For a man who had spent lifetimes unraveling the encryption of global superpowers and mapping the neural pathways of a digital world, the South Korean National Registry was less a fortress and more a beaded curtain.
Arthur sat in the sterile, blue-tinted glow of his multi-monitor setup within his room. The hum of the servers provided a white-noise backdrop to the percussive, rhythmic grace of his typing.
To the outside world, Arthur was a ghost—a reclusive heir buried in scientific eccentricity. To the data stream, he was an invisible administrator, a silent god moving through the backdoors of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Locating the Shin family was a triviality. Within seconds, the screen displayed the physical coordinates of a cramped apartment building on Sun-cheong Street. Specifically, the residence of one Shin Youngwoo—the man destined to become "Grid."
But Arthur didn't just want to know where the future Legend slept. He needed to be the shadow in the hallway. He needed to be the neighbor whose door closed just as Youngwoo's opened.
In the original timeline, Youngwoo was a social pariah, buried under 100 million won of debt and isolated by a bitterness that bordered on insanity. To dismantle a destiny that hadn't happened yet, Arthur required total environmental control.
"The building is at capacity," Arthur murmured, his ruby eyes reflecting the green luminescence of the resident logs. "Of course it is. In the concrete hive of Seoul, space is the only true currency."
He leaned back, the silver strands of his hair catching the light. Most would see a dead end. Arthur saw a social engineering puzzle.
If there were no empty apartments, he would simply have to create a vacancy. Not through violence—that was the hallmark of the unimaginative—but through the most potent weapon in a capitalist society: the irresistible, life-altering offer.
"Ciel," he whispered. "Analyze the B-Block of Sun-cheong Street. Find me the fracture point."
The AI's voice resonated directly within his auditory nerve, smooth and chillingly precise.
< Master, I have cross-referenced the financial health, debt-to-income ratios, and medical records of every tenant in the block. Apartment 707 presents a 94.2% probability for a successful 'voluntary' displacement. >
Arthur scrolled through the dossier. The Lee family. It was a classic tragedy of the modern era—a family caught in the grinding gears of an unforgiving economy.
* The Mother: Old Mrs. Lee, a widow living alone in a 140-square-meter apartment. Four bedrooms, one living room—an echo chamber of a house for a woman whose only company was the hum of a decades-old refrigerator.
* The Son: Young Mr. Lee. A victim of corporate downsizing. He was currently treading water in the "Daily Labor" pool, breaking his body at construction sites and pulling cables in freezing tunnels just to keep his three children fed.
* The Debt: The loan for his own cramped apartment in Jong-sui was a decade from being cleared. His wife worked double shifts at food stalls, and his children's education was a flickering candle in a gale.
"Perfect," Arthur whispered. "They aren't just poor; they are desperate. And desperate people don't look for traps—they look for lifeboats."
Arthur checked his personal account. 100 million won—mere pocket change from his family's perspective—sat ready.
His mind drifted to the Chaos System's Store. He had noted a technology called the Light Cube Cluster (SAO Archive). It was a method to convert binary code into a "digital soul."
By combining this with the Einzbern Homunculus Technology he had wished for, he could eventually pull NPCs from Satisfy into the real world.
But to fund a war of that scale, he needed the game. He needed the gold. He needed to steal the Pagma's Successor class before Youngwoo ever laid eyes on that legendary book.
The night was cold, the air thick with the scent of charcoal smoke and diesel exhaust. Arthur stood near the entrance of the Jong-sui apartments, his white hair tucked into a dark hoodie.
He looked every bit the mysterious urbanite, a sharp contrast to the weary laborers trudging home.
He watched as a man approached the gate. Young Mr. Lee looked like he had been dragged through a rock crusher.
His shoulders were slumped at a painful angle, his hands stained with industrial grease, and his eyes were vacant with the soul-crushing exhaustion of the working poor.
"Mr. Lee, I assume?" Arthur's voice was calm, cutting through the man's fog of fatigue.
Lee blinked, his hand tightening instinctively on the strap of his heavy tool bag. "Who... who are you? A debt collector? The bank?"
"My name is Kim Arthur," Arthur replied, stepping into the light of a flickering streetlamp.
"I have a proposition that will ensure your children never have to worry about tuition again. Shall we talk over soju? My treat."
The promise of a warm meal and a moment of respite was a weapon against a man who had forgotten the taste of comfort. They sat in a nearby Pojangmacha—a tented street stall. The steam from grilled chicken feet rose between them like a veil.
"Apartment 707," Arthur began, pouring the soju with the flawless etiquette of a high-born son. "Your mother lives there alone. It is far too big for her, while your own home is... cramped. Your three children are sharing a single room, aren't they? It must be difficult to study in such conditions."
