WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Conglomerate Heir Just Wants to Fail ◈
Chapter 29
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“Everyone saw the Goryeo Ilbo interview this time, right? It was exactly the same shock I felt when I first met the Vice Chairman.”
President Jo Eungsu spoke without concealing his excitement.
“That destructive energy, dismantling everything that exists for the sake of the essence and rebuilding the whole board from scratch! As expected, once our Vice Chairman sets a goal, he is an aggressive man who secures market share first by shaking up the entire market without caring about losses. What he showed in the retail industry was the beginning of deconstructive creation.”
President Jo was overcome with emotion as he recalled the supermarket, paralyzed by crowds on the first day of the unprecedented “The Chairman Has Gone Crazy” discount event.
“Was that so...?”
President Jeong Geonju of Daeseung Construction tilted his head.
“The Vice Chairman I experienced was a little different. As President Jo says, he can sweep in as swiftly as the wind, but behind that lies a terrifying patience, quietly waiting for the right moment like a forest.”
President Jeong recalled the two months when the suspension of the project-finance development had left him on edge.
At the time, he had despaired because he did not know the Vice Chairman's intentions. Now, however, he knew it had all been a perfectly calculated wait.
“Then, when the opportunity comes, he burns fiercely like fire. Once he has achieved his precise objective, he stands firm like a mountain and does not waver. In my view, the Vice Chairman is not an aggressive man so much as a terrifying hunter, one who could wait decades for the moment when victory is assured.”
It was the Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain strategy President Jeong had advocated before.
This time, President Jeon of Daeseung Financial offered a different interpretation.
“The Vice Chairman I experienced... is someone who changes the board itself. While we move pieces across a chessboard according to established rules, he is someone who would overturn the table holding that chessboard if it created the situation he wanted. Who could have imagined that giving up profit would instead raise ESG ratings and draw investments from pension funds all over the world? Who could have thought that handing out money to ordinary people would be the perfect investment for monopolizing data, the core of future finance?”
His voice gradually became more impassioned.
“The Vice Chairman does not act based on immediate profits or losses. The rules of this society, the workings of capitalism, even human psychology. He sees through the essence of all of it and acts on a new level that we cannot even imagine. Aggression and patience are merely means for that vast plan. This declaration of ‘dismantling’ is a signal flare that he intends to evolve not only Daeseung, but South Korea's entire economy to a new level.”
Then President Kim of Daeseung Chemicals, who had only been listening quietly, adjusted his glasses and spoke in a low voice.
“What if all of that is true? What if all this is merely one side of the Vice Chairman...?”
Silence briefly filled the conference room.
President Jo Eungsu and President Jeong Geonju looked at one another.
They did not think what they had seen was wrong.
But they had realized something new.
What they had seen were only small pieces of the Vice Chairman's greatness.
“They say it's like blind men feeling an elephant. That's exactly what we are.”
President Park of Heavy Industries let out a hollow laugh, and the other presidents nodded with deep sighs.
They had merely interpreted the sides of the Vice Chairman they had experienced within the limits of their own understanding.
“In the retail industry, where consumer loyalty barely exists, overwhelming the market with a volume and prices competitors cannot match was the surest path to victory. The Vice Chairman saw through that and ordered an attack without hesitation.”
President Jeong Geonju agreed with President Jo Eungsu.
“But the construction industry is different. Trillions of won in capital are tied up, and once you begin, you must look decades ahead. A rash attack means self-destruction. That is why the Vice Chairman waited quietly like a forest until the best hand came to him, until every market risk disappeared and the most favorable conditions were laid out for us.”
President Jeon of Daeseung Financial continued with a sigh.
“And in the financial industry, where justification, trust, and invisible rules prevail, rewriting the rules of the board itself was the path to victory. By using ESG ratings and the justification of social responsibility, which no one had paid attention to, he created a vast flow of capital that conventional financial logic could never have imagined.”
Through their different experiences, the three presidents had ultimately arrived at one truth.
The Vice Chairman was not simply aggressive, patient, or someone who overturned the board.
He was all of those things.
A strategist without equal, who saw through the “essence” of each industry and freely employed the optimal strategy for it.
President Kim of Daeseung Chemicals, who had begun this whole discussion, looked out over the city and murmured.
“Then... what other side of the Vice Chairman have we yet to see? What kind of ‘dismantling’ suited to the essence of Daeseung Chemicals, and of the other affiliates, is he preparing?”
No one in the conference room could answer that question. Only a heavy silence settled over them.
But they were all thinking the same thing.
The moment this Vice Chairman moved, wherever it might be, South Korea's economic landscape would be overturned once again.
.
“Dismantling... disassembly...”
In the silence of the Vice Chairman's office, I stared blankly at my smartphone screen.
