I Became a Goblin Ancestor

The General Management Team’s day is always busy.

This is because although the other four factions of the city – the Punishment Team, the Gold Flow Team, the Legal Affairs Team, and the Protection Team – are in charge of most of the city’s affairs, it is Yeon-ah’s General Management Team that gives the final approval for these matters.

In other words, the General Management Team had to check all the tasks handled by other factions once, and had to grasp the right and wrong, hidden corruption, and the relative importance of each document, so they couldn’t help but be busy.

Moreover, in addition to this, the General Management Team was also in charge of managing most of the different races within the city, so how could they not be busy?

As such, the General Management Team was diversely divided into dozens of large and small departments and operated non-stop 24 hours a day.

And Yeon-ah, who was busy in her own way solving only the most important problems of the city, though not as much as the people in the departments.

Today, too, she was sitting in her office chair, handling work.

Tap tap—

“Huu…”

It had been 20 minutes since she started handling one of the few documents that came up today.

It was such a complex matter that even she, as the team leader of the General Management Team, couldn’t make a decision arbitrarily, so Yeon-ah had been concentrating and pondering for 20 minutes straight.

“It’s difficult…”

The matter Yeon-ah was currently handling was none other than the issue of the city’s slums.

“I knew the slums were already contaminated as much as they could be… but to think such a thing would happen…”

Although the defense city had achieved brilliant development by building walls and joining forces with other-world races, naturally, as it grew rapidly in a short time, there were areas that lagged behind.

Right away, there were slums even in places not far from here, the city center, and most of the outskirts near the walls of the defense city were slums.

If they had dealt with it immediately when the slums began to be recognized as slums, they might not have needed to rack their brains now, but at that time, they were still busy stabilizing the city, so suppression was impossible in the early stages.

And by the time they had some leeway and tried to do something about it, corrupt hunters and the culture of those places had already been created, making it difficult to intervene.

Therefore, the General Management Team and the Protection Team tried to solve the problem by slowly chipping away from the outside, but in the meantime, intolerable things began to happen inside those rotten areas.

“I’d like to just forcibly push them out, but…”

Yeon-ah really wanted to use force to eliminate and deal with the slums, but if she did that, the filth that had accumulated inside would burst out and affect the general areas of the city, so she couldn’t do that either.

“Haa…”

Therefore, when Yeon-ah was sighing again while holding this problem that didn’t have an easy answer, suddenly a dry knocking sound resonated in the office.

Knock knock—

“What is it?”

[I’m the general manager of the External Management Department. We’ve succeeded in obtaining some information about the ancestor you entrusted to us, and I’ve come to report it.]

“…Is that true?”

Yeon-ah’s eyes widened in surprise at those words from outside.

However, Yeon-ah reorganized her expression with a short cough and put down the document she was holding, and lightly waved her hand to open the door.

“Come in.”

Although the slum issue she was currently handling was quite urgent, there were ways to deal with it if necessary, so it seemed better to listen to his words about finding information on the ancestor first.

After all, the ancestor’s matter was the most important priority for Yeon-ah, who led the family of the General Management Team, more than anything else.

As the door opened with a creak, the person entering was a man with a stern impression wearing glasses.

“Here it is.”
“Hmm.”

He held out the documents he was holding to Yeon-ah, who was several meters away, as soon as he entered, and Yeon-ah once again controlled the wind in the room to bring them to her.

Fwish—

The document was sucked into her hand, caught by the wind Yeon-ah controlled.

And as Yeon-ah began to look through and turn the pages of the document, the man opened his closed mouth and began to speak.

“It took a considerable amount of time to obtain this information as it was lost in the city war of the past, but our team investigating outside managed to obtain a small but significant piece of information. It was a very big harvest.”

Indeed, as the man said, this was a very big harvest.

This was because, unlike the ancestors of other races who had continued to live from generation to generation from the past to the present, the ancestor of Yeon-ah’s family was only one, and therefore, finding information about the ancestor among the information lost in the past city war was like finding a needle in a desert.

However, although this was sufficiently remarkable and worthy of reward, Yeon-ah had no intention of listening to the man’s attempt to recite the history of his departments, so she spoke first.

“For now, as we don’t have time, please summarize only the important points. I’ll look through the rest of the material myself.”
“…Ahem, yes, understood. The first thing I’ll tell you is about the ancestor’s race and actions.”

The man, seemingly embarrassed that she spoke first, pushed up his glasses once and then went straight to the main point.

At this, Yeon-ah pricked up her ears to listen to his explanation while quickly reading through the material.

However, just as his words were about to begin, they were soon interrupted once again.

Tatatatatak—!!!

“Ex-excuse me! I’m the general manager of the Security Department!! T-Team Leader!! Something terrible has happened!!!”
“Haa… What is it this time?”

What interrupted the man’s words was none other than the shout of the Security Department’s general manager who ran into the office.

What important matter could it be that made him, a former S-class hunter, run to the office sweating profusely like that?

Yeon-ah had such a question seeing his appearance, but she looked at him to hear his story first.

And if the reason for interrupting an important conversation turned out to be insignificant, she decided to give him a disciplinary punishment, and gave him the right to speak.

