Chapter 145 : Broker
Chapter 145: Broker
If Baek Woohyun hadn’t been in a state where he had activated the power derived from [Perfect Being], it would have been a small sound he might have missed without noticing.
However, since he had been continuously exercising his superhuman abilities from the moment he recognized the smell of blood, there was no way he would miss it.
It was clear from the way he immediately gave Kim Hana a hand signal and began advancing even more cautiously than before.
“……”
The homeowner had been brutally murdered, yet there were signs of movement from inside the house? He had no choice but to think the culprit was still inside doing something.
And here, the enemy was most likely someone from the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance side, and judging from how Jeong Hyeonjun had been killed, there was also a high probability they were an Awakener.
It meant it was only natural for Baek Woohyun to proceed even more cautiously than when he first entered the house.
‘There they are.’
Baek Woohyun’s eyes narrowed as he reached the front of the master bedroom after passing through the living room that was a sea of blood. It was because he could clearly feel the presence of someone moving inside.
The other person seemed to be somewhat cautious since they had just killed someone, but they couldn’t escape his senses that had reached a superhuman level.
In any case, now that he knew the opponent’s location, he judged there was no reason to linger outside.
That was why he immediately sent another simple hand signal to Kim Hana and suddenly flung the door open.
Crash!
“Wha—”
To Baek Woohyun, who had entered the ‘slowed world,’ he could see a man in front of the tightly closed safe at the far end of the master bedroom slowly turning around.
The man, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, was dressed in a neat suit, and perhaps because of the sunglasses he hadn’t taken off even indoors, he gave off an eerie sense of intimidation.
It was a completely different feeling from the two suspects he had dealt with before.
Well, this person was an assassin sent by the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance side, so naturally he would give off a different aura than ordinary thugs.
Tap!
Of course, trivial matters like how intimidating the man in the room was didn’t affect Baek Woohyun in the slightest.
To him, the opponent was merely someone who only caught small fries.
Unless they were a Hunting Dog—specifically an elite Hellhound, or even among those, classified as one of the strongest Three-Heads—what difference would it make?
That’s why he didn’t hesitate at all even as he kicked off the floor and closed the distance in one breath.
Swoosh!
“—at?”
As a result, the man could only finish his words just as Baek Woohyun’s right hand whipped out sharply like a whip and extended.
He had completed both the approach and attack before even uttering two syllables. It was truly an unreasonable act of violence that must have felt unbearably unjust to the opponent.
Anyone would have shouted “That’s impossible!” if a fist reached right in front of their nose when they hadn’t even looked away for a moment.
Crack!
“—?!”
However, unfortunately for the man, he wasn’t even given the opportunity to complain about this unfairness.
Baek Woohyun’s right fist, which had bored in like an awl, struck the man’s jaw, and the heavy blow that landed on the vital point was enough to knock out his consciousness.
With a chilling sound, the man whose head had turned to the side collapsed right there on the spot as if he had been shot.
Even though he must have been an Awakener, he was destroyed without even using his supernatural ability once. It was the result of a perfect ambush that didn’t give him time to react.
“……”
After finally checking his surroundings and confirming there were no more signs of presence, Baek Woohyun relaxed the tension in his body.
There was no way they would send someone capable of escaping his senses just to eliminate a single Jeong Hyeonjun, so the situation was now practically over.
All that remained was to extract the necessary information from the subdued man.
‘The problem is……’
Baek Woohyun glanced at the empty air. At the spot where a camera filming him would likely be.
While proceeding with ‘Reverse Planet,’ he had never once forgotten about those who would be watching him from the studio.
No matter how much his personality had dulled and worn down from rolling through hell for ten years, it was impossible not to be conscious of the tens of thousands of people who would be watching his every move.
So until now, he had been ‘restraining’ himself in various ways, but this time it seemed impossible.
The man wasn’t a thug who would spill information after just choking him and breaking a few fingers—even that was adjusted so it wouldn’t show well on the broadcast.
In other words, proper interrogation was needed, and he knew well that broadcasting that would be problematic.
‘Should I turn off the broadcast for a moment?’
