It’s an Academic Fact That Rankers Are Model Students – Chapter 250

Chapter 250: Reconnecting to the Source of the Problem

Vroom~

A van was driving down a Russian road.

The van, which could carry more than 10 people, only had two people in it, including the driver.

“Wow. In this day and age, you’re driving manually instead of using autopilot. Gulp, gulp, ah~”

One was a Korean high school student who smelled of vodka and hadn’t even filled up his 20 years of drinking experience.

“……If you drive around like that these days, you’ll be caught by our Russian police.”

The other was a Russian man in a tank top with tattoos and scars all over his body.

Simply put.

Kyung-joon and AngerManagementVodka met in real life.

And Kyung-joon was currently on his way to his hideout near Vladivostok, Russia, in a van driven by AngerManagementVodka.

“Is your boss there?”

“No. The boss is at the Ruski Komrade Moscow branch. If he were here, he wouldn’t have responded to your message in the first place.”

“Aha. I see.”

Ruski Komrade.

The World’s largest player workshop guild and a real mafia in Russia.

AngerManagementVodka, the 11th-ranking executive there, said to Kyung-joon, his unofficial business partner in The World, in surprise.

“By the way, I never thought you’d customize your in-game character to look exactly like you in real life…… I thought you were crazy when I first saw you.”

“Why? What’s so crazy about it? And you look pretty much the same in-game as you do in real life.”

AngerManagementVodka’s real body and in-game character were also very similar in height and build.

“At least I changed my appearance. I couldn’t help but make my character’s body the same as my real one because it’s easier to control.”

“Aha. Control. So that’s why my Synchronization Rate was so high.”

Kyung-joon muttered to himself in Korean.

“Hmm? What was that?”

“Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.”

Kyung-joon realized a fact that he had accidentally overlooked.

He then started writing a complicated-looking mathematical formula in his smartphone notepad and nodding his head as if he had figured it out.

“Tsk, you’re just as weird here as you are in there.”

AngerManagementVodka clicked his tongue at Kyung-joon, amused.

After a little more idle chatter.

“So, what’s this business you want to propose?”

He finally brought up the main topic.

Thump.

Just as Kyung-joon finished taking notes.

“Well.”

Kyung-joon hesitated for a moment before bringing up the point.

“Mr. Vodka, you’re ranked 11th, but you’re actually the guild master, right?”

“……That’s not an answer to my question. And don’t answer a question with a question.”

“Anyway, that’s how it is. I see that you don’t seem to report to anyone separately in the game for 24 hours a day, and you seem to handle all the greetings and transactions. I don’t know about the outside ‘reality,’ but you’re the one who’s actually in charge and managing Ruski Komrade in the ‘World,’ right?”

“……”

Shhh.

AngerManagementVodka was driving down the road without a word.

But Kyung-joon felt it.

He felt the speed slightly increase and decrease.

He must have unconsciously put more pressure on the accelerator pedal.

After a while to gather his thoughts.

“Did you follow me?”

AngerManagementVodka asked curtly in a very dry voice.

“I did a little research beforehand since we’re going to be doing a lot of business together.”

“I see. So you did a little research…… But did you know this? You’re in Vladivostok, where you don’t know anyone, in a van with a hatchet right under the driver’s seat, heading to one of the headquarters of our Russian mafia. You should know that.”

Whirr, whirrick.

There was a sound of something like a stick spinning.

No, it was a pretty heavy sound for a stick.

It was the sound of a hatchet spinning.

Of course.

AngerManagementVodka was busy driving and, unlike a mafioso, seemed to value safe driving, so both hands were on the steering wheel.

“I think there’s one of those hatchets under the passenger seat here too, right?”

Whirr. Whirrick.

Kyung-joon was spinning the hatchet under the passenger seat with just one finger, as if he had pulled it out from somewhere.

🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷

Gulp.

AngerManagementVodka swallowed dryly.

‘……This is real life. What the hell is wrong with this kid……’

To be honest, when AngerManagementVodka first saw Kyung-joon, he looked down on him.

