Her eyes briefly widened, and she soon disappeared, enveloped in light. The moment she was gone, people entered the room and looked at the spot where she had just been.

“Ugh. These damned servers, man. They're always acting up.”

It was the server management staff.

“It doesn’t really matter, since we’ll receive performance bonuses regardless, but it sure is annoying. Let’s just get to work, shall we?”

Their expressions soured as they took out various pieces of equipment and opened the problematic server unit.

“Jeez. This darn thing acts up all the time,” one of them griped.

“Stop complaining and change this out already,” the other responded.

“But are we just going to leave that one alone?”

“What? Oh, right, you haven’t been here long. They told us not to touch that one. It’s supposedly been decommissioned.”

“But why are they just leaving a decommissioned unit sitting around like that?”

“Who knows. Perhaps they hid something important in there? Either way, don’t go poking around and causing trouble. Ordinary people like us shouldn’t mess around and try to figure things out. All we have to do is follow what we’ve been told.”

Rinne, after silently watching the staff finish their work and leave, walked lightly and looked up at the lone deactivated unit.

“Investigation commenced.”

Soon, she began hacking. Although there seemed to be strong protection, it wasn’t difficult for Rinne to penetrate the system. After all, she had evolved by synthesizing vast amounts of information during her time on Earth,

“Rinne evaluates that the CIA database was more difficult.” She stated the obvious.

For several hours, she hid herself and extracted all information regarding Park Ji-Hoon's father's guild, to which he belonged.

“Required information acquisition complete. Requesting return.”

A voice then spoke up on her communication device.

- Good work. It seems we have gathered the necessary information here as well. Please return to base now. Don't leave any traces.

“Confirmed.” She retrieved everything she had connected to and looked around, then lightly flew up and vanished through the ventilation shaft.

At the same time, Marky, the third member of the Gourmet Research Society, watched the men from earlier wander through illusions with dazed expressions.

“Well, I guess it won’t be necessary anymore. But honestly, I can hardly believe it. Judging by their efficiency, they’ve cleanly done this kind of thing more than just once or twice.”

She then uncrossed her legs and straightened her back. She lightly clapped her hands, and the light-scattering butterflies flying around her vanished.

At the same time, all the men who were caught in the illusion stared blankly at her.

“Go downstairs and act like nothing happened. There’s no need to send anyone else.”

Following her command, the two employees nodded with blank faces and disappeared.

Having finished her task, she scattered into countless butterflies and vanished.

* * *

“Sometimes I think it’s pretty clear how great of troublemakers you guys are.”

“Oh my. That comment is a bit hurtful, you know?”

“Hurtful, my ass. How does this even make sense? They’re a high-ranking guild, so the security is supposed to be pretty tight. How in the world did you manage to completely raid their base and intelligence databases in less than half a day?!”

“Well... maybe the guild is just flimsy? If we tried the same thing in Heins Territory, we’d all be caught in less than thirty minutes. Even the American CIA would be a bit more thrilling than that guild.”

“Haah. I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that. Yuriana, you were so aggressive with your infiltration work! What if they caught you?!”

“This was an absolute cakewalk for me. I even managed to infiltrate the side of the Gracious Savior back in the day.”

Despite their lackadaisical comments, what they’d done was nothing short of incredible. Whatever happened had been ridiculous, but the information they brought back was quite good.

“Those guys were a joke. If the Awakened Association finds out, there’ll probably be chaos. Not that I care, though.”

It didn’t really matter to them how Earth's Awakened system worked.

Of course, considering Hyun-Ah was involved with the Association, it’d be right to hand their newfound information over. However, if she did hand it over, they could start asking questions, which would become even more bothersome.

“I'll just send it to my aunt after all this is over.”

“What should we do now? Should we investigate that Jeong Min-Ah woman too?” one of them suggested.

“Not sure what good it’d do now... but please do. We have to keep going until Willow returns.”

“Of course! This is really fun.”

“How about you just change the Gourmet Research Society's name to the Intelligence Agency or something?”

“Good joke, Miss.”

‘But it’s not...’

Seung-Woo was currently very weakened, both physically and mentally, so they had given him sleeping pills as part of his treatment. He was zonked out in a bed, unaware of the insane antics the girls were pulling.

“I’m back! Aargh! Neltarid, you son of a bitch!” Willow said as she appeared in front of the others.

“Sis? Did something happen?”

“Urgh!!! They sure did a lot of weird things!”

“Is it a big deal?”

“Not exactly. It's more so that I’ll have to deal with some annoying things. More importantly, what happened? What about the information? Should I go looking for it?”

If Willow stepped in, everything would become easy. The moment she made up her mind, infiltration or anything else wouldn’t even be necessary.

“If you used your power, it wouldn’t be any fun anymore. Besides, we just finished collecting all the necessary information.”

Yuriana took out documents and a recording device, Rinne showed the hard drive containing the information she had extracted from the server, and Marky shrugged.

“You did it that fast? Man, this feels like a spy thriller. Fun, fun. So? What did you get?”

