Chapter 22

Chapter 22. Galactic Martial God Chronicle - Amusement Park Kidnapping Incident (5)

At my joke, Si-woo let out a sigh of relief.

-I am glad. Judging by the fact that you are making strange jokes, it seems you have not been harmed.

As expected, she understood me from the slightest cue.

If I had simply said I was fine, she would have worried that I might have been hurt after all.

Personally, in times like this, I liked easing the tension with this sort of joke.

I did make jokes from time to time, but since they were references from another world, Si-woo did not understand them at all.

Thinking about it, the reason she was wary of me using the internet might be because I kept making jokes she had never heard of before.

-Do you know your current location?

“No. For now, I don’t think we’ve left the amusement park. I see something like a boiler, and it’s a fairly large sealed room without a single window. You’re tracking my location, right? Is the GPS signal showing?”

-Perhaps the abductors planned this in advance, but GPS signals around this area are continuing to malfunction.

Therefore, we are currently tracking the phone’s radio signal through the family’s military satellite radio-wave detection. We should know the exact location in about twenty-two seconds.

At Si-woo’s words, I spoke so Cheon So-yeon could hear.

“Then if we wait just a little, the rescue team will come.”

Cheon So-yeon’s expression brightened at my words too.

-By the way, young master, your phone was found broken. How are you calling me?

“Ah, this? I thought it’d be nice to have a sub-phone, so I bought one with my allowance. Seeing as you didn’t know I bought a phone, I guess you don’t restore deleted logs?”

Since a three-year-old could not go to a store alone, I had naturally bought it online.

As for delivery, Si-woo went out from time to time, and I had aimed for that gap.

There were quite a few things I had bought secretly from Si-woo that way.

Naturally, those items were being stored by my main body through Inventory.

-From now on, I suppose I must restore deleted logs as well.

“No...! Don’t do that. A kids lock is installed anyway, so I can’t even go into strange sites. That’s an invasion of privacy.”

-It was a joke. However, young master, did you not agree to keep an allowance ledger when you began receiving an allowance? Why have I never seen any purchase record?

“Haha, I’m keeping my promise. Double ledgers are basic.”

I had promised to keep an allowance ledger, but I had not promised to transparently show her what I had written.

Using my allowance as a base, I had been investing in various funds and stocks, slightly growing my allowance.

Since my starting capital was so small, I could not grow it by much.

I had bought the phone with the money I grew that way, so it was only natural Si-woo, who merely skimmed the total amount of my allowance account after I quickly restored it to normal, had not noticed.

At my answer, Si-woo fell silent as if she had lost her words.

-Maybe I truly should cut off your internet....

“No...! It’s because I have the internet that I can contact you like this at a time like this...!”

At my urgent voice, Si-woo answered in a tone that suggested she had no choice.

-Understood. Your exact location has been identified. By the way, is Miss Cheon So-yeon with you? Cheon So-yeon’s parents are beside me, unable to sit still from worry over their daughter.

“Yeah, she’s right next to me. I’ll let the surrounding sound reach you too.”

The phone had a function that removed all other surrounding noise and let only my voice be heard, and a function that let all surrounding sounds be heard.

Conversely, it could also be set so that only I heard the other person’s voice, or so that the voice could be heard normally, or it could use speaker mode.

After changing the setting, I said to Cheon So-yeon,

“Cheon So-yeon, even if you speak quietly, your parents will hear you, so say hello.”

At my words, Cheon So-yeon nodded and whispered into the brooch-type phone in my hand.

“Mom, Dad, I’m safe. Don’t worry.”

“They’ll hear even if you don’t whisper that close.”

Do not underestimate 50th-century technology.

The development of eavesdropping technology during the new Cold War had allowed even the quietest human voice to be captured, no matter how far away it was.

There were few things as helpful to technological development as persistent human malice.

-We are continuing to track your location. There is a possibility that you may be moved, so please keep the call connected.

“Got it.”

I put the band into Inventory and attached only the brooch, the main unit, to the undershirt I was wearing beneath my clothes.

The brooch was thin, so unless one looked closely, it did not stand out much from the outside.

“Let’s tie our arms and legs again. Once the rescue squad starts coming here, the abductors will come to move us too. If they see that our restraints are loose then, they might put us to sleep again.”

“Uh, but if we tie ourselves up again, we won’t be able to move right away if something happens, will we?”

“It’s fine. There’s a knotting method you can undo at any time. Fold the rope in half like this, hook your thumb here, and....”

I taught her a restraint method often used in escape magic tricks.

To be precise, it was merely a trick that made it look as if one were restrained, not actual restraint.

If tied like this, it would come undone with just a slight twitch of the thumb.

For the legs, I wrapped the rope in a way that looked like they were tied if the tips of the feet were pressed together, but would come loose immediately if the feet spread just a little.

“Wow, how do you know something like this?”

“The internet.”

Right now, the abductors had locked us in this storage room and were too busy looking for a way to escape the amusement park to pay attention to us, but if they soon realized this place had been discovered, they would take some kind of action.

For now, Cheon So-yeon and I looked like three-year-olds, so the abductors would not be wary of us either.

As proof, they had merely tied us up and gagged us, without using acupoint sealing or anything of the sort.

Well, I was only a bonus, and no matter how much Cheon So-yeon possessed the Heavenly Martial Body, they probably thought, How much could she have grown?

However, judging by Cheon So-yeon’s qi sense alone, she had at least passed the Entry Realm and should have reached Third-Rate.

Perhaps, true to the name of the Heavenly Martial Body, she might even be at the Second-Rate stage.

“What realm are you at?”

