Cheney was exhausted. The government had asserted that the Afghanistan war was perfect, but it wasn’t from the perspective of Cheney, who had actually participated in it. Mercenaries like him were responsible for maintaining public order in occupied territories. Terrorists often sent kids with bombing vests, and they were forced to make painful decisions.
If he wasn’t desperate for money, he would have gone back to his hometown already. However, he had a son suffering from childhood cancer there.
One day, a Whitehorse executive came with a contract extension document.
“Next one is in Iraq. The superiors are urging us to extend the detachment contract, so the next destination must be Iraq as well,” the executive said.
“Are the conditions the same?” Cheney asked.
“Yes, but I’m thinking of giving you a better offer since your reputation is quite good.”
The executive placed new files on the table, and Cheney skimmed through the names of the dispatch areas and employers. This contract wasn’t for a battlefield. It was his hometown, Texas, and the employer organization was far from the war industry. On top of that, they had offered a thirty percent increase in his original annual salary. Cheney couldn’t understand.
“What do they do, and where am I going to be assigned?” he finally asked.
The executive replied blithely, “Let’s say that it’s a hazardous substance disposal station. Well, that’s kind of true. Anyway, you’ll hear the truth after you sign the contract.”
Cheney thought it would be less dangerous than the warzone. He would no longer need to aim a gun at a kid’s forehead and could see his wife and son on regular vacations.
He picked up a pen.
***
“It looks like an air-raid shelter.”
The hazardous substance disposal station was camouflage for the place. There was a station, and a real business was running, but the actual thing was located underground.
“That’s right. I heard it was built during the Cold War,” Ethema replied, and he was an agent assigned as Cheney’s supervisor. Cheney knew him well as he was famous for his excellent performance when he was a trainee in Whitewater and won a favorable contract. Besides Ethema, Cheney saw many familiar faces of the outstanding trainees here.
“You are from Afghanistan, right?” Ethema questioned.
“Yes,” Cheney responded.
“You’ve come a long way. Your training record seemed decent, so if you had joined earlier, you would have been in level two by now. That’s too bad.”
“I haven’t heard anything except that I’m in level three.”
“No need to rush. Follow me.”
This place, which was built by mending an air-raid shelter, seemed to have strong security in Cheney’s view. There was only one entrance, and they had installed a reinforcement blocking gate at every passageway down to the warehouse. Of course, agents and high-performance surveillance cameras were everywhere. In order for someone to break into the warehouse, they had to go through a strict security system in this entire station.
What are they keeping? Is it a drug…
“You are perhaps thinking that we’re protecting drugs, right?” Ethema asked.
Cheney widened his eyes in surprise.
“No.”
His supervisor continued, “Everyone thinks like that at first, and so did I. I used to wonder how many drugs were piled up here under this degree of security.
The passage down to the basement was long and narrow. Cheney was bothered by the surveillance cameras that moved in response to motion detection sensors. It was obvious that every single movement was being watched.
“You’ll be placed outside. This will be your first and last time entering the warehouse unless your position changes. Make sure you look at what we’re protecting. If a problem arises, it’s our job to retrieve them,” Ethema said.
The more Ethema explained, the more curious Cheney became.
What is it?
They passed the last security system of the reinforcement blocking gate. In front of them was a gigantic bank vault door that blocked their view. Cheney sent a signal to the agent at the gate, and the agent picked up the phone.
“Cat Food Warehouse. Code number 005.”
The vault door finally opened, and Cheney stared at the gap. What he saw was different from what he expected. There weren’t tons of drugs piled up, nor gold bars, nor jewels.
Cheney followed Ethema into the warehouse and saw various-sized cabinets arranged in an orderly fashion. Each cabinet had a tempered glass window that allowed a person to check the contents from the outside, and a name tag was attached to them. When Cheney looked at Ethema, Ethema nodded. Cheney was now free, so he approached the nearest cabinet. Then, Ethema warned him from the back, “Don’t touch anything. As soon as you touch it, you’ll get killed and people will think that you had died in Afghanistan. Hahaha. Why are you so surprised?”
Ethema laughed it off, but his words seemed to be true. The guns of the agents outside the blocking gate were shining. Cheney gulped and looked over the tempered glass.
Leather gloves? They’re just leather gloves…
Cheney’s gaze shifted to the name tag.
