Chapter 41

Senator

He let out a warning that he already knew who I was to ensure that I didn’t make any sketchy moves.

He was trying to start a conversation after inserting some pressure. I looked at the old man in front of me.

‘Edward Danton.’

Although his popularity was low due to little media coverage, he was a well-known figure between politicians and business people.

As the head of the Danton family, who had invested in various fields such as steel, oil, finance, and IT since the 1800s, he was currently focusing on companies related to the processing of dungeon by-products and production of related products.

‘That is what is exposed to the light, and in the dark, he’s running a pretty big sideline.‘

On the other hand, very few people in this era called him the Senator.

In the United States, hunter, dungeon, and gate-related things were grouped into National Defense categories and must be approved by the senate. Also, Danton lived in D.C. and mobilized numerous lobbyists behind the scenes to influence the legislation to pass in the way he wanted it to. His attempt was almost successful.

‘In the process, of course, the votes are divided, but the result alone was going to go his way.’

It meant that he was the only real Senator, making a hundred senators move as he wished on that subject alone, and so the personnel of the black market named him with respect.

His lobbying direction was to lower state restrictions and regulatory hurdles on dungeon artifacts. Since the research lab or the federal government would hold onto the item for too long until the item’s stability and performance were proven, he recommended to send it to the dungeon in the hands of hunters.

Meanwhile, he also planned the first black market to secretly trade such items and visit hunters.

“If I’m gone from here, then the Celestial Dragon wouldn’t stay still.”

“That’s a pun that’s not even funny. Things that can’t even track you will very well find out where and who you died to.”

Indeed, the black market in Korea did not seem to have contacted Celestial Dragon separately. Oh Jin-Hwa knew who I was but kept her mouth shut.

“Wasn’t your belief that we should train more Awakens and increase their power as soon as possible? In preparation for the worst case of the collapse of an S-Class or SS-Class dungeon, or even… higher class dungeons that may appear and collapse. I’m a hunter, too, and you threaten even to kill me as soon as you meet me.”

“Since I’m much more important than a Hunter like you. And you’ve been tracking what I’m doing behind the scenes. You may be from an influential guild in Korea, but as an individual, you’re an E-class, and I don’t know where you heard the rumor and how the story spread, but don’t worry. I’ll find where it leaked out and clean it up. You got four minutes left.”

He must be stir-frying Korean information lines like crazy.

‘Although no matter how hard he may flip things over, nothing will come out.’

I didn’t care about the threat for him to kill me in four minutes.

He looked at the metal box next to me. A bodyguard inspected it before entering the building. Danton, who was informed in advance, would be itching to hear an explanation about that.

You couldn’t kill someone that way.

“You should listen to the explanation before you kill me.”

“There’s also a choice of torture to extract the information, and kill you.”

“Torture tends to produce answers that perpetrators want to hear rather than telling the truth. Anyway, let’s cut back on the introduction.”

I opened the box, and Danton’s eyes widened. It contained Ersmann’s severed corpse, especially the head.

It was perfectly preserved, almost as if it had just died. It was collected separately from the evidence collected from the Okcheon dungeon to be submitted to the government.

“Hmm…”

Danton could not hide the interest on his face.

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He noticed at a glance, the identity of the corpse that the bodyguard had not seen.

“That’s the foreign race corpse that was recently obtained from Korea.”

“Yes. It’s almost the same type as the one found in the 12th Dungeon in New York.”

The ones encountered at Okcheon dungeon were born from eggs of an individual named Leah, and the ones from the New York dungeon were the children of Geruit. It looked a little different, but Danton understood that it was the same species.

When he saw it, Danton leaned slightly forward. Now, we could talk.

“What about the Korean government?”

The question was whether the government was aware that I brought this here.

“Of course, they don’t know.”

“What about the guild?”

“They don’t know.”

“Are you saying you’re here solely as a private person?”

“Yes, at this moment, I do not represent the Korean government nor the Celestial Dragon Guild. I’m proposing to negotiate as an individual named Seo Jin-wook.”

“To give you the right to do business with me?”

“That’s right.”

Danton usually dealt with black markets around the world that were linked. To make a deal as an individual meant that one could make a deal with items and information on par with a single market.

In fact, some hunters had such qualifications in the future. Angelica was an example of it. Their encounter was ostensibly seen as a meeting between the Guild Master and an investor, but deep down, they met to exchange items and information.

Of course, I was there, too. I continued the conversation with Edward Danton I had experienced then in mind.

“What’s the benefit of doing business with you? Why do I have to keep talking instead of burying you when a guy, who I have no information about his roots and who hasn’t been in a long-time business, comes forward knowing who I really am?”

He was asking if I had prepared a tempting deal. He was a merchant, after all, even though he had beliefs. I then answered.

“The cockroaches, they’re probably starting to snoop around in the New York dungeon again.”

Danton’s mouth finally caught a smile for the first time.

Instead of the consternation of how I knew it, he had decided that the other person was someone he could talk to, and he was interested in it.

His eyes glistened through the thick wrinkles.

“That’s something the Korean government doesn’t know yet.”

A few months ago, the U.S. government detonated a tactical nuclear weapon in New York’s 12th Dungeon, annihilating the Ersmann there. Since the clear was not over, the gate had not been closed, and since then, continuous exploration had been carried out by hunters in protective suits, and the Ersmann had recently crossed the dungeon border and started to come around again.

The new ones were not affected by radiation at all.

