Chapter 167

Chapter 167

“Sniffle… Sniff…”

After her father died, Eunhye always cried. She was afraid of everything. She was terrified of her mother, and she was terrified of the man who her mother had brought as her father-in-law. Most of all, she was afraid of her father in law’s lingering eyes, which seemed to want to devour her, and trembled whenever his hands had a chance to grope her body.

She tried asking her mother for her help, but instead of protecting Eunhye, her mother stared at her with judging eyes. Eunhye didn’t know then, but now, she knew what her mother’s look meant. Eunhye’s mother looked at Eunhye with eyes full of jealousy, as Eunhye became the woman who had stolen her man.

“Don’t worry, Eunhye. It’s just play. You’ll be having fun with dad. So much fun~”

Eunhye was afraid. Everything was terrifying and disgusting. It was not a superhero nor a god, but a boy of the same age that saved her from the living hell that her biological father had often told her about.

“It’ll be fine.”

With a carefree attitude, he saved her from the depths of despair. With a child’s body, he had taken down an adult, and afterward, neither her mother nor father-in-law could look straight into his eyes. Eunhye always followed Yongno around, and Yongno always protected her.

Ting!

As the dark surroundings began to change, she continued with her thoughts. Yes, it was probably from then. She realized then that she would do anything for him.

Step.

As Eunhye took a step forward, a human shadow approached her from the dark. It was a shadow with a body shape like Eunhye’s. However, the peculiar thing was that only the shadow’s two eyes could be seen through the black leather armor that enwrapped the shadow figure.

“Arc Ilensia.”

After Eunhye quietly murmured, the shadow figure in front of her suddenly started fading away. Then, Eunhye’s body started to change. The full body armor that the shadow had been wearing was now on her.

“Start.”

While breathing regularly and closing her eyes, Eunhye was no longer Oh Eunhye. She was now a member of the Blackyak Sect, a practitioner of the No Thoughts Gold Strong Technique, and one of six Master level users in DIO. She was now Arc Ilensia.

***

“Welcome back to the Exchange Center, Merlin. Are you done with the recent event?”

“Yeah. Can I go straight to the Illusory Area?”

“Sure thing.”

With the help of Ellen, the purple haired woman who had the title [Exchange Center Assistant], Merlin moved directly to the Illusory Area, the space where flying shuttles were sold. The space was extremely large, as if it possessed its own heaven and earth. Large gemstones littered the surroundings like trees while the ground was composed of blue gem tiles.

“Did you gather enough gem points? You said last time you had 10,000, but you stated you were planning to obtain more.”

“Yeah, I gathered a bit more.”

“Anyway, I’m a bit surprised. I figured you’d be participating in the fourth fishing event.”

“There’s a fourth fishing event?”

“It was publicly announced. Seems like you didn’t have time to check. You haven’t seen the message, have you?”

“I was logged out. One second.”

After stating this, Merlin took out his Beholder from his inventory.

/DIO (Dynamic Island Online), a fantasy world no one has ever seen before!

Welcome to this exciting island!

In relation to today’s event, the following patches shall be applied as of January 29th.

– A fourth wave of gem fish are appearing. We welcome any users who haven’t yet had a chance to participate in the event.

1. The fourth wave of gem fish will be 1.5x the size of the previous waves.

2. The various schools of gem fish will appear 20 kilometers apart at the same time. We received various comments and messages regarding [Merlin Emrys], but we have found that the user has not broken any rules, so no penalty will be placed on the user. However, for the enjoyment of all other users, Merlin Emrys shall not be participating in this fourth wave event.

We will try our best not to cause any inconvenience to the service.

Thank you./

After reading the contents of the announcement, Merlin broke out into a smile.

‘I never heard of such a ban being placed on me, but to state that I’m banned.’

However, the important aspect of the announcement was that his ID was specifically mentioned, unlike the previous event announcements; this meant that the developers were probably willing to use force to block him from participating. The public announcement was most likely a warning to let Merlin know that he wasn’t welcome to participate in the upcoming event. If he went against their wishes, Merlin thought that he’d probably anger the developers, or possibly something worse.

“But that makes me want to participate even more.”

Though a bit burdensome, Merlin couldn’t hide his identity as long as he was playing DIO, so he felt that he needed to meet the developers at least once sometime soon. They wouldn’t just kill him off or block his account, right? When Merlin gathered his thoughts and raised his head, Ellen asked a question.