Even considering that Asians look young, Kyung-joon looked like a teenager no matter how he looked at him.

No matter how strong he was in the game, it was just a game.

But the crazy hatchet tricks that Kyung-joon was showing now were enough to make even him, a Russian mafia veteran, flinch.

Whirrick. Whirrilick.

Perfect rotation as if he had calculated all the forces, including centrifugal force, gravity, and normal force.

“Ruski Komrade executive 11th ranked AngerManagementVodka.”

Kyung-joon called him that and flicked the hatchet up slightly with his finger.

Whirrick, thump!

Then, with the tip of the blade, the hatchet stood upright on his fingernail.

Even though it was inside a moving car, its center of gravity did not collapse.

It was like a ballerina standing on tiptoe at the edge of a sharp cliff.

That was Kyung-joon, maintaining the center of gravity of the hatchet with his incredible sense of balance.

“Let’s just get along, shall we? Huh? I don’t have much time anyway. I’m in a hurry. We’re here to do something good together, not to fight, right? All I saw was Mr. Vodka in the game, and it’s not like I hacked into your database or anything. I just added a little imagination to what I saw directly, nothing more, nothing less.”

Whirrick, thump.

Kyung-joon tossed the hatchet upwards and caught it safely by the handle.

His fingernail was slightly chipped, but there was no blood.

Kyung-joon put the hatchet he was holding under the passenger seat drawer.

“Do you remember when I asked Mr. Vodka if he wanted to rip off the boss?”

He asked in a slightly softer voice, perhaps intending to lighten the tense mood.

“……I remember.”

“Good. Then let’s cut to the chase. I’ll get straight to the point. Give me a place to study and manpower. I’m guessing you have a lot of hacking technicians and programmers besides the a12b1234 workshop personnel.”

It was true.

AngerManagementVodka was in charge of everything that happened in The World game.

That’s why he was able to work freely in Kyung-joon’s Study Territory and so on, even though he was only ranked 11th.

In the first place, the other executives ranked 10th to 1st were all old men and didn’t care much about what was going on in the game.

All they were interested in were real-life guns and oil, and wiping the asses of politicians.

“And take care of miscellaneous things, legal or illegal.”

“Miscellaneous things.”

“Money laundering, smuggling, destroying evidence, diverting attention. That sort of thing.”

The van turned a corner and began driving down a dirt road.

Duguddugdug.

Cold sand dust billowed up from the windows and the car shook violently.

In the midst of the noise, Kyung-joon gave his last order.

“If you do that, I’ll give you two things. One is 『technology』, as you might have guessed, and the other is the World.”

“……What? The World?”

“Yes. The World. You’re smart, so you’ll probably understand what I mean. If you don’t, then start with this. Have you ever thought about what my study territory in the World, what it will eventually become?”

The first player to own a territory.

Although it was not yet a city-state, let alone a country, in terms of population and size.

Considering the 『monster army』 that was expanding its influence and power inside Whale Forest……

While AngerManagementVodka was racking his brains, Kyung-joon added one more thing.

“And this might be a really ridiculous delusion, but one more thing.”

The only decent artificial intelligence technology in reality was self-driving cars.

『How come the NPCs in the World have such perfect artificial intelligence that they are indistinguishable from real humans?』

“What do you think? Have you ever thought about this?”

Kyung-joon grinned playfully.

AngerManagementVodka, on the other hand, couldn’t.

“……I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Right?”

Kyung-joon was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I’m getting all sorts of crazy ideas, but they’re all so crazy that I have no idea. But what if that crazy thing is right in front of you?”

Gulp, gulp.

Kyung-joon had been drinking vodka from the bottle whenever he got the chance.

Then he suddenly took out a sealed bag from his pocket.

“Blegh!”

He threw up.

“What, what the?!”

“Ugh, ugh, ugh!”

“Damn it! I told you to take it easy kid!”

“Ugh!”

Screech!

AngerManagementVodka finally stopped the van in the middle of the dirt road.