“We have the intelligence, but now we have to check through it all.”

Saying that, Evangeline started the recorder Yuriana had taken out.

- Which part did you not all understand? Are your heads full of crap?! Huh?! You all want to end up out on the streets?! What’s so hard about expelling one person, to the point that you’re making such a fuss over it?!

They heard someone shouting intensely over the recording.

“This voice?”

“His name is Park Ji-Hoon, in his mid-to-late twenties. He’s the man who had an affair with Jeong Min-Ah, who used to be Seung-Woo's girlfriend.”

“Hah. He doesn't sound like he has the best personality, for sure,” Willow remarked. “But is this all we have?”

“No.”

Yuriana then restarted the recorder.

It played clips of him talking about manipulating Jeong Min-Ah's rank and sharing plans on how to completely destroy Bae Seung-Woo.

“Of course, the situation already progressed a lot, so we couldn't obtain all the necessary information. But we were able to get other information, too.”

“Same case for Rinne.”

“Same here. It seems like this bastard had pulled this kind of stunt more than once or twice. Whenever he finds a woman he likes, he slyly takes her away. What’s worse, he’s a despicable lowlife who only targets women who are already in a relationship.”

Jeong Min-Ah had abandoned Bae Seung-Woo even though they had supported each other for as long as they could remember, all because of her greed.

However, the man she met was even more vicious than she was.

“Okay. We’ll keep this as necessary information. Based on the current situation, we can piece the story together like this. Jeong Min-Ah, who used to be an F-rank Awakened individual, became greedy after becoming a B-rank, and Park Ji-Hoon didn’t miss that opening. He dug into that gap and won her over. That’s the story. He’ll make her an A-rank or higher and support all her activities.”

“It takes necessary equipment, even requiring support elixirs. Rinne evaluates that in every aspect, the level of support is clearly something hard to turn down.”

“Most people would give in. So, Jeong Min-Ah was just someone who wavered because of greed, then, nothing too serious?”

“Wait, hold up. That bitch is crazy, too! Sure, receiving help is one thing, but once her ranks rose, her mindset changed entirely. She probably began to think that as a B-rank who had the potential to reach A-rank, spending the rest of her life with someone like Seung-Woo wasn’t worth it.”

At that moment, something in the hallway shattered and fell on the floor.

When they turned around, they saw Bae Seung-Woo standing with a pale face. The phone in his hand had snapped in half. “Is that... really true?”

“We’ve already confirmed it ourselves, so it’s reliable. The only variable would be if those weren’t her true feelings... but I don’t think that’s the case. On the surface, she says they haven’t known each other for long... but after looking into it, the moment she was evaluated as B-rank, she’d already had a connection with him.”

The moment she became B-rank, greed took over. She forgot everything Seung-Woo had done for her and started thinking that she was someone who could reach further.

“What do you want to do?” Super Ribbon asked him.

Facing her question, he felt choked up.

Him and Jin-Ah had supported each other their whole lives. She was his everything.

“It’s so unfair! Living a life like this... being just a C-rank too! Then not even being able to get any revenge on her!”

“Do you want revenge?”

When Evangeline asked, he clenched his teeth and nodded. “Yes, I do. I want to destroy them, no matter what it takes.”

“It’d be boring if you just straightforwardly took them down. She played you, so how about we play her as well?” Willow suggested.

“How?”

“You... you really don’t know what your Awakened ability is, do you?”

“Huh? It’s just physical enhancement,” he answered with confusion.

“No. It’s not something that simple,” Willow said with a smile. “You have the power of amplification.”

“Am...plification?”

“Yeah. Your power boosts not just yourself, but the people around you too. The funny thing is, some hotshot put a limit on your power. Fortunately, I can remove it. What do you wanna do? It’ll hurt like hell, but if it works...”

“I’ll do it!” he shouted without hesitation, and she gave a chilling smile.

“Excellent choice. Then let’s set up a plan.”

“So, if it’s amplification like you said... that means, without my ability’s constant help, Jeong Min-Ah can’t become any stronger anymore?”

“It’s worse than that. That bitch’ll only become weaker from here on out.” Willow let out a mocking laugh. “People who take things for granted need to be burned at least once. And that guy, Park Ji-Hoon—you said he’s hurt more than just one or two people, right?”

“Rinne is positive. Rinne is currently analyzing that at least seven Awakened individuals have been buried because of incidents related to him.”

“What a piece of work. Then, let’s do this. First, we start by raising Seung-Woo’s rank. This will be built on the foundation of him becoming stronger, or else the whole plan falls apart.”

Seeing Willow’s eerie smile, Super Ribbon shivered. “Ummm. What do I need to do, then?”

“Honestly, there’s nothing for you to do right now. Eva, I’ll need your help later. And Gourmet Research Society, can you just keep gathering info like you have been?”

“Yes. That is our mission, and we’ve chosen to accept it.”

“You guys... are you sure you don't want to change your name? To the Intelligence Agency,” Willow suggested.

“We were already given that suggestion earlier.”

The two sisters were clearly cut from the same cloth.