Former Ranker's Newbie Life

Do-Jin knew this woman was part of the Imperial Security Bureau. Her name wasn’t the one he remembered, but it was standard practice for field agents to rotate identities on a regular basis.

Back then, she gave off more of a hardcore vibe. Right now, she just looks like a rookie pretending to be a veteran.

Now that he thought about it, this woman was actually the representative of the Imperial Security Bureau. She was the poster NPC who handed out quests to players whenever disasters or calamities got tangled up with the imperial family or the Empire itself.

The problem was that they were never supposed to show up this early. In the original plot of LOST, these NPCs only appeared once players started to feel like frogs in a boiling pot, right around the point when everyone started thinking, Wait, is the world actually about to end?

And yet here she was, not the seasoned woman in her forties with experience etched onto her bones, but a low-ranking agent in her late twenties who looked like she was still trying way too hard to seem tough. The clue that was supposed to come looking for him as an achievement reward had finally shown its face. No matter how he looked at it, something was amiss.

So this is it,Do-Jin thought as he held out his adventurer pendant and Elthomagia emblem.

***

Until recently, Deneve worked as a back-alley courier, delivering illegal goods between criminals for money. But now, she served as an informant for the Imperial Security Bureau. She had gone through six months of training, and the bureau had already assigned her missions. Specifically, she was to live her life as a criminal and act as an informant whenever the bureau needed her to.

That was all she had ever been until she caught a lucky break. Deneve managed to slip into a smuggling ring with considerable influence, and there she caught the stench of something truly rotten. Thinking that kind of intel would earn her a decent payout, she decided to dig deeper. She threw herself into the job, got dragged through the mud, and clawed together everything she could. In the end, though, she uncovered too much.

Even the upper ranks of the Empire are tied into this shit...?

The fear hit her hard and fast. Deneve tried to clean up what she had and run while she still could, but someone discovered she was a rat, and she became a fugitive overnight.

Any help from the Security Bureau was a joke. They treated criminal informants like disposable trash, using them until they broke and tossing them aside. Worse, someone in the bureau itself was probably involved in this mess. If she reported in and tried to meet them, she would die quietly and without a trace.

No, that’s not right. The rats would know when my body is dumped in a sewer.

Those thoughts hounded her as she ran, right up until capture was staring her in the face. That was when Do-Jin appeared.

“Eltho... Magia...?”

The adventurer pendant Do-Jin showed her didn’t impress her. However, the emblem of Elthomagia was a different story. Deneve looked at Do-Jin, then at the bodies sprawled behind him.

If I keep running like this, I’ll get caught and die sooner or later. If that’s how it ends anyway... wouldn’t it be better to make one massive score before that?

Deneve had no idea whether Do-Jin would buy her story, but she decided to roll the dice first and think later.

She handed the pendant and emblem back to Do-Jin and said, “So you’re with Elthomagia. I figured you had to be someone impressive.”

She paused for a second, then introduced herself. “I’m Imperial Security Bureau Agent Deneve.”

She watched his face closely, expecting some kind of reaction once she named a direct imperial organization.

However, Do-Jin kept a completely deadpan expression as he replied, “Yes. So what kind of situation is this supposed to be?”

So you’re gonna act like one of those high-and-mighty Elthomagia mages, she thought bitterly, though she kept up the act of a proper agent.

“They’re smugglers involved in criminal activity. Something went wrong during an undercover investigation, and that’s how this mess happened.” She swallowed and pressed on. “So I was hoping to request your cooperation in the investigation. I’m asking for your help as a member of the Imperial Mage Tower in cutting out this cancer festering within the Empire.”

Both the Imperial Mage Tower and the Imperial Security Bureau served the Empire, at least on paper. Deneve tried to convey that with a look.

Do-Jin watched her for a moment, but he was more focused on the golden dust from the Light of the World that drifted faintly around her. It was subtle enough that no one would notice it without looking closely. Anyone without a Magic Eye would miss it entirely.

Of course... Do-Jin thought. Dragging someone completely unrelated into this mess is hard, huh?

He let out a chuckle as he watched the light meddle.

As Deneve looked back at him, an ugly thought crossed her mind. Is he not even considering it? Or does he think I’m full of shit?

Panic crept in, and desperation shoved caution out of the way, so Deneve started talking faster and louder, the words stumbling out before she could stop herself. “I’m not asking you to help for free. The situation is bad enough that I can’t call in support, which means I’m the only one who actually knows what the hell is happening on site right now.”

She forced herself to keep going before he could cut her off. “A manpower shortage is a real problem. If money or contraband evidence happens to vanish in the middle of the operation, nobody will even notice, let alone trace it.”

“Well,” Do-Jin replied flatly, “that’s a pretty serious problem.”

In other words, she was willing to look the other way if he helped her and skimmed a few smuggled goods in the process. It was fucked up enough that someone claiming to be an imperial agent was openly dangling corruption as bait. Of course, Deneve was no longer an actual official. She was just an informant getting by on borrowed authority, and there was no way Do-Jin could have known that.

“Alright. Let’s assume you really are with the Security Bureau, and that you actually want to wipe out criminals. What exactly do you want me to do?” Do-Jin asked.

“As much as you can,” Deneve answered.

She started spilling everything she knew, laying it all out without holding back. She talked about smuggling routes that bypassed inspections, along with hubs, drop points, and hidden storage sites. For smugglers, those weren’t just logistics, but lifelines. Lose them and everything would fall apart.

