About an hour before now.
The Tube that had left Mid-Land Seoul arrived at Old Earth, that is, the former Earth. From that Tube descended the Shinseong Group's Head of Human Resources, who wore horn-rimmed glasses, and a blonde female team member.
The moment the female team member set foot on the surface, she rubbed the side of her nose with her index finger and grumbled.
"Somehow Old Earth seems to get more run-down as time goes on. The smell alone is rank. Ugh."
A boyish suit.
A narrow tie.
The Shinseong Group badge glittering brightly on her full chest.
Swaying golden bobbed hair.
The woman who possessed the above features looked youthful in the face, yet her manner of speech was that of an old-timer.
Her name was Lee Ru-in.
Her affiliation was the Shinseong Group Human Resources Team.
Her age had become twenty-five this year.
In the world these days, twenty-five carried a special meaning.
Twenty-five years ago from now, in the very year the Great Cataclysm occurred, Lee Ru-in had been born in an obstetrics clinic in Gangnam, Seoul.
In other words, Lee Ru-in was not from Old Earth Seoul, but an NG born in Mid-Land Seoul.
Here, NG was an abbreviation of New Generation, referring to the young people who had come from Mid-Land rather than Earth from the moment of their birth. In other words, it meant the Mid-Land natives aged twenty-five or under.
Of course, not everyone twenty-five or under was called an NG. The title of NG was attached only to the young people who had awakened a supernatural ability.
Thanks to that, most NGs across the world were tremendously proud of the fact that they were a new generation, and by the same measure they looked down on those from Old Earth.
It was while Lee Ru-in was rubbing the side of her nose in dissatisfaction. Along with a WHACK, sparks flew before Lee Ru-in's eyes.
"Gaah. Big brother, why are you hitting me?"
Lee Ru-in flared up in anger.
At that, a hand that came flying like a thunderbolt from beside her seized her cheek and stretched it out long.
"Uuurgh, ehh oh uh―."
Originally Lee Ru-in had meant to say, "Let go of me." It was only that her pronunciation leaked out because her cheek had been stretched taut.
The culprit who had struck the back of Lee Ru-in's head a moment ago and then grabbed and stretched her cheek was none other than Lee Jae-in, the Shinseong Group's Head of Human Resources.
"Employee Lee Ru-in. Are you not going to pull yourself together? Prattling on about smells in the middle of important business is not enough for you, so now you use casual speech with me, your team leader?"
Lee Jae-in, still stretching Lee Ru-in's cheek with his right hand, spread the thumb and middle finger of his left hand wide and pushed his glasses up.
This gesture was a long-standing habit of Lee Jae-in, who had risen to the position of Head of Human Resources of the great Shinseong Group at a young age.
When Lee Jae-in turned stern, Lee Ru-in pulled her neck in like a startled turtle.
"S-sohh-ee."
Lee Ru-in's pronunciation leaked again.
"Is being sorry the end of it? You should not create things to be sorry for in the first place."
Lee Jae-in scolded her sternly.
Even so, he swallowed a laugh inwardly and released her cheek.
Lee Ru-in, the youngest of the Human Resources Team, had the flaw of being unable to read the atmosphere, but that did not mean he could simply hate her.
Personally, Lee Ru-in was also the younger sister Lee Jae-in had raised with his own hands, changing her diapers when she was small, and her skills were outstanding to match.
"All right, now let us focus on the work."
"Yeees."
While Lee Ru-in hung her head low and rubbed her stinging cheek with her palm, Lee Jae-in had already prepared a ride.
Some time later, the Lee Jae-in and Lee Ru-in siblings appeared on the outskirts of Daejeon.
Lee Jae-in raised a flashlight and lit up the desolate city outskirts.
On the high barbed-wire fence installed along the edge of the city, a sign reading 'Megacity Daejeon' hung, snapped halfway through.
Thump.
Lee Jae-in and Lee Ru-in leapt lightly over the barbed-wire fence, a full four meters high, and entered Yuseong District in Daejeon City.
Once, this Daejeon had come close to becoming the heart of the Republic of Korea.
Quite a long while back, in 2027, that is, three years before the Great Cataclysm occurred, the Korean government of the time launched three megacities across the country in order to reorganize administrative districts.
At that time, in the Chungcheong region, Sejong City, Gongju City, Cheongju City, Nonsan City, and even Gyeryong City were bundled together as a package with Daejeon City at the center and incorporated into a megacity.
Afterward, targeting 2031, a capital relocation bill designating Megacity Daejeon rather than Seoul as the administrative capital of the Republic of Korea passed the National Assembly.
