Chapter 195: Home Visit (4)

TL: SHW

When you spent enough time in Hunter society, there were some stories you couldn't help hearing whether you wanted to or not. The story about Hong Seok-young's dead son was one of them.

Well, even so, I had occasionally heard stories about Father's son, Se-un, even before then. Malicious rumors always followed famous people around. The tragic death of an only son must have been an appealing story to people who couldn't stand seeing others do well. Appealing enough to secretly whisper it into a child's ear.

But even I had hardly heard anything about Father's wife… about the woman herself. Maybe it was because Father hadn't been as famous back then as he was now. There were still photos of her at home, but that was exactly how much I knew. She had been the same age as Father, and they had come from the same Orphanage.

That made the sudden revelation that Father had a brother-in-law rather bewildering to me. Even if he was someone who had died after getting caught up in an unfortunate incident.

But Lee Mi-seon must have already known about it, because aside from being surprised when she belatedly realized why Hong Seok-young was acting this way, she showed no other reaction.

Then again, thinking about it the other way around, what besides family could shake Hong Seok-young this badly? No, actually, it would be scarier if there were something else.

"But…."

The rampaging Mana itself had subsided, but that didn't mean peace had returned.

Hong Seok-young was still staring sharply at Gamble and Hope.

"We don't know anything about that!"

Gamble quickly spoke up.

"Didn't you say earlier that you did it for money?"

"I thought you were talking about the grave robbing! We don't deal in… that kind of thing!"

"Really?"

Hong Seok-young tilted his head.

"Unlike the doctor, that one looks like he knows something."

"What? Uh, huh? Shanshan?"

"Hm? Ah, I didn't do it. Sandra didn't either. That's a bad thing to do. Even I know that much."

"Even knowing that, aren't you the sort who could do it without batting an eye?"

"Hmm."

Hope hesitated for a moment.

"This is where I'm supposed to say no…. Too late, right?"

"Too late."

Hong Seok-young smiled sharply. Hope returned it with a similar smile. As if either of them might sink their teeth into the other's throat at any moment.

In the end, I stepped in.

"That's enough."

I glared at Hong Seok-young.

"And stop needling them. We're never going to get anywhere like this."

"Hmm."

"…Like Hope said, we came here to talk this time."

Hong Seok-young, who had stubbornly kept his mouth shut, slowly nodded.

I looked away from Hong Seok-young. Hope grinned as though he'd won, but after Gamble jabbed him in the side, he settled down.

I couldn't leave this to those two, who looked closer to beasts than humans.

I asked Gamble, who was still human.

"What did you mean by grave robbing?"

Gamble glanced warily at Hong Seok-young before answering.

"…We needed funds."

"Funds?"

"It takes a lot of money to set up a company…. Especially when you have to run a foundation too."

From what I'd investigated, both Hope and Gamble had grown up in fairly affluent families, even if they weren't from conglomerate dynasties. After all, Hope was the son of a famous guild master in Australia, and Gamble was the daughter of a renowned Mana engineer.

…Well, they couldn't exactly use their parents' money for suspicious activities. I understood why Gamble had wanted to create a more illicit source of funding.

"But grave robbing?"

"Just… well, a few things from ruins and places people rarely visit. There are people who like that sort of thing."

Gamble spoke in a voice that nearly disappeared into a whisper.

"Only grave robbing?"

"……."

Gamble squeezed her eyes shut.

"Actually, we stole a lot of other things too!"

"What kinds of things?"

"Like hiding guns that were being smuggled and refusing to give them back until they paid us, or, uh. Telling them we'd report them if they didn't pay…."

Whatever courage Gamble had shown when she stood up to Hong Seok-young and protected Hope had vanished as she explained all this while trembling.

"We did plenty of good things too!"

"For example?"

"Finding stolen goods for people! We only took the reward money for that."

"Who stole them?"

"…Shanshan?"

"……."

"……."

"But they were drugs!"

"You gave them back just because they paid you a reward?"

"…We reported them and collected the bounty too."

"……."

"……."

I couldn't tell whether I should call that barely moral, or say they were even worse.

I didn't know what Gamble took our silence to mean, but apparently she interpreted it in a more negative way.

Gamble pressed her lips tightly together, then opened her mouth.

"If you p-promise not to report us, I can show you the evidence too."

"……."

"B-but I can't do anything beyond that…. I don't want to go to prison."

"And you're aware that what you did was the sort of thing that could send you there?"

"……If there's no evidence, I'm innocent!"

"What are you even saying?"

I pressed my fingers firmly against my temples.

"Never mind that. Those… fundraising activities. Did you carry them out under Ark's name?"

"Shanshan was the one who actually did the work, so…."

"It's a gray area."

Hope cut in instead of Gamble, who was blushing and smiling awkwardly.

"Hm. Fine. I wasn't planning to tell you this much, but if that's what you've been looking for, I guess it doesn't matter."

Hope muttered quietly, then lifted his head.

"How much do you people know about Ark right now?"

***

Ark.

The Ark.

The name alone reeked of a cult, but surprisingly, it wasn't a religious organization. In East Asia, including Korea, they did collect money from their members by trotting out unheard-of pseudoscience to maintain their influence, but even so, they weren't a religion.