Lee's face twisted into a mask of defensiveness. "If you've come to harass an old woman out of her home—"
"Quite the opposite," Arthur interrupted, his ruby eyes locking onto Lee's. "I want to rent it. I'm offering 2,800,000 won a month. And if you agree, I'll pay six months in advance, tonight, on the spot. In cash or wire transfer."
The silence that followed was heavy. The market rate for that aging building was barely 1.5 million. Arthur was offering nearly double. To a man pulling cables for pennies, it was a staggering sum.
"Why?" Lee stammered, his voice trembling. "Why would someone like you pay that much for a relic in B-Block?"
Arthur leaned in, spinning a web of calculated, manipulative lies. "A friend of mine—he lives right next door to your mother, his name is Shin Youngwoo. He told me about your family's situation. He's a good friend in the game we play, Satisfy. He wanted to help, but he's... well, he's a bit proud and quite broke himself. He asked me to reach out. I need a base of operations in that specific area for my research, and this fulfills both our needs. A total win-win."
The mention of Youngwoo changed the entire dynamic. To Mr. Lee, Youngwoo was a fellow loser, a man he often saw at the labor center looking equally miserable.
The idea that Youngwoo had "made it" in a game and was secretly looking out for his neighbors was a narrative that sparked a flame of hope in Lee's chest.
"Youngwoo... that useless fellow actually did something right?" Lee laughed, a sound of pure, jagged relief. "2.8 million... that pays the school, the interest, the surgery for my wife's wrist... Alright. I agree. I'll talk to my mother tonight."
"Happy cooperation," Arthur said, shaking the man's calloused, shaking hand.
As Arthur stood up to leave, a small, stiff card fell from Mr. Lee's pocket. It landed face-up on the dirt floor of the stall.
Arthur froze.
On the front: A Circle, a Triangle, and a Square.
On the back: A phone number.
The air in the stall suddenly felt several degrees colder. Arthur hadn't expected this. His world wasn't just a fusion of VR gaming and corporate intrigue.
It was a collision of survival tropes. The Lee family wasn't just poor; they were being scouted for a slaughterhouse.
"Mr. Lee," Arthur's voice lost its warmth. It became as sharp and cold as a surgical scalpel. "Did you play Ddakji at the train station or some alleyway recently? With a man in a sharp suit?"
Lee blinked, startled by the sudden change in Arthur's aura. "Yeah... just yesterday. Won a million won. He said there was more where that came from if I just called the number. Why? You know him?"
Arthur grabbed Lee's shoulder, his grip like an iron vice. "Listen to me very carefully. If you love your wife, if you want to see your daughters grow up, do not call that number. Burn the card. Forget the man exists. If you need money, you have my rent. That card is an invitation to an early grave in a place where your body will never be found."
The sheer intensity in Arthur's eyes—the eyes of a man who had seen the end of worlds—forced Lee to recoil in genuine terror. "I... I understand. I'll throw it away. I promise."
Walking back toward the hotel, Arthur connect to his mental link, "Ciel. Monitor Mr. Lee's desperation state, And Ciel... search the dark web for the 'Salesman.' If the Squid Game exists in this reality, the organizers are a source of Chaos Points I haven't even begun to tap."
< Master, the probability of Mr. Lee's survival has increased to 88.4%. However, the presence of the 'Salesman' suggests this world is an unstable multi-dimensional overlap. You are not in a single story, Arthur. You are in a nexus. >
"Good," Arthur grinned, his white hair whipping in the wind. "A stable world is a world with no room for a king. A chaotic world is a playground."
He had secured the apartment. He had secured a front-row seat to Grid's journey. And he had just discovered that the stakes of this life were infinitely higher than a simple VR game.
The displacement of an elderly woman from her home of decades is rarely a clean affair; it is a quiet tragedy of necessity.
In the cramped, dimly lit living room of the Lee household in Jong-sui, the air was thick with the smell of cheap tea and the suffocating weight of poverty. Young Mr. Lee sat across from his mother, his head bowed, his hands trembling as he explained the offer.
"Mother," Lee whispered, his voice cracking. "I am a failure. I pull cables until my arms go numb, and I still can't buy the children new shoes. Their school... they won't let them stay past this month. The fees are too much."
Old Mrs. Lee looked at her son, then at her daughter-in-law, who was clutching a stack of unpaid bills like a shield.
She looked at the four-bedroom apartment she occupied alone in Sun-cheong Street—a relic of a time when her husband was alive and the world felt stable. It was a museum of memories, but memories couldn't feed grandchildren.
The promise of 2,800,000 won a month wasn't just rent; it was a lifeline. It was the difference between her grandchildren becoming scholars or laborers. With a heavy sigh and a weathered hand resting on her son's shoulder, she agreed.
"If this lets the children study," she said, "I will move tomorrow. I will take the small room here. Just... tell that Youngwoo boy 'thank you' for me."
Little did she know, the man she was thanking didn't even know she existed, and the man she was moving for was the architect of their new reality.