The Haenam experimental facility was less of a farm and more of a fortress by the time Arthur was finished with its initial overhaul.
Located on a jagged peninsula at the southernmost tip of South Korea, the site was naturally isolated, flanked by steep cliffs and the churning waters of the East China Sea.
When Kim Da-sung handed over the deed, it was a failing government-subsidized project with rusted silos and salt-blighted soil.
To the rest of the world, it was where a privileged heir had gone to hide his military burnout; to Arthur, it was the "Level 1" starting zone for a global takeover.
Using a portion of his personal trust and his father's "no-questions-asked" initial investment, Arthur didn't buy tractors or standard irrigation systems.
Instead, he commissioned the construction of three massive, ultra-reinforced greenhouses that looked more like downed spacecraft than agricultural buildings.
These structures were built with opaque, military-grade polymer glass and reinforced with a lead-lined lattice to prevent any form of thermal imaging or satellite surveillance from peering inside.
He insisted on a closed-loop atmospheric system, officially "to protect against cross-contamination of experimental pollen," but in reality, it was to ensure that the golden light of the All-Purpose Farming Tool (AFT) would never be seen by a passing drone.
Standing in the center of "Greenhouse Alpha," Arthur felt the hum of the high-end climate control units his father had provided.
The air was thick with the scent of ozone and rich, damp earth. He was alone. He had dismissed the facility's skeleton crew, placing them on a "paid research sabbatical" to ensure complete privacy.
"Ciel," Arthur whispered, his voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling. "Initiate a full scan of the soil composition in the central plot. I need to know the exact saturation of salt and heavy metals left by the previous project."
Arthur extended his right hand. With a thought, a brilliant shimmer of light coalesced into a sleek, impossibly sharp hand-plow. It didn't look like any tool found on Earth; its surface was etched with shifting runes that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat of their own. This was the weapon that would win the food war.
As Arthur knelt and pressed the AFT into the gray, lifeless dirt, he didn't just feel the resistance of the earth; he felt the "soul" of the land.
Through the tool, he could sense the microscopic deficiencies, the thirst of the parched minerals, and the dormant potential trapped beneath the crust.
He began to move. In the eyes of an observer, he was merely a young man gardening in a high-tech shed. But in the eyes of Ciel, he was rewriting the biological code of the environment.
"That's the point, Ciel," Arthur muttered, a feral glint in his ruby eyes. "We aren't trying to feed the world's hunger. We're trying to create a dependency. A rice field yielding double the amount of crops than a normal high yield rice field. We need that kind of production."
He spent hours in the silence of the greenhouses, his "Healthy Body" blessing ensuring he never felt the fatigue that would have claimed a normal man.
While his sister, Soha, likely thought he was moping in the dirt, and his father waited for him to crawl back to the boardroom, Arthur was building the foundation of his "Chaos."
By the time the sun set over the Haenam cliffs, Greenhouse Alpha no longer contained gray dirt. The soil was now a deep, rich obsidian black, vibrating with an unnatural energy that made the air feel electric. He had created a sanctuary where the laws of nature were secondary to his will.
Inside this fortress of glass and steel, Arthur finally sat on a crate, looking at the black earth. He had the privacy he needed. No cameras, no guards, no prying family members. Only him, his Divine AI, and a tool that could bend reality.
Soha stared at the encrypted satellite feed on her monitor, her thumb tapping a rhythmic, agitated beat against her desk at the Kim manor. For the third time this hour, the screen displayed nothing but a digital void—a "dead zone" over the Haenam peninsula.
"He's actually doing it," she whispered, more to herself than to the empty office. "The idiot is actually trying to hide from me."
To the board of directors, Arthur's move to the southern tip of the country was a tragic surrender—the breakdown of a golden boy who couldn't handle the pressure of the front lines.
But Soha knew her brother. Arthur didn't "break"; he recalibrated. She had watched him since they were children, and he never retreated unless he was looking for a better angle to strike.
She pulled up the financial ledgers for the Haenam project, her eyes scanning the anomalies she had flagged earlier.
"$3.2 million for "military-grade polymer glass."
"$1.5 million for state of the art water irrigation system."
She was dying to know what her brother was doing there for the month so she contacted someone in the company.
"Director Kang, I want a drone dispatched from our Mokpo branch. Not a standard model—use the stealth-integrated thermal units we developed for the defense contract. If he's using lead lining, check for electromagnetic leaks or unusual water displacement in the bay. I want to know exactly what kind of 'farming' requires this much funds"
She leaned back, a playful smile on her lips, "You can hide from the world brother but you can't hide it from me."
Somewhere in the southern peninsula,
Arthur didn't even look up from the obsidian soil. A cold, knowing smirk played on his lips. "She's predictable. She can't stand it if I hide something from her, I know this will happen the moment I dumped the idea of bringing her here."
He moved with practiced calm. He didn't run; he didn't panic. Instead, he retreated into the shadows of the secondary storage bay. In the center of the room sat the "Red Herring"—a collection of high-end, custom-made carbon fiber farming tools he'd had manufactured to mimic the silhouette of the AFT.
With a flick of his wrist, the shimmering, runic AFT dissolved into motes of light, returning to his soul space. He reached out and grabbed the physical decoy—a sleek, matte-black hand plow that looked expensive enough to fool a drone's high-resolution lens, but was ultimately just inert metal.
"Ciel, vent the internal atmospheric pressure slightly," Arthur commanded, stepping back out into the center of Greenhouse Alpha. "Give her a 'leak' to find. Let her sensors pick up nothing but high-nitrogen fertilizer and standard humidity."
As Arthur knelt back down, theatrically digging into a patch of soil that—thanks to Ciel's active camouflage interference—now looked like ordinary brown dirt on the drone's feed, he felt the invisible gaze of his sister.
Miles away in Busan, Soha leaned into her iPad. The stealth drone's feed flickered, then stabilized. She saw Arthur, looking tired and solitary, hunched over a row of dirt with a fancy designer plow.
"Is that it?" she whispered, her brow furrowing. "A five-million-dollar greenhouse just to play in the mud with a custom toy?"
She watched him for ten minutes. He looked like a man obsessed with a hobby, not a man building a revolution. But deep in her gut, the cognitive dissonance nagged at her.
Back in Haenam, Arthur felt the drone bank and begin its return flight. He waited until Ciel confirmed the signal had faded beyond the cliffs before he dropped the fake plow.
"Sorry Soha. But this is a secret I can't share with anyone. Not now, not ever." Arthur muttered, his eyes turning back to the ruby-red glow of the true AFT as it rematerialized in his hand. "Now, let's give this dirt something benificial."