Money Keeps Piling Up No Matter How Much I Spend

Chapter 215

Translator: Dreamscribe"The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy in human history."

Patin said things like this all the time.

That the Soviet Union should never have fallen.

"Of course, it's only because the Soviet Union collapsed that I am where I am today."

Ironically, Patin was the one who had benefited most from its collapse.

Had the Soviet Union survived, he would not have become the leader of a nation. He would still be living as a special agent.

"But it's not as though I ever wanted this position for its own sake. I am here only to rebuild the glory of the Soviet Union, following the destiny that heaven ordained for me."

Patin had always maintained that his rise to leadership was solely for the purpose of restoring Soviet greatness.

And that it was a destiny decreed by heaven itself.

That heaven had willed the killing of countless people and the creation of a dictatorship.

If that were truly heaven's will, wouldn't that make heaven cruel?

"......"

Before handing Patin his tea, Sergei posed a question.

"Mr. President, you've used me to assassinate people on numerous occasions."

"Why bring that up all of a sudden?"

"Was all of it truly for the sake of rebuilding the Soviet Union's glory?"

Both Patin and Sergei knew the answer.

How many people had Sergei killed on Patin's orders until now?

Yet they both knew that none of it had truly been for the old Soviet Union.

He was asking despite already knowing.

Whether Patin would rationalize even this, justifying all those murders.

Just as Sergei himself was trying to justify what he was about to do.

"......"

Patin stared at Sergei for a moment, then smiled and answered.

"What a thing to state the obvious about. Every one of those deaths was not for me, but for this country."

Hearing that actually put Sergei's mind at ease.

If Patin had honestly admitted it had all been for himself, Sergei might not have handed over that cup.

"The black tea has a lovely aroma today, Mr. President."

"Does it? Indeed it does."

Patin accepted the cup Sergei offered without a shred of suspicion.

"......"

Sergei watched in silence as Patin savored the fragrant aroma and took a sip of the black tea.

It would be a lie to say he felt no pang of conscience.

He had just stabbed in the back the man who trusted him.

The question he had asked moments ago was nothing more than self-justification.

He had no intention of making excuses.

If Patin had betrayed Russia for the sake of his own power, then Sergei had betrayed his master for the sake of his family.

"Why have you been staring at me like that?"

"Mr. President. Are you familiar with the Tears of the Goddess?"

"Of course. Our top researchers developed it."

The Tears of the Goddess.

A poison that could kill a person in an instant with just a single drop.

Normally, lacing tea with poison would always leave some trace.

The smell would be off, the taste altered.

But the Tears of the Goddess was colorless and odorless, so anyone who drank it would have no idea it was poison until their body began to react.

"I always carry it on my person. So that I can carry out your orders at any time, Mr. President."

"I didn't know that. The way you say it, one would think I issue assassination orders every day."

"To date, I've killed nine people with it. I'd always wanted to round it up to an even ten, and it seems that last one will be added soon."

"Hm? What do you mean by that?"

"I put a single drop in the tea you're drinking right now, Mr. President."

"......!?"

Patin looked back and forth between his tea and Sergei in shock.

"You are my tenth, Mr. President."

"Sergei. You, you......"

"I'm sorry. Those bastards took my son and daughter."

"And for that you betray me!? Do you think I'll just let you......"

Patin's shouting broke off mid-sentence.

The vicious poison was already spreading through his entire body.

"You know the effects of this poison better than anyone, Mr. President. It takes effect the moment it's ingested and causes death within two minutes. By now, all of your bodily functions are shutting down. You won't even be able to speak."

"......"

Patin could only glare at Sergei with bloodshot eyes.

More than the poison, the sense of betrayal at being brought down by the subordinate he had trusted most seemed to cut even deeper.

"I will carry on your grand vision, Mr. President."

There was no reply from Patin.

He had likely drawn his last breath before he even heard Sergei's final words.

"......"

After gently closing Patin's eyes, which wept gruesome tears of blood, with his hand, Sergei took a deep breath and rose from his seat.

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the day would come when he would kill his own master with his own hands, but now was the time to pull himself together.

"The President has been poisoned!"

He shouted at the top of his voice, summoning the people outside.

"Find out who brought this tea and bring them to me immediately! That bastard killed the President!"

Sergei had no intention of dying here either.

His children's lives were precious, and his own life was just as important.

More so than Patin, lying dead before him.

* * *

[Famous Hollywood actor John Carey has been arrested. A large quantity of drugs was found at his mansion, along with a massive trove of illegally filmed material, which has shocked the public. John Carey was taken into custody by police who stormed in during a speech......]

John Carey, who had done nothing but badmouth our Kwangwoon and even disparaged the foundation's employees.

I was well aware that there were plenty of suspicions about Kwangwoon, so I hadn't particularly wanted to respond.

I knew that addressing it would only pile on more misunderstandings.

But disparaging our foundation's employees, of all people, was something I absolutely could not stand by and watch, so I had been preparing to take action, but...

"Looks like that won't be necessary."

"I saw that news too. Apparently he'd been handing out drugs left and right to his followers. And had a massive collection of illegally filmed material."

He may have said some crazy things, but he hadn't seemed like that kind of person.

It was unexpected.

"Unexpected, sure. But there was a reason behind all those unhinged rants. There's no way someone doing that many drugs could be in their right mind, right?"

"Fair point."

We had been prepared to file a formal protest and even pursue a lawsuit at the company level.

But since the FBI had already hauled him in, there seemed to be no need for us to pile on further.

"Still, it's scary. Even a big-name actor like that gets brought down by drugs in the end. I hear the drug problem is getting really bad in our country too."

