| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 3899 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2556 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
“Since my parents are coming today, I’ll go ask if I can stay in your home for a bit longer and come back.”
After receiving news that her parents had returned from their long overseas holiday, Katalina said she’d go ask her parents for permission to stay longer, when she should be asking the house owner instead.
“Can’t you just do it by phone?”
“Uh, I can’t. I’m sure my father will tell me that I stayed too long at your place so he’ll tell me to come back, and mom will probably support him on that. I have to go there and cry… I mean, I have to properly persuade my father to let him give me permission.”
I could almost imagine what the situation would be like in my mind. Still, I’m sure they’ll let Katalina stay here since parents were weak to their children’s pleas. If they won’t let her, she may even threaten to move out of the house or something.
“Alright, good luck with that then.”
“Yep, I’m always super welcome to your good luck wishes!”
Saying that, Katalina kissed me lightly on my cheek and she waved her hand at me as she went out. Though she had done it just as a way of saying bye, I couldn’t help but have a slight blush on my face every time.
I was wondering if I should go and hang out with Esther who should be on night duty right now. But then I had to consider the fatigue and thought that it was a good idea to make sure the fatigue meter was full in preparation for the war, which there wasn’t much time left.
If the enemy were smart enough, they would stop fighting against each other and put creating an alliance as the top priority, but it didn’t seem like that would easily be the case.
Though the main forces of those guilds fighting each other were also a big part of the problem, the vice guild leader of Zenon guild and many high ranking officers died due to Tiara’s successful assassination, so there was no way that such conflict could be resolved easily.
Vrrrmmm.
Hearing the sudden ringing of the phone, I looked at the phone set down on the table. I picked it up, trying to calm down the noisy phone from ringing continuously.
Who called me? I stared at the phone screen questioningly.
0717-****-****
Though the number wasn’t one that was saved already, it was a familiar number so I took the call.
“This is Elizabeth, who is this?”
[Ah, greetings, Duchess Elizabeth. I’m Cartel, the one who’s taking care of the request that you’ve put in previously.]“The request?”
[The… request that you’ve put in for me to investigate this ‘Lee Ha Yeon’ person in Korea.]“Ah!!”
Only then was I able to realize why I was familiar with this number. I was so busy with a number of things that I had forgotten to save it as a contact number on my phone.
[It seems you remember now. I’ve completed most of the summary investigation on her, and I’m contacting you before I go into detailed investigation on her. I’ve already sent you the interim report so you can check it in your spare time.]“Okay then. Oh yes, actually!”
[Yes, please go ahead.]“I’d like to have some bodyguards protect ‘Lee Ha Yeon’ wherever she goes.”
[Bodyguards you say? Well, that’s not too hard. But just how much security are you wishing to have on her?]“Please make it so that it’s on a similar level with mine.”
I felt that the only way I could feel at ease was if she was receiving the same or similar amount of security at her side protecting her.
[Hm! Duchess Elizabeth, I’m afraid that’s impossible.]“Impossible?”
I spoke bluntly, slightly annoyed by him saying it was impossible.
[I apologize if you feel annoyed, but Korea is a nation where carrying guns is not something that’s easily achievable. On top of that it’s even more difficult to keep an armored and weapon-loaded helicopter on standby here as well.]Armed helicopter? I never heard that I had such a thing on standby. But considering that it was the head of the intelligence committee that takes care of all security information, he must be speaking the truth.
Because the amount of knowledge I had on my own security was only on the surface level with no time to spare in order to figure out everything about it in detail, it may have been something obvious. Though it was definitely illegal to keep an armed helicopter in possession, for someone with such high power and status in the country, getting over that law is just like jumping over a waist-high fence.
[Not only that, the bodyguards that serve you are composed of elite veteran forces with at least 10 years of experience in battlefields so it’s not easy to hire people with such experience here. Your highness is famous for having the security detail that’s on par with the security that follows the nation’s leaders of powerful countries like America or Russia after all.]“Hmm…”
I had to think for a bit. I figured out it was the reason why there were strangely so many expenses even though the family name didn’t directly control and run any giant corporations. Then I realized that the reason why the family coffers still hadn’t run out even with such large continuous expenses was because of the fact that we had an astronomical amount of wealth as well as numerous interests acquired all around the world.
We actually owned over 20% in stock over a good number of global-sized companies, and there were a fair amount of companies that are basically like our puppets with over 50% of their stocks being owned by us. I’m sure that if I were to look through the related documents even more, there may be more companies that I had overlooked which should be in a similar category.
But frankly, I didn’t want to directly involve myself all the way over there as well. It was because there were already asset managers who were much more knowledgeable than me in that department and law firms that are managing the contracts and the household’s assets.
There’s even a separate audit firm that works together with us, and periodically we invite external law firms and taxation people to study and keep an eye out for any discrepancies and problems that may exist within.
On top of that, my grandfather’s will also mentioned a bank account in Switzerland that had more than enough bonds and cash assets that would allow me to bring up the family to its glory again should it be unlucky and fall to ruin somehow.
[So as a result, the level of guards that are escorting your highness is not only unachievable in Korea, but everywhere in such a short amount of time.]“If that’s the case, I would like to request that you put the best possible guard team you could in escorting her.”
If I cannot have the best-case scenario for her, I should put at least the second-best one for her.
[That would be no problem for me. I promise you that she will receive the security level that wealthy CEOs receive in Korea.]“Thank you.”
