Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 279

This guy was a lunatic—a full-blown, certified maniac. He apparently had no idea how much the fruits were worth.

The market was still reeling in shock, but for Suho, it was the moment he had been waiting for.

This is convenient. I’ve made quite a bit of money, and I was just about to move to the next phase anyway.

In fact, he was grateful that Haseul had shown up out of the blue.

His plan—to collect as much of the currency circulating through the market as he could—had been a roaring success. Opening an auction had elicited reactions that were more eager than he had anticipated, and he still had a ton of baked goods left.

It’s time to start hoarding other resources.

What better customer to start with than Haseul, the city’s most infamous harvester? She had plenty of fruits, and for her, it was easier to part with them than to mix in with the crowd and try to outbid others.

Without a word, Haseul pulled a few fruits from her pockets and held them out to Suho. She offered him no less than six.

Suho grinned, taking the fruits immediately. “Well, well. Thank you for your business, dear customer. You can take your pick over there. You gave me six fruits, so that’s enough for three strawberry cakes.”

Without hesitation, Haseul walked over to the display. There was a minor caveat—while Suho had mentioned “cakes,” these were actually slices, not full cakes. Unfortunately, he had only been able to take what was left over at the bakery at the end of the day.

Haseul, however, did not complain. She carefully picked out the slices with the freshest and most delicious-looking strawberries.

Everyone in the market was aghast. This was borderline robbery. It was extortion.

Nobody could comprehend how Haseul could have accepted the demand without question. The fruits of Álfheimr were the city’s most precious commodity. Even if harvesters had many of them, they were not worth a few baked goods.

But Haseul didn’t seem to care what the others thought. She cautiously chose the three strawberry cake slices that she liked best and put them gingerly into the plastic bag that Suho gave her, then she left as silently as she had come.

After a pause, a wave of relief swept over the market. It was as though a storm had just passed through. It went to show just how many people had lost their heads to Haseul’s scythe. The moment she was gone, the buyers rushed back into the fray, scrambling to get their hands on what bread was left.

However, Haseul’s visit—brief and uneventful as it may have seemed—had changed things. Suho turned back to the crowd and, with a wicked grin, dropped his next bombshell.

“New rules! If any of you are out of money, you can pay with Álfheimr fruit instead.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Who would actually do that?!”

“And there is no telling when I might raise the prices further, of course,” he said decisively.

The realization hit the buyers like a truck. As long as Beru Bakery had stock left and that stock continued to dwindle, the competition would only intensify. This was a textbook example of market scarcity.

But now it wasn’t just about money—the entire currency system had changed, and Haseul had changed it. In the end, Suho was not only emptying the wallets of the market’s traders but also making them voluntarily choke up their expensive fruit.

I give all the credit to Haseul, Suho thought.

He turned to Beru.

“Beru...”

“Yes, Young Monarch?”

Still looking in the direction Haseul had gone, Suho asked, “She was S-rank, wasn’t she?”

“You saw correctly. But more importantly...”

It was the giant scythe on her shoulder, not her rank, that had caught Beru’s eye.

“I sensed the energy of the Outer Gods from that scythe,” he said.

Sirka nodded in agreement beside Suho. “I felt it too. The weapon was made from Stones of the Outer Gods, just like the ones in the high elves’ eye sockets...”

Could she be an executor? he wondered. He needed to look into this.

“Beru, follow her. Find out who she really is.”

“Of course.”

The shadow ant vanished instantly.

While I’m at it...

Suho issued another command to his shadow soldiers. From his shadow, they slipped forth undetected and wove into the shadows of every villain in the market.

With the villains, Suho’s shadow domain began to secretly grow, spreading through the city of Paradise under the expansive shade of Álfheimr.

***

A short while later, the leadership of the Free Market Coalition gathered for a meeting. The man who had summoned them was none other than the president of the bank.

“Is everyone here?” he asked.

He scanned the faces of the fruit merchants, whose expressions were unusually gloomy, and clicked his tongue.

