Past Life Returner

It was night when we came out. While the survivors looked up at the moon with overwhelming emotions, the mercenaries who guarded the dungeon entrance and Joshua’s close subordinates gathered around us. They became speechless when they saw our miserable appearances. We had bloody scabs and wounds all over our bodies. Then, they ran toward their leaders.

Joshua walked towards me, ignoring his subordinates, and whispered as if the shock he had experienced from the boss monster’s room hadn’t left him yet, “I’ll escort you to my mansion.”

“No, I’d appreciate it if you sent me a car. I’ll stay at the Wilson Hotel,” I replied.

***

“You should go to the hospital,” one of Joshua’s subordinates said.

“No, head to the mansion,” Joshua replied.

“But…”

“Things will get more serious from now on. Go to the mansion,” Joshua said firmly.

The man got an eerie feeling from Joshua’s eyes and voice—he was acting differently from when he carried out a significant project in the office. The man turned to the mercenary captain, who was in the same vehicle. He was the one who had recommended the captain to Joshua.

The captain’s team had distinguished themselves in wars from the onset of the Bosnian Civil War until the signing of the Dayton Treaty. They were even called the ‘Skeletons of the Balkans,’ so people called the captain a ‘skeleton leader.’ However, he looked really haggard now.

‘What happened in that supernatural space called a dungeon?’ the man wondered as everyone who went in had changed a lot.

“Captain, I sincerely apologize for mistreating you and showing poor leadership in the dungeon.” Joshua looked at the mercenary captain.

The captain replied slowly, “At the time… everyone was panicking…”

Those were memories they wanted to erase from their head immediately.

“About the verbal contracts,” Joshua said.

“If you promise me one thing…”

“Your people will never go back into the dungeon. It will never happen again, and you’ll be in charge of the outside. But we need more people,” Joshua added.

“How many do you have in mind?”

“The more, the better. Can you recruit, though? Right now, it is…” Joshua hesitated.

The captain became lost in thought. He felt weird calculating the number of mercenaries needed when he couldn’t even imagine seeing the light outside the dungeon a few hours ago.

Why now? the captain thought.

He was about to burst into tears, so he hurriedly opened the car window. The strong wind and the moonlight in the night sky reminded him that he had come back alive. He was finally back to the place where he was supposed to be. While the captain was suppressing his tears, Joshua patted him on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, captain,” Joshua said.

“Ahem. I’ll go to America as soon as we wrap this up,” the captain responded.

“America?”

“Have you heard of Whitewater? They are proper business organizations, not freelancers like us,” the captain answered.

Joshua replied, “I don’t know much about the private security market.”

“The growth of Whitewater has been insane since the 8.11 terrorist act. The entire industry seems to be focusing on the war in Afghanistan, but they will probably…”

Joshua nodded as the captain explained.

“I hope it’s not too late. Please hurry,” Joshua replied.

The car became silent again. Then, the captain recalled the screams from the dark in the dungeon, and Joshua remembered the scene he witnessed in the boss’s room. Joshua still couldn’t believe how dreadful my ability was, as I treated the demon and monsters like toys. His brain no longer functioned whenever he saw my fearsome power, but since he was away from me now, he organized his thoughts one by one.

Joshua had planned to pressure me with his family’s strength by making me succumb to capitalism and slowly conciliate me by driving me to despair. However, Joshua now realized that I was in a class of my own, a being on a whole different level from anyone else in the world.

People stated that individual force was now meaningless, but my ability seemed to be the greatest of all time to Joshua. He wondered what kind of weapon could defeat me, since I was so fast and strong. Considering how I had slain the demon, Joshua believed that I could easily avoid gunshots and instantly kill those who aimed their guns at me. To Joshua, things had happened in the blink of an eye.

We can’t control him by force. If I cannot kill him… Joshua thought.

He thought there had to be a way to kill me. For instance, shooting me from a distance beyond my line of sight, or luring me to a random place while detonating an explosive unexpectedly. The mercenary captain sitting next to him was a professional at those tasks.

Odin is human, like us, but… would that work? Ah, it’s annoying.

He thought of bringing in the government, but that was digging his own grave. Another issue was that he had approached me for the same purpose as me, and that we both wanted each other. This was a game, and the loser would go under. There was no opportunity for Joshua to win under my rules, but he thought his rules would also not work well for him. If he impacted my family business, he knew I would retaliate recklessly, neglecting social norms. I could afford to be outside the law.

Ah, what should I do?

“Book a luxury room under the name ‘Leonard Lee.’ The hotel is the Wilson Garden in Berlin,” Joshua instructed the guy in the passenger seat.

A moment later…

“Someone just reserved a room with the same name,” the man said.

“Upgrade it to the suite at the Royal Penthouse,” Joshua responded.

