༺ Protection (3) ༻
1.
After Deneb and the twins left, the already spacious house felt like it became twice as big.
“It feels like something is missing…”
“When I think about it, I’ve been living here by myself for the longest time…”
“Can’t relate with that since I’ve never lived in such a good place before, but I reckon that it was boring for you.”
Siwoo and Sharon were eating their dinner while chatting.
But this time, instead of eating in the dining room as usual, they were doing it in the living room.
The reason for this was because they wanted to watch the news about the recent incidents.
It was currently a hot topic on the internet too, as if they were to put on something inside the search bar, the first twenty recommended searches would be something related to the incident.
The scale of it made Siwoo wonder if the witches could really cover up the incident well.
And to his surprise, they did cover it up.
Well, ‘cover’ wasn’t exactly the correct word here, as what they did was clearly a manipulation of information.
They changed the cause of the death of the people; from being killed by strange monsters to explosions caused by gas leaks.
All the survivors gave out the same answers when they were being interviewed, as if they had rehearsed it beforehand. They even showed CCTV footage of people suddenly dying from explosions when they were in the middle of shopping.
They put the blame on poor management and constructions for letting this happen, declaring the construction company guilty for not abiding safety regulations.
After he saw that they gave the company’s CEO, president and representative arrest warrants, Siwoo turned off the TV.
“…”
“Siwoo…”
When she saw Siwoo keeping his mouth shut, Sharon gently took his hand.
“You’ve done your best. Didn’t the Countess say that there are a lot of people who survived thanks to you?”
“Yes, but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth… I guess I shouldn’t have tried watching it while eating, huh?”
Thanks to the atmosphere turning sour, their dinner came to an end earlier than usual.
Sharon tidied up the dishes and brought them to the kitchen. Then, she called out to him.
“Right, why don’t we take a stroll together? Staying inside wouldn’t improve your mood anyway, would it?”
“Take a stroll? Where?”
“Incheon Port.”
“Sure. They have great clams there.”
Siwoo agreed to her suggestion, Besides, he needed a change of atmosphere anyway.
Maybe it was because the twins went back already, but the house was less lively than before.
And he figured that there was no need for him to share his depression with Sharon.
“Well, getting some grilled clams sounds nice, but do you know that Gehenna has a contact point for smugglers in there?”
“Huh? That kind of thing exists?”
“Yeah! They aren’t always available, but every three months, there is a period of time where everyone would come and go to the port for around fifteen days, right? They’ll be available by then. There are a lot of things to see there! Though, I don’t normally go there often, only when it’s necessary.”
“What kind of things can we see there?”
Sharon continued her explanation. According to her, there were places like this all over the world, and Incheon Port wasn’t a unique case.
She said that usually the smugglers would carry some goods from Gehenna, but that wasn’t always the case. They would occasionally bring some goods from the Modern World back to Gehenna too.
“So, you know the magic crops that they grew in the Latifundium, right? Exiles can’t really go to Gehenna to buy those directly, but they don’t really need to, as the smugglers will bring those crops here instead! The same goes for other stuff like magical tools and such.”
“That sounds more like a regular market to me.”
“Well, it does function like one!”
He remembered that he saw similar things in Border Town, so Siwoo assumed that it worked in the same way as it was in Border Town.
Back then, he recalled his subtle excitement when he visited the town, even though his overall mood had been depressing due to how awful his life was.
And now that he had the chance to explore it again under a completely different mood, he became visibly excited.
“Anyway, thanks to you I managed to find a clue on how to restore my brand, so I’ll need to visit the place to buy some offerings and other things I’d need for my research.”
“Sure, I’ll go with you.”
Hearing his words, Sharon paused for a moment.
She tapped the floor with her toes for a bit before nodding decisively.
It seemed like she was about to say something, but she stopped herself before actually saying it.
“Alright, get ready quickly then!”
But, since she said so without saying anything else, Siwoo decided to just go with the flow and follow her lead.
2.
And so, they went to Wolmido, Incheon, by taxi.
After they got off, they went to a restaurant that served some grilled clams, ate their fills, then continued on their ways.
From the distance, they could see cranes holding massive containers and the inner part of the Incheon Port.
The air around the area had the unique scent of autumn mixed by the salty smell of the sea.
“So, you said that there are smugglers’ contact points all over the world, right? Where are they exactly?”
“Mostly in large trade ports, like Incheon and Busan. I also know there’s one in Yokohama, Jebel Ali, Port Klang and Los Angeles…but, that’s all I know.”
“What about China? They don’t have any there?”
“Well, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t take the existence of witches very well. In fact, there’s barely any Witch Point in their country. They really just don’t want to cooperate with witches unless it’s really necessary.”
Though the witches and various nation leaders had signed a cooperative agreement, they didn’t have any obligation to get close with each other. This was what happened with China.
“Is that really okay for them, though? Like, don’t they need witches’ help to hunt the Homunculi?”
“Well, they have a large enough population, so they have the leniency to ignore the Homunculi’s attacks as long as the casualty numbers aren’t that high. Keep in mind that the witches aren’t hunting those Homunculi out of obligation or because of their sense of justice. They are demanding, and wouldn’t even think of making a move without any proper compensation.”
Siwoo found Sharon’s lecture about the witches’ international affair interesting.
“This is also why witches wouldn’t go to third-world countries or developed countries who couldn’t afford to pay them.”
“But, unlike China, those guys don’t really have the leniency to ignore those things. What would happen to them?”
“It’ll create a vicious cycle, I guess. The thing is that, even if a witch willingly wishes to settle down somewhere in peace, they wouldn’t go to countries with poor infrastructure like Bangladesh or Cambodia.
