Chapter 1452: Return to Work (2) |
“Urgh…”
Wiggins sagged on the couch like a wet sponge while looking completely drained.
Kang Jin-Ho saw that and uncharacteristically showed some concern. “How are you doing, Wiggins?”
“…”
Wiggins’ head slowly turned toward Kang Jin-Ho. Such was the spookiness of his head turn that, with the assistance of an eerie background music, this scene would’ve felt right at home in a horror movie!
“My lord, did you just ask me how I was doing?”
“…”
“This… This humiliation! The shame…!”
Wiggins covered his face with both hands. Even he wasn’t sure how he managed to hold on to his sanity, despite going through the indignity of shouting the lines of a teenage girl in love throughout the night!
Kang Jin-Ho sneakily looked away. It felt like he was guilty of elder abuse for some reason!
Wiggins wasn’t abused physically, but it was pointless to bring that up. Since he’d readily shout that physical abuse would have been so much more preferable to this torture!
“Thanks. I know you’ve worked hard,” said Kang Jin-Ho.
“…”
Wiggins’ burning glare stabbed into Kang Jin-Ho. Such was the intensity of his glare that even Kang Jin-Ho avoided meeting it and stared at the floor for a second or two.
This must be the first time Wiggins made such an expression. However, Kang Jin-Ho had no excuses this time. He knew he was guilty, after all!
Wiggins muttered coldly. “I sincerely hope that Miss Choi aces the audition.”
“…”
“Otherwise! All the work I did to improve our company’s revenue! Will go down the drain!”
Every word he chewed out was accompanied by the background noise of teeth gritting subtly.
Kang Jin-Ho awkwardly fake-coughed. “It’s not like I’ve done something wrong here, though…”
“What was that, my lord?”
“…It’s nothing.”
Kang Jin-Ho promptly told himself to watch his conduct for the foreseeable future after observing Wiggins loudly gritting his teeth.
Wiggins pouted in dissatisfaction before shaking his head as if to change the topic.
“Besides all that…” Wiggins asked in a solemn voice. “What will you do, my lord?”
“About what?”
“Will you accept their request?”
“Hmm…” Kang Jin-Ho reclined against the couch. “I don’t see why not.”
“We’re dealing with the American government, my lord. Powerful nations operate on their own rationale. Without a doubt, they will try to use us. They might act as if they would cough up their lungs if we ask for it right now. However, once they see us as no longer useful, they will immediately sever their ties with us or try to change the dynamics of our relationship.”
“Yes, I’m sure they’ll do that.”
“Hence, I…”
“Here’s the thing, though.”
“Yes?” Wiggins looked at Kang Jin-Ho, his brow rising higher in puzzlement. Kang Jin-Ho’s voice sounded a little more heightened for some reason just then.
“Doesn’t that apply to practically everything?”
“…”
Kang Jin-Ho mouthed a cigarette and lit it up, then smirked at Wiggins.
“This is a transaction. And all transactions are like this, wouldn’t you say? It’s not like we’re negotiating with them because of how righteous and loyal we are, anyway. For example, if the Round Table can’t fulfill our demands, we’ll rethink our partnership with them in a heartbeat, no?”
“Mm…”
“Or were you planning to take on continuous losses just to prove how loyal you are?”
“No, I wasn’t. You’re right about this, my lord. It’s just that I’m reticent about the Americans’ ultimate goal, which is to use us.”
“Aren’t we going to do the same thing, though? We want to use them, after all.”
“My lord,” Wiggins replied with an uncertain expression. “We are dealing with the American government here, sir. These people are the best at extracting maximum benefits while shouldering none of the losses. If both sides are after the same goal… The side losing out will inevitably be us.”
Kang Jin-Ho casually shrugged. “I don’t mind trivial losses.”
“Mm…!”
“Wiggins, you know that life is not that easy. It’s not possible to always win. If you try to do that, the number of options available to you will reduce drastically.”
“…”
“Sometimes, you need to shoulder some losses if you wish to make inroads in life. That’s all.”
Wiggins silently nodded. He confirmed that Kang Jin-Ho had his own thoughts regarding this matter, which was sufficient for him, at least for now.
“By the way, may I ask you about something else, my lord?”
