Chapter 100: Independence Approaches (2)

"Huh?"

Lee Arin made a bewildered expression at Jinseong's words. And Lee Serin, who was next to her, smiled awkwardly as if troubled and quietly approached Jinseong to speak softly.

"S-sorry. Um, uh. O-oppa?"

"What is it?"

"Now, uh. The situation and... timing and. Place. Yes... It doesn't seem appropriate..."

Lee Serin slightly turned her head towards where Ella and Anastasiya were.

Fortunately, the two didn't seem to have heard what Jinseong said and were playing around, tumbling over each other, looking like a scene from a rodeo festival.

The sight of Anastasiya trying to ride on Ella's back and Ella trying to shake her off saying she's heavy was brightening the atmosphere just by looking at it.

"Just... It hasn't been long since they suffered from being caught by that... bad sorcerer... If you say such things..."

Those two need consideration.

Lee Serin awkwardly said this to Jinseong.

And Lee Arin, who had a blank expression after hearing Jinseong's words, was cursing Jinseong with her eyes. Although she didn't dare to curse out loud to Jinseong, perhaps feeling it was inappropriate, her eyes were criticizing him as if saying 'Do you even have a human heart?'

"Hmm."

Jinseong tilted his head and looked at Ella.

A person not in his memories.

The woman who disappeared becoming Anastasiya's body.

His sisters' friend, and a child with a personality Jinseong couldn't understand.

I see. World War III hasn't broken out yet...

Usually, after experiencing a major event, mental disorders followed.

In the past, when he was living as a mercenary, newcomers who had just "lost their murder virginity" by killing someone for the first time on the battlefield, as mercenaries would say in slang, all complained of mental anguish.

They spoke of suffering such as dreaming of being tormented by the person they killed, suddenly feeling as if someone was strangling them during daily life, or constantly seeing visions of dying in the same way as the person they killed.

However, after World War III broke out, complaints of such mental anguish significantly decreased.

Daily life itself had become so chaotic that ordinary things could no longer cause mental shock.

In a word, it could be said that the 'threshold for mental shock' had risen.

Murder?

Murder was something that happened not infrequently even in big cities.

You could witness a robber killing someone in real-time if you went to a dark back alley, and in slum-like areas on the outskirts of big cities, you could clearly see the harm of anarchy.

The rich raised private soldiers as bodyguards and shot people who invaded their homes under the name of 'self-defense', and for politicians or high-ranking officials, seeing people who rushed at them die was a daily occurrence.

Cities were still better.

In rural areas, you could easily see entire villages colluding to kill outsiders and rob them of their valuables, and in closed environments like islands, you could see events that truly surpassed imagination.

For example, villages falling into pseudo-religions and committing all sorts of terrible acts, mad magicians settling down and conducting human experiments, or government-led experiments being carried out.

Jinseong, who had worked as a mercenary, had seen and heard quite a lot.

In the United States, there was the MK-ULTRA OMEGA project, a continuation of the CIA-led brainwashing and human experimentation program MK-ULTRA, and in Japan, they were conducting racial improvement experiments based on the Japanese Race Improvement Theory and eugenics data obtained during their Nazi alliance.

In Europe, research was being conducted on the military use of evil spirits centered around the Western European Alliance, and in South America, human sacrifice sorcery rituals were being secretly performed. In Africa, criminal organizations crazed by the strange superstition that "virgins can cure AIDS" were going around doing terrible things, and the "Glacier Alliance" formed by magicians gathered in the Arctic and Antarctic was trying to bring an ice age to Earth, claiming all this was due to global warming.

Besides these, there were groups causing problems by destroying livestock farms, claiming that meat-eating stimulates human violence and causes wars, and criminal organizations that caused food shortages by setting fire to farmlands around the world, saying the world should be purified by fire. There were magicians who tried to do terrible things, saying a world without war should be established under machine control, and insane martial artists obsessed with anarchism going around assassinating presidents around the world.

The whole world had gone mad.

Jinseong had lived seeing all sorts of crazy scenes in such a mad world.

That was why he hadn't thought that Ella would be mentally shocked. In his mind, it was common sense that people wouldn't be mentally shocked by just that level of incident. Moreover, the fact that Anastasiya, who had been using Ella's body, was tough and optimistic enough to even strike mercenaries who had seen and heard all sorts of dirty things speechless, was also a reason why he hadn't considered PTSD.

In Jinseong's mind, there remained an afterimage of future Marten ending her impression of seeing the huge white bone tower made by Unified Korea with just a "It smells," ending her impression of the terrible scene created by a pseudo-religion with just a "Poor things," and grinning and eating the corpse of the monster that had tried to eat her even though she had almost died being melted alive by a monster born from human experiments.

Then I should just send those two.

Jinseong gestured to his sister as if to reassure her and approached Ella.

