Chapter 24: Witch Hunt Plan
“What?”
“…….”
Raksha asked with an expression of disbelief.
The angel, wearing a similar look, unconsciously folded the wings that had spread slightly.
“You killed a ghost?”
Raksha walked straight toward Diesel.
Then he stopped abruptly right in front of his nose.
Eyes of an eerie blue, unfathomable in depth, as if they held the deep sea within them.
The being known as the evil ghost Raksha stared straight at him.
“This guy?”
But Diesel did not shrink back at all and spat out his words.
“Got a problem?”
“You didn’t mistake it for some experiment the Black Water bastards made, did you?”
‘This is really unbearable.’
Up until now, I had listened quietly, if only because of my connection with Isabel and Little Sister, who had given me such an expensive motorcycle as a gift.
But everything had its limits.
‘Say one more word…….’
As I endured my anger to the very end, veins bulging at the back of my neck, Raksha happened to drive the final nail in.
“You don’t look like you could even catch one mangy mutt in the back alleys.”
There was no need to hear any more.
Immediately, Diesel drew up his magic power.
Raksha’s sneering exhale froze into cold frost.
An evil ghost of the Fire Realm, a Raksha.
Questions like how strong he might be were irrelevant.
If I were going to keep being treated like this, then even if I had to give up an arm, I needed to at least sever the opponent’s wrist.
With that resolve, I clenched a single strip of pitch-black ice in my hand.
It did not compare to the spirit sword I had used to cut down the ghost, but it was a Black Ice Sword filled to the brim with the power of Seolha Thousand-Year Ice.
“Seems like I could catch at least the mangy mutt right in front of my eyes.”
At that, Raksha muttered with an interested expression.
“Oh, that ice is……”
The moment Diesel tightly gripped the sharp blade of ice.
Isabel, who had been watching them, spoke in a low voice laced with weight.
“Enough.”
Sound waves imbued with mental-type magic burst from her vocal cords.
As if a small storm had blown through, the lamps hanging from the ceiling shook noisily.
“…….”
“Including Diesel-nim in this operation was also my decision. Stop wasting time on pointless power struggles. Raksha-nim.”
“Hmph……. Fine. But I’ll be watching.”
Raksha held Diesel’s gaze to the very end, then sharply turned around.
Then Isabel bowed her head slightly toward Diesel.
“I will apologize in his stead, Diesel-nim.”
“…….”
“Why don’t we sit down for now?”
As if to shake off the strange tension filling the room, Sis’s cheerful voice rang out.
She flopped down onto a large sofa covered in dizzying, unique patterns.
Soon, Seriel approached and sat neatly beside Sis, and Raksha leaned lightly against the back of the sofa with his arms crossed.
Diesel stood where he could see everyone at a glance and observed the situation.
“Then I will begin the briefing.”
When Isabel gestured through the air, the lights dimmed smoothly.
At the same time, a hologram rose in front of the sofa where the Ghostcatchers were seated.
“As you know, the objective of this operation is to capture the ‘Witch of the Electrosphere’.”
A witch believed to know all the secrets of the Electrosphere.
Countless attempts had been made so far to capture that mysterious being, but all had ended in failure.
‘Even the megacorps failed.’
Even the Megacorporations, who could supposedly retrieve a demon that had fallen into the Abyss if they truly wanted to, had been unable to uncover her identity—so how exactly were they supposed to catch her?
It seemed Diesel was not the only one harboring such doubts.
“Well, it’s practically an annual event by now.”
Raksha scoffed with a snort.
“Hear me out. This time, the scale itself is different.”
As Sis refuted Raksha’s remark, Isabel continued the briefing.
“This is where we will infiltrate to capture the witch.”
With her words, an enormous facility appeared against the backdrop of pitch-black space.
‘That is…… the moon?’
Isabel’s subsequent explanation matched Diesel’s guess.
“It’s the ‘Lighthouse’ at the lunar base. According to my information, roughly two weeks from now, the witch will appear here.”
Silence fell at the unexpected briefing.
The one to break that quiet was, as expected, Raksha.
“You’re saying we’re going all the way to the moon just to catch a witch?”
Isabel flipped the hologram and replied.
“This lunar base is a facility of the megacorp ‘Podvig’. And at precisely the time when the witch is expected to appear, Podvig has scheduled an on-site tour of the lunar base planned for all employees worldwide, from new hires to executives. It’s a massive project on a scale they’ve never attempted before.”
“An on-site tour? For all employees?”
Seriel voiced her doubts.
“It’s a typical showy plan aimed at boosting employee morale. Lately, Podvig has been rife with unsettling rumors related to internal corruption. They’re holding a huge event like this to divert attention from those rumors.”
“So we’re going to sneak into that tour event?”
At Diesel’s words, Sis nodded along.
“That’s right.”
“Hmm…… This kind of thing doesn’t really suit me.”
“Infiltration? That’s ridiculous. No matter how good you are, Sis, even if you cover for us from behind, the two of us are practically impossible to infiltrate with in the first place.”
The angel’s words had a point.
Those two Ghostcatchers were a Raksha and an angel who stood out no matter who looked at them.
“Yeah. How’s a bitch walking around with a lightbulb over her head supposed to infiltrate anything?”
“…….”
“This operation is infiltration, but its nature is a bit different.”
At Sis’s words, question marks appeared over everyone’s heads.
Then Isabel added an explanation.
“We are going to the lunar base officially.”
“Officially?”