Code: Evolution, the game that had been my sole comfort whenever I returned to my cramped rooftop room after grueling work over the past several years.
One by one, I dismantled and disassembled all the equipment and characters I had lovingly raised in it.
On the screen, “Lilith, Witch of the End,” the character I had cherished and evolved to the highest rank, looked at me sadly.
[Do you wish to disassemble SSR-rank ‘Lilith, Witch of the End’?]
[Upon disassembly, you will obtain 50 ‘Ancient Soul Fragments’ and 100 ‘Corrupted Data Cores’.]
[Warning! Disassembled characters will be permanently lost.]
Without hesitation, I pressed the confirm button.
In a flash of brilliant light, a character holding years of memories became a handful of material items.
After failing to get the Pink Eyes collaboration character no matter what, I had completely lost interest in the game.
Of course, if I wanted to, I could buy an account with every limited character, including Pink Eyes.
No, I could easily buy the game company itself.
But that was no longer the game I wanted to play.
What I had enjoyed was building things up with my own hands, experiencing the exhilaration of the rare success amid countless failures and setbacks.
Besides, I could not be playing games if I wanted to achieve my original goal of bringing down a conglomerate.
So that I could never return, so that no lingering attachment remained, I thoroughly destroyed my account.
Every SSR character was gone, and all my top-rank equipment had been disassembled. My account was now no different from that of a beginner who had just started the game.
No, it was even worse than that.
The achievements and titles I had earned by clearing every piece of content remained, but not a single powerful character or piece of equipment worthy of them was left.
It was a bizarre account, like the empty palace of a fallen dynasty.
“What a waste.”
It was so easy for years of effort to come to nothing.
If only Daeseung could collapse this easily.
Then the office door opened, followed by quiet footsteps.
“Vice Chairman, are you feeling better?”
Lee Jinju, the Chief of Staff, cautiously approached as she checked on me.
“Yes. I'm fine now.”
I answered absentmindedly without taking my eyes off the screen.
When I disassembled my last remaining SSR-rank character, a paltry amount of materials appeared on the screen.
I clicked my tongue without realizing it.
“Still, the efficiency is terrible. All this for such little material.”
“!”
.
“Still, the efficiency is terrible. All this for such little material.”
Lee Jinju had entered the Vice Chairman's office because she was worried about his condition, only to overhear his complaint as he stared at his smartphone with a tense expression.
Two keywords naturally pierced Lee Jinju’s ears.
‘The efficiency is terrible? Such little material...?’
The next battlefield the Vice Chairman had agonized over so deeply that he had been bedridden with a flu-like illness was materials engineering!
Goosebumps rose all over Lee Jinju's body.
Retail, construction, finance.
Every field the Vice Chairman had touched so far had been in the software realm of services and finance.
But now, his gaze was turning toward manufacturing, the foundation of the group.
It must mean that the innovation the Vice Chairman envisioned for manufacturing had to begin with innovation in its roots, its materials.
“So you intended to delve into the beginning of all manufacturing. Materials and raw materials.”
Lee Jinju spoke with certainty.
“I will immediately prepare a report on the R&D status of Daeseung Chemicals and Daeseung Heavy Industries, as well as the global market for advanced materials and materials engineering. Ah, I will particularly focus on analyzing developments among advanced-materials companies in Japan and China.”
Lee Jinju had not forgotten the core of the foresight the Vice Chairman had stressed in the interview, the Japanese and Chinese markets.
Japan was a traditional powerhouse in advanced materials, while China was catching up frighteningly fast with its enormous capital.
In other words, the present of those two markets was the future of South Korea's materials industry.
.
The signal flare sent up by the Executive Office quickly spread throughout Daeseung Group.
A Class A confidential document drafted by Chief of Staff Lee Jinju, titled “[Vice Chairman's Directive] Strategy for Securing Next-Generation Core Materials and Materials Engineering Technologies,” was first sent to Daeseung Chemicals, Daeseung Metals, and the Institute for Future Strategy, which oversaw the group's R&D.
The executives who received the document immediately convened the highest-level emergency management meeting with the gravity of martial law having been declared.
The group's new heart had clearly identified its next target.
.
A private members' bar in a quiet alley in Gangnam.
Only a heavy silence filled the space, scented with old leather, strong whiskey, and a faint trace of cigars.
President Kim of Daeseung Chemicals and President Geum of Daeseung Metals silently stared into the amber liquid in their respective glasses.
The clear sound of ice striking the heavy crystal glasses seemed especially loud.
President Kim of Daeseung Chemicals was the first to break the silence.
“At last, it's our turn.”
President Kim's voice trembled faintly with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.
While the group's other affiliates had been selected by the Vice Chairman and rewritten history, the manufacturing division, the foundation of the group, had remained quiet like the calm before a storm.
That suffocating wait had finally ended.
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