“Hmm, you know dear.”
Tudor leaned casually against the counter with a subtle smile on her face. Her long hair was cascading down in a glittering display.
“Fixers usually tend to share a lot of information to increase their own value. The same goes for your information.”
“But?”
“But just like with the information beneath your mask, the personal details fixers prefer to keep private can be quite costly. And sometimes, people became targets for attacks just because they started digging into such matters.”
I understand what she’s implying. I could pay to have this matter looked into but I should be prepared for potential conflicts.
“Well, I’m not planning to make such a request right now. Actually, I came here to take on a request instead.”
“Hmm, good, good. There happens to be an interesting request that might just suit your taste… Thirteen, could you cover for me here for a moment?”
Perhaps because he was such a regular, Thirteen responded with a chuckle and a nod of understanding. However, it seemed he had no intention of taking on the barista role; instead, he simply leaned against one side of the counter and looked to be planning to either shoo away any customers or tell them to wait.
Tudor saw this and gave Thirteen a slight nod before gesturing for me to follow her into the office.
“And there’s a proposition for you.”
“What kind of proposition?”
“That….How about we discuss that privately inside, just between the two of us?”
Tudor said with a wink.
As soon as we entered the office and sat down, Tudor began by addressing the settlement.
Despite having been through a whirlwind of adventures, including defeating the dancers in Tanhyeon with Jang Hyeon-deok, meeting the King in Yellow, and extracting the gold from the dancers, the last real quest I officially completed involved eliminating ghouls and a ghoul shaman in the basement of that apartment complex in Munsan.
“As I mentioned before, Yeonam Construction is very satisfied. It seems the cleanup was very thorough, wasn’t it?”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})“I didn’t do a sloppy job.”
“Right, and that’s why there was a bonus.”
“A bonus?”
“Yes, a bonus. Just a moment.”
Tudor paused momentarily and tapped away at her keyboard. The sight of a witch wearing a wide-brimmed cone hat conducting a bank transfer on a computer screen….It was funny no matter how many times I saw it.
“There, transfer complete. Do you have a banking app on your smartphone? Or rather, are you familiar with the concept of applications?”
“…I know them.”
“The image of a mage hidden behind such a mask and managing bank transactions on a smartphone is funny every time I see it.”
Whether Tudor read my mind or it was merely a coincidence, I felt somewhat caught off guard. But I played along with Tudor’s joke while checking my smartphone.
One hundred and eighty million won.
Given that my account originally held exactly one hundred million won, it was eighty million won that had been deposited this time.
“That’s quite generous. A bonus of thirty million won is indeed something to be thankful for.”
“You don’t sound happy at all though.”
“No, I’m happy. Money is always good.”
Although I spent nearly a week bedridden, I worked one night and earned eighty million won.
It seemed I was beginning to become insensitive to the value of money.
My indifference was partly due to the cursed gems that were currently piled up in my room. They were difficult to dispose of, but if I could, they would be worth several times the amount of money currently in my bank account.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})“If a mage of your caliber was interested in money, you wouldn’t be taking risky fixer jobs; you’d be doing something else.”
“Well, I won’t deny that.”
“What would it take to please you, I wonder?”
Tudor said this as she took a half-reclined position on the desk while looking up at me. Though I sometimes forget, her beauty stat is a 20. It’s considered transcendental. If it weren’t for my magic talent and some other traits that came with it, if I was still the ordinary twenty-something working from home Kim Shin-hwa from before coming to this world, I would have been completely frozen in my place and unable to utter a single word.
“For me, the story you told me yesterday is enough. It’s a request I’m genuinely interested in.”
“Hmm, alright. Since we’re done talking about money, shall we move on to discussing the new job?”
With that, Tudor handed me a thick file.
When I flipped through the cover and checked his first page, I saw a photo attached.
The photo depicted an old hospital surrounded by numerous trees, with a very large mountain visible in the background.
A hospital, trees, and a mountain.
Identifying the location based solely on these keywords was no easy task, yet I recognized the mountain in the photo. It was a place I had visited several times throughout the game.
It was Gamaksan Mountain, the tallest mountain in Paju.
And there, set against this mountain, was the dilapidated and aged abandoned hospital.
It finally came out.
I had been waiting for this.
This was it.
This very reason was one among many for why I specifically chose Tudor out of the numerous brokers operating in Paju.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})The first fixed quest provided by Tudor.
[The Abandoned Hospital of Gamaksan].
From the outside, this building might look merely like an abandoned structure that had lost its owner, but if you look closely, you can find something odd about it. The neglect was only superficial.
For a place supposedly left to decay, the windows were too clean, and the glimpses of the interior seen through the windows were too orderly.
At this point, I wanted to declare that I knew enough and rush off to Gamaksan Mountain, but that would be getting ahead of myself. Given the already present subtle doubts in Tudor’s manner towards me, I couldn’t act as if I knew everything about a job I was seeing for the first time.
So I had to talk to Tudor about the request.
“Looks like a rundown hospital, doesn’t it? Where is this place?”
Tudor peered into my mask with a curious smile. What is she thinking? Soon Tudor’s mouth opened.
“This is a place called Gamaksan Mountain. Are you familiar with it?”
“I’ve heard of the mountain; that’s about it. So?”
“It’s the tallest mountain in Paju. Besides that, it’s a mountain rich with resources for mages and psychics, so it might be worth exploring while you’re there.”
