Chapter 529 – #111_Intimacy Work (3)
#529
1.
“How dare you! How dare you! How DARE youuuu!!”
In the days since acquiring a new slave, Luelle had been joyous.
So joyous, in fact, that she hadn’t uttered her usual catchphrase, ‘How tedious,’ even once.
Of course, she also enjoyed conversing with her loyal crew.
Well… no, actually, it wasn’t as enjoyable as she’d hoped.
They had certainly sworn their loyalty, surpassing the limits of mere familiars.
She had no doubt about that.
However, it was a misconception to think that a loyal subject would necessarily be an enjoyable conversational partner.
They couldn’t even feign surprise like Siwoo, nor could they pretend to utter heartfelt exclamations.
Although she knew it was partly for show, he had always given excellent reactions whenever she showed off her magnificent Akula, and he never failed to praise even the simplest of meals.
Aside from her master, the only person who had ever spent such fulfilling time with Luelle was a weapons dealer.
And she had only seen him a few times during her apprenticeship as a witch.
Luelle, who had spent long years in solitary struggle, was, to say the least, thrilled by the human presence she had experienced after so long.
Therefore, she had even looked favorably upon the fact that he had killed Foreign Minister Lakenlaken.
He worked hard, listened well, and provided entertainment, so she thought it might be okay to accept him as a member of the Akula, and that it might be time to lift his sentence of lifelong slavery and grant him the status of a crew member.
But then.
“How impudent!”
How dare a slave utter such foolish nonsense about the ambitions of his ruler?
It was irrelevant whether other witches would object or whether it would be designated as a public matter.
And she had never intended to engage in indiscriminate slaughter in the first place.
Even if she were to start a war, she had only intended to target the military.
“Hmm?”
Luelle’s eyebrows tilted as she stomped towards the war room.
A genius idea, like an electric current, flashed between her temples.
It was a profound idea that only a genius strategist who had transcended common sense could ever conceive.
“Could it be… a spy?”
She couldn’t rule out the possibility.
The fish tank she had handed over as part of her pact with the True Ancestor Witch.
Shin Siwoo, who had become a slave so naturally on the Akula, where no outsider had ever set foot.
“……”
Gehenna, or perhaps the United States, Russia, or China.
She was certain that they had caught wind of her ambition to conquer the world.
It was entirely possible that they had planted a spy to shake her and break her will.
Of course, it was still just a possibility.
“Impressive.”
And rather than doubting or being angered by the possibility, Luelle chose to admire the enemy’s brilliant strategy.
With this method, it would be possible to plant a spy without anyone suspecting a thing.
In fact, Luelle had trusted him without the slightest doubt until now.
A smile crept onto Luelle’s lips.
It was a somewhat bitter smile.
“Very well, I accept your intelligence war, whoever and wherever you are.”
An intelligence war of schemes and plots was also an excellent means of warfare.
And when it came to war, Luelle had no intention of losing.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
After charming the cunning Shin Siwoo, she would use him as a double agent.
And once she had extracted all the enemy’s information and he was no longer useful, she would mercilessly use him as a slave again.
“Hehehe! Mwahahaha!”
Luelle’s way of thinking was less a result of rational judgment and more like wishful thinking.
And in truth, she wasn’t even thinking about it that seriously.
The reason was simple: even if the possibility was slim, she thought it would be more fun to act as if it were true.
Her decision not to harm Shin Siwoo right away was for similar reasons.
In any case, the green light on the lamp meant that the crew had found some useful ‘loot’.
“Loot amidst the endless stream of new and exciting events? How can I not be delighted?”
Luelle’s heavy footsteps had become as light as a feather.
2.
3,000 meters below the sea.
Water temperature close to 2 degrees Celsius.
The pressure exerted per square centimeter was a staggering 350 kg.
Even in the darkness of nature, where not a single ray of light could penetrate, life thrived.
Luelle, who was inspecting the ship on the tilted deck, half-buried in sediment, gently tapped the nose of a small fish that didn’t show any signs of alarm even when it saw her.
The nameless fish darted away.
Around her, the fish-men moved in perfect unison, sending the salvaged goods up to the Akula.
“It’s been a while.”
In the Age of Exploration, when a mere storm could easily shatter a ship, it might have been different, but a ship the size of a building crossing the Pacific Ocean could easily break through waves of ten meters or more.
In the World Wars, when warships fought each other relentlessly, it might have been different, but now, they all had sturdy steel keels that were difficult to break, making it hard to expect a sinking.
The only time a ship would sink was when a small or medium-sized vessel capsized in the waters near a country, but even then, quick cleanup operations would be carried out in the name of saving lives and preventing environmental pollution.
Thus, finding a shipwreck in modern society was a difficult task.
Before the Akula could even find one, it would be salvaged, which was why the Akula, which spent all day scouring the sea, rarely came across the latest modern goods.
“Hmm…”
In that sense, the ship they had salvaged this time was unusual.
It was a small to medium-sized cargo ship that made one wonder how it had even dared to navigate the sea with such displacement.
