Chapter 149 : East
They say that failure is the mother of success. But it’s always best to succeed from the start rather than learning from failure. It was a self-evident fact that I, who had succeeded, was greater than Harry, who had failed.
From his perspective, it was an unfair situation. He was the one who had actually led this team, but I was the one who had succeeded. It was like he had made porridge and given it to a dog.
“Th-that you were lucky…”
“I conducted some research on my own.”
I didn’t go through complicated processes like setting conditions and making plans based on data like Harry did. The rapid growth of the spirits. That was all it took.
“Fortunately, there were results. It was a stroke of luck.”
“……”
Harry bit his lip tightly. It was secondary that his ambition to realize his dreams was in jeopardy. How much effort he had put in was not important in corporate life. The value he could present to his superiors was ultimately the result.
Success was success, whether it was a coincidence or not. No matter how much he disliked it, that was the reality. Besides, he probably wouldn’t even think it was a real coincidence.
Why would Claire have formed a project team? The stakes were high, and of course, the difficulty was not to be underestimated. In reality, it was just that Claire had accepted my proposal, but that was how it was known to the public.
Even to protect his own pride, it was better for Harry to admit that I was actually a capable boss. At this point, Harry’s insubordination was completely stranded.
If it were a contractor or a greedy businessman, they might have been blinded by jealousy and resorted to cowardly tricks. But Harry was a researcher by birth. Although he was a bit rude and arrogant, he was a naive type who thought that he had to compete with his abilities.
“But this is not a great achievement to the point of throwing a party just because it’s over.”
I gently patted Harry’s shoulder. He might have harbored some ambition, but in another interpretation, it meant that he had a desire for improvement. There was no need to exclude Harry. He was an excellent researcher.
It was enough that I had taken the initiative of this project team. In the first place, I had left that cunning insubordination alone with that in mind.
“There’s still a long way to go. I think it’s just that we’ve got a teaching material to refer to.”
“……”
Because my success was not a coincidence, but an ability that only I had. How the seeds brought from the World Tree’s garden were different, how they could be improved, what mechanism the rapid growth of the spirits was based on, and how it could be applied to real life based on this…
I didn’t know. I had formed a project team to interpret this. I needed personnel who would analyze it for me if I gave them the direction.
“I’ll trust and entrust it to the chief researcher.”
Since there was a definite success story, there would be no one to question the direction I had set. And he would do his best to prove that he was not an inferior talent to a parachute.
“You can do that, right?”
“……I will make sure not to disappoint you this time.”
Automatic hunting could exist not only in games but also in reality.
***
“The analysis of the disk is complete.”
When I returned home, Beta said. It was a content I had been looking forward to, but for some reason, I didn’t feel much emotion. It wasn’t because my threshold had risen after experiencing various incidents in the course of carrying out the request in District 17.
“The analysis of the disk is complete. The analysis of the disk is complete. The analysis of the disk is complete.”
It was just that I had heard it many times.
“Hey! Shut up!”
And the one who had suffered in the process was Bell.
“How many times a day do you have to say the same thing! My ears are going to fall off!”
“You told me to let you know when the analysis of the disk was complete. I was just doing as I was asked.”
“He’s busy! Can’t you see?”
“A third party cannot know when he will not be busy. He might have forgotten, so I am reminding him periodically.”
“Aww, if you’ve done it this much, just listen! I’m going to get a neurosis at this rate!”
The content analysis of the disk had been completed a long time ago. He had said from the beginning that it wouldn’t take long, and Beta had done as he had promised. The reason I hadn’t been able to check it was purely because I was busy with my work.
As the scale of the request in District 17 grew, I had no time to pay attention to anything else. In the meantime, when I told Beta to talk about it next time, he really said the same thing next time, and I also postponed it in the same way… In the meantime, only Bell was about to die of frustration.
“I was going to check it today anyway.”
I had just returned after finishing all my busy errands. Bell cheered, saying that he would finally not have to listen to the parrot’s whining.
“Then I will start transmitting the data.”
The analyzed data of the disk was transmitted to my phone. Although he had been annoyed, he was curious, so Bell, who had peeked his head out to check, expressed his doubt.
“What is this. Coordinates?”
“That’s right. I will mark them on the map.”
On the screen that had switched to a map, specific locations were blinking.
“……”
There was no common point in the coordinates. They were indiscriminately divided. But some of those locations caught my eye.
There was probably no job that involved as much legwork as a contractor. I had been all over this city, carrying out requests. Of course, there were many places that were familiar to my eyes. But it wasn’t that I was familiar with them because I had actually been there.
If my memory was not wrong… it was because they were places that had left a strong impression.
“Is this all? Just a few coordinates? Is this all the content of the disk?”
But it was a story that had no connection with outsiders. Bell pouted his lips and muttered in disappointment. He had been more expectant than me, the person concerned, so the change in his expression was dramatic.
“Is there some treasure hidden here? But is it worth applying the highest security system… it is. I admit it.”
The scale of the map, which had been limited to Gellerg City, grew. The border area, the extreme environmental zones including the Great Plains and the Land of Similarity, and even the external cities. Soon, a map covering the entire continent was spread on the screen.
“If you’ve recorded the coordinates of a treasure on a continental scale, this would be a material that only a few people in a specific class are allowed to view. Especially depending on what that treasure is.”
Bell said with a bitter taste. He was originally a craftsman with a high reputation. It meant that he had never been short of money. At the same time, he had not made materialistic desires the milestone of his life.
The current Bell was just a common man who dreamed of living a peaceful and comfortable life without stress. When he saw a treasure, his survival instinct moved before his desire.