Indeed, in the world of [Cthulhu World], Gamaksan was known for such traits. If you wandered around carefully, you could even find elixirs and sites that enhance magical power alongside several altars for the descent of spirits and mythical beings.
When I nonchalantly nodded my head, Tudor continued speaking slowly.
“On the outside, it’s just an old abandoned building, but in reality, it’s still being maintained by its owner. There was even an incident where a ghost stories streamer was trying to explore the abandoned building but he was caught and chased away by the building manager.”
“That’s funny. A building like this has a full-time manager guarding it?”
Tudor smiled at my remark.
“Exactly, the reason this building looks like it’s ruined is because the owner wanted it to look that way.”
“There must be something valuable hidden inside, then?”
“But recently, a problem arose. Some newcomers have suddenly occupied the abandoned hospital where that precious thing is hidden under the pretext of exercising lien rights.”
Lien rights. This is a common occurrence in real life, but in the [Cthulhu World], a special setting was added to it. For example, like what’s written in this file folder…
“It’s written here that these aren’t just newcomers; they’re a force composed of psychics and mutants.”
“Right. While there is a bit of a tangle in the legal rights, these folks aren’t genuinely entitled to exercise any lien rights; they’re merely thugs.”
“It seems we’re in a situation that can’t be resolved through law and common sense, then?”
“Indeed, a team was sent from elsewhere before, but none have returned. That’s how the story unfolds. And so, after much circling, they’ve come to this point. The fee for the job is 120 million Won.”
With 180 million in the account, adding 120 million would make it exactly 300 million, wouldn’t it?
As Tudor had pointed out earlier, the amount didn’t particularly excite me. What concerned me more was whether this was the end of it.
The reason I was waiting for the [Abandoned Hospital of Gamaksan] wasn’t because of money, so it wouldn’t matter if this was all there was to it…
But the content of the [Abandoned Hospital of Gamaksan] that I remembered and the contents of the request when it was linked to Tudor didn’t end there. I acted like I was wondering if there was something more that I hadn’t caught onto yet and asked Tudor.
“Is that all? Just go and knock out everyone I see there?”
Sure enough, Tudor winked at me and continued.
“Haha, if it were just a simple eviction request, there would be many others besides you to handle it.”
Yes, it had to be this way. The quest harbored several more pieces of hidden information.
When I nodded my head and showed interest, Tudor continued speaking with a proud expression on her face.
“After taking on this request, I couldn’t shake off this feeling… So, before introducing it to you, I decided to dig a little deeper.”
“Seems there’s some hidden information, then?”
“Exactly. The client provided overly detailed information about the psychics here. Ah, that information is attached towards the end of the document. Anyway, ahem. But for all that, all the people mentioned here were faces I didn’t recognize.”
Though I already knew all this content, the way she presented it made it engaging.
“Hmm, unknown faces? And then?”
“Upon further investigation, it turned out that this place was never a hospital to begin with.”
Tudor declared this shocking revelation as if announcing a major discovery. That’s right. This wasn’t a hospital, but a research facility. A laboratory that was secretly conducting human experiments.
And in Paju, there’s only one group famous for such deeds.
“This is one of the secret research facilities under the auspices of Helistic.”
Yes, them.
This hospital in Gamaksan was similar to the secret research facility where I had awakened.
“The mutants and psychics occupying the hospital are actually test subjects who underwent unique procedures at that laboratory. That said, they are far from ordinary individuals.”
When I signed a contract with Tudor, I made it clear that I would not engage in affairs involving ordinary people.
And just like Tudor said, these were neither ordinary citizens nor innocent victims. Most of Helistic’s test subjects were generally criminals or death row inmates much like Lee Chang-hyuk.
These were people who led such shitty lives that they voluntarily participated in the experiments for the opportunity to strengthen their bodies. Beating up such scoundrels was something I could do without hesitation.
“Hmm, alright. Let’s proceed.”
[Quest accepted!
<Base Capture Quest: The Abandoned Hospital in Gamaksan>
Subdue all the psychics occupying the abandoned hospital and restore the facility to a ‘safe’ condition.
Remaining Targets: 0/58
Reward: 750,000 XP + 180,000,000 Won
Failure Penalty: Death]
The quest details became clear. The mission would be complete once all 58 test subjects were subdued.
Subduing 58 test subjects… It wasn’t impossible, but it certainly wouldn’t be easy. Although there were far fewer of them compared to ghouls, these people were not mindless creatures that charged forward. Moreover, among them were individuals as troublesome as the ghoul shaman.
But there was a compelling reason for me to undertake this quest.
If things went smoothly, this quest could potentially unravel some of the mysteries of this world that had been plaguing me. Even if that were not the case, there were items that could only be obtained from this place.
When I was about to get up with these thoughts in mind, Tudor held me back.
“Dear, may I make a proposition before you leave?”
“A proposition? Oh, right, you said something like that earlier.”
“I had reserved the request especially for you, but someone showed interest in this mission before you arrived today.”
“And?”
“How about you two team up for this? I think you’ll like it.”
“Like it? Why would you think that?”
“Because the fixer I’m about to introduce to you is this person.”
Tudor handed me a photo.
This was a frontal photo of a fixer.
Bleached long hair, a bright red leather jacket, a small face whose age is hard to guess, and a huge zanbato sword that seemed like it came out of manhwa.
“That’s Curtain Call.”
