Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 18===

Acre Kiss-of-Rose was the chief executive officer of Salem Logistics, one of the seven corporations that directly controlled the Capitalist Corporations’ home country. Currently, his made-to-order jacket was soaked on the inside.

However, this was not due to the heat of Africa. It came from sweat brought on by a much more unpleasant feeling.

The Gigant Hustler had been both a giant battle and a giant weapons trade fair. That weapons show had a certain important objective in addition to holding sales negotiations for military weapons and threatening the opposing world powers by showing off one’s technological might.

Simply put, it was to create connections.

To do that, it had been assumed that his Capitalist Corporations would win the battle fought between eight Objects. That had been the scenario set up in advance.

But it had all crumbled down around him.

One moment, Acre had been boldly swinging up his fist. The next, he had become a laughing stock. The gentlemen in suits, the ladies in dresses, and the high-ranking military officers in berets and plenty of medals had all given him false looks of pity and those faces were burned into the back of his mind. He might as well have been updating his unwritten execution list.

(I will recover.)

He had a “large physique” that was a fair bit removed from the ideal human body and he had neatly-maintained white hair and an identically-colored beard. He had aged so naturally that it looked like he had been born with hair that color.

But his eyes alone were filled with blazing light.

(No matter what happens and no matter what it takes, I will take back the respect I lost at the Gigant Hustler! Even if it means faking a largescale accident!!)

Heat filled him until it seemed he would burn out the thin circuits in his mind, but then a driver opened the back door of a black luxury car. Acre climbed in without thanking or tipping the man. In a space rivalling a small bus, he sat on the sofa and pulled a chilled bottle of champagne from the mini-fridge.

Instead of speaking to the driver directly, he used a small microphone.

“What happens next?”

“You have special evacuation training as part of the weapons show.”

“I know that! I’m asking what kind of accident we’ll be faking to recover my…no, I mean Salem Logistics’ reputation!!”

“It has all been planned out. The impression left by that battle will be wiped clean and you will stand at center stage once more. Tomorrow, the world will be shocked by the new turn history has taken, CEO.”

“As long as you understand. And just to be clear, this is for Salem as a whole, not just me.”

He was a man who had no distinction between his work and private life. An enemy of the company was an enemy of his life and his victories were the company’s victories. He was the stereotypical example of someone who would have nothing left if his job was taken from him.

So as he fidgeted with the audio set, he could not stand the relatively insignificant broadcast he found.

“Salem Logistics has announced a new generation of online shopping with their Silver Key service. This revolutionary system allows you to order something from your smartphone anywhere on the globe and have it delivered within twelve hours.”

“What is this?”

“But the system has a dark side. It’s set to use a number of routes used by air tankers, which shows just how much fuel it will consume. And consuming all that fuel requires expanding the tanker routes used to carry it. There’s a possibility the international conflicts over the Indian Ocean and Panama Canal have been strongly influenced by Salem Logistics.”

“What is going on? This audio set is broken! None of the buttons are working and it won’t even turn off!”

Only after shouting in anger and looking up did he realize that the black luxury car was driving through an area he had never seen before.

The area was nothing like the bright international airports, luxury hotels, or casinos the old man was used to seeing. It was filled with people he suspected would punch him in the jaw and steal his gold teeth not five minutes after he started walking around there.

“Let me ask again: what is going on?”

“It’s simple: first the Sixth Branch incident in the Arctic and now the pitiful defeat at the Gigant Hustler. Of course, stirring up the battlefield took some doing. I even had to dig up an underground water vein below the Legitimacy Kingdom’s First Generation.”

A mocking tone filled the driver’s voice.

“But setting that aside, this is really quite sad, CEO. All I did was claim this was part of your evacuation training and I easily abducted someone with power rivalling a head of state. The secret service readily opened the way when I told them their boss had selfishly changed his plans and that I couldn’t reveal the details. Being a one-man manager certainly has its downsides, doesn’t it?”

“You…?”

There was a questioning tone in Acre’s voice, but not because he was questioning who this was.

He was asking why this person was alive.

For one, the skilled abduction could not have been as easy as the man claimed. He would have had to overcome countless barriers to pull it off. And that went beyond the security around Acre. If this man had not had the Gigant Hustler advance as he wanted, Acre would not have been so panicked. In fact, if the negative psychological warfare of the Sixth Branch had not shown itself, the Gigant Hustler would not have happened in the first place. If any one of those pieces had not succeeded, Acre would never have taken the first step toward this abduction.

Acre knew of only one person who could so easily pull off that kind of world-scale tightrope act just to accomplish a single goal.

Meanwhile, the driver continued speaking.

“One: I am a poor man who was swallowed up by Salem Logistic’s new service, the Silver Key.

“Two: I am a feeble former spy who had already retired and started a second life in a small household in the Soberania District near the Panama Canal, but had it all taken from me by your money-driven war.

“Three: if I used the name Nyarlathotep, would you still have to ask why you haven’t been killed yet, Azathoth?”



Things had yet to truly begin.

An unmanaged war was about to start and it would be far from clean and would surpass the boundaries of a mere military exercise.

The Capitalist Corporations home country was managed by a group of seven corporations known as 7th Core.

The position at the top of one of those corporations was equivalent to being a king in the Legitimacy Kingdom.

And one such CEO’s life was at the center of the madness about to burn through the world.

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