“Since the numbers of witches in those countries are few to begin with, they can’t really handle all the Homunculi attacks, especially when those start to become more frequent. With that, those countries’ infrastructure would gradually become worse and worse, and when that happens, less witches would be willing to settle there…
“That’s why, those countries usually would employ witches using some kind of contract that lasts for a period of time, just like mercenaries. Of course, even that is still ridiculously expensive for those countries.”
Siwoo began to know things that he would never have known if he was a normal person.
Now, he could see how deeply involved the witches were with the Modern World, even though it didn’t seem like it on the surface.
And the more he listened to her words, the more he found out that witches and humans essentially lived in the same way.
“Have they ever thought of working for one of those countries?”
“Well, if I do work for them, then I’d be obligated to fight off every trouble that comes their way. I’m just a rank 17th witch, that kind of work is too dangerous for me.”
Her answer made sense to Siwoo, as even Yebin, a rank 19th witch, also didn’t dare to take that risk.
As they kept on talking about this, a thought suddenly came to Siwoo’s mind.
“Right, what about those Criminal Exiles? What do they usually do for a living? Like, Gehenna doesn’t want them, other Exiles also don’t want them, and they’re banned from using all the services in Witch Point. How could they not go crazy after all that?”
He knew that there were only a handful of Criminal Exiles running around in the world.
But, how did those guys survive? Especially considering how deeply rooted the witches’ influence was in this world.
He knew for a fact that some of them were still causing havoc here and there.
“Well, like I just said, witches don’t really have a sense of justice. They hunted Homunculi because they wanted the money, and obviously, the money would be used for their magic research.
“Those Criminal Exiles you’re talking about, if they haven’t been caught already, that means they’re the most dangerous ones among the most dangerous ones.
“They are either grand witches or close to being one.
“In the first place, aside from Duchess Tiphereth, barely any witches would willingly trying to get into fights. Strong witches with a lot of money wouldn’t even try to hunt the Homunculi, let alone those Criminal Exiles.”
To put it in the game terms, the witches who barely scraped by with hunting small mobs, wouldn’t just go out of their way to solo raid bosses.
Sure, the prize would be great, but the risk would be too high.
“Also, those Criminal Exiles have their own way of making money, like running a drug cartel somewhere in South America or cultivating drugs in general.
“I mean, they did say that chemistry is rooted from alchemy, so that’s pretty much still within their area of specialty. Of course, there are some of them who obtain profit from legitimate business as well.”
“But, if they mess around too much, wouldn’t Duchess Keter come for them?”
Hearing his question, Sharon just shrugged her shoulders.
“Duchess Keter, huh…? How do I put this…? She…doesn’t care much about it? Let’s say that after we go back home, I’ll try and form a human trafficking organization, then I make it grow so big and it becomes the biggest one in the world. Even in this situation, unless I announce to the world that I am a witch, or openly use magic in the process, she would just leave me alone.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. You see, the only moments when the Duchess would make a move is when a witch openly made a big fuss in the world using magic and almost revealing the existence of witches.
“Or if they made such a big fuss like, for example, if that one witch running the cartel in Mexico bought a nuclear plant and launched it in the middle of Mexico City. The Criminal Exiles also know about this, so they wouldn’t deliberately look for trouble either. They’ll keep it within a reasonable level.”
After that, Siwoo was able to hear about secrets of the world that weren’t told in textbooks.
To summarize, the reason why the Criminal Exiles weren’t being dealt with was as follows.
First, the witches who’d take bounties and stuff didn’t want to deal with them because they weren’t strong enough.
Second, the witches who were strong enough didn’t need the bounty, so they simply didn’t want to bother.
Third, they hadn’t caused enough trouble for Duchess Keter to interfere.
In any case, since they had been walking while talking for a while, they reached the part of the district where there were no buildings around.
On the road, there were trucks carrying massive containers instead of passenger cars.
When they entered the pier through a gate, they could see a bunch of containers piled up on the ground, more than they’ve ever seen in their lives.
Bizarre looking machines could be seen, lifting the containers up and down while dozens of large warehouses were lined up side by side throughout the grounds.
The most impressive looking machines out of all of them were the tens-meters-long cranes that were used to pile and unload the massive container towers.
“This way.”
Sharon pulled Siwoo, who was curiously looking around, by his sleeves and headed toward the largest warehouse in the port.
In truth, Siwoo was worried that some people in work clothes would stop them before they could look around, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
Then again, that meant the music box was still working properly.
No one even spared a glance at the two of them.
As they slowly made their ways inside, treading through the gap between the containers, Siwoo soon realized that he couldn’t find any more people in his surroundings.
Even the boisterous noises of the heavy machineries couldn’t be heard anymore.
Suddenly, a big warehouse, towering over the others, appeared in front of him.
It might sound a little funny, but Siwoo thought that this must be what it felt to be kidnapped by a witch, just like in those storybooks he used to read as a kid.
“I was wondering why you were so nonchalant about all this, so that’s how it is, huh?”
“Well, while this is the place where all the people gather, and they wouldn’t mind sharing the space, that doesn’t mean they’d build this building out in the open where everyone could see it.
“As far as I know, they used ley lines, water veins and the arrangement of the containers as medium to spread their mana and conceal the place.
“To get here, you need to turn at the right corner at the right place, so people won’t stumble upon the place by accident.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Right?”
The reason why they didn’t find anyone guarding the warehouse was probably because of the concealment.
After that, the pair opened up the door and entered the smuggler’s contact point.
