Chapter 294: Turmoil in Gangcheon
Cho Sang-hoon was having trouble tamping down on his concerns as time went on. The turmoil in Gangcheon had been escalating for a long time, and to make matters worse, the Underlayer Event was a total disaster.
They barely made any progress beyond their initial probes on the Primal Constructs. After their failed assault on the Siege Boss, they had been unable to properly regroup. Different factions within the settlement, organized into companies, challenged their strategy and demanded accountability while avoiding any commitments themselves. Something had to give.
Despite being the global leader, the many internal organizations within the city had been slowly degrading the overall position of the settlement through their own selfish pursuits. Inter-company competition was an addiction that they hadn’t been able to escape, even after the shuffle caused by the apocalypse. Their superficial inclinations for wealth and rank had resulted in all of the old corporate style underhanded tactics that would have been better left behind.
If asked to help save the settlement, the question was always ‘What’s in it for us?’ They only wanted to know about how they would profit, as if survival was a secondary consideration. Obsessive selfishness, driven by greed and vanity, threatened to drag them all into oblivion.
The rankers thwarted each other instead of cooperating, unnecessarily ceding ground to the Primal Constructs while seeking accolades for their own companies rather than considering the settlement as a whole. It had become impossible to rely on anyone for important tasks such that delegation became completely impractical. Thus, even with a massive settlement, they could not pursue opportunities that couldn’t be handled in-house. If not for their enormous initial population, they would have been just another settlement that had fallen by the wayside.
To make matters worse, as their Champion sought to continue upgrading the civilization shard, she had welcomed a subordinate settlement into Gangcheon’s greater territory, but that subordinate was under the complete control of an alien faction. They had no loyalty to the human race, seeing themselves as a step above. They proudly represented an external force that existed among the stars. Despite joining with the larger settlement, they never saw themselves as inferior, maintaining a facade of power that baffled until it became a real threat.
The Knights of Time sought world domination and had been gradually expanding their influence over Gangcheon as whole, riling up various companies of residents into a vaguely nationalistic frenzy to suit their needs. They suggested that the future global capital had to be in Korea and it would become a hub for not just the world, but the galaxy as a whole.
The subordinate shard was weak, but their convictions were not, and it had been a festering problem that the Champion’s company recognized would have to be addressed sooner rather than later. In the days before the Settlement Event, it was increasingly common to see groups with the belt and sash combination representing the Knights among the residents while walking through the glowing streets of their city, as if they were converting citizens to their cause.
For the most part, the companies that had formed around shared alien factions had behaved the same as any other group. They competed for position, as if seeking to maximize profits in a future integrated Earth. Somehow, it didn’t occur to them that they had to do more in order to survive first. Cho Sang-hoon’s temper boiled over at the thought.
“Greedy idiots! Money-hungry fools! Agh!” Sang-hoon shouted into the Underlayer, letting the stifling dirt absorb his frustration.
Sang-hoon was a close confidant of the Champion as her senior secretary, and these days, he was the face of the centralized power within Gangcheon. Pressure on Champion Na Ho-jung had become so great, she wasn’t able to move openly for fear of assassination. Instead, he acted on her behalf.
Sang-hoon was of the opinion that they had to quell the growing insurgency definitively. It was time they made an example of someone, but he wasn’t so brash as to try anything in the weeks before a settlement event. Still, he looked forward to punishing them with his own hand.