How pathetic.

These vendors, who had once carried themselves with pride and confidence, had been brought to their knees overnight.

“Beru Bakery,” the president stated.

The entire table flinched.

Seeing their reactions, he sighed. “Do you realize that this makes no sense? How can a single bakery disrupt the entire city’s economy?”

Even if bakeries were rare in these parts, an entire city’s economy should not be falling apart over something like this. Yet that was exactly what was happening.

“There was a second shipping container, as it turns out,” someone mumbled.

Indeed, the newcomer had had two bakeries’ worth of goods, not just one. The traders had spent a fortune scrambling to buy the rookie out, only for him to drop another container right away. People lost their minds.

“I have no idea what sort of skill that is...”

They wondered if they should call him a “container summoner” or something of the sort. The real issue at hand, however, had nothing to do with what to call him or the nature of his skills.

“The real problem is that the rookie raked in an obscene amount of money in a single day.”

“And then he just disappeared without spending any of it.”

Indeed, this was the problem. It wasn’t wrong to make large sums of money in the market—that was what the market was for. But hoarding money and keeping it out of circulation was a disaster waiting to happen.

The city’s economy didn’t run on wealth—it ran on debt. Even if the debtors wanted to pay up, their interest would just continue to build if money wasn’t flowing. And if that interest was left unpaid, their debts would explode, and their heads would follow.

No one wanted that outcome, not even the bank. If the debtors defaulted all at once, the bank would collapse with them.

“At this rate, the circulation of currency in the city will be severely restricted within days. Trade will take a major hit,” said the bank president. “As you all know, the amount of currency in our city is extremely limited. If a single person hoards this much of it, there won’t be enough left for others to conduct business, which will inevitably lead to market stagnation.”

As he spoke, the gathered individuals nodded in agreement. This was a small, closed economy, which made it especially fragile to disruptions.

“With fewer transactions, the prices of everything else will be affected as well...”

Mr. Park, the fruit trader, let out a heavy sigh, clearly growing impatient with the lecture. “Sir, with all due respect, isn’t it a little early to be worrying that far ahead? Won’t that newcomer end up spending his money sooner or later anyway?”

The president’s sharp gaze snapped to him. “And when do you expect that to happen? How do you suppose a single person is going to spend that much money? No, more importantly, does he even need anything? He already netted a pile of fruits before he vanished. What more could he possibly need from us here?”

Mr. Park was silent. It was true, and everyone knew it. The needs of people in the city were simple—food, clothing, and shelter.

In this city, “clothing” referred to armor. It wasn’t a luxury but a necessity for survival. Given the unique circumstances of North Korea, however, there was no way to obtain more armor. Whatever one wore upon arrival in North Korea had to be repaired and maintained by the wearer themselves.

Then there was food, which was usually magic beast meat, ordinary fruit, or the coveted fruit of the Álfheimr. That was the real source of the crisis following the sudden appearance of the bakery.

Lastly, there was shelter, or a place to spend the nights. The citizens of the city did not own homes. Every accommodation was rented, and rent was paid on a daily basis. Since someone could die any given day, all accommodations in the city demanded rent this way.

“What if we spread the word that everyone should charge that guy an exorbitant rate for lodging?” Mr. Choi suggested, coming up with an uncharacteristically good idea.

This brought the conversation to the next biggest problem at hand, however.

The bank president swept his gaze across the gathered leaders before speaking in an icy tone. “A fine suggestion. Does anyone know where he is right now? Where is he staying, pray tell?”

Everyone fell silent.

“We lost sight of him the moment he sold his bread and left the marketplace, did we not?” he continued.

That was true. Suho had once again disappeared without a trace like a ghost, just as he had the previous night.

“Do you think this has something to do with his... container summoning?” 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

“Maybe he’s hiding somewhere, sleeping in one of the bread containers.”