The time required for interrogation wouldn’t be that long.
If he actively utilized his experience from ‘that side,’ it would be over in about ten minutes.
However, since there had never been a single instance where the video was cut for ten minutes during ‘Nuclear Tourism’ content until now, Baek Woohyun couldn’t help but agonize over it.
Especially since turning off the broadcast hadn’t been discussed in advance with the studio side panel.
“I’ll need to step in for a bit from here.”
Kim Hana intervened just as Baek Woohyun’s resolve was gradually solidifying toward turning off the broadcast for a moment.
She pulled out a small balisong knife—also called a butterfly knife—from inside her clothes and approached while unfolding it.
Soon reaching the fallen man, she looked at Baek Woohyun with a somewhat eerie expression.
“Originally I planned to just observe today, but interrogation is a domain of experience after all. A junior who just became a special agent wouldn’t be able to do even this, right?”
“……You’re right.”
Baek Woohyun didn’t bother denying Kim Hana’s words.
Unless he was going to display pointless pride, it would be useless anyway.
“Hmm.”
As he obediently acknowledged his shortcomings and stepped back, Kim Hana, who had been casting a somewhat puzzled gaze, shrugged her shoulders.
She seemed to have speculated that Baek Woohyun would insist on handling it somehow himself out of vengefulness. Just like he had done with the thugs earlier.
“Then while I interrogate him, please search the house for now, Junior.”
“Understood.”
“Nnngh…… Wha— Huh? Huuh?”
“I’ll teach you interrogation techniques separately later. If you want, that is.”
“What are you doing, mmph! Mmph!”
Leaving behind the man’s struggles with his mouth gagged, Baek Woohyun exited the master bedroom and began thoroughly searching the house.
Here, ‘searching’ meant starting with thoroughly going through the corpse of Jeong Hyeonjun who lay dead with his throat cut, and turning over every place where something might be.
Since they had caught the culprit anyway, there was no need to preserve the crime scene, and besides, he hadn’t cared about such things in the first place—which was why he acted this way.
Surprisingly, this search, which seemed like mere wasted effort, yielded fairly good results.
Inside the sofa that he had torn apart and practically dismantled, he obtained a considerable amount of cash along with a ledger of unknown identity.
It seemed the safe placed in the master bedroom was a fake, and he had hidden the important contents here instead. You could say the small fry used his head in his own way.
“……”
Baek Woohyun casually tossed the bundle of cash aside and read through the text written in the ledger at a rapid pace.
It was speed-reading that seemed like he was just roughly flipping through, but it was possible because the contents consisted of only four things without any explanation: date, name, age, and gender.
For dozens of pages he flipped through, only those things were written, so there was no reason to hold on and struggle with it for long.
Crumple.
Finally reaching the last page, Baek Woohyun’s hand gripped the ledger tightly. It was a touch that didn’t care whether it got crumpled or not.
At first glance, it was a ledger whose contents were unclear, but for him who had experienced ‘that side,’ he could understand what the phrases repeated throughout dozens of pages meant.
He would bet on it—this was a record of human trafficking. A record of what person was sold to the Research Facility on which date.
‘So that’s why an Awakener came.’
Jeong Hyeonjun was probably a broker dealing with the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance. He would have been something like a connecting link between human trafficking criminal organizations and the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance.
There had been quite a few similar bastards on ‘that side’ too—they all departed for the afterlife at Baek Woohyun’s hands as soon as they were caught—so it wasn’t particularly special.
Anyway, that relationship had fallen apart for some reason, and it was speculated that the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance side had dispatched an Awakener for his elimination.
‘Was Jeong Jihun eliminated along the way?’
There was a high probability that he had been eliminated along with the others because he happened to demand payment for selling Baek Woohyun right when things fell apart between Jeong Hyeonjun and the Research Facility·Corporate Alliance side.
Whether it should be called unfortunate or karmic retribution, Baek Woohyun thought it didn’t matter either way. Jeong Jihun was already dead anyway.
Crash.
“I’m done, Junior.”
Kim Hana, shaking off her blood-covered hands as she exited the master bedroom, glanced around the house that had become a mess.
