Vol 6 Chapter 27

Soon, an engine sound close to an explosion startled people passing by on the street, followed by a screaming "Vroom!" as the man on the motorcycle shot out, accelerating hard onto the road. The sky, gradually darkening, was immersed in the lingering glow of the last sunset.

After driving for quite a while in a manner that could only be described as rough, Jin Je-hwan left the metropolitan area for a city and passed by the massive rehabilitation hospital visible from afar, heading towards a residential area on the opposite side of the road not far from there.

By now, it was completely dark, with only the crimson streetlights and the motorcycle's headlight illuminating the way ahead. Around this time, Je-hwan finally slowed down, stopping his motorcycle next to a villa and looking up.

Although his face, gazing at the light seeping out from a house on the not-too-distant first floor, still looked cold, it seemed somewhat drained of energy. Standing in the shadow of a blind spot that couldn't possibly be seen from the window of that house, Je-hwan stared blankly at that white light for a long time.

He tried to take a step, thinking of moving a few times, but in the end, he couldn't move and remained rooted to the spot as if nailed there.

Je-hwan knew all too well who lived in that house.

The house where a pale-faced man with a limp in his right leg lived. Yet no one held as much significance to Je-hwan as that man.

Am I a fool? Je-hwan quietly asked himself. Perhaps he was. Just a few hours ago, when he had rushed out of this house, his chest had been scorched by a flame he had never felt before in his life, groaning from the burn. He had expected to be in pain, clinging to that wound for at least a month.

But why was he standing here now? Moreover, filled not with pain, but with anxiety and worry.

The information Jin Seo-hwan had mentioned at the end was undoubtedly about that man living in this house, Kang Mu-heon. Je-hwan hadn't heard anything about Yoon Seok-ho sending something to Mu-heon a year ago, but all the other information matched surprisingly well.

He was the only man who lived in this city near the rehabilitation hospital, played THE MIST, and had been in contact with Yoon Seok-ho. Because Kang Mu-heon held the most important position among THE MIST's main quest users, and was also the only person Je-hwan knew who was actually using a special access capsule.

That capsule, THE MIST's special capsule for people with disabilities, had been prominently featured when THE MIST first appeared, but was conveniently forgotten after the service started. In fact, rather than being forgotten, Saturn had probably maneuvered to prevent the media from covering it, but the public, who forget things that don't appear in the media, just thought of it as "Oh, there was such a thing" and didn't try to find out more details.

In reality, no one who played using the special capsule had ever appeared, and it was impossible to find out about them. Je-hwan's shock when he learned that Mu-heon was a user of it was greater than he had expected.

Je-hwan recalled once again the information about Saturn that he had investigated many times before.

Saturn had started as a small software company. As the company grew, it developed various VT software and related devices for games, medical use, and home use, riding the trends well and growing significantly. But after growing to a certain size, they cut off all side branches and focused their efforts on investing intensively in one area. This concentrated investment strategy succeeded, and now they had become a world-renowned major corporation.

Saturn's chairman's family was famously of Korean descent, but currently, the consensus was that the old chairman's position was quite precarious due to the board of directors. However, recently, when the chairman, who had not been showing his presence, suddenly revived the ghost game department called Saturn GS and released THE MIST, which became a huge hit, the chairman's faction regained strength, leading to a tense standoff with the board of directors' faction over the company's power structure.

At the center of this, there were four people known publicly as the core development leaders of THE MIST, the hot potato. However, one of them was missing, two were in the United States, and the remaining one was Yoon Seok-ho, who had been appointed as the new head of Saturn's Korean branch.

Due to its revolutionary nature, various industries were eyeing the game system intently. The medical VT industry was vocal about why such new technology was being used for mere games, while the VT network business industry was salivating just at the development of a more realistic VT experience. And the ones most fiercely targeting THE MIST's new technology were the VT game companies that were about to starve to death as their livelihood was disappearing right now.

Everyone wanted to dig up information on THE MIST's new technology, and there were rumors that the number of spies who had jumped in for this purpose might be enough to populate a city, with a bit of exaggeration. It was only natural for Saturn to defend against this, as all the notable figures had been deployed to obtain this new technology, but due to their recent internal conflicts intensifying, they couldn't properly respond at the company level.

In the end, it was no exaggeration to say that Yoon Seok-ho, one of the top developers who had been promoted to the highest position overseeing everything, was the only one holding the front line of defense.

Nevertheless, THE MIST had been running without any apparent problems so far. It was truly amazing.

Initially, Je-hwan hadn't intended to work so hard on THE MIST-related tasks. He had accepted the job request simply because he had nothing better to do during the downtime when his maternal grandfather wasn't giving him work, and he couldn't have imagined that the strange quest he had obtained by chance at the beginning was actually part of the main quest. He had even considered giving up the quest because it seemed bothersome.

However, if asked now whether he could do that again, the answer would be a firm NO.