Humanity Protection Company

TL/Editor: raei

Status: 5/week mon-fri

Illustrations: posted in discord

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It was past midnight.

The penthouse, the temporary residence of the Korean branch of the Goldberg Club, had been seized entirely. The old man and the information broker met in a newly acquired hotel room.

As the old man entered, tapping his cane, the information broker looked up leisurely.

"Sir. How did the negotiation go?"

"Just submitted the proposal. What do you expect? It'll be a while before we see any substantial content."

The old man took off his coat without sparing a glance, while the information broker tapped the table with his fingers.

The information broker thought of the person who had a grudge against him.

"That Lee Yeonwoo? What about him? How much money would it take to smooth things over?"

"How much do you think it would take?"

The old man, having hung his coat on the rack, sat down across from the information broker.

The information broker smiled awkwardly. His voice was tentative, as if testing the waters.

"About as much as we got from the Green Association?"

"Thief's mentality, I see. Think bigger. You've got plenty of money, don't you?"

"It's all in stocks and dollars."

The information broker shrugged.

"NASDAQ is invincible, and the dollar is king. It'd be a shame to pull out now..."

He converted his earnings to dollars as soon as he made them and bought ETFs tracking the NASDAQ index. ETFs that rose in value as long as the US stock market was on an upward trend.

The old man frowned and began to lecture.

"Do you want to die? Want to be buried without using all that money? If you don't pay an appropriate price, they'll forcibly extract it from you, you know?"

"Come on, sir. He's just an investigator. He seems to have made some money from solving many cases, but he hasn't touched really big money."

The information the broker had obtained didn't include any achievements or rewards for solving the climate anomalies.

That was because the company had put great effort into protecting what Yeonwoo had asked to be kept hidden.

Therefore, the information broker judged that Yeonwoo, being an investigator, would be satisfied with just returning the money received from the Green Association.

"Value is relative, isn't it? Won't that be satisfying enough?"

The information broker shrugged again.

The old man was about to burst out in anger, but then he remembered something and let out a weak sigh.

'This information broker doesn't know how to interpret information.'

Value is relative. Can the price of threatening a survivalist's life really be settled with money?

And.

'He doesn't even understand what precognition means.'

Precognition wasn't about seeing the future. It was about changing it. It was about limiting the countless branches of future possibilities.

He didn't want to waste energy on a youngster who wasn't even in the mindset to listen to advice. If he died like this, it would be natural selection.

The old man waved his hand dismissively.

"Do as you please."

After all, his main job was to contract with the dice holder as the club's proxy.

The information broker grinned and leaned forward. He rested his elbows on the table and interlocked his fingers.

"Then, please propose the money we received from the Green Association first. It's currently in gold, but if they want it changed to something like banknotes or anomalous objects, we can lower the price a bit-"

The old man listened with one ear and let it out the other, while the information broker, chattering away, stopped talking as if his throat had gone dry.

He grabbed the water bottle.

"Just a moment for some water."

And then, the possibility that Yeonwoo had chosen and the dice had implemented reached them.

Misfortune.

The water he was gulping down got stuck in his throat. The information broker bent over, spitting out water. A harsh coughing sound followed.

"Kack, keck!"

"Choking on water? Why are you in such a hurry?"

The old man glanced at him. Are all young people like this these days? But the old man's expression soon hardened.

The information broker flailed his arms, but unfortunately, his elbow struck the corner of the table. That electrifying shock.

"Ugh!"

The information broker jumped up and down. And then he misstepped somehow.

Crack, his ankle twisted. His body fell backward. The chair toppled over, and as the information broker fell back hard, his toes slammed into the sharp corner of the table.

Thwack-!

The table's edge dug between his toenail and flesh. That horrific pain.

"Arghhhh!"

His head was dyed with pain. The information broker rolled around, screaming. The water bottle fell on top of him, soaking him.

The old man looked down at the unsightly information broker with sunken eyes. An impossible series of misfortunes.

'Is this... the dice? It doesn't seem like each judgment was rolled separately. Misfortune? The distance should be considerable, is there no distance limit?'

He thought, looking at the information broker.

Meanwhile, the information broker, after suffering in pain for a while, finally came to his senses. His eyes were mixed with half bewilderment, half annoyance.

"What's this all of a sudden. Sir, am I under attack?"

"Probably. More importantly, check your stocks."

In that moment, the information broker's face turned ashen. His complexion became pale as if all the blood had drained from him.

"No. No way. No. Right?"

He took out his phone with trembling hands. Even that didn't go smoothly.

The touch screen didn't work properly, he failed to log in repeatedly and his account got locked, he dropped the phone and the screen cracked, he got cut by something and blood beads formed on his finger.

Despite this, the information broker gritted his teeth and kept tapping his phone, and finally saw it.

"Uh. Uh."

The sight of the stocks he had steadily been buying plummeting in a steep curve.

The information broker blankly watched the falling graph. He coldly denied reality.

"This much of a drop is fine. It was due for a correction anyway after the continuous upward trend. Considering the average price, I'm still in profit. It's actually a good time to buy more. It'll go up eventually, right? The club won't just sit by either."