“They said he booked that room.”

“Are you sure?”

Joshua questioned as if it couldn’t be true.

“I’ll check it again.”

However, the answer was the same. There were only twelve Royal Penthouse suites that were modeled after the Austrian palace. They offered every service, including butlers and chefs, and the rooms cost seventy thousand dollars per night. They were usually empty except when the German government served state guests because even billionaires rarely booked a suite due to their price. Joshua became even more astonished after learning that I had reserved a suite for thirty nights instead of just one.

“You better report to me on Leonard Lee and his family’s business by tomorrow morning,” Joshua said.

“Yes, sir. I’ll hurry up.”

Joshua stayed up all night and told his group members not to open the dungeon boxes yet. He spent time overhauling the group system and received reports about me the next morning. Obviously, all the data regarding me, including the family business, was fake, and Leonard Lee didn’t exist. To be exact, the business and person that had been present at the time of recruitment had now suddenly vanished.

Was it because of this?

Joshua was pleased rather than angry. He realized that I had intentionally revealed my true identity by staying in a luxurious suite and accepted his fight. He knew that I was telling him to try as much as he could to knock me down.

If we can fight based on this world’s rules, I can never lose to you. I’ll rip you apart.

Joshua was ready to head his family home.

***

Joshua’s family reprimanded him and questioned his ability to run the business, but now wasn’t the time to tell them the secret. However, he was still able to seek help from them, as they loved him very much. He received files managed by the U.S. Treasury and Department of Commerce, and the documents contained information about money transactions. Joshua was aware that the initial authorized capital was required in order to record a fake business on paper, so he searched the money’s source.

“Lawrence Cable Market. Lawrence Lee,” he muttered.

When he listed the owner of the company, his subordinate phoned the butler of Joshua’s family home to ask for help in investigating the transactions secretly.

“Driver Gold. Robert Young. Jeff Merson.”

An endless number of faxes came in, and Joshua eventually burst with joy after looking at the file for more than half a day.

“I got him!”

He finally found the funds from the Cayman Islands and noticed that I actually took a part in society and dealt with the laws quite well. He realized that I had created Leonard Lee and the fake family by covering them up with multiple paper companies under more than a hundred million dollars of funds from the Cayman Islands. There was a twelve-digit transfer code number in his hand, and that number would lead him to my Cayman Islands vault. This time, Joshua phoned the butler directly.

<Joshua: The transfer code number is 992311417922. It’s Silverman in Cayman.>

<Butler: The elders are watching you, sir.>

<Joshua: Yeah, I know. I won’t make them worried. After this…>

Then, he heard a loud noise over the phone, even though the house had always been quiet.

My home is a place where there’s no disturbance at all…

<Joshua: What’s going on?>

<Butler: You don’t need to worry about it. Could you please tell me the number again?>

Although he was favored by his family, he didn’t have enough authority to intervene in their business, and he had a long way to go until he reached that point. However, Joshua took the butler’s response calmly this time and didn’t swear. Before entering the dungeon, his ultimate goal had been to join his family’s board of directors and become a member of the Bilderberg Club. However, his heart was now wriggling with greater ambition. He was planning a revolution. If he could bring me in and complete the group, it was possible for him to break down the status quo.

A few seconds later, the fax machine began pushing out papers, and his close subordinate took them out. The man stood firm and only looked at Joshua with a slight frown. Joshua stood up himself and approached him.

“Umm… this is…”

The man slurred the end of his sentence, and Joshua somehow felt uneasy. Then, he took the paper shaking in the man’s trembling hand. He laughed when he checked the paper, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile, as my safe name was…

「Corporation. Hallo[1], Joshua」

Then, the man’s phone rang. As he put it to his ear, his eyes suddenly widened and he looked at Joshua.

“Sir!”

“I know what it is. It’s all good. We can start over here…”

“No, your family is under attack!” the man shouted.

When Joshua heard the term ‘attack,’ he remembered the sight he had witnessed in the boss’s room. The faces of the elderly at home overlapped with the monsters’ decapitated heads in his memory. He could see blood flowing out from the heads and quickly dyeing his house. Joshua immediately regretted shadowing me.

Why the hell did I do this to this horrible being?!

Joshua came to his senses after hearing the sound of news on the television.

“The mark’s intensive selling has caused a plunge in European Currency by 2.25 percent, so the countries in the EMS[2] are…”

The economic channel was already broadcasting the attack as breaking news.

“Is that what’s under attack?” Joshua asked.

The man stared at him, wondering if Joshua was all right because Joshua seemed to be actually relieved. Joshua quickly blinked his eyes.

“Sir…?”

Joshua’s eyes blurred.

If Odin really started all this… no… I can’t believe this. It must be just a coincidence!

1. German hello ☜

2. European Monetary System ☜