And immediately after.

“Th-th-the ancestor has disappeared!”
“…Pardon?”
“I-I’m really sorry…!!!”

Hearing his report, Yeon-ah couldn’t help but mutter in bewilderment.

It seemed that an event had occurred that made it impossible to sit quietly in the office anymore.

The underground space of the General Management Team’s tower.

The security of the ancestor kept there was being carried out very thoroughly.

The underground space made of the highest-grade gate mineral material, created along with the establishment of the General Management Team, was equipped with all kinds of advanced alarm facilities, and personnel from the Security Department, directly selected by Yeon-ah’s family, went down to the basement every hour for 10 minutes of surveillance and came back up.

Moreover, the number of people who could go down to the underground space was less than 20, including Team Leader Yeon-ah, and all those who had doubts and tried to go down were summarily executed by Yeon-ah, so it’s needless to say how serious Yeon-ah was about protecting the ancestor.

‘I’m screwed…’

And because of this, Dong-jae, the general manager of the Security Department in charge of the ancestor’s security and currently following behind Yeon-ah, could only mutter so inwardly.

‘This is crazy… What should I do?’

It wasn’t just empty words; the fact that he was screwed now could be objectively judged just by looking at Yeon-ah urgently running through the corridor in front of him, going around various departments.

“Take control of the city-wide surveillance camera authority and check them one by one. We must find the ancestor before they get involved in any unnecessary trouble.”
“Um… Team Leader, the surveillance camera authority is under the jurisdiction of the Punishment Team, so if we use it arbitrarily, there’s a possibility that they might complain…”
“We are the General Management Team. There’s no need to worry about such trivial complaints, so focus only on finding the ancestor. I’ll take responsibility.”
“Y-yes, ma’am!!”

Look at those words, taking control of the surveillance cameras under the Punishment Team’s jurisdiction without a word.

Normally, Yeon-ah would never do such a thing, saying she didn’t want to cause unnecessary conflicts between factions, but now that the ancestor had escaped, it seemed that nothing else mattered in her eyes.

And naturally, Dong-jae, who was following behind her along with her secretary, was in a desperate situation.

It was no exaggeration to say that the reason she was acting like this now was entirely due to his negligence, so he felt like he was walking on the edge of a blade, not knowing when his head might be cut off.

‘I’m in a situation where I feel like dying from unfairness too…!’

If he were asked to make excuses, Dong-jae did have something to say in his defense.

As usual, after Yeon-ah went up after seeing the ancestor at 12 o’clock, while waiting for the surveillance time, suddenly an alarm went off, and when he went down to check, the ancestor had already disappeared.

In the silver-gray space he went down to after hearing the alarm sound, there was only a trace of a hole as if the ancestor had dug down.

He followed the hole belatedly, but it only led outside the tower, and the ancestor was already nowhere to be seen.

Dong-jae himself was just doing his job as instructed and waiting for the scheduled time, but the ancestor had disappeared, so it was enough to make him jump up and down in frustration.

‘But if I say this now, I’ll die right away, right…?’

However, even if he had such a valid excuse, as long as he was in charge of the role of the Security Department’s general manager, the ancestor’s escape was entirely Dong-jae’s responsibility.

Such excuses were merely a struggle to die more painfully, so Dong-jae had no choice but to quietly follow behind Yeon-ah with his mouth shut.

And after walking behind her for some time in uncomfortable silence and surrounding commotion, Yeon-ah, who was sitting with an uncomfortable look in the City Management Department checking the surveillance camera screens, opened her mouth softly.

“Security Department General Manager?”
“Hup! Y-yes, ma’am!!”

At her call addressing him in a low voice, Dong-jae, feeling that the moment had finally come, straightened his back and answered.

“You probably already know this… but if anything happens to the ancestor when we find them, you’ll have to take severe responsibility.”
“Yes… I understand.”

As expected, words that could only be described as inevitable fell on Dong-jae like a sentence.

Dong-jae nodded his head, trying hard to hide his desperate emotions, and then looked at the scene in front of him where thousands of screens were appearing and passing by.

‘Please be safe…!’

Now that such a definitive sentence had been handed down, the only thing Dong-jae could do was pray that the escaped ancestor would be safe.

Dong-jae prayed and prayed with the most desperate heart since he was born into this world, and whether his desperate wish was heard.

Among the hundreds of department personnel checking the surveillance cameras, one person’s shout resonated loudly.

“W-we’ve found the ancestor!!”
“Really?! Where exactly?”
“…Wait a moment, huh? Th-that is…”

The woman who had clearly shouted confidently, but when Yeon-ah asked eagerly, she checked her screen again and gradually trailed off.

And after glancing at the screen she was checking a few more times, she conveyed the message to Yeon-ah in a trembling voice.

“In-in the gate of city district 12… they’re in a confrontation with the Punishment Team’s ancestor…”
“The Punishment Team’s ancestor… you say?”

Yeon-ah asks back with a stiff reaction to the woman’s report.

At Yeon-ah’s reaction, the others fall into a cold silence as if cold water had been poured on them.

It seems Dong-jae’s desperate wish had reached the devil.