Looking at the information broker rambling, the old man shook his head. Then he struck his cane down with a thud.

"Right, the club will prevent the economic crisis. The company plans to help too."

The Great Depression, a fixed future, has come? Feed gold to the Golden Omnipotence and it'll be stopped. There are many other means and powers too.

When an economic crisis comes, gold prices tend to rise, so the club will calculate the profits and losses to prevent the crisis.

The company was similar.

If it were just a simple economic crisis, they'd think it's none of their business and pretend not to see it, but.

'This is an accident combining the dice's result and the future fixed by Golden Omnipotence.'

In other words, it was an economic disaster caused by two dangerous anomalous entities. The company wouldn't stand idle in such a case either.

The problem was the information broker.

The old man pointed his cane at the information broker. This junior was so clueless.

"But what about your life? An opponent capable of causing this much damage sees you as an enemy."

"Uh..."

"The club has no intention of protecting you specifically."

Because an anomalous entity that can confront Golden Omnipotence and create synergy is more important than some rookie like this.

Starting with this contract, sometimes giving profits, sometimes preventing losses, gradually intertwining, won't they eventually become friends?

'This is the club.'

Isn't this a more sophisticated method than crudely antagonizing and killing?

There are many foolish juniors who don't understand this, though.

At that point, the information broker realized the situation. His lips trembled, and he barely managed to open his mouth.

"I'll dispose of all the stocks and dollars. How much compensation should I pay?"

"Now you're ready to listen. Here's what you need to do."

The old man folded his hands over his cane.

"Equipment that helps with work and survival rather than money. And separately, 1 billion won. A forced contract stating you'll never sell information related to the dice or that person again."

No one is outstanding from the start. The old man, hoping the information broker had learned a lesson from this incident, advised in a low voice.

---

---

At that moment, in the hospital room, Yeonwoo and Mark Jung were shaking their arms and legs as they looked at the laptop screen together.

Wondering what possibility the dice had implemented, they opened the stock screen out of curiosity. NASDAQ stocks were plummeting sharply.

"This, isn't this a precursor to the Great Depression? No, why?"

"W-what did you roll? Misfortune, you say? Didn't you roll an economic crisis?"

"I really only rolled misfortune, and it was just a success. It can't cause this much damage."

Yeonwoo raised his voice, feeling wronged.

'It was just a success, so why is there this much damage? This isn't just unfortunate.'

But it happened after rolling the dice.

Mark Jung frantically messed up his hair with his hands.

"Yeonwoo. This is really not okay. Although it wasn't your intention, the Great Depression? The number of people who will suffer because of the dice result, ah."

It's uncountable. The people who will suffer because of an anomalous entity, that is.

Mark Jung, with his somewhat strong sense of duty, groaned, clutching his head.

Yeonwoo was at a loss for words too. He caused the Great Depression, something he'd only seen in history books? And on top of that.

'How many incidents have I caused now? The Reptilian boss going berserk, losing an ordinary bullet. If we count this one...'

Until now, things had aligned well and benefited the company, so he'd somehow gotten away with it, but would the third incident be overlooked as just an incident?

Yeonwoo's pupils trembled uncontrollably.

'Is the headquarters suspicious of me too? Thinking I'm deliberately causing incidents?'

Twisting it around, he'd spread the Reptilian plague, handed over an ordinary bullet to a hostile group, and caused an economic crisis.

'...Even I think this looks like a doomsday cultist, not a company employee?'

The fire was at his feet.

Yeonwoo jumped up in panic, grabbed Mark Jung's shoulders, and shook him back and forth.

"You said you're under a director, right? Quickly contact them and tell them! Say I rolled misfortune and all hell broke loose!"

"Ah, yes! My shoulder!"

Mark Jung, being shaken vigorously, took out his phone.

Yeonwoo retreated to the door of the hospital room, his senses on high alert.

The call connected.

"Yes. Due to the dice result now, ah. You know? The club? Precognition... I understand. I'll relay that."

The call ended. Yeonwoo looked at Mark Jung, extremely tense. He wondered if they might have ordered to shoot him with an ordinary bullet.

Mark Jung spoke.

"Yeonwoo. They say it's not your fault."

"Are you sure?"

This doesn't seem like a problem that would end just like that?

Yeonwoo's suspicion deepened. He turned the doorknob with a click, opened the door, and hid behind it.

"I didn't know this well either, but precognition..."

Mark Jung explained with a relieved expression. The future fixed by precognition. Yeonwoo's result had merely rolled down towards the tilted future.

Yeonwoo understood too. Something like an Oracle system.

"So, they can handle it all, right? It's all the club's fault?"

If even the dice couldn't handle the Oracle system that burst, surely the company can block a single precognition?

Indeed, Mark Jung nodded as he looked at the laptop screen.

"Yes. It's rising again."

Whether they used large-scale psychological manipulation or some strange anomalous entity, I don't know.

"It will end up as just a minor incident. And the director said..."

Yeonwoo perked up his ears.

"He said to tell him if something like this happens. Whether it's revenge or whatever, the company will handle it for you, so please only roll the dice when you're out on a mission..."

The director, who had indirectly experienced a bomb meant to explode outside going off inside the house, was also shocked.

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