then, folding his arms, he considered her proposal.
It’s certainly not a bad offer.
He had no interest in promotion.
Long experience had taught him that nothing remained in the end, no matter how high one climbed.
But the bounties did interest him.
The sums placed on the Liberation Brigade were substantial. If things went well, he could make a good haul.
Of course, to keep the bounties for themselves, he and Yoo Na-gyeong would have to subjugate the Liberation Brigade without any support.
No matter how many vermin like that there were, it'd be a piece of cake.
Rimon gave a faint snort.
No matter how many high-level players they had, they were ultimately a group of criminals.
A disorganized rabble who did not even know what real war was could never stand against him, no matter how many there were.
The only remaining issue was that they were suspended, but even that was not worth worrying about.
As Yoo Na-gyeong had said, if they subjugated the Liberation Brigade, a mere suspension would be erased as though it had never happened.
The more I think about it, the less reason there is to refuse.
After sorting through his thoughts, Rimon’s expression suddenly stiffened.
Ssssss.
A black haze swept across his vision.
Then, over Yoo Na-gyeong’s face as she watched him expectantly, a completely different figure began to overlap.
“...What the fuck?”
“Huh? Why are you suddenly swearing?”
“I’m not talking to you, so stay still for a moment.”
Rimon raised one hand to stop Yoo Na-gyeong from doing anything sudden.
It was not merely because he was bewildered by the abrupt situation.
He had experienced this phenomenon, where someone’s appearance suddenly looked different, once before.
This feels similar to when that bastard Seo Yong-chan looked like he had a cow’s head...
Fortunately, unlike in Seo Yong-chan’s case, Yoo Na-gyeong’s entire head had not turned into a cow’s head.
Her complexion merely looked pale as a corpse, and her hair appeared to have suddenly grown long.
The problem was her slender neck.
More precisely, the snake with its fangs sunk into that neck.
Considering Seo Yong-chan’s case, it doesn’t seem like a hallucination... but it probably doesn’t have a physical form either. If it did, Na-gyeong wouldn’t be this calm.
It was the same as with Seo Yong-chan.
A black haze suddenly crossing his sight, followed by someone’s appearance changing.
And the fact that he was the only one who could see it.
But considering who it was and the situation at hand, Rimon thought about it much more seriously than he had with Seo Yong-chan.
Have I really gone mad and started seeing hallucinations?
If he saw something strange once, he could simply decide that the other person was strange.
But if he saw it twice?
Even Rimon could not help questioning his own state of mind a little.
That was why he did not immediately draw his sword and cut down the snake.
Hallucination or not, that snake did not seem likely to kill Yoo Na-gyeong right away.
If this isn’t a hallucination...
Like any sensible person, Rimon first ruled out the possibility that he had gone mad.
Then he found the most reasonable answer he could think of, the best explanation for this situation.
...Have I suddenly gained the ability to see things others can’t?
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