Ella was sitting on the bed in a half-given-up state as Anastasiya, who was riding on her back, wouldn't fall off. Then, when she saw Jinseong approaching her, she brightened up as if she had never been tired and got up to greet him.

"Ah, Herr Park! What's the matter?"

"I was wondering if you had contacted Frau Winter's master."

Ella spoke as if troubled by his question.

"I did contact her. But..."

"Was there some problem?"

"What I experienced was so unrealistic... It seemed hard for her to believe over the phone."

That was understandable.

To summarize what happened to Ella briefly, it went something like this:

She went to study in Russia, but suddenly a crazy fortune-teller kidnapped her and tried to perform a human sacrifice, and her friend's brother, who was a sorcerer, intervened in the human sacrifice sorcery ritual to save her, and thanks to him extracting her sister who had been in her body in the form of a teratoma and giving her a new body, she gained a sister she didn't know about.

This alone would be enough to make one's head spin, but there were all sorts of additional details.

Jinseong changed his voice to deceive the Grand Witch, and based on information about a person named 'Hans' that only the Grand Witch knew, he deceived her and extracted all sorts of items. And with that, he intervened in the human sacrifice sorcery and performed great feats to save her.

But Jinseong, the protagonist of these great feats, was a sorcerer who wasn't even an adult yet.

Moreover, he was from Unified Korea, known as a barren land for sorcery, and he wasn't even a disciple of a famous sorcerer but a self-taught sorcerer.

It might have been easier to explain if she said a passing sorcerer had saved her, but then Jinseong's merit would disappear. For Ella, who had grown up hearing from her master that gratitude should be repaid twofold and grudges fivefold, deceiving her conscience was unthinkable.

So she had to tell the truth, but…

Why did the truth seem more like a lie?

"I strongly dissuaded my master from coming here. She said that no matter how much she heard, she couldn't understand at all, and that she needed to meet and talk to understand step by step. Even though I told her it was okay, she keeps saying she'll come..."

Jinseong smiled brightly at those words.

"That's great."

"What?"

Jinseong pressed Ella's shoulders to sit her on the bed, and lifted Anastasiya, who was staring at him while riding on Ella's back, into the air and sat her down next to Ella. Then he smiled kindly and said to both of them.

"You both need mental care right now. The mind is like the liver. It's hard to notice when it's breaking down, but once it's broken, it's hard to fix. Frau Winter and Frau Lentz might not have noticed themselves, but your minds are probably very tired right now. At times like this, family becomes a big support."

Jinseong paused for a moment and glanced at Anastasiya.

"And there's also Frau Lentz's problem. Even though I gave her a name, it's not recorded in any system. Frau Lentz is currently stateless, and officially doesn't exist in the world. There's no way to prove her identity."

"Ah..."

Ella looked at her sister with surprised eyes as if she had just realized.

"A young child. Stateless. Unable to verify identity. And beautiful appearance on top of that. These are perfect conditions to be targeted by bad people. Moreover, it would be even more dangerous in Russia where the mafia is still powerful. It would be best if she could return to Germany together with Frau Winter, but as I said, she has no identity so she certainly won't have a passport. And it's too dangerous to try illegal entry."

"Y-yes, that's right."

"That's why we need the power of Frau Winter's master."

To be precise, they needed the power of Grand Witch Odilia A Reich.

The power of Odilia, who had strong influence and connections, and was the owner of a world-renowned cosmetics company.

"There are many ways. With connections and money, nothing is impossible. We could slip her into the refugee list and make her a German citizen, or we could bribe an orphanage, manipulate documents, and then adopt her to give her a legal identity. If not that, we could even buy a new identity and then have her change her name. There are also methods like claiming she's a crime victim or a hidden illegitimate child, but these might attract people's attention so it's better to avoid them."

"What?"

Ella's eyes widened at the variety of methods pouring out of Jinseong's mouth.

"And you know. Even if it's not about mental issues or Frau Lentz's problem..."

Jinseong looked at Ella worriedly.

"Are you thinking of not having even one bodyguard after experiencing such an incident? It's reckless to decline a bodyguard when you have money and connections. You can't keep one forever, but wouldn't it be good to have one at least while in Russia?"

At this, Ella nodded as if entranced.

"Yes, yes. That, would be good, right?"

"Then there's something you should do now, right?"

"Huh? Yes. Ah, contact. I'll contact her."

Ella hurriedly grabbed her smartphone and moved her fingers busily to contact her master, Agnes. And next to her, Anastasiya, who seemed to have become curious, peeked at the contact list, but when she saw that there weren't many people in the contact list, she turned her gaze away as if feeling sorry.

"Given that she said she'd come right away... I think she might arrive in Russia soon. Frau Winter, Frau Lentz, please spend precious time with your family."

Anastasiya looked at Jinseong, who was turning his head to look at Lee Serin and Lee Arin.

"I will also spend time with them."