Kang Jin-Ho nodded. “Sure.”
“Let’s say you train the American soldiers. How much improvement will they experience?”
Kang Jin-Ho furrowed his brow. Not from displeasure, of course, but because he was busy formulating his answer.
“Give them half a year, and they should become more or less useful, I think?”
“I see. That means the Americans will get stronger and stronger with enough time.”
Kang Jin-Ho shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. They lack the crucial foundation. No matter how hard they train, their level won’t surpass the Demon Cult believers. But the Demon Cult will keep getting stronger through successive generations. Meanwhile, the Americans’ methods have already put a ceiling on how high they can go.”
“Mm…!”
Wiggins also had been thinking about this topic. Since his thoughts roughly matched Kang Jin-Ho’s, it seemed he shouldn’t worry about the answers to this situation anymore.
Although he hadn’t said it out loud, what Wiggins was wary of wasn’t the “America” of now.
America’s financial wherewithal and manpower were unimaginably vast. Although the Americans had stumbled onto an incorrect path, once Kang Jin-Ho pointed them in the right direction… In the far-flung future, America might turn into the Martial Assembly’s worst enemy. That was what Wiggins worried about the most.
“My lord, I…”
Kang Jin-Ho shook his head. “Such a far-off future doesn’t interest me. What matters to me is whether they can be of any use right now or not.”
“Yes… I agree with you.”
“And one more thing,” said Kang Jin-Ho.
“My lord?”
“What we need isn’t a ragtag bunch of wannabes joining us as extra hands. No, what we will gain from this trade is… information.”
Wiggins’ eyes subtly quaked.
Ah…!
Even he had forgotten about that crucial element.
“Yes, information.” Kang Jin-Ho weightily nodded. “Haven’t you felt this while dealing with the Chinese, and then the Korean government? We seemed to be dancing on their palms all the time. But we were running around as blind as bats. Don’t you think that’s unfair?”
If this was an online multiplayer game, it’d be no different to China using a map hack. For now, the alliance with the Chinese government had put a stop to their surveillance efforts, but…
Who knows what they will do next?
The end of the alliance would naturally lead to the resumption of the surveillance. No, before that, it was impossible to confirm if the Chinese really had stopped their surveillance as promised!
“Extracting information using the Blood Demon will hit a wall soon. Once they find out that he has joined our side, the Chinese will keep him at an arm’s length, after all.”
“Yes, they will definitely do that.”
“Pretty soon, the alliance we have with the Chinese will peter out.”
“Indeed, my lord. That alliance was for appearance purposes only, after all.”
“But the Americans knew we had an alliance with the Chinese. They also knew it was a superficial one, too. When you think about it, how absurd is that?”
Indeed, it was quite absurd. However, that revelation came out so nonchalantly that neither Kang Jin-Ho nor Lee Hyeon-Su could leisurely consider its implications at the time.
America somehow had extensive knowledge of the movements of both the Martial Assembly and the Chinese government. The significance of such a revelation should never be downplayed.
“Yes… For sure, the Assembly’s ability to collect information is still poor,” said Wiggins.
However, there wasn’t much the Assembly could do about it. After all, it didn’t pay attention to overseas activities. Where would it find enough wherewithal to do that when it hadn’t even finished dealing with its domestic affairs?
Of course, Lee Hyeon-Su and Wiggins had been trying to expand the Assembly’s information network into China as they got more and more entangled with the Chinese. But this project was still in its early stages. As such, the Assembly had to rely on two different sources for most of their information. One was the Round Table, while the other was South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
Unfortunately, both places were not in their usual state at the moment.
The Round Table was still going through various pains right now after the Master had overthrown the old system of doing things. That situation required most of the organization’s attention to sort out, which meant the number of agents dispatched to other nations had decreased significantly. As a result, its ability to collect information had suffered just as badly, as well.
However, the Round Table’s information network had always been thinly spread all over the globe, to begin with. It was never good enough to accurately uncover various bits of news happening within China. And with the reduction in its information network… Expecting significant help from the Round Table was being too optimistic, at least for the time being.