It looked like it had only sunk a few months ago, and it had been pushed to a point of no return that a typical merchant ship would never dare to approach.
Even though it was obvious that a cargo ship that had deviated from its course would have been detected by satellite, there had been no rescue procedures.
In other words, it was a ship that was being managed under some kind of procedure or agreement.
There were two types of ships like this.
Pirate ships that the people of some impoverished country would use to make a living.
Smuggling ships that transported modern goods to Gehenna.
“It’s a smuggling ship.”
To exaggerate slightly, it was nothing short of a legendary treasure ship.
For a typical merchant ship to pass through a ‘gate’, it required a massive amount of magic power proportional to its mass and volume.
A mere smuggler would not have that much magic power, which meant that they would have to make up for all that vast magic power with magic stones.
Even after deducting the cost of the magic power consumed, they would still have to make a profit, so they would naturally have to load up on expensive luxury goods.
If they were to order even a simple ready-made product, they would have to be prepared to pay at least ten times the price.
Therefore, all sorts of luxurious goods poured out of the ship, which didn’t even have a proper name on it.
Carpets that looked like they had been woven stitch by stitch by three generations of artisans, all kinds of fine liquors, and even precious materials and jewels used in magical research.
Just selling that wand with the large diamond embedded in it would be enough to buy ten of these smuggling ships in cash.
But Luelle’s reaction was lukewarm.
It was like biting into a very appetizing fruit only to find it full of sourness and astringency.
“Why does it have to be a smuggling ship?”
She hadn’t even expected a heavily guarded warship.
Wouldn’t it have been better if it had been a modern merchant ship that had sunk in a storm?
If that had been the case, she might have found something a little more interesting…
She didn’t care about money.
In the sealed kingdom where she had lived with her master, there were vast riches buried along with memories.
Physical shares of oil drilling companies, bonds issued by various corporations, and an enormous collection of artwork.
If she completed her trials, she would have enough money to buy at least a modern destroyer, if not an aircraft carrier.
“Put it in storage when the work is done.”
Luelle, deciding that it was no longer worth watching, returned to the submarine alone.
And she realized that it had been a hasty decision a few hours later, when the items brought into the ship had been washed and dried.
3.
Siwoo had spoken out of turn and incurred Luelle’s wrath.
It was an act of meddling that had only stirred up trouble.
She didn’t have a particularly deep relationship with her, and she was, after all, still under detention.
She should have been trying to please her, but instead, she had said something that poured cold water on her ambitions.
But she didn’t regret it.
Siwoo didn’t dislike Luelle.
Her words and actions sometimes reminded her of her twins, but she didn’t feel the twisted madness that she had felt from the other enemies she had encountered.
She didn’t want her to go down the wrong path and end up like the Witch of Aquarius or the Witch of Desire.
But had it been eight hours since she had been placed under house arrest?
Luelle came to Siwoo’s room, knocked on the door, and shouted.
“Come quickly! Hurry! Hurry!”
“Yes? Yes?”
“This is no time to hesitate!”
She had thought that when she came back, they would have a serious conversation.
No, at the very least, she had expected Luelle to unleash a torrent of criticism after having mulled over her anger.
Luelle’s way of thinking was extremely childish.
She was the very epitome of a princess who had grown up however she pleased.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
But what was this?
Even though she was already walking at a speed close to running, Luelle kept urging her on and overtook Siwoo.
As soon as she reached the top of the stairs, she was met with a pile of junk scattered across the lobby.
“Do you see it? It’s the freshly salvaged loot!”
Luelle looked like she was about to die of excitement, as if she had completely forgotten the tension from earlier.
“Loot?”
“Isn’t it the stuff we salvaged from a shipwreck?”
She had been secretly worried that she might have been pirating a perfectly good merchant ship, so she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I have a new mission for you! Look over here!”
Luelle stretched out her arms and pointed to the latest modern goods that they had managed to salvage.
It was then that Siwoo noticed some familiar items among the junk.
A large TV, various Blu-ray discs and players, surround sound speakers, a computer, and a guitar, among other things.
This haul was massive.
As they were items ordered by the high-ranking witches, they had been perfectly packaged for safety, and thanks to the containers that had fallen and been buried in the dirt, they had managed to salvage ten different types of modern goods in perfect condition.
“Sort and organize these items and teach me how to use them! Especially the items piled up over here! Do you understand?”
“Wasn’t I under house arrest?”
“House arrest is over! Over! It’s an emergency!”
It seemed that in front of the massive spoils of war, the slave’s backtalk was not even worth getting angry about.
Come to think of it, she had piled up the modern-looking items as if they were sacred objects, while the jewels, which were clearly worth hundreds of times more, were just thrown into a corner.
She had once again confirmed that Luelle had a great interest in modern goods.
Looking at the cargo piled up in the corner, it seemed certain that it was a smuggling ship…
Who would want to set up a movie theater in their room?
“Understood, for now.”
Siwoo nodded, her expression bewildered.
