Thumbs Up, Level Up

Chapter 254

The reptilian monsters all disappeared as soon as Ji-Cheok defeated the apostle of the [World_devouring_serpent], but unfortunately, so did the human limbs they had torn off. The flesh and bone they had consumed could not be brought back, and Ji-Cheok was powerless to restore the bodies of those who had been maimed because of the serpent worshipers.

Some of the survivors would turn to robbery and crime in order to save themselves. Ji-Cheok needed to restore order to the city as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

“This message is for my people. Those who have no urgent business to attend to, I summon you here.”

The people of the Tama Clan responded to his message. All but two of them were summoned before him in a beam of light.

“We have answered your call, Lord.”

“Good to see you. We are in a critical situation, so let’s move quickly. Rescue the survivors, heal those in need, stop the buildings from collapsing. Move out!”

“The Lord has given us the command! Save the people!” Macaw of the White Charcoal shouted, and the summoned people immediately scattered in all directions.

Ji-Cheok also immediately moved into action, sifting through the rubble. Meanwhile, he shouted orders to Cheok-Liang.

“Cheok-Liang! I need you to find skills that can save people. Now!”

?I have already prepared, Master. These are all the large-scale search skills, and telekinesis skills and supplies. I have also found some healing and summoning skills.?

Cheok-Liang brought up the list.

[Dr. Know-it-all’s All-Purpose Golem], [Eye of the Underground], [Clairvoyant], [Life Detection], [Mental Enhancement], [Healing Wave], [Touch of the Regenerator], [Life…]

There were a lot of skills, but they were cheaper than he had thought.

“Purchase them all! Summon Dr. Know-it-all’s All-Purpose Golem!]

Flash!

All Dr. Know-it-all’s All-Purpose Golems that Ji-Cheok could summon popped out. They were floating in the sky—weird circular mechas about a meter in diameter. They had eight limbs, each with a six-fingered mechanical hand.

‘They’re smaller than I thought.’

They looked like space octopi or something like that, and there were 126 of them.

“Clairvoyant! Eye of the Underground! Life Detection!”

As Ji-Cheok used one skill after another, the locations of survivors everywhere appeared in his mind.

“Save the people!”

“Bboo.”

“Bboo.”

“Bboo.”

The Golems made strange noises and spread out. They started picking through the rubble, pulling people out.

Ji-Cheok was also on the move.

Boom!

He lifted the rubble with telekinesis and gently picked up the man he had detected with his skills. The injured man had passed out, with his legs crushed.

“Healing Wave”

Ji-Cheok’s mana transformed into a healing force and started to heal the injured. He could see the crushed legs return to normal at a visible pace, and the injured man seemed to regain his healthy complexion.

He set the now-healed man down in a safe area, then immediately went out to save more people. He found someone trapped in an overturned car and took action right away.

He found them, treated them, and moved them to safety.

As he repeated the process, he could feel his number of Likes rising.

‘Is it because I am livstreaming? Or is it the gratitude of the people I’ve helped?’

However, Ji-Cheok did not have time to check. He rescued people as if he was in a trance, and when the day was over, he could see that he had saved everyone who was alive.

He also realized that there were still a lot of people that had died in the rubble before he could get to them.

? ? ?

?The death toll in Malaga is now officially over 120,000. The number of injured is even higher… And let’s not even start with the property damage. The problem is that this is an act of terrorism. The nature of the event is different from what we have seen in New Jersey.?

A chubby middle-aged man in a suit and glasses spoke lazily. Opposite of him sat a thin, middle-aged man, also in a suit, but without glasses.

It was a three-way debate. It was one of those typical debate shows on television discussing current events.

Right now, they were talking about the recent event in Spain.

?The dungeon in New Jersey came out of nowhere, you could not avoid it. The best chance of survival would be just running away from the dungeon. It was a good thing that it opened up in the middle of the road instead of inside a building.?

The viewers could hear the other panelists sigh, but the man continued to talk.

?You know this right? Sometimes dungeons appear inside a building and when that happens, the building itself collapses, causing a lot of casualties.?

?I know that, but don’t you think it’s a stretch to say that what happened in Spain is different from the New Jersey Incident??

?Of course, it’s different! The dungeons can be stopped with the dimensional barrier generator that Jungha Group is working on right now. Soon there will not be any new dungeons created in Korea, and the government is actively working on it to make that happen. But terrorism like this is hard to stop. If a madman sets his mind up to kill all these people, what can we do to stop him??

?Still, we can’t just sit back and watch people get killed…?

?When did I ever say to just sit back? All I’m saying is…?

The two panelists were going at it hard, trying to persuade the other side. The moderator cut them off and changed the topic, but they ended up talking about the situation in Malaga again.

Jung Bi-Ga smirked and turned her head away from the screen to look at another monitor. On that screen, a number of people and heavy machines were drilling into a massive glacier.

“Even if I shrink down the fifty-kilometer pillar as much as I can, it’s still going to be ten kilometers long. And it has to be one kilometer wide… Um Ji-Cheok, you’re one crazy person.”