I felt that it was enough. It wasn’t like she had made any nemesis, and there were no assassins aiming for her life anyways.
[Then I will contact you again next time, your highness.]And so the call ended. Remembering that he had sent me an email, I hurriedly moved over to the table where the PC was and sat down.
Waiting for a moment to let the computer boot up, I then logged into my email service automatically and saw there was a new email that I received which had his name on it.
I thought it would be somewhat written like a summary, but the report was quite long and more detailed than I thought. Not only were all the details about her anatomy written there, but it also listed the size of her wealth, the routes she takes every day, and even what she was currently doing these days. All the details that I wanted were all written there.
As the information was all in relation to my little sister, I couldn’t skip past even a single letter. Since it hurts my eyes to read the whole thing on the computer, I printed the whole thing out which reached over 20 pages in length.
Moving over to the sofa, I began to carefully read the report. At first, I felt pain for her, then sadness, then afterward happiness and surprise. And finally, I was very worried for her.
“Sigh… that girl went all the way to Las Vegas?”
As my little sister was someone who’s always realistic and logical in her way of thinking, seeing her act that way was extremely shocking. When I saw that she took one million dollars in seed money and grew it to close to 60 million dollars by betting, I couldn’t tell whether I should cry or laugh about that fact.
I thought about what she would have done if she were to have lost all that money, and there was only one answer to that question.
“I should be thankful to the gods.”
Though I always resented the gods in the sky, for today I gave an honest thank to them for this luck she received. It seemed like Ha Yeon was truly determined to go to Las Vegas thinking that she will take her own life after betting away all of her money. Yes, I admit that I was being very selfish as well. If Ha Yeon were to have lost all of the money and took her own life, I would have never been able to forgive myself.
“To think that me making her never play Blue Sky would have resulted in her being guided to play Blue Sky in the end…”
I realized the fact that my efforts in trying to make sure she doesn’t fall for that world had in the end took the opposite effect when I had disappeared from her life.
The world of Blue Sky was equivalent to being addicted to a hardcore drug. It may be different if they never experienced it even once, but if they had tried it even just a little bit or experienced it, it was hard to fight off the urge to wanting to keep playing it. The government in China once declared the Blue Sky game as harmful to health, but a large number of high ranking government officials and leaders had fallen deep into the game already, leading to the situation where the majority of the people disregarded the regulation, and this fact was well known throughout the world.
It was a very volatile situation where the 2nd Tiananmen Square incident could have occurred, so you could tell that just how fierce the opposition would have been if the government were to be strict in their enforcement.
Which is why I didn’t want Ha Yeon to step into that world, but…
“Sigh…”
On the other hand, it was fine for her to delve into the world of Blue Sky as well. It wasn’t like she can harm herself by playing for 24 hours straight since there was a fatigue system within the game. The players of Blue Sky actually actively put in the effort to improve their health condition and participate in society more so that they can have a better time playing the Blue Sky game, so it wasn’t like it was all bad.
But what I was worried about is that in the Korean server of Blue Sky, my character had relationships with others that weren’t on strictly good terms and I was also worried about how she will be able to handle the large guilds pressuring her constantly.
Since my character was quite famous for having great control over the character as well as unique fame, which meant that many guilds constantly and persistently kept bothering me to join their guild.
In the case of large guilds in the Korean server, often the guilds that were made for farming gold grew big enough to become a self-sufficient large guild, and these guilds treated even high ranked users as nothing but tools for their use. They would put them to use on siege battles and other guild wars until they died or have not much use any more, then they would just kick them out or dispose of them in the end.
Since quite a number of high-ranked users disappeared in that fashion, I did my best to make sure I never join any particular guilds. But I knew very well that such path is not an easy one to take.
First, there aren’t that many good hunting grounds to make use of, and I had to always be careful of other guilds trying to threaten me. I would sometimes receive attempts at my life by assassins, so every day that I played Blue Sky back then was like walking on ice.
If it wasn’t for the guild leader of Phoenix, ‘Sing Ha’, I may have ended up not being able to endure the harassment. The Phoenix guild was different at least in that it was built by Sing Ha himself who belonged to the wealthy class of people, and though his personality was slightly different to me and I can’t quite say that he’s a ‘very generous guild master’, he knew the limits in how far people should go which helped me survive for so long.
But since the Phoenix guild is still a group made to look for profit in the end, for any mid to high ranking user, it was better to just not be in any guild at all. At the least, you wouldn’t be dragged off to a dismal guild war that you had no chance of surviving after all.
That was how seriously bad the competition and scheming were in the Korean Blue Sky server. Well, it would be hard to deny the fact that the unique Korean nature of aggressively not wanting to lose to anyone contributed heavily to that way of thinking.
“Even so, I’m severely limited in how much I can go out helping Ha Yeon in Blue Sky right away at this time.”
In Blue Sky, by design, there are a lot of limitations in how you are able to help out the character in the game through real life. Though hostile takeover of the sponsor companies for those large guilds is one factor that can help out, it’d only have an indirect effect, and I still wouldn’t be able to help her directly, which she needs right now.
Though being competitive was also important, in the world of Blue Sky, the most important thing was simply strength and power.
“I guess I’ll just have to hope that the Korea server becomes unified as soon as possible.”
In the end, it becomes a powerful motivator for me in wanting to finish off this war that I had planned2.