At my question, Cheon So-yeon hesitated.

“We need to assess our combat strength first to decide whether to take action, quietly wait for rescue, or figure out what to do if we’re taken hostage and threatened.”

Because the call was connected, I heard Si-woo nagging me to simply wait quietly for rescue.

If I were alone, honestly, escaping would not be difficult.

I just had to rush at the abductors and die by their hands.

The abductors would have no interest in my corpse since I wasn’t their target, so they would abandon my corpse, and I would simply make a new clone, pretend to be dead, contact Si-woo, and go home.

The problem was Cheon So-yeon.

No matter how much I was merely someone who had been swept up in this, I could not leave a three-year-old baby behind.

Of course, looking at the way she spoke and acted, I had my doubts about whether she truly was three years old.

“Well, I know it’s rude to ask a martial artist about their realm, but the situation is what it is. Even if your current realm becomes known, you have the Heavenly Martial Body, so your realm is going to rise quickly anyway. That much must be true, or else the abductors wouldn’t be doing something this insane in the middle of Cheon Family territory, would they?”

“Th-That’s true.”

With an uncomfortable expression, Cheon So-yeon silently mouthed the words.

I’m at least Second-Rate.

“Hmm, got it. Then self-escape is impossible. Let’s wait for rescue after all.”

As I said that, Cheon So-yeon looked toward the door.

“The abductors are coming.”

Cheon So-yeon and I hurriedly bit down on our gags.

The door opened, and the two abductors entered.

“Damn it! Even the vents were sealed off! This wasn’t in the plan!”

“Calm down. This place was abandoned thirty years ago when the amusement park was renovated and expanded, so it’s missing even from the internal map. They won’t find it right away. According to the hacking team, the amusement park management system has no influence over this building either.”

“Still, wouldn’t it be better to join up with the parent surveillance team? I’m uneasy with only the two of us.”

So the abductors were moving in multiple teams.

It was good news that there were only two people who carried out the kidnapping.

“No. It’s actually better to hide here. When you first came here for the preliminary investigation, you liked that there was a place this hard to notice too, didn’t you? I guarantee it. There’s no way the search will reach this place in a single day.”

“Well, this amusement park is filthy huge. ...Haah! Damn it, things were going so well when the parent surveillance team somehow managed to separate the kid with the Heavenly Martial Body from her parents!”

It seemed Cheon So-yeon being separated from her parents had not been a mistake on the part of Cheon So-yeon or her parents.

This place was a sci-fi future world, but it was also a martial arts world called Galactic Murim.

And when it came to martial arts, formations always appeared without fail, so perhaps they had mixed into the crowd and used something like an illusion formation to naturally separate Cheon So-yeon from her parents.

Or perhaps they had used some scientific technology I did not know.

“By the way, are those brats still not awake?”

“They must be awake. We only used enough medicine to knock them out for about twenty or thirty minutes.”

“Then are these little things pretending to be asleep right now? Pretty smart, aren’t they?”

Oops, they caught us pretending to be asleep.

Well, I had expected that.

I slightly opened my eyes and looked at the abductors.

The two abductors were wearing balaclavas with only the eyes exposed, the kind commonly called burglar-mask beanies.

“Should we put them to sleep again?”

“No. That medicine is expensive. We got a specially expensive one so the Heavenly Martial Body wouldn’t be damaged, so we have to save it.”

Since we were tied up and gagged, it seemed they did not feel the need to put us to sleep again.

Then the abductors’ radio sounded.

-You two! Move somewhere else immediately! Somehow, they found out and are moving toward you!

It seemed to be a radio transmission from the ones they called the surveillance team.

Rescue squad, you useless bastards. How could you let them find out where you were going?

You should’ve moved secretly without anyone noticing!

“What?! That’s impossible! How did they know this place?”

When the abductors learned that their location had been discovered, they panicked.

At that moment, one of the sharp-eyed abductors grabbed me by the collar and lifted me up.

After discovering the phone hidden under my clothes, the abductor shouted in fury.

“You damned brat! You hid a phone?!”

The excited abductor tried to slam me straight into the ground and kill me.

At this rate, I’ll die!

“I’ll kill y—! Guh!”

I pulled a one-handed sword out of Inventory and stabbed it straight through the abductor’s abdomen, through the qi center on the meridian chart.

No matter how much I had trained, my body was still that of a child, so even if I held a sword, I did not have the muscle strength to pierce through a qi center.

That was why I decided to take a gamble.

I used my internal energy to raise the muscle strength of my arm to the extreme.

If anything had gone wrong, my muscles might have ruptured, or the bones of my arm might have failed to endure the power of my muscles and broken.

However, perhaps because of my sense of danger, or perhaps because, as Cheon So-yeon had said before we were kidnapped, I had already been ready to advance to the next stage, I succeeded in one go.

Once I succeeded once, I roughly understood how to strengthen my body with internal energy.

I had reached the Third-Rate stage.

“Guh...! Grrk!”

When his qi center shattered, the internal energy sleeping inside it flowed backward, and the abductor collapsed in agony.

The higher one’s realm, the more dangerous it was for the qi center to shatter, but conversely, the higher one’s realm, the harder it became to shatter the qi center.

However, judging by the fact that his qi center had been shattered with the strength of a Third-Rate, it seemed the abductor’s realm had not reached the Peak Realm.

Well, Peak Realm or not, if you let your guard down, you die. Wasn’t that the way Murim worked?

This was the price he paid for ignoring the ancient advice to beware old people and children.

“No! Where did that sword come from?!”

Looking at the shocked abductor, I giggled and laughed.

“Ta-da! A magic trick that makes a sword appear~!”