“What kind of bull—”
The two otherworldly races showed the same reaction in different ways.
“I’ll pass the upcoming Podvig entry recruitment exam and officially participate in the tour. So……”
Isabel finished her sentence with a gentle smile.
“From now on, all of you need to prepare for job hunting.”
“Ah, damn it, what the hell is this supposed to be?”
Raksha bit down hard on the pencil he had been holding in his mouth and snapped it in half.
“Don’t look at anything else—just memorize the key points I organized.”
Sis said as she handed a new pencil to the Raksha.
“No, what era do we live in that we’re using writing tools made of this kind of graphite?”
“That’s just how the company called Podvig is. They’ve always been stubborn about analog stuff. So it’s better if you get used to handwriting quickly.”
Raksha put the new pencil in his mouth and let out a groan.
“Still, the written exam for the department you’re assigned to is on the easier side. It’s nothing but elementary-school-level questions. Compared to Diesel or Seriel, it doesn’t even count as difficult.”
“Shut up.”
After groaning like that for quite a while, Raksha snapped the pencil again with a dull crack.
“Stop breaking them already! Even if they don’t look like much, they’re expensive!”
“Hey. Then why aren’t you doing it?”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you taking the exam like us, Sis?”
At that, Little Sister set down a new pencil and replied.
“You call that a question……? When you enter the moon, who do you think is going to clean up the mess afterward? Hacking support is more than enough with command-level guidance. Or are you asking me to help with on-site firepower too?”
“Ah, damn it. I’m just feeling wronged, okay? Wronged!”
When the Raksha burst out in anger, the pencil in his hand snapped again.
Sis clenched her molars tightly and said,
“From now on, every time you break one, I’m deducting it from the settlement money.”
This operation was an approach only possible because the members were otherworldly races—a Raksha and an angel—and Diesel, whose identity was still almost unknown.
Diesel could simply register an identity guarantee card under a completely new name, and even if the Raksha and the angel brought roughly forged IDs, the company had no way to verify them.
‘Because it’s almost impossible to pin down the identity of otherworldly races.’
Measuring the bodies of otherworldly races was not entirely impossible, but it was extremely troublesome and difficult.
That was because the components making up their bodies were substances that did not exist in our world.
Despite such risks, the reason companies hired otherworldly races was their outstanding abilities.
With superior physiques and intelligence, and the ability to freely wield the power called Miracles, otherworldly races were welcomed by any company.
“All done writing it?”
Sis approached Diesel, who was filling out a new ID, and asked.
“Yeah.”
Diesel handed over the paper with the fake information written on it.
“James Meyer, male, age twenty-five, education……”
Sis nodded as she checked through the details.
It had been almost two full months since I came to this world, and only now was I getting an ID.
Of course, it was an identity that would be discarded the moment this operation ended, but it still gave me a strangely fresh feeling.
“Alright, then let’s take one last photo.”
“Do I not need to disguise myself or anything?”
“We can composite it in post-processing. On-site, Isabel will take care of it. It’s fine.”
It sounded like Isabel, a Mystic, would help with mental-type magic once the operation began.
‘It’s already something to look forward to.’
Mental-type magic that could never be learned through ordinary means.
At best, the things I could obtain right now were Furry Gum that made me look like a beastman, or perfume that caused memory confusion.
Even those toy-like items were all treated as illegal and could only be obtained by paying exorbitant prices to back-alley merchants.
When you thought about it, it was only natural that corporations strictly regulated mental-type magic.
From their perspective, with so much to protect, there was no ability more threatening than manipulating a person’s mind.
After all, the simplest and most reliable method of information theft was a social-engineering approach that controlled an employee’s mind.
“Alright, here we go. Kimchi.”
A clicking sound followed, but it came from Sis’s mouth.
Whether she was taking photos with artificial lenses implanted in her eyes or not, Sis kept winking at Diesel while making clicking sounds.
“Why are you taking so many?”
Diesel showed a slightly displeased expression at Sis’s behavior.
“You always need backups for everything.”
Then, as if she were calculating something in the Electrosphere, she went “Hmm……” and fell into thought for a moment.
“All done.”
“The compositing’s finished?”
“No.”
When Sis raised one finger, several round, sparrow-shaped drones appeared and began printing something in midair.
“The IDs are done.”
“……”
Already?
Diesel knew well how absurd that was, because he had once tried to make an official ID himself.
Just forging a government-issued registration number took a minimum of two weeks and up to several months.
And this was not even comparable to a common resident ID that anyone could carry around—this was an identity guarantee card issued by a corporation.
From Diesel’s experience, it was not the kind of item that could be produced in an instant like this.
‘What a waste to have to use it once and throw it away for this operation.’
“Here, take it.”
Sis handed a gleaming card to Diesel.
He took it and examined it……
“……?”
It was not just one.
Thinking she might have printed two copies of the same thing, he compared them, but they had completely different faces and names.
“One of them is my gift.”
When he looked at Sis, she smiled.
“Since we’re making them anyway, it’s better to make two at once. You probably needed an ID anyway. Right?”
I examined it very carefully, wondering if she had done something strange to the ID.
But it was a perfectly flawless ID, with no such signs at all.
“For this operation, use the ID I roughly made and toss it, and carry around the one you carefully filled out just now in your everyday life.”
I received a gift I never expected.
Sis winked playfully again.
Had she taken another photo this time too?
She didn’t make a clicking sound, so it probably wasn’t that.
Well, at this point, it didn’t really matter anymore.