Chapter 251. The Matter of Making a Living (2)

A mass withdrawal request?

Unsure what was going on, Eun-Ho first set the fifty-eight-million-Point armor back on the shelf and quickly left the shop.

When he returned to the Wailing Forest, the scene waiting for him was chaos. The Wailing River might as well have overflowed.

“Please! I’m begging you!”

“Hurry! Process it already!”

“It’s urgent!”

“What the?”

Employees had gathered in front of the castle gate like a pack of stray dogs. Every single one of them wore the same desperate expression.

Then, someone spotted Eun-Ho and his team standing atop the wall.

“There! It’s the union leader!”

“Please process my withdrawal! Right now!”

Several people rushed forward, shouting frantically. One of them was a man in a gray knit sweater, a woman in a blue dress standing beside him.

“What’s the reason?” Eun-Ho calmly asked the man in the gray sweater, who had arrived first.

The man’s face flushed bright red. “Union members are being charged a thousand times the normal price at every store inside the company! A thousand times!”

“A thousand times?”

That meant an item that normally cost one Welfare Point now cost a thousand Points. Something worth ten thousand points had skyrocketed to ten million points. No wonder the shop prices had seemed so absurd.

Now it makes sense.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that union members could no longer use any of the company’s stores, effectively cutting them off from buying even basic necessities.

“Is everyone else experiencing the same thing?” Eun-Ho asked.

“Yes, Eun-Ho,” Ji-Eun answered quickly. “I checked and every member of the team is affected by this.”

Even in the middle of the chaos, Ji-Eun had managed to gather the situation.

She proceeded to hand Eun-Ho a report showing the price changes across various shops. “The low-tier shops, mid-tier shops, high-tier shops, restaurants, bars, even team supplies... everything has gone up.”

How were they supposed to go on with their life when they couldn’t even afford food anymore?

“Do you think the chairman did this?” Ji-Eun asked quietly.

Eun-Ho nodded. “Most likely.”

Either the chairman had acted directly, or he had ordered someone beneath him to do it. Otherwise, manipulating prices across the entire system would have been impossible.

“That’s a pretty extreme move,” Ji-Eun muttered.

Every employee here had a role to fulfill. It was the kind of company that firmly believed those who didn’t work didn’t eat. If tens of thousands of employees suddenly dropped out of the workforce because they couldn’t even afford basic necessities, operations would inevitably grind to a halt.

The chairman likely already knows that.

The chairman had considered that consequence and still launched the attack anyway. He had likely been desperate.

“Is there any way to fix this?” Ji-Eun asked.

That depended on how the change had been made. Had the system itself been manipulated to adjust prices across the board, or had the chairman pressured each individual shop owner into raising their prices?

Let’s find out.

Just as Eun-Ho opened a message window to ask, the answer arrived before he could type.

Soeju: Seems like pressure had been applied.

Soeju: Wait a moment. We’ll try to hold things down on our end.

Pressure... That means the chairman doesn’t have the authority to arbitrarily alter all prices himself. That’s a relief.

At the very least, there was still room to negotiate with the shop owners, who actually controlled the prices.

“This is really serious!”

“Why are you dragging your feet?! I need to buy something right now!”

“Please calm down,” Eun-Ho said.

Technically, there were two options: persuasion or intimidation. However, what puzzled Eun-Ho even more than the chairman’s move was the employees’ reaction. Of course, he could understand why they were angry at being unfairly penalized simply for being union members, but this went beyond that.

“How are we supposed to calm down?!”

“Exactly! Would you stay calm if you were in this situation?!”

“If you tell us what items you need and which store you’re trying to purchase them from, the union will find a way to supply them at the original price,” Eun-Ho replied.

“That’s not the problem!!” However, the man in the gray sweater clutched his hair and stomped his foot in frustration. “It’s not that simple! You wouldn’t understand because it doesn’t apply to you!”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t apply to us?” someone snapped.

“Yeah! Prices went up for us too!”

Some people wore mismatched shoes, clearly having rushed over without thinking. Coupled with bloodshot eyes and unkempt hair, it was as if they had a blade pressed against their throats.

“The reaction seems a bit extreme,” Eun-Ho muttered.

“That’s right, Hyungnim!” Jae-Hyuk added angrily. “Talking to you like that is completely unacceptable!”

No. That’s not what I mean.

“We have only one week left!”

One week?

Eun-Ho frowned.

Were there really items in the shops that were so urgent, so valuable, that people would panic like this?

Something felt off.

This is strange.

