NOVEL NEXT Chapter 150
Catherine was focused on wasting her expensive (or maybe cheap) time, rolling around on the sofa as usual.
It wasn’t that she had nothing to do.
From: ‘Natasha Petrova’
– People are causing a scene saying you’re not taking jobs lately.
– It’s not like I don’t know the reason.
– I’ll cancel it on my end.
From: ‘City Security Department, ■■’
– Confidential mission request.
– Please respond after confirming the above content.
From: ‘White Rabbit’
– Would you like to game together…?
Just by looking at the message list filling her view interface, one could tell.
Catherine had a lot of things to do right now.
She just wasn’t doing them.
The hologram channel she had carelessly left on was playing an animal documentary.
[Lions can be seen as the kings of beasts. Due to extinction in the wild, they can only be found in city zoos now.]
Bored, Catherine lay upside down on the sofa, her legs flailing in the air like they were swimming.
[This is video data of a lion. (Sound of a lion yawning) Quite adorable, isn’t it?]
“……Yawn.”
Catherine yawned long and slowly, blinking her eyes with a sleepy expression.
[(Hunting video) But as mentioned earlier, lions are indeed creatures that can be called kings of beasts. Let’s learn about the specs of lions─.]
– Thud.
With a light wave of her hand, she ended the hologram and stared blankly at the ceiling.
It wasn’t that she wanted to see the ceiling, but lying down made it happen naturally.
Stifling her drowsiness, she envisioned the figure of a wizard on the ceiling.
‘……Something feels off.’
It was an instinctual feeling.
Catherine clicked her tongue short, pondering the cause of this inexplicable unease.
Siwoon’s behavior after spending a night with Eve felt strange. It felt so peculiar that she emphasized it to herself three times internally.
The oddly close distance, the smile lingering on Eve’s lips, Siwoon’s strange demeanor, and more.
Little suspicious things piled up, fueling Catherine’s doubts.
Looking back, it might have affected the Chairman asking Siwoon for security.
She internally speculated on the possibility.
In the midst of that, a voice from the AI, which was the source of her worries, reached Catherine’s ears.
[Emergency situation.]
“……Huh?”
Caught off guard by the abrupt content, Catherine responded with a mixture of surprise.
“What’s going on?”
Rising from the sofa, she manipulated her view interface to amplify Eve’s voice.
If it were someone else, it might be dismissed, but if Eve, an AI, said it was an emergency, there was a high chance that it truly was urgent.
However, what Eve said was far from being urgent.
[We recommend you search for news regarding NCB24 in net space right now.]
“…An emergency and you’re telling me to search for something?”
Muttering in annoyance, Catherine moved to launch net space in her view interface.
The urgency in Eve’s voice hinted at something important.
“……”
Yet, there was no need to search.
As soon as she accessed the NCB24 net site, a headline that presumably matched Eve’s statement topped the main page.
Catherine froze, feeling as if she had been hacked.
『Announcement of Engagement Ceremony for Taylor Blackstar, Chairman of Black Monolith Corporation (Breaking News)』
A silence that felt like eternity washed over her.
“…What the hell, damn it─.”
Before the harsh curse could escape her nice lips, Eve continued.
[All other entities have already been informed. ‘Catherine’, what will you do?]
Catherine sprang up from the sofa.
A cracking sound echoed from her tightly clenched fist.
“What’s to ask? Isn’t it obvious?”
Catherine prepared to head out.
34. Me? (5)
…Hmm.
I tried to organize the situation as objectively as possible.
This is bad.
No, that’s an understatement.
This is really bad.
Just glancing around revealed utter chaos.
Rampaging vehicles were crashing through walls, trying to hit people, security personnel who had crashed through the ceiling struggled to stop the cars, while joyful reporters eagerly captured the chaos on camera.
However, for a former pro mercenary, remaining calm in such a situation was essential.
So, I mentally erased one of the possibilities I had considered.
This incident.
It wasn’t created by magic.
Eve said there were no traces of hacking in the vehicle terror incident.
It was unlikely that the supreme entity of cyberpunk, the god of machinery, Super AI Eve, would be wrong.
So I was almost certain this incident stemmed from ‘magic’.
But it wasn’t.
I felt no mana at all.
No matter how much I trained in magic like a mad wizard, if I couldn’t feel the existence of mana in a large-scale incident like this…
My second master, Merlin, sleeping underground, might just scold me.
(He actually is in the underground.)
Not magic, not hacking either.
Then what could it be?
But continuing down that peaceful thought process was impossible with chaos all around.
…….
Because a group of women was headed straight for me from a distance.
They appeared dignified.
Despite screams and chaos all around, their indifference was striking.
Leading the group was Catherine.
Behind her were AI, the boss of No Answer, a famous singer, a part-time worker from a sushi place, and an ordinary criminal.
Except for one relatively normal person, all gathered were individuals who could attract people’s attention just by showing up.