This was what Ji-Cheok was originally planning on building. It was big enough to be mistaken for a fifty-kilometer-tall high orbital elevator.

There was no land at the North Pole. All the ice was actually glaciers, and underneath was ocean water. So originally, Ji-Cheok’s fifty-kilometer dimensional barrier pillar was going to go all the way to the ocean floor.

It was cut down to ten kilometers, but the idea was the same. She was planning to drill down to the seawater beneath the glacier and build up from the depths.

The design was complete and construction was already underway. All sorts of skills and spells, psychic and Arcane-Engineered items, and Alchemy were being used to harden the glacier itself. After all, if the glacier broke, it was going to delay the project.

Once that part was complete, she was going to start putting together construction equipment on top of it, and start on the dimensional barrier pillar. Once the hole was drilled in the glacier, she was going to send the equipment down to the depths of the ocean.

Normally, no single company would have been able to do this, but because Ji-Cheok had spent so much money, there were thousands of people here and trillions of won in heavy equipment.

On top of that, Adam Bronze’s company had also joined in, and the U.S. government had agreed to help, so resources were pouring in.

It was going according to the plan.

So far.

As for what would happen next, Bi-Ga had no questions or doubts. Dungeons would open up around them, and secret societies were bound to attack them. Thus, she was making preparations for that. Killing machines were being installed, created by her powerful skill. She did not just install them on the Arctic glaciers—they floated both in the sky and in the ocean.

It was like she was inside a frozen fortress. Additionally, there were laborers from all over the world and Hunters who were sent to protect them.

“But… Well, it’s okay. This means I can do whatever I want to do …”

She was undoubtedly one of the most prominent wealthy individuals in the world. She earned money like she breathed as her drones kept generating revenue through patents. However, she had never been able to use trillions of won so freely like this. She had enough money for all practical purposes, but that was all there was to it.

Right now, however, she had over two hundred trillion won in her hands. Ji-Cheok was somehow earning a massive amount of money and he had simply given her unlimited access to it.

“It’s like he’s using a cheat code…”

Like this, she was enjoying the feeling of being rich for the first time in a long time. And here, she was building a machine empire like no one had ever seen.

“Huhuhuhu. I wonder who is going to attack us first~”

She laughed and turned her attention to another screen. It was showing news from the United States, not Korea.

? ? ?

?Who was responsible for the attack in Malaga? An attack that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths!?

?A comparative analysis of the New Jersey Incident and the Malaga Incident.?

?How did the pride of South Korea, Ji-Cheok, get his power??

?Is the power of the dimensional barrier generator real? Korea, the Age of Zero Dungeons is coming!?

As Ji-Cheok watched more and more videos, he could not help feeling the rush of excitement that came with every Like that stacked up. It was inevitable, with so many patriotic videos being posted. When he got home, he played a few videos and found himself swept up in a frenzy of national pride.

Despite the political turmoil outside, he had decided to let Ji-Han handle everything, so he had not received any calls from the government or the political parties.

?Master… You are getting so many Likes!?

“I can see that.”

He knew that if he posted something when he went to bed, hundreds of millions of Likes would be waiting for him when he woke up. If he uploaded just one video, he would easily get five hundred million Likes in a day. The number of Likes from the relief video of Spain had already surpassed eight hundred million. Of course, this was only natural since he was gaining worldwide popularity.

Despite using so many Likes, he was still approaching 4.5 billion. It was truly a victory for humanity! No, a victory of humanity’s God!

As much as he wanted to revel in his success, however, he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. The end of the Tutorial was approaching, and while he had already found a viable solution and was working hard to implement it, there were still so many selfish people who wanted to sacrifice the lives of the innocent for their survival.

‘How can I feel good about this? I need ideas. Good ideas.’

?Master, I have an idea.?

“Oh, really?”

‘You always have an idea! My best advisor!’

?Yes, Master. How about a public relations campaign??

“A PR campaign? Tell me more.”

? ? ?

“Hyung… Where exactly are you trying to go with all this?” exclaimed Mu-Cheok.

Mu-Cheok was the only relative that Ji-Cheok still had. He also Awakened with A-Class level abilities, and he even had a promising future as a Hunter with an S-Class job. On top of that, with the help of a dubious modification surgery from Bi-Ga, he had attained the potential to become an SS-Class Hunter.

Despite all this, Mu-Cheok was dissatisfied. Currently, he had reached level 120 and possessed the power to overwhelm other top Hunters at the same level. He achieved these accomplishments by raiding dungeons with his team members while separated from Ji-Cheok.

Obtaining such achievements in just a few months was not only due to the excruciating hardships they endured, but also because they had been dispatched to dungeons of the Time Distortion category, with the help of Ji-Han.

These dungeons were like Ji-Cheok’s Training Space of the God of War, in that time flowed differently inside the dungeon. Of course, the minimum rank of these dungeons was five stars, and they were elite dungeons at that. However, they gave the team a priceless advantage: even if one year passed inside, only a day would pass outside.

1. Ji-Cheok uses the term “my people” in the same way as God is quoted in the Bible to refer to Israel, i.e., his chosen ones.

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