「Classification Number: F-0001
Name: Hunting Gloves」
Following that, Cheney scrambled while skimming through the tempered glasses of the cabinets. The contents varied. While some of them looked modern, such as glasses, shirts and pants, there were also breastplates and weapons that seemed to be used in the Middle Ages.
「Classification Number: E-0112
Name: Kciphos Intensifier’s Iron Mace」
Some of them were presumed to be from primitive civilizations.
「Classification Number: C-0051
Name: High-Ranked Plague Sorcerer’s Bone Necklace」
Cheney moved to the end of the air-raid shelter as if he was possessed by something. Then, he turned his head in all directions. The cabinets were piled up because a single file wasn’t enough to store all the contents. All he could see were cabinets.
Cheney and Ethema came out on the ground. When Ethema sat on the bench and tapped the spot next to him, Cheney hurriedly sat down, looking dazed.
Ethema laughed.
“They are cat food, and this place is a cat food warehouse. That’s the official code name.”
“Are they mysterious?” Cheney asked with a serious face.
“Mysterious?”
“You know, something like ancient relics with supernatural powers. It’s not believable, but there’s no other way to explain it.”
Cheney recalled the security of the cat food storage.
“Maybe or maybe not. You will know when the security strengthens. Newbies start from there,” Ethema pointed far ahead.
They couldn’t see from their spot, but warning signs with radioactivity marks were attached to the steel-barred fence. From there, guard posts were located at every certain distance, and Ethema was pointing to one of them.
“You must have fought against terrorists on battlefields, but you will fight the boredom from now on. I guarantee that you’ll never find any job like this. Any questions?” Ethema asked.
“…Are there any groups after us?”
“Not for now, but it’s obvious that the cat food should never be exposed to the world. I hope you don’t come up with your own ideas because these things are useless to us. That’s all I can tell you.”
Ethema turned his gaze toward the outskirts, and Cheney turned his head in the same direction. A vehicle was entering.
“New cat foods are here,” Ethema muttered.
“…Where are they coming from?”
Ethema had been nice like the Virgin Mary, but his kindness vanished immediately. Cheney shut his mouth as he realized it was time to get up with his equipment without saying a word. Then, he headed toward the guard post that Ethema pointed at while looking at the car that entered. Agents from the storage were helping the driver take iron chests out from the trunk under tight security.
***
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
Woo Yeon-Hee and I handed over drop items and backpacks to the agents. Since drop items from C-class dungeons were of high quality, we had brought as many as we could. The Kciphos Corps Leader’s Mana Stone I got after defeating the boss monster had to be stored, too. I handed that over to the agents and headed towards the shower tent.
The water from the hose was warm since it was a simple shower booth, but it was perfect to remove blood stains from my body. These items were outdated, so I put the cape into my backpack and came out of the tent.
After a while, Woo Yeon-Hee also came out, drying her hair with a towel. She faintly smiled while looking at me as she was celebrating how we had not used Mary’s Hand and the Man Who Overcomes Adversity. However, fatigue covered her face as the conquest was fierce. She stumbled, so I wrapped my arms around her shoulder.
“You are tired, too,” she said.
She had no idea that we were abnormally powerful and enterprising compared to other Awakened in the past.
“Today is the 17th,” I said.
Woo Yeon-Hee looked at me with curiosity, then she widened her eyes as if she realized something.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
She instantly looked at the agents. Everyone here knew that we were Koreans because of the language we spoke. We approached the agent who was organizing the drop items into the iron cabinets.
She asked, “How did it go?”
“Pardon me?” the agent questioned.
“Did Korea make it to the round of sixteen?”
The agent’s eyes quivered, and I murmured to myself that he’s an American and not too interested in the World Cup. Apparently, there was another agent who was into soccer, so the agent pointed at him.
“They did.”
Woo Yeon-Hee clenched her fists after hearing that as if she had received a nice reward from the box. Then, she frowned as the pain kicked in. She was no longer the hunter who fought against the Kciphos Corps Leader with murderous eyes. She was now just a red devil who missed the soccer games since she last watched the match against Poland on June 4th.
“Korea was the best,” the agent said.
She let out a sad sigh, then looked up at me with twinkling eyes.
“Isn’t it too late to go back to Korea? To watch the round of sixteen…” She made a sad face.
“We’ll be able to join the local Korean team to return if we head to New York right now. But will you be able to do that with your current health?” I asked.
Woo Yeon-Hee nodded strongly and replied in excitement, “I might cry if I miss that game. It’s the round of sixteen!”