But fortunately, the chaos around seemed too overwhelming that few people paid them much mind.
But is Julia really okay to come out like this?
I thought the bounty issue was still unresolved.
Well, she might have her reasons.
If not, it meant she was too disoriented to care.
…….
Maybe she just seemed a bit out of it….
Anyway.
I didn’t know about anything else, but it was a bit scary.
At that moment, one of the vehicles charged towards them at full speed.
Confirming the driver through the front windshield, it was clear he was sweating bullets while trying to steer away. Yet, the vehicle’s movement didn’t change.
I sprang up from my place.
“Watch out─!”
Catherine’s fist slammed into the car’s hood at that moment.
I watched, dumbfounded by the scene.
“?”
– Kwhack!!
It looked like a scene from a movie.
In other words, it was a moment so absurd that if I told someone about it, I would probably be told not to talk nonsense.
The huge vehicle crashed into her fist and flipped over. It did a half-turn in the air before crashing down in the opposite direction.
Thank goodness the ceiling was high here. Though, is that really good? I’m not sure.
Through the shattered front windshield, I saw the driver clutching the deployed airbag, confused about what had just happened. I empathized with his feelings, too.
What on earth is happening?
Catherine, as if nothing had happened, started walking back towards me.
What a main character.
More like the final boss.
I became twice as scared than before.
My life might shift into a horror splatter genre. If I die, will I return to the original world? I should leave behind a last message saying, “Well, it was a decent life!”
My thoughts were cluttered with needless musings.
That’s how flustered I was.
To what extent was I flustered?
– Thud, thud.
Catherine’s footsteps echoed loudly, sounding almost exaggerated.
…….
No, seriously, the ground beneath her was cracking.
It wasn’t just my imagination.
As the atmosphere grew tense, a few figures hidden with optical camouflage emerged from the front where the Chairman was sitting.
I could see exosuits engraved with the Monolith emblem.
Their human forms were barely visible.
Cyberware full-body suits.
“…Asymmetric Security Department?”
I had seen them a few times during missions but hadn’t really encountered them much.
As hidden blades of Monolith, it made sense for them to protect the Chairman.
Wow, I didn’t even know they were here.
I felt a chill run down my spine.
If they clashed, I couldn’t predict the outcome. I wanted to call the Chairman over to resolve the situation rather than being flustered.
However, the Chairman waved his hand lightly, quicker than I could speak.
The Asymmetric Security Department personnel bowed their heads slightly and vanished from sight.
The Chairman stood up from his chair, slowly making his way to the stage.
What, exactly, does he plan to do in front of the enraged Catherine (and the other six)?
My curiosity was short-lived.
Catherine stopped in front of the Chairman and spoke.
“Even if you are the Chairman, this is─!”
“The engagement outfits are prepared back there.”
“……?”
“We need to attend together.”
Catherine’s words were silenced by the Chairman’s.
A brief silence followed.
I can only imagine that in their minds, the thoughts were teetering back and forth like a seesaw.
‘Crash the engagement vs. Attend the engagement.’
““…….””
Their decision came swiftly.
The anger on Catherine’s face quickly melted away as she cautiously asked.
“…You prepared for our attendance too?”
“Hehe, of course. Since the schedule is starting soon, hurry and change.”
In an instant, the atmosphere shifted to one of peace.
Of course, the distant sounds of cars still crashing into people could be heard.
But at least for now, it was peaceful.
“……Chairman.”
“Yeah?”
I quietly asked the Chairman.
He looked at me with a small smile.
It was a remarkably innocent smile, hard to believe it was the source of all these issues.
He hadn’t smiled like this often in the past, but these days he seemed to smile a lot.
“……Well, if you planned to do this together from the start, couldn’t you have just invited them initially?”
Catherine wouldn’t have had to storm in saying, “This engagement is void!”
Had I spoken my thought, the Chairman tilted his head slightly while playfully smiling.
“It’s amusing, isn’t it?”
“……”
I looked at the Chairman with a dumbfound expression.
The Chairman continued.
“Well, truthfully, it wouldn’t have mattered if they didn’t show up, and I wouldn’t suffer any loss, either.”
He said it casually, as if to imply for me to remember it.
“See, the outcome is great, right? We resolved the terrorist incident, and the engagement is proceeding just fine.”
He was always unfazed.
“This is what handling things is like.”
“……”
No wonder he’s the Chairman of a megacorp.
*
《This is NCB24 news. As Taylor Blackstar, the Chairman and CEO of Black Monolith Corporation, announces his engagement, it’s also rumored that the number of participants in the engagement ceremony is ‘8’. Furthermore, it’s said that only ‘1’ of them is registered as a male in the city database. The Monolith side is expected to provide further details on the wedding event─.》
– Ding.
I shut off the news.
The next day, I heard that Justin Borg, the Executive Secretary of the Monolith, had been admitted to Neon City Central Hospital due to extreme stress.