The story wasn’t any better with South Korea’s NIS. With the arrest and the subsequent imprisonment of the NIS’s director, the agency was currently mired in serious turmoil. The arrest itself was made public, so unsurprisingly, the government was forced into performing an in-depth auditing process of its spy agency, with a comprehensive overhaul of its structure and systems soon to follow.
With all these internal upheavals, the NIS was basically a war zone at the moment.
Worse still, the recent events had strained the “ties” between the Assembly and the NIS, making it doubly tricky to request for information on China.
All things considered… The Martial Assembly was basically walking blind at the moment.
“For now, only two places have the power to collect information properly,” said Kang Jin-Ho.
Wiggins slowly nodded. “One is China, and the other is America?”
“That’s right.”
“Hmm…”
Wiggins rubbed his chin contemplatively.
It all sounded rather logical, didn’t it? As far as information warfare was concerned, nothing would be more beneficial to the Assembly than forming an alliance with the Americans.
One didn’t have to bring up the current era to know how important information was in a war. Besides, the Assembly had already gone through a torrid time thanks to the gap between it and China’s ability to collect information, anyway.
Anyone failing to understand the importance of information, even after experiencing such difficulty, would obviously lose in the end.
“Understood, my lord. It seems I’ve overlooked something so crucial. Forgive me for being unable to see this far ahead, as you have done so.”
“No, it’s fine. It must’ve been complicated, after all.”
Kang Jin-Ho had no problem with objectively looking at America as yet another foreign country. But Wiggins couldn’t do that. He knew how the Americans operated, after all.
“But my lord, do you think they will accept our demands?”
“I think they will. Because they have nothing to lose. If we were asking for information on America itself, they might say no, but what we want is information on China, which is a country America considers its enemy. And I’m sure it’ll be very pleased if we use that information to wage a war of attrition against China.”
“So, they want to pit the two sides against each other.”
“Yeah. That’s the extent of our relationships, after all.”
Wiggins slowly nodded. “However, you think playing along with the Americans’ plan will also benefit us.”
“Yeah,” Kang Jin-Ho nodded back. “Nothing will get done if we keep worrying about stuff like that. I think it won’t matter, anyway. The Americans won’t pose us any problems right now, after all.”
“Mm… If Americans have functioning brains, they will try to stop us from waging a direct war against the Chinese right away.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“Hmm…” Wiggins grunted while tapping his cheek.
This situation was more or less sorted out now. But it still didn’t feel resolved yet to him. Far too many things were tangled up in a complicated web, with no easy way to untangle them, to give him peace of mind.
Kang Jin-Ho chuckled, as if he understood Wiggins’ sentiment.
“Don’t overthink it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Whether it’s relationships or dealings, all those things are secondary issues. What’s important, though, is who is stronger.”
“…”
“Do you think these people can stop me?”
When Wiggins saw the corners of Kang Jin-Ho’s lips curl up, he felt his heart calm down in an instant.
Ah, yes. That’s right.
Kang Jin-Ho’s world was not the same as Wiggins’.
While Wiggins’ world was a tangled web of countless relationships and dealings, Kang Jin-Ho lived in a simpler world where the law of the jungle applied.
The strong trampled on the others, while the weak got their things taken away. And… Kang Jin-Ho was the “strong” in that world. Stronger than the Americans, at least!
“Yes, it seems the alliance with the Americans is a good idea, after all,” said Wiggins with a bright grin. “We’ll do as you say, my lord.”
Kang Jin-Ho coolly nodded, then leisurely puffed away at his cigarette.
It felt like their American sojourn was drawing to a close. Although the events had ballooned in scale more than they had expected, this trip still proved to be rewarding in its own way.
All that was left to do now was to put the finishing touches. Although Kang Jin-Ho couldn’t tell how the Americans would respond…
They won’t back off now after having come this far. As long as they are not stupid, that is.
Wiggins abruptly said something just then. “Then, that means we now wait for…”
Kang Jin-Ho cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, yeah. I know. We wait for the Americans to…”
“No, I was going to say we now wait to find out if Miss Choi has aced her audition.”
“…”
Kang Jin-Ho cautiously looked at Wiggins before sighing deeply after noticing the Englishman’s pouting face.
Yup, he’s not gonna let this go anytime soon, now is he?
As it turned out, Wiggins could be a surprisingly bitter man about certain things!