Although the Great Cataclysm occurred one year before the bill took effect, rendering it all meaningless.
The Lee Jae-in and Lee Ru-in siblings had set foot in that very Daejeon.
There were two reasons why a big shot (?) of the standing of the great Shinseong Group's Head of Human Resources had come down to Old Earth in person with only a single subordinate in tow.
First, the purpose of finding the young master who, for certain reasons, must not be revealed to the world, that is, the blood of the Head of the Strategy Division Lee Myeong-u, and secretly taking him to Mid-Land.
Second, the intention of quietly slipping that young master into the Shinseong Group's open recruitment currently underway across Gyeonggi Province, Gangwon Province, Pyeongan Province, and Hwanghae Province.
Lee Jae-in had visited Old Earth in person in order to handle the above two missions smoothly.
'It works out well that a group-wide personnel expansion happens to be underway. I only need to look for an opening while pretending to inspect the open recruitment, then slip the young master in among the hiring candidates.'
This was Lee Jae-in's plan.
That was right. In the central and northern regions of the Republic of Korea at present, the Shinseong Group's screening process for full-time employee candidates was in full swing.
Looking at it a little more concretely, the Shinseong Group's Human Resources Team was touring Gyeonggi Province, Pyeongan Province, Hwanghae Province, Gangwon Province, and parts of North Chungcheong Province, selecting full-time candidates, that is, interns.
However, the area south of Daejeon was excluded.
The reason this region had been left out of the target area was that it was a buffer zone.
North of here, even as far as the southern part of Hamgyeong Province, lay within the Shinseong Group's sphere of influence and posed no problem, but Megacity Daejeon remained an unstable buffer region.
The Shinseong Group of Mid-Land Seoul.
The Geosan Group of Mid-Land Busan.
The reason was that Daejeon was the city wedged between those two powers.
If the Shinseong Group's Human Resources Team threw its weight around in Daejeon for no good reason, there was every chance a clash with the Geosan Group would break out.
Of course, no one in the Shinseong Group feared Geosan.
It was only that, if a clash with Geosan broke out, they would also have to collide with Mid-Land Osaka, its blood-sworn ally standing behind it, and so they restrained themselves.
***
What has been the top-priority task facing the Shinseong Group over the last twenty-odd years?
It was precisely 'the cultivation of superior talent who can seize the resources and knowledge of the Highland first.'
Superior talent who have awakened a supernatural ability do not simply fall from the sky. First an ability candidate must be sent into the Highland and exposed to that place's brutal environment before DNA mutation, that is, awakening, is finally achieved, and in this process two thirds of them fail the mutation and turn into beasts.
Furthermore, among the one third who succeed in awakening, another seventy percent end up gaining nothing more than a wretched ability.
In the end, if the Shinseong Group sent one hundred candidates into the Highland, they salvaged a mere ten ability-holders.
The greater problem was the survival rate after awakening.
The Shinseong Group's new employees who broke through the ten percent odds and awakened a usable ability, that is, the ability-holders, more often than not died in the Highland without even completing a single year.
Looking at the statistics compiled recently by the group's Human Resources Team, among the Shinseong Group's full-time new hires, the one-year survival rate in the Highland was forty percent, and the three-year survival rate was a mere ten percent.
In other words, out of one hundred candidates, only a single one awakened a usable ability and then survived safely to their third year, peeling off the Rookie label.
Since the survival rate of ability-holders was this atrocious, it was impossible to pioneer the Highland with Mid-Land natives alone.
Herein lay the very reason why the major powers of Mid-Land, the Shinseong Group included, regularly replenished their manpower from Old Earth.
And Lee Jae-in, the Shinseong Group's Head of Human Resources, intended to exploit this point to bring the innocent-looking orphan boy Han-eol before his eyes up to Mid-Land.
One day later.
Han-eol was led by the hands of the Lee Jae-in and Lee Ru-in siblings up to Pangyo.
Though he was leaving behind the Daejeon orphanage where he had lived for over ten years, there was in fact almost nothing worth packing for Han-eol.
One pendant shaped like the letter R hanging at his neck.
One backpack holding one set of worn clothes, two sets of underwear, and two pairs of socks.
This was the whole of Han-eol's fortune.
Even so, Han-eol did not care. He crouched in the back seat of the sleek car Lee Ru-in was driving and cheered inwardly.
'I'm finally going up to Mid-Land. I knew I'd be picked. Gwahahaha.'