He realized that the kid had been talking crazy because he was drunk.

“Damn it…… I feel like an idiot for taking you seriously. Hey, kid! Are you okay?!”

“Gasp… huff… This damn thing won’t come out…… Look at this.”

Swoosh.

Kyung-joon held out the bag he had vomited in to AngerManagementVodka.

“Ugh?! Get that away from me!”

“No… I worked hard to throw up, you know? Take a look.”

“This crazy kid…! Uh…? “

Squirm.

Something was wriggling inside the vomit bag that Kyung-joon held out.

Red flesh.

“Look closely. It’s still multiplying, right?”

Kyung-joon pointed to a part of the red flesh.

The horrible flesh, which looked like something out of an alien movie, was bubbling and boiling in the vodka.

“T, This is…”

“If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’ve probably heard of BIVS, the bio company under Seolha Group that’s been in the news lately.”

“You don’t mean……”

“Yes. Delodel. I just gave it the same name I took from the World, but this is the endlessly multiplying monster that was in the news.”

The reason why Kyung-joon, despite being a minor and in the real world, kept drinking vodka.

It was all to keep the delodel he had smuggled onto the plane alive in his stomach.

“Let’s study this thing. Within three weeks.”

🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷

After beating the crap out of Secretary Oh and throwing him into the hospital’s garbage incinerator.

The reason Kyung-joon skipped school and went to Vladivostok to meet AngerManagementVodka without telling his parents.

It was to treat the side effects of Infinite Knowledge Seeker’s high Synchronization Rate on his real body.

In fact, just as there is no such thing as a perfect 0% in the world.

Not all actions performed in the World have no effect on the real body.

It’s just that the number is very close to 0%.

And this number is called the Synchronization Rate.

However.

The Synchronization Rate, which should have been close to 0%, was unbelievably high for Kyung-joon, the Infinite Knowledge Seeker.

A few days later.

“Phew.”

Somewhere in an underground building in Vladivostok, which was not even marked on the smartphone’s satellite map.

Kyung-joon was standing alone in a corner of a large room, in front of a mattress that smelled of basement.

Crack.

He lightly struck the back of his hand with the hatchet he had brought from the van.

Thud.

Blood gushed out as he pulled out the hatchet.

He was about to stop the bleeding with a bed sheet.

But there was no need, the wound began to bubble and heal at an incredible speed.

Just like the monster, delodel.

“……This must be a side effect of Eternal Telomere.”

Kyung-joon and Teina’s joint research skill, 『Eternal Telomere』.

He had used it like crazy in his bloody battle with Merde.

And this was the aftermath.

For some reason, even with the capsule treatment, the internal injury, not the external one, had healed too quickly, and he had unexpectedly overwhelmed Secretary Oh, who he thought was the pinnacle of an ordinary human being.

Secretary Oh had said outside the hospital that he might be in big trouble within a month……

“Maybe three weeks at most. I have to finish it by then.”

If he didn’t.

The only path left for him was death.

No.

A life as a monster without reason, surely worse than death, awaited him.

Thump.

He lay down on the bed and put on the The World connection gear.

It wasn’t an ordinary connection gear.

It was a special access device that AngerManagementVodka’s top hackers had modified so that it couldn’t be traced where it was connected from.

[The World login sequence is in progress.]

[Loading data……]

Seolha Group must be wondering what the hell he was doing right now.

To be honest, what they were doing was crazier.

But perhaps the existence of the Infinite Knowledge Seeker was essential to their crazy plan.

So they would try to find him and save him by any means necessary.

However.

It was impossible, based on his experience with the capsule treatment.

There was no way to cure this with current technology.

And the current delodel research he was conducting with AngerManagementVodka would not be nearly enough.

Of course, it would be a huge help.

But it was a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

To solve the problem, he had to go back to the root.

The root of the problem.

The fundamental reason why Kyung-joon had come this far and ended up like this.

[Infinite Knowledge Seeker 『Kyung-joon』]

[Connecting to The World.]

It was right here.

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