At the merchants’ hesitant murmuring, the president clicked his tongue in irritation. “Then we must find that container! Think about it. If any of you encounter him outside the market, it would be the opportunity of a lifetime!”

“The Huntsman Guild is already scouring the city from top to bottom. We’ve also put out a request to some of the more skilled individuals,” someone said.

The bank president’s words had cut to the heart of the matter. Like it or not, the newcomer was essentially a walking treasure chest. That container of his, now emptied of bread, was undoubtedly brimming with glistening coins instead. And because the use of force was allowed anywhere outside the market, whoever found and killed him first would become the sole owner of that vast fortune.

Of course, that would not be the end of it, as everyone knew. If someone succeeded in killing him, they would be murdered by someone else in turn. The money would switch hands, and there would be an infinite cycle of killing in the city.

This was a city of villains, after all. Eventually, the money would enter the hands of the strongest villain or group, and only then would matters be concluded. Any of those outcomes spelled catastrophe for the city—it would be an outright disaster.

“It no longer matters who kills the rookie,” the bank president said. “The balance of the city has already begun to crumble.”

It was a wretched situation. The most absurd thing was that all of it had begun because of a single person on a single day.

The president, burdened with the responsibility of maintaining balance in the city, exhaled slowly. “So the best way to handle this... is to make the money flow back into the market. We have to make him use that money in whatever way we can, be it through the bank or some other means.”

That was the only realistic solution he could envision.

“None of us here have proper economic knowledge or experience running a bank. We simply created this system to ensure our survival. This economy we’ve built is a fragile, precarious construct that could collapse at any moment,” he continued.

That was the truth. None of them had seen this coming, but deep down, they had always known. No matter how much they claimed to control the market’s economy from the shadows, if something like this ever actually happened, it would immediately expose how little control they truly had.

They could boast, but at the end of the day, they were nothing more than a bunch of murderers who ran from the association and were driven all the way to North Korea. It was easier to talk about killing someone than about difficult matters like market logic and balance.

Mr. Choi lost his patience again and spoke up.

“So what do you propose we do, then? Are you saying we should just find the guy and force him to spend his money? Even if it means taking some... extreme measures?”

“Hmm. Extreme measures, you say... Now that’s an interesting idea.”

It was as if the bank president had been waiting for those exact words. His snake-like eyes gleamed sharply, and with an infuriatingly smug expression, he gazed across the room and shrugged.

“Now, personally, I would never have imagined such a thing. But... Just this once... Are you all saying we should go through with it?”

The sheer brazenness of his words made the others grind their teeth in frustration.

That snake.

So he was waiting for us to bring it up first.

The bank and the Free Market Coalition had always upheld certain boundaries—rules that ensured the city remained functional, however precariously. However, by framing this as a “special exception,” the president was, in effect, stripping the coalition of any say in the matter and using the so-called “crisis” as an excuse to do whatever he pleased.

He laced his fingers and smiled in satisfaction, seeing that the conversation was going exactly the direction he wanted.

“Good. Then as you have suggested—”

Suddenly, the doors burst open, and a debtor rushed into the room. “Sir! We have a problem!”

The president, his annoyance palpable, turned to face him with a deepening scowl. “What now?”

“It’s B-Beru! The newcomer!”

“What? Have you found him?”

At those words, everyone in the room shot up from their seats.

However, the debtor’s response was even more baffling.

“W-well... I suppose you could say that. He showed up of his own accord.”

“What? Where?!”

“The bank. He apparently came to buy fruit.”

“What? Fruit?”

The bank president’s expression froze.

Don’t tell me...

The debtor, growing visibly uneasy under the weight of the president’s glare, stammered, “Y-yes. Uh, he... He’s asking how many fruits he can buy with all his money.”

Ah. So that’s how it is. He’s insane.

In that instant, the president became certain. This Beru—he was a true lunatic.

“S-someone stop him!” he barked. “Someone get down there and stop him right now!”

The bakery villain was about to gut the bank’s entire fruit reserve.