Her expression remained indifferent even at the scene that had practically become a wasteland.
This level of carnage had already been expected from the moment she ordered the search.
“So, did you find anything?”
“I did.”
“What is it?”
“A ledger. It appears to be a record of human trafficking. It seems Jeong Hyeonjun supplied test subjects to the Research Facility side.”
“A human trafficking record…… Can I see it?”
“Yes, here it is.”
***
“Ah, so that was a human trafficking record ledger. I just thought it had strange contents written in it.”
“Same here. I’m really amazed that you could deduce that far from just contents with only dates, names, ages, and genders written.”
—For real, amazingㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Me too, I saw it like Jeong but thought something was off
—His deduction ability to compile information and reach conclusionsㄷㄷ
—This seems to be why Hackphysical often has content we’ve never heard or seen in the story lineㅇㅇ
“Hmm. Sometimes when I watch Mr. Cheater’s broadcast, I get this feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“The feeling that Mr. Cheater seems exactly like someone who lived in ‘Reverse Planet’ for a long time. In ‘Reverse Planet’ as reality, not as a game.
—Of course, that can’t be the case though.”
***
Flip flip.
“Phew.”
Kim Hana, who had rapidly flipped through and skimmed the ledger she received from Baek Woohyun, let out a deep sigh.
Having worked as a special agent for quite some time, she seemed to have immediately realized that Baek Woohyun’s speculation was true.
Closing the ledger, she spoke with a furrowed face.
“Your speculation is correct, Junior. This is a human trafficking record ledger. During the interrogation, I heard information that Jeong Hyeonjun was a broker who arranged deals between criminal organizations and the Research Facility.”
“……”
“What’s interesting is that in the materials passed to me, Jeong Hyeonjun was just an ordinary thug who had only made contact with Jeong Jihun once.”
Was it simply the Otherworld Management Bureau’s lack of investigative ability?
Or was it an intentionally occurring information omission?
Either way, it was a situation that couldn’t be very pleasant for Kim Hana.
If it was the former, it meant they couldn’t even properly investigate a mere thug, and if it was the latter, it meant the Research Facility’s dirty work had reached deep into the Otherworld Management Bureau.
However, she was probably hoping for the former.
Unlike the former which was simply incompetent, the latter also meant there were that many internal enemies.
Still, purely incompetent allies were better than enemies pretending to be allies standing behind you, weren’t they?
“Other information I learned during the interrogation—”
Information that Kim Hana had made the assassin man spill during interrogation flowed from her mouth.
Unfortunately, most of it was exactly as Baek Woohyun had predicted alone. From the breakdown of the business relationship to the deaths of Jeong Jihun and Jeong Hyeonjun.
It was probably because the situation was too typical to escape the perspective of someone who had rolled around tediously on ‘that side.’
However, not all the information she obtained was meaningless. Among it, there was sufficiently valuable information.
Representatively, information about the human trafficking criminal organization that had been dealing with Jeong Hyeonjun was such.
“The connection to the human trafficking organization. That’s what that bastard killed Jeong Hyeonjun and was looking for here. I think the Research Facility wanted to deal directly without involving a broker in the middle.”
“Do you think the Research Facility eliminated Jeong Hyeonjun for direct dealing?”
“No, I don’t think so. According to what I heard during interrogation, the Research Facility side told that bastard it would be good if he found the connection to the human trafficking organization, but not to worry about it otherwise.”
The man’s main objective was Jeong Hyeonjun’s elimination, and finding the connection to the human trafficking organization was merely an additional goal at best.
Therefore, Kim Hana’s judgment was that it was difficult to see they tried to eliminate Jeong Hyeonjun for direct dealing. If that were the case, they would have prioritized the connection more.
“Anyway, that bastard found the connection to the human trafficking organization in the master bedroom.”
“……”
“It’s just a tail, but if we grab it and follow up, it’ll be instant until we reach the organization.”
Kim Hana looked straight at Baek Woohyun with eyes as sharp as a knife.
Befitting a special agent, it was a gaze thick with the scent of blood.
“So that’s what I’m asking, Junior. What will you do?”