“Anyway, what enhancements were you thinking of?”

“Actually, I want to do production.”

If Merlin planned on purchasing just any flying shuttle, he wouldn’t have needed to gather so many gem points. Of course, the existing offering of flying shuttles could be upgraded to the heavens, costing quite a lot of gem points, but even still, those upgrades wouldn’t have cost as many gem points as what Merlin currently possessed.

Flip.

After Merlin stated that he wanted to go to production, the guidebook flipped its pages and landed on the seventh chapter. He had bypassed the fifth chapter, where one could purchase flying shuttles, and the sixth chapter, where one could upgrade one’s flying shuttle.

Zing.

When Merlin drew a basic frame in his head, a transparent marble resonated, and soon, a line began to be drawn in the air. Ellen’s expression hardened when a few lines of text in the shape of production annotations appeared above the line.

“Oh, wait. If you set the basic armor as Methrinium, the price will balloon out of control…”

Disregarding Ellen’s comment, Merlin continued his design. He wasn’t producing assembly parts or creating part designs like other users; Merlin was making an entire flying shuttle from scratch. Of course, since he couldn’t test out his creation, he’d have to complete the whole process, from blueprinting to creating and testing, in his head.

“It’s a lot more complicated than I thought. Since I need to run through various tests and diagnostic reviews, this’ll probably take me quite some time.”

Though he murmured those words, Merlin wasn’t in a hurry. He had plenty of time.

“What? To put a magic circuit all over the frame of the shuttle, that’s too much… Eh! You’re even utilizing an Aegis system?”

Ellen groaned at the amazing design. She hastily tried to stop Merlin.

“No, wait. 200,000 points have already been consumed just by going this far. What are you thinking? Your design requires an inordinate amount of gem points…”

“Speaking about gem points, I have roughly 2.5 million gem points.”

“W-what? 250 thousand?”

Ellen seemed to have misspoken due to surprise. Merlin calmly reiterated.

“2.5 million. I’m not lacking in gem points, right?”

“…”

After leaving Ellen dumbfounded and speechless, Merlin continued his design. It was going to take quite a while to complete.

***

The scandal around Leaf quickly subsided. No large issue arose since the general public’s consensus on the internet was that Leaf was just an innocent bystander. Leaf didn’t provide sexual favors to high-ranking politicians, nor did she do drugs or have an affair with a married man. She was simply attacked by bad teenagers, so there was no underlying moral issue to get her into trouble.

To be sure, Leaf’s morality was never really the main issue. What mattered was whether she was sexually assaulted by the teenagers or not. Of course, even if she was raped, Leaf would have been innocent of any crime or moral hazard, but the chastity that Korean society demanded of its female idols was a terrifying reality.

Female celebrities who live based on a conjured, manufactured image, especially someone like Leaf who gained appeal with her cuteness, would be put in a dangerous situation if they were to lose their public image; their entertainment career would probably implode overnight, for no fault of their own. Even though this logic seems terribly absurd, this was reality in Korean society.

Of course, news articles didn’t openly state [Leaf Loses Her Virginity] (though there were many news articles that stated just as much), but many news reporters would spin words and cause the enter issue to be more salacious and malicious than it was. The news reporters would write titles that pretended to be concerned for her but create unfounded rumors, like, ‘Public is concerned Leaf might have been raped’ or ‘She should not do anything extreme just because her body has been sullied’. In addition, legally problematic comments such as ‘Leaf’s no longer a virgin’ or ‘Ah, it was bound to happen. Isn’t that the case in the entertainment industry?’ were also posted and easily found underneath those problematic news articles. If the situation wasn’t resolved quickly, Leaf’s public perception would have become unrecoverable.

However, after the unedited video clip was uploaded, the one where Yongno eventually beat up the high school kids and took Leaf away, the problematic news article numbers died down considerably. The whole ten against one fight scene was like something straight out of an action movie; some even went as far as to state that Leaf was ‘creating an action scene on purpose’ or that ‘Leaf is using viral marketing to promote an upcoming action movie or music video’.

“Then, that ten to one scene really happened.”

“I have no comment on that. Please don’t focus on that aspect.”

Seeing Yongno shake his head, the CEO of SH Entertainment, Kim Sunghyun, asked, “Why?”