***

The floor was paved with pristine white marble. A fountain and flowing streams ran through the room, making it easy to forget that the place was indoors. Instead of water, alcohol flowed through the channels.

It was a space devoted entirely to indulgence. Calling it a banquet hall felt odd with the massive bed at its center, yet calling it a bedroom felt just as strange given the extravagant furniture surrounding it. Heavy velvet curtains blocked the sunlight, leaving the room so dim that it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night.

Click.

Into that decadent chamber stepped a man. Holding a file folder in one hand and a candle in the other, the man approached the bed as if he were already used to this scene.

“We’ve taken care of it, Director,” he reported to the person beneath the blankets—his superior, the director of the Operations Bureau.

However, instead of the response he expected, a burst of giggling laughter rang out.

“Ahaha! That tickles! Stop!”

Another one today, the man thought.

He had long known that different women entered the director’s bedroom every day. He also knew the director absolutely hated being disturbed while he was entertaining them.

“Director?” the man called again.

Still, this was an order personally issued by the chairman. Even a reckless director couldn’t simply ignore it.

A woman suddenly popped out from beneath the blanket, saying playfully, “Mu Ah! Someone’s calling you, Honey.”

The naked man in her arms finally revealed himself. “Ha. You came back so fast.”

The handsome, sculpted blond rubbed his eyes lazily as if he had just woken up.

“Mu Ah, are you going to work?” the woman asked sweetly.

“Ahem, well... Oh, right. There weren’t any complications, were there?” the director asked casually.

The subordinate lowered his gaze and cleared his throat. He had seen this scene many times before, yet the working environment still felt impossible to get used to.

“The shop owners were extremely dissatisfied,” he reported. “We promised them subsidies to compensate for the loss in revenue, but I doubt they’ll tolerate it for long.”

He then paused, glancing uneasily at the women surrounding them.

The blond director waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about them. Go on.”

“The bigger issue is...” The man stepped closer, leaning closer to whisper cautiously into the director's ear, “If this situation drags on for too long—”

“If it does?” the director prompted.

“Someone will definitely end up being deleted.”

The director flinched.

“Eek! Mu Ah, that sounds scary!” The woman stroking the director’s chest jolted, her pale shoulders trembling. “I’m going back under the covers!”

Mass deletions of employees were common for failed trials. However, it’d be a different story if it happened because they had been caught in the middle of the company’s political struggles. A big uproar was guaranteed to happen.

“That could cause problems,” the director muttered.

“Yes. Which is why it would be best to—”

“But.” The director cut him off calmly, as if he had already anticipated the possibility. “They’ll all leave before that happens.”

“Pardon?”

“Their lives are on the line. Who would be stupid enough to cling to a labor union in that situation?”

It was a perfectly logical conclusion. The subordinate nodded in agreement.

“And I heard the ones who started this union are just rookies who haven’t even been promoted yet,” the director added.

“They joined the company less than a month ago,” the subordinate agreed.

Less than a month?

“In that case, the ones who should be acting as the union’s center won’t even realize what’s happening before it’s over.”

It would be an easy fight. As long as they tolerated a little temporary chaos, victory was practically guaranteed.

A faint, crooked smile spread across the director’s lips. “It’s been a while since the old man personally gave me an order.”

After all, the lives of a few insignificant employees could never outweigh the chairman’s command.

“Handle it without mistakes,” said the director.

“Yes, sir.”

The subordinate bowed immediately. Knowing his superior well, he offered no complaints and turned to leave.

“Oh right,” the director said again, as if he had just remembered something. “What about Yeon Seol?”

“Ah, the director of the Audit Bureau has been keeping a low profile lately after receiving a reprimand from the chairman.”

Yeon Seol was the esteemed head of the Audit Bureau, the man who treated the Operations Bureau like his personal limbs. His stubbornly upright personality had always been irritating.

The director clicked his tongue. “Useless bastard. Couldn’t even take advantage when I handed it to him.”

He still had his pride. Hence, he had no desire to watch Yeon Seol get humiliated by some newly appointed team leader.

“Hmm? What did you give him?” one of the women asked curiously.

“Information.”

Well, that was probably why the chairman had eventually assigned the task to him instead. Someone who had clawed his way up from the very bottom knew best how to torment the insects crawling there.

“So,” the director continued, “who was it that wiped out those monsters?”

“My apologies, sir. We couldn’t identify them.”

“A killer who leaves no trace, huh.”