As it happened, Kwangwoon had already made donations to the government on its own initiative, in pursuit of drug eradication and a clean Korea.

From what I heard, the government was already assembling additional teams and showing a strong commitment to rooting out every drug organization in the country.

If the results were good, I intended to increase the funding beyond what was currently being provided.

So should I call the strategy team back and tell them to hold off on the lawsuit against John Carey? No, wait. He could easily pull the same stunt again once this blows over, so it'd be better to wrap things up definitively.......

"Oppa!"

Just then, my sister shook me and shouted.

"What?"

"L-look at that."

I shifted my gaze toward the TV, where her finger was pointing.

[Russian President Patin dead.]

"!?"

I was so stunned that I froze in place.

This was the dictator of Russia, Patin.

The situation in China was already a mess, making Asia's future impossible to predict.

On top of all that, Patin suddenly dying meant that Russia, too, would be plunged into massive chaos.

"Oppa. What happens now? Does the Ukraine war end too?"

That was impossible to say.

There was no definitive word yet on whether Patin had died of health issues or been killed in a coup.

But regardless of what had happened.

Peace on Earth was off the table for the foreseeable future.

* * *

"This is exactly why I said I wanted to retire."

Aiden let out a deep sigh, his face haggard with exhaustion.

The collapse of China and the elimination of Li Jinping and his inner circle.

The subsequent fall of the North Korean government and the execution of the Kim Family.

Fine. All of that had been manageable.

But now something had erupted in Russia.

They say the end of a dictator always looks the same.

Patin, too, had met a gruesome end by poisoning.

Because of it, Aiden had to forfeit the vacation he had barely managed to secure, return to the White House, and sit back down in this godforsaken chair.

"So, do we have any intel? Who killed Patin?"

"Initially, the culprit was unconfirmed. There was speculation that the Oligarchs had made a preemptive move, but it's now been determined that Sergei, Patin's closest confidant, was the one responsible."

"Sergei?"

"Yes. Apparently, he had the staff member who originally brought the tea executed on the spot without even an interrogation. The FSB found that suspicious and launched a reinvestigation."

"And the result is that Sergei did it? I know at least five Sergeis off the top of my head. Which one?"

"Sergei Maksimov. Patin's closest confidant, his right hand, and his Chief of Staff."

Aiden knew that name.

He was one of the persons of interest, wasn't he?

A man who had always stayed at Patin's side, carrying out every dirty deed on his behalf.

And he had turned traitor.

If even Aiden was surprised, then Patin, who had trusted Sergei above all others, must have died shaking with rage at the betrayal.

Then again.

Who was he to mock anyone?

Aiden himself had been betrayed by his own most trusted Chief of Staff.

"But Sergei, wasn't he supposed to be someone who would never flip?"

"Under interrogation, it came out that Sergei's children were studying abroad in Europe, and an unidentified group had kidnapped them. He claims he had no choice but to make that decision......"

"That makes sense, then."

But he found himself suddenly curious about the identity of this group that had kidnapped those children.

"The Oligarchs?"

"That's unclear. However, it's been reported that President Patin had advance knowledge that the Oligarchs were consolidating forces to stage a coup and dispatched special forces. As a result, every single Oligarch was killed when the operatives raided them during a meeting."

The power dynamics in Russia right now were spiraling into strange territory.

The last order Patin had issued before his death was to eliminate every Oligarch.

If the Oligarchs had indeed orchestrated Patin's assassination, then both sides had effectively taken each other out simultaneously.

"Word has it that the Oligarchs reached out to Sentinel first, and Sentinel passed that intelligence on to Patin."

"And that's why Patin wiped out the Oligarchs?"

"Yes. The question is who found Sergei's children, hidden away in Europe, and went so far as to kidnap them."

"......Don't tell me it was Sentinel."

"That's the most likely possibility. Sentinel has operatives all across Europe, after all."

Hearing all that, the pieces began to fall into place in Aiden's mind.

"So Kwangwoon deliberately set it up from the start to eliminate both of them......"

"It's a plausible scenario. From the very beginning, Patin and the Oligarchs were being played by Kwangwoon. And in the end, they were maneuvered into destroying each other."

It might be conjecture, but given how events were unfolding, it couldn't simply be dismissed as delusion.

Why had the Russian billionaires decided to betray Patin in the first place?

It started with the collapse of China, followed by Kwangwoon's freezing of their Bitcoin assets.

On top of that, the freeze had been surgically targeted at only the Russian billionaires' holdings, effectively cornering them.

In the end, the Oligarchs, who chose their fortunes above all else, joined hands with Sentinel to kill Patin, and Kwangwoon handed that intelligence right over, turning them against each other.

"And in the end, the winner is Kwangwoon. Patin is dead, the Oligarchs have been wiped out to the last man, and the Bitcoin assets they had hidden away now belong to Kwangwoon forever."

Kwangwoon had gained hundreds of billions of dollars without lifting a finger.

"Even so, isn't it going too far to push Russia to the brink of collapse just to seize that money?"

At one aide's remark, Aiden let out a dry laugh.

"Do you really think Kwangwoon caused all this chaos just to get their hands on a few hundred billion dollars?"

"Sir?"

"Given how much money they're already pulling in, would they really have stirred up this much trouble over that amount? Obviously, there's a bigger purpose behind it."

From here on out, Russia's future would be utterly unpredictable.

Who would become the next Patin, and how would the war in Ukraine end?

None of it could be forecast.

But one thing was certain.

"Everything is unfolding exactly according to Kwangwoon's plan."

And Aiden knew it.

Just as it had been before, just as it was now, and just as it would always be, the victor was Kwangwoon.