“I hit them pretty hard… Ah, Leaf, state that you parted ways with me immediately afterward. Tell them that you didn’t catch my name. You don’t want me to be sent to the police office, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Yongno was currently at Sunghyun’s home, where Leaf was hiding. Just to be careful, Yongno had worn his cap down and avoided others when he made his way to Sunghyun’s home. The reason why he did such a cumbersome and somewhat dangerous thing was because of Leaf.

“Anyway, this video clip of Leaf’s legal guardians… they’re truly bad people. I knew their personalities weren’t good, but I never thought it’d be this bad.”

The necklace that Merlin had put around Leaf’s neck was a mini video recording device, and the bracelet was another camera with additional audio features. The video clips captured showed Byunghu and Misun violently hitting Leaf, shouting insults, and threatening her. They truly were ‘caught fish’.

“I believe it’s been a bit crazy with contract negotiations recently. I feel that it would be for the best to emancipate Leaf.”

“If we do that, this evidence will be critical.”

In the eyes of the law, Leaf was an adult, as she was twenty years old. Of course, if Leaf emancipated herself, Byunghu and Misun may be afforded some compensation for their services as Leaf’s legal guardians up to now, but once word got out that they had been siphoning her money and physically beating her, the outcome would completely change.

“Use the video clip to state that you’ve been beaten constantly. You said that they took all your money, so there’s probably going to be a considerable paper trail.”

“W-well, I didn’t really get hit all the time. And as for the money, I don’t really spend money to begin with…”

Leaf tried to be understanding, but this only made Yongno’s eyebrows twitch as he frowned.

“Don’t live like a loser. You’ll be taken advantage of all the time. Do you think you won’t need money for the rest of your life?”

“Don’t worry about the legal proceedings. Our company has an in-house lawyer.”

Sunghyun accepted the USB that Yongno handed over. At that moment, Yongno used Enhanced Eyesight to read Sunghyun’s spiritual qi.

‘He doesn’t seem like a bad guy.’

Unlike others his age, Sunghyun’s spiritual power burned pure and strong; Yongno couldn’t sense anything troubling within it. Since it didn’t seem like Sunghyun had any evil intentions, Yongno decided not to concern himself with Sunghyun.

“Then, I’ll be taking my leave.”

Yongno got up from his seat. He could have sent the USB drive through courier mail, but he expressly came to Sunghyun’s house to use Enhanced Eyesight and figure out Sunghyun’s motives.

“Already? You should eat something with us…”

“No, I’m not hungry anyway. Oh, and I also left a present within the USB, so make sure you access it.”

“A present?”

Instead of answering, Yongno waved his hand and left the house. It was such a simple yet final movement that the two didn’t have a chance to stop him.

“The atmosphere around him has changed.”

“The atmosphere around him?”

Though she had seen Yongno once before the incident, Leaf didn’t notice any changes. She recalled that Yongno was somewhat dark when they first met, but people always wavered between being sad and happy, so Leaf didn’t really think much of it. Leaf had chalked up the difference between Yongno’s first impression and how he acted now as originating from a mood difference, but Sunghyun, whose job it was to read people, noticed a significant difference.

“He changed a lot. It seems he met some sort of crossroads… hmm, I wonder what it was.”

After saying this, Sunghyun went to his PC and plugged in the USB. He was planning on sending out the evidence for the eventual court trial, but when he accessed the USB, a compressed file caught his eye. When he double clicked and opened the compressed file, an image popped up.

“What is it?”

“It looks like sheet music. Is this what he meant by your present?”

Sunghyun read the sheet music. He slowly turned the pages of the sheet music.

“Heh, how considerate of him, but we already have quite a lot of sings in the works right now, right?”

“Also, it’ll be best if you take a break from work after this incident… huh?”

Sunghyun, who had put his hand underneath his chin, and Leaf, who was standing behind Sunghyun, froze in place as their expressions stiffened. Leaf quietly asked, “Uhm, this is kind of good…”

“Quiet.”

Sunghyun got up from his seat. He put on his business suit and sat back down to read the sheet music. In the serious atmosphere, Leaf also quietly focused on reading the sheet music.

Click.

They reviewed the entirety of the sheet music once more, from start to finish. At some point, Leaf started to hum the verses written underneath each line of music. After reading through the entirety of the sheet music, Sunghyun spoke in somewhat of a gasping tone.

“Where did you say he lived again?”