“I didn’t see it. I don’t know. It has nothing to do with me, so you take care of it.”
So Bell avoided the place. It was annoying that he was running away without any loyalty, so I could have forced him to sit down, but I let him go because he was going out to the backyard.
Suddenly, water had risen in a space that had been fine, creating a pond. It was the holy blood. The ground was flooded, and I had to dig a new water channel. Besides that, there were a series of trivial chores, so Bell was busy as soon as he got used to the work.
Leaving him behind, I checked the map once more. As expected, what these coordinates meant was not a treasure.
‘It’s a map showing the location of the spirit cocoons.’
The familiar coordinates exactly matched the area that Greenwood had requested and the place where I had recovered the spirit cocoon.
‘I wondered how Greenwood had found the spirit cocoons, but there was a secret like this.’
It was a material worth the trouble of going all the way to District 2. Of course, it wasn’t that I could trust it completely. It was a material that hadn’t been updated for a while. There was no mark on the coordinates I had recovered.
Greenwood probably had also checked it based on this and then put out a request.
“Can’t you check where the data came from?”
And I remembered Beta’s words that it was suspected that the password on the disk had been manipulated from the outside. This was not Greenwood’s data. It had been stolen from somewhere.
“It’s the city government.”
“The city government.”
If it had been Centream, I would have nodded and moved on. They had tried to use the spirit cocoons in their own way. I didn’t know what they were aiming for, but there was something they had gained in the process.
It wasn’t the city government. Why would the city government need to know the location of the spirit cocoons? It was just bewildering to hear the name of the city government all of a sudden.
It was a matter that needed to be investigated further before making a hasty conclusion.
“I see for now.”
Greenwood had been looking for someone who could hatch the spirit cocoons, and in the worst case, they had tried to convey at least this information. It was a good thing for me too. I no longer had to wait vaguely for Greenwood’s activities to resume in order to recover the spirit cocoons.
I was curious about what on earth had happened, but I just had to ask directly instead of racking my brain.
‘He must be up by now.’
Elliot. It was time to receive the price from him.
***
A surprising fact. There were also hospitals in Gellerg City. Of course, hospitals were facilities that had existed even in the ancient civilization period. It would be strange if there were no hospitals in this city, which boasted the highest level of civilization on the continent.
It was a dangerous city where dozens to hundreds of people died every day, and the number of injured was several times that. The hospital rooms should have been overflowing with patients. But the hospital I had visited was quiet.
It wasn’t just here, they were all the same. This was because medicine in this world was in the realm of alchemy and magic, not medicine. Putting aside the expertise, in a word, it was expensive.
They prescribed potions even for a light cold, and potions were the essence of alchemy. As befitting this city, there was of course a patent, and Nano Buyer Company had monopolized it.
Although they had now grown to the point of being called a megacorp, their roots were the Alchemist Guild, a community of alchemists. It was a case similar to the Mage Tower. Just as there were no mages who went against the authority of the Mage Tower, there were no alchemists who went against the will of Nano Buyer Company.
Since the supply was limited, the price naturally skyrocketed. That’s why hospitals were facilities that not just anyone could use. Of course, Elliot, a successful contractor, was hospitalized in a private room there.
“Hmm, I showed you a shameful sight before. I’m sorry.”
Still drunk. I think he should be more ashamed of his current appearance. There were no liquor bottles rolling on the floor. But that was because the hospital had cleaned them up.
As I got closer, his face was red, and the smell of alcohol was strong. It was absurd.
“Haven’t you ever heard that patients shouldn’t drink?”
“……? Is there such a saying?”
He asked back as if I were the strange one. It was a world where superhumans ran wild. There were plenty of monsters that couldn’t even be treated as human. There were even guys who had died and come back to life, so if you think about it, the harm of alcohol, well, it might not have been known.
No, even if I think about it again, that can’t be right.
“The hospital must have told you not to.”
“I didn’t care.”
“……”
It seemed the hospital hadn’t tried to stop him either. Since a famous person like Elliot wouldn’t be short of money, they were probably trying to extort some money from him on this occasion. It was a drinking party established because the interests of the alcoholic and the money-grubbing hospital coincided.
“Didn’t you say the effect of the holy blood was gone?”
It didn’t mean that the awakened psychic powers had disappeared. The awakening of psychic powers was originally the effect of the artifact called the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. The holy blood was an item to which the leader had added the function of subordination.
So even if the leader died, the psychic powers did not disappear. On the contrary, Elliot was freed from the danger of going berserk. Since he had been drinking to control the berserk state, the need to drink excessively as before had disappeared.
“I drink because I like it. Well, I understand your concern. You must be worried that I won’t keep my promise and will collapse again. Let’s solve it here so you don’t have to worry.”
Perhaps because he had finished his revenge, Elliot was not hiding his inner thoughts slyly as before, but had a straightforward attitude.
“Read it.”
As if he had prepared it, Elliot handed me a file he had taken out from a drawer. It was a document with the personal details of one person.
“He’s a contractor like me. He was a person with a complicated past, just like me. Although it’s rare for people in this line of work not to be.”
I slowly scanned the contents. It was him. The real person related to Greenwood, whom I had finally made a connection with.
“As for my friendship with him… you can claim it with this.”
“This is the pendant you were carrying around to find the Guardians of the Dawn.”
“I drew the design, and he made it for me. He was good with his hands.”
Considering the trouble I had gone through because of this fake pendant, I doubted whether he was really good with his hands. I reluctantly accepted it.
“Okay, so where is this person now?”
“East.”
Elliot said.
“The City of Iron and Blood.”
(End of Chapter)