“Using this, you can do whatever you think is possible and push it as far as you can...” Her voice faded at the end.

She had information in her hands, but she had no clue how to turn it into an actual plan.

Do-Jin narrowed his eyes. Was she always this fucking sloppy?

Then again, history was full of catastrophically stupid intelligence operations. If someone put together only the dumbest shit the CIA or KGB ever pulled, they could fill several books without even trying. Regardless, Deneve’s amateur clumsiness wasn’t the real problem. What mattered was this mess that lay in front of him.

Smuggling, huh?

At the thought, Rockel’s face immediately surfaced in his mind. He was the bastard Do-Jin had personally sent to hell back in the dwarf village.

What if the disaster Rockel caused with the Cult of Ruin was about to happen again, just in a different form and a hell of a lot sooner...?

Do-Jin was the one who had killed Rockel. He was also the one who had poked the Cult of Ruin, which had planned to stay quiet and buried for a long time. That meant the fallout was his responsibility too.

“Fine,” Do-Jin said. “I’ll do it. But I have conditions.”

“Conditions...?”

“We cut out the cancer my way. You provide the information and stay out of how I handle it.”

You look way too fucking green to trust with anything else, Do-Jin thought, although he kept that part to himself.

“Alright,” Deneve agreed immediately.

With no rope left to cling to, she grabbed the one in front of her without asking questions. When the conversation ended, she turned toward Max with an apologetic look.

“You said you were going to run,” Max muttered.

Deneve shook her head slowly. Running only changed the timing, not the outcome. “I told you, once you get tangled up with those assholes, they won’t let you die clean.”

“Sorry,” he replied.

Only the two of them understood what that exchange really meant. After all, Max and Deneve had known each other since her days as an undercover criminal.

After a while, Max sighed and spoke again. “Do what you have to do. At the very least, try to stay alive and call me sometime. I hate shit that ends with a bad aftertaste.”

He jerked his chin toward the bodies on the ground. “I will take care of that mess. Consider it a farewell gift.”

“Thanks, Max.”

The tension in the air made it hard for anyone else to butt in, so Do-Jin quietly walked outside. He also felt a bit awkward about being the guy who had just added several corpses to the scenery. After a good while, Deneve stepped outside as well.

“So where do we go?” Do-Jin asked.

Deneve turned her head toward the east, the same direction she had been fleeing from with the last of her strength.

***

“So you’re saying you don’t even know what they’re smuggling?” Do-Jin asked.

Deneve nodded in response. “But I’m certain it’s something huge. They shut down every existing operation all at once. You don’t do that unless something far more important is coming in.”

Deneve explained that the usual smuggled goods were probably still sitting at their respective hubs, so even if they came up empty on the main target, scooping up whatever was stuck there would still mean a massive payday.

“So you’re saying they’re trying to bring in something extremely important, but you have no idea which route it will take or where it will end up?”

“That’s exactly it.”

In that case, there was only one option left. They had to start by hitting the places that looked the most important. Do-Jin began jumping between major cities using the Mage Tower’s long-range spatial leap. The process required verified credentials, not to mention a disgusting amount of money, but neither posed a problem for him.

At each Elthomagia Mage Tower in the major cities, no one gave Deneve a second glance as she stood beside him. Once they reached a region that served as a kind of bridgehead between the sea and the interior, Do-Jin left the city proper behind.

If they’re bringing something in large quantities, they have to use the sea or a river.

With that in mind, Do-Jin chose his first target from among the coastal transit points: a tunnel dug into the ground. Although it was nowhere near the city, it was about a kilometer away from a checkpoint that anyone traveling inland from the sea had to pass through.

This looks like one of those drug tunnels on the U.S. and Mexico border.

In fact, it looked almost identical to the ones he had seen in videos and documentaries. Whether it was VR or real life, people really did live the same way and pull the same stunts.

“You’re not seriously planning to just walk straight in there, are you?” Deneve’s voice shook as she asked.

Do-Jin turned to look at her. His expression said it all.

Why the hell are you asking something so obvious?

In that moment, Deneve felt something closer to certainty than intuition. She had roped in someone completely unhinged.

“How many people do you think are in there right now...?” Deneve asked hesitantly.

“Would calling for backup actually solve anything?” Do-Jin asked in response.

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“And if we lie around here all day, what exactly do you think we will catch?”

Deneve clenched the pistol she had been carrying close to her chest. She had stolen it from among the smuggled goods while fleeing, and it had kept her alive this whole time.

“Don’t worry,” Do-Jin said. “I’m not telling you to fight. I will handle the cleanup myself. You stay here and wait.”

With that, he started walking toward the tunnel. The distance wasn’t short, and the surroundings were pitch-dark, but his posture was nothing like that of someone sneaking in or staging an ambush.

“W-wait! Are you seriously going in like that?”

“Stay put and don’t move,” Do-Jin said. “I’m not being considerate. I’m saying this because you would get in the way, so no need to feel bad or anything.”

“You’re unbelievable.” She tried to force herself back onto her feet as her stubbornness flared up inside her.

However, she quietly shrank back when a wolf the size of a small house was summoned beside Do-Jin, almost as casually as if it were a joke. At this point, stubbornly digging in her heels and refusing to listen was not an option. Do-Jin scared her a little more than the pitch-black tunnel carved into the ground.

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