That Dungeon-victim… children's group Kang Tae-woo was involved with, was it? That was the same. Ark's influence reached there, and there were suspicious aspects to it, but at the same time, quite a few people had genuinely benefited from the organization's help. People from all different levels of society, too.

That wasn't me saying Ark was surprisingly decent. It was me saying that was how vicious the organization was.

They instilled in participants the belief that they were doing the right thing. Without knowing where it would ultimately lead. Without even knowing what they were truly taking part in.

By that logic, wasn't it closer to a pyramid scheme than a cult? No, it already was a pyramid scheme.

My biological parents had said the purpose of their research was to lead humanity somewhere better.

"Ah, right. There are people like that too. The Research Lab people, right? Noah said it would just be a hassle if things got tangled up, so she told them it was roughly something like that. Was it that there was no need to interfere when they were misunderstanding things all on their own and working hard all on their own?"

Had they known that the research they believed would bring about humanity's evolution was actually part of a madwoman's scheme to bring the monsters inside Dungeons out into the world? I tried to… picture the faces of my biological parents, who had died so long ago, but I couldn't. It really had been too long. They weren't people I'd seen often enough to remember in the first place.

"Noah looks quiet and well-behaved, but she's bad at sitting quietly. So she left that kind of research entirely to those people. If they got results, great, and if not, whatever? Originally, they were with another… Sandra, where did you say they were from again?"

"You said they came from a pharmaceutical company. The name was…."

"Atlas?"

"Yeah. You know it?"

"What?!"

"They were founding members there, but they aren't with the company anymore. They left quite a while ago. It was so long ago that finding records from back then was difficult, but judging by all the vague stuff about internal problems, I figured they probably split off to Ark around that time."

Wasn't the timeline a little… strange?

No matter how much of a genius Noah Michel was, regardless of what she herself claimed, as long as she was human, it was hard to escape the limitations of age. The founding members had left Atlas Pharmaceuticals….

A very long time ago. Before I was even born. Around the time my brother might just barely have been made.

Before Noah Michel had even Awakened as a mage.

…Had she swallowed up a cult that already existed? That actually made more sense. My biological parents had fallen for the Archmage's sweet talk too… no. Maybe they'd thought they were the ones using her.

Just because people thought themselves smart didn't mean they only did smart things.

"Ah, but that group turned out to be more opinionated than expected, so Noah did find them annoying. That's probably part of why she got rid of them this time too, right? Noah likes nice, obedient kids who do what she says!"

The image of Noah Michel in my head was getting worse and worse.

I'd actually thought rather highly of her in the past, back when I'd considered her a generous mage who gave freely. Come to think of it, why had Michel gone out of her way to create Runes and make them known? To secure influence?

"That too. And whenever something happens, people run straight to Noah. Apparently she gets quite a lot of information that way."

We had to assume there was nowhere in Europe, including France, that Noah Michel's influence didn't reach.

"Anyway, on the American side, Noah… expanded her influence using some fairly rough methods. In the process, my face… face? No. I kept my face hidden pretty well. So how exactly did the rumor that I'm the boss get started?"

"Not very old. Can't tell whether you're a woman or a man. Can crumple a car like a piece of tissue paper."

"As long as they don't know my face, it's fine. People don't recognize me when I dye my hair anyway. Maybe it's about time to change it again…."

"Pink! Make it pink next time!!"

"No. The American side is more like Noah's hands and feet. It's not like I haven't operated there when Noah asked me to, but I don't do that kind of, annoying, hm, disgusting stuff. What would I even use human corpses for?"

"Then?"

"To explain that, you need to know how Ark is structured."

Ark was a Cell Organization.

That was something we already knew. The Ark faction centered in Korea and active throughout East Asia and the Ark faction active across North and South America, including South America's black markets, were different enough that they could practically be considered separate organizations.

Just as we'd suspected, the money illegally earned in South America had been used to fund Noah Michel's research.

"But if they're collecting an enormous amount in tribute from here and only a tiny cut comes back to you, what do you think happens?"

"You'd get resentful."

"Right. So things are a mess over there too right now. That… brother-in-law? What happened to him probably happened amid all that."

"From what I can tell, the organization may also have simply grown too large for Noah Michel to handle."

"Even if she's an Archmage, managing people is a different matter…."

"She might actually be bad at it because she's an Archmage."

Hearing the internal state of affairs directly from someone inside Ark was… unexpectedly a complete shitshow.

If Gamble was right and Noah Michel had no talent for managing an organization, Ark might collapse on its own before we even did anything. Had that actually happened? Well, it probably hadn't collapsed entirely, but maybe it had shrunk in size. Enough that Father had mistakenly believed he'd eradicated Ark completely.

Maybe that was how Gamble had managed to last nearly twenty years….

"Anyway, the one who's most dissatisfied over there is Henry."

A new name.

"Henry?"

"If Sem was Noah's right pinky toe, this kid's about her left pinky toe."

"…Not her left and right arms?"

"He's not important enough for that."

Hope said it without the slightest mercy.

***

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