There was no way a mere contract worker or rookie employee could eliminate that many monsters without leaving evidence, which meant someone was backing them.

“So they’ve already started building their own power base?” The director lowered his long golden eyelashes, sinking into thought. He muttered to himself, “No wonder the old man is paying attention. Do we have files on that guy?”

“That guy?”

“Lee Eun-Ho.”

The subordinate quickly nodded. He knew that this was the same man who had served as the lawyer in that troublesome trial.

“Yes, sir. The video of the union’s inauguration ceremony and the combat footage that got him into the Hall of Fame have been gaining a lot of attention lately.”

There was no shortage of information. In fact, it was far too much for someone who had only just joined the company.

“Bring it here,” the director said.

“You want to watch it yourself?”

“Yes,” he replied lazily. “Let’s see what makes this Lee Eun-Ho so special.”

***

Ji-Eun, who had been struggling on top of the wall, wiped the back of her neck and broke into a cold sweat. “Everyone! You can’t do this here—”

Eun-Ho stepped forward and pointed directly at one of the union members. “You there.”

It was the guy wearing the gray sweater. “M-me?!”

“What exactly is this item you’re so desperate to buy right now?”

Eun-Ho instinctively knew that they weren’t making this scene because they couldn’t buy lunchboxes or potions. “There’s something we don’t know about, isn’t there?”

Eun-Ho became certain of one thing. Whatever these people wanted so desperately, it had to be something the company controlled—something that held the employees’ very lives in its grip.

The Wailing Forest, which had been filled with screams, pleas, and desperate cries, suddenly fell quiet.

“T-that is...” the man in the gray sweater began hesitantly.

“As I said,” Eun-Ho continued calmly, “we don’t know what you want. And if we don’t know the situation, we can’t solve it. We’re not your enemies.”

The man in the gray sweater glanced around nervously. He clenched his fist, then loosened it again. After a moment of hesitation, he seemed to reach a decision.

“Didn’t you say time was running out?” Eun-Ho asked.

As if those words pushed him over the edge, the man raised his head and shouted, “...!”

He screamed so loudly the veins in his neck bulged, but no one could hear what he had said.

“What was that?”

“What did he say?”

“Was that a foreign language?”

“What are you talking about? The language system’s unified!”

Eun-Ho had experienced something like this before during the Character Evaluation, when he killed the White Serpent and received a penalty.

[You’ve developed the status effect, Mute.]

They weren’t permitted to know what the man wanted.

“Then, try writing it down,” Eun-Ho suggested.

He handed the man a piece of paper and a pen with a faint thread of hope. However, it was a completely blank page.

“Fuck! It doesn’t work! It’s not working!” Swear-Master shouted.

“Why? Why is that happening?” Ji-Eun asked anxiously.

“I’ve seen this kind of shit a million times in fantasy novels!”

At the mention of novels, Eun-Ho suddenly recalled something.

“These kids aren’t even assigned to a department yet. Giving them more information violates regulation.”

It was what the Operations Bureau mentor had said while stopping the gambler earlier.

Information that violates regulations, taboos, restrictions, stories that we are not allowed to know... Eun-Ho thought.

“Ha, stuff like this always gets revealed after the entire story ends,” Swear-Master muttered.

“Let me borrow that,” Eun-Ho said.

“Huh? What for?” Before Swear-Master could react, Eun-Ho took the megaphone from his hands. “That won’t work—”

They couldn’t just sit around waiting for the system to spoon-feed them answers.

“Ahem! Test, test,” Eun-Ho said into the loudspeaker. “Alright! Everyone who heard what the man in the gray sweater just said, raise your hands!”

Everyone gathered in front of the castle gate raised their hands, utterly bewildered.

“From this moment on, you will do exactly as I say. Group up with people who come from the same language background. Move!”

“Huh?”

“What’s this all of a sudden?! We said we’re in a hurry!”

“Exactly! If you’re in a hurry, move faster!” Eun-Ho shot back.

“What?!”

If they couldn’t speak nor write, they had to find another way, a loophole the system hadn’t managed to block.

“Ten people over there,” Eun-Ho instructed.

“H-huh?”

“Go pick up some stones. You’re going to write letters with them.”

“What?!”

“This group here. You guys will use your bodies! Starting with the gray sweater, line up and form words!”

“Whaaat?!”

“Make a letter by standing appropriately!”

It didn’t matter if they used stones or their own selves. He also didn’t care whether they wrote letters or acted them out.

“What the hell?”

“What are we even doing right now?”

He was going to find out no matter what. “Begin!”