Han-eol was glad first of all that he had been selected out of the many orphans.
The moment Han-eol had been chosen by Lee Jae-in, every one of the thug older boys at the orphanage had glared at him as if to devour him whole.
Han-eol's peers had also screwed up their faces.
'Hahaha. How envious must they all have been of me? Ahahahaha.'
Last night, the souls of the older boys as reflected in Han-eol's eyes had been colored half in the purple that signified jealousy and half in the blood red that meant hostility.
Han-eol had witnessed that scene clearly, and it had actually put him in an even better mood.
But there was something else that had made Han-eol even more excited than that.
'I wasn't the only one in the world with an Image.'
Han-eol raised his head slightly and observed the man in the front seat.
Inside the soul of that horn-rimmed-glasses mister―Han-eol still did not know the man's name or position―a small knife with a blunt tip had settled in and was giving off a faint radiance.
By contrast, inside the soul of the blonde-haired lady, something was in the middle of condensing, but its shape had not yet properly formed, so it was hard to make out.
In any case, it was certain that the blonde-haired lady also possessed an Image.
'This mister and lady must be ability-holders, right?'
Han-eol's eyes gleamed.
Up until now, there had been no ability-holders around Han-eol.
Perhaps that was why? Inside the souls of those around Han-eol, there had been no Image at all.
By contrast, the mister and the lady dispatched from the Shinseong Group were highly likely to be ability-holders.
And on top of that, an Image existed inside their souls.
What this meant seemed clear.
'So my guess really is right, isn't it? An Image is the potential for awakening, isn't it? Then that means I can awaken too, no problem. Ahahahaha.'
It was this very fact that had Han-eol floating on air.
'My thinking must be right. That's why this mister and lady didn't even spare a glance for the thug older boys with the good physicals and picked out only me to take along, isn't it? Aaah. This is good.'
Han-eol was so happy he felt he might cry.
At the thought of leaving this dangerous Old Earth and going up to Mid-Land Seoul, which was like heaven, Han-eol's body trembled.
Some time later, a shudder surged through Han-eol's entire body like a tsunami.
"Uwaaaaaah―."
Han-eol shook and shook and clenched his teeth.
Right now, Han-eol was in the middle of hurtling terrifyingly upward against gravity. And he was being fired at a speed nearly rivaling a rocket launch, shooting up to a dizzying height.
To put it a little more precisely, the single-person capsule Han-eol had boarded had been launched, spewing blue-white light from its tail.
At the boundary between Pangyo and the Seoul Sinkhole (the place where Seoul had stood before the Great Cataclysm), a means of transport called the 'Tube' had been installed.
The Tube, shaped like a long pipe, was an important means of transport linking Old Earth and Mid-Land.
Inside this pipe, several hundred single-person capsules were mounted, and these traveled back and forth between Earth and Mid-Land as though one had boarded an elevator.
Naturally, there was not merely one Tube.
Just around the Seoul Sinkhole alone, no fewer than four Tubes had been installed.
The Shinseong Group's Human Resources Team used the Pangyo Tube among these to send the full-time candidates unearthed this year, that is, the interns, up to Mid-Land Seoul.
And the Head of Human Resources Lee Jae-in secretly slipped Han-eol in among those interns.
Of course, it was only the wording that was 'secretly'; there was not an inch of hesitation in Lee Jae-in's conduct.
Within the Human Resources Team, the team leader's authority was absolute. It was a structure in which no one in the Human Resources Team could raise an objection to the team leader's sudden actions.
Moreover, this case was all the more special. It was because the Human Resources Team members did not even perceive Han-eol's existence.
Well, that was understandable.
The candidates unearthed by the Shinseong Group's Human Resources Team this time numbered over three thousand.
On top of that, these candidates had been brought in broadly from the central region of the former Republic of Korea and the North Korean area, so they had never laid eyes on one another.
So in the middle of all that, even if a single chestnut-haired boy had been added, would that stand out to anyone?
"Come on, come on, move quickly, quickly. Board the Tube quickly."
While the Human Resources Team members strained the veins in their necks, Han-eol was shoved along by the person behind him, boarded a capsule inside the Tube, and flew off into distant space.
The time at this moment was 11:55 at night.
The date was April 28, 2025.
The Head of Human Resources Lee Jae-in had met the time limit of the Day of Silence, that is, the very deadline chosen by the Shinseong Group's shamaness, with barely a moment to spare.
As it happened, today was also Han-eol's birthday.
Which meant that Han-eol had officially turned fifteen years old.