The Ersmann adapted themselves to everything, whether it was poison, temperature, or air pressure. They could survive as long as their body was not entirely fragmented. This time, they were deployed after evolving to overcome radioactivity.

However, there was only one substance that they could not have immunity to. I then spoke, pointing my finger at the head in the box.

“It looks different, doesn’t it? The corpse’s body fluid is as poisonous as the ones in New York dungeons.”

A being that lays eggs among the Ersmann, to base it on Earth’s logic, the qualification to become the ‘queen’ was the ability to produce a unique chemical. The substance, which flowed in Ersmann’s body fluid as soon as they hatched, acted as a poison to individuals with different genetic information.

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Furthermore, Leah was a much older being than Geruit, so the eggs’ rate was slow, but the poisons were highly toxic. In other words, the children of ‘Geruit’ who appeared in the New York dungeon would die if they were exposed to the fluid of the children of ‘Leah’ that I brought. It was impossible to respond without indefinitely preparing detox artifacts.

That was why Ersmann, who had no qualms about eating civilized tribes, fought a war between their bloodlines and avoided eating each other as much as possible.

“Poison, that was?”

“Yes, it’s a poison that they can’t develop immunity to. Leave it to the researchers how to extract body fluids from this corpse and to process them. I don’t know about that either.”

Actually, I knew a little bit, but I shut up because I thought providing too much detail would cause more suspicion.

“We’ll need proof.”

Now there was no countdown mentioned in his mouth, saying there were a few minutes left. Whether what I said was true or not, the items and information I brought got his attention.

Now, Danton would send the sample through the back door of the Pentagon. After a few intermediate steps, the entire corpse would be handed over to the appropriate guild.

“Yes, I’ll be waiting.”

There was nothing to gain from holding on to the corpse, and it was enough to use it as a means of trading.

If they stayed as they were, the U.S. government would eventually not be able to stop some of the Ersmann from escaping the New York gate. In the absence of a dungeon key, it was helpless for them to block the gate with all sorts of means and obstacles.

Those who had such immunity to radioactivity as an option would even lay eggs in New York. Since they moved away from the queen’s pheromone, which prevented reproductive development, they would start breeding as soon as they escaped from the dungeon’s hostile environment.

For some time, they transformed New York City into a human hunting ground for the Ersmann. Many hunters had died to exterminate them.

It was not my wish to recreate that history.

“Well, what do you want?”

He knew that I didn’t come here simply to get the right to trade. I spoke about the things that I didn’t direly need first.

“I’m looking for an item that looks like this.”

I put on the hologram. It was an artifact that I reproduced as similarly as possible based on my memory.

It was a statue depicting a creature that did not exist on Earth.

Danton tilted his head.

“Do you have any features that you could describe other than the looks?

“No. This shape, luster, and color are important.”

There was no particular function in this product. It was not a weapon, and it was not a shield. It was an ornament made by a race to commemorate something.

And so, even after it was found in the dungeon, it was traded among the collectors who gathered them as a hobby, so I didn’t know who owned it at this point.

In the past life, by the time that Randy got his hands on the magic sword, that was not available anymore, so I had to find it in advance.

Danton’s network of information could find it out since it was from a gate in the U.S.

“What are you going to use it for?”

I just laughed without answering. What I needed was the metal that made up that statue.

I was going to melt it as soon as I had it.

‘Since I can’t always listen to all the babbles of the magic sword.‘

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Danton spoke sullenly, “Anyway, hand over the data. Is that the only thing?”

“No, there’s one more thing.”

I asked, “Do you also have shares in a company called ‘Decker & Jefferson’?”

Danton frowned. “No, there’s something a little dubious about that.”

This guy had smelled it, too.

“Have you dug in?”

“No, I don’t think it’s worth it at this stage. Do you know anything?”

Instead, he tried to dig up information from me for any rumors I have heard. I lived up to the expectations.

“Soon, if the IRS and the Department of Defense will work together to find more about the company intensively, I think there will be interesting results.”

Danton raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how many businesses the company owns and how many subsidiaries there are?”

“It’s enough to shake down the headquarters for now. The subject is…”

I had better narrow it down.

“There will be interesting information on research that could give non-Awakens the effects of healing potions found in dungeons.”

I was trying to make a deal with Danton because of this, after all.

First of all, I would be going around to get the items that were considered necessary in the future. That was the case with the magic sword.

However, when those rank down to a secondarily important thing, it would be challenging to get my hands on it by going around the world even if I had more colleagues later on. That could be achieved through Danton.

And another thing, those too crucial for me to be less than of any other priorities, but I couldn’t figure it out by myself.

When I needed to shake off information against a large organization or company, I needed a backup.

Now was the time.

“Will it be possible?”

“Wait for the call. I will check the corpse first, and if what you say is true, I’ll drop in some words.”

For Danton, it was simple to produce and leak fake letters or fabricated evidence to a connected a congressman.

Only then did I smile satisfactorily.

‘I’ll see him soon.’

Not long ago, when I commissioned my old colleague’s whereabouts, I found out that three people, except Angelica, were born in this era. Unlike the fact that Choi Seung-hyun’s existence had been wiped out.

However, one of them had noticeable additions.

‘Nathan Drake. He is 19 years old as he was alive. Specifics: No trace has been found since he went missing ten years ago.’

Nate.

One of the last five, and was later called ‘Necromancer.’

He had no recollection of where he had been locked up in the past. Even when he was moving somewhere, his view was blocked entirely.

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The U.S. government would now find out about the information that would serve as a clue.