Moon's Labyrinths

The date of the trial was soon set. It was an important issue, and the public was very interested in the case. Keeping that in mind, the trial was going to take place in public, and it would be broadcasted to the world.

However, the trial wasn’t the most important issue right now.

“I see! We have to recapture Armstrong city.”

“Yes.”

The Mayor nodded at Plu-El’s words.

Plu-El had been very helpful. All the countries were very satisfied with her cooperation. She wasn't alone in cooperating with the people of Earth; the other Moon people did so too. However, Plu-El was a descendant of the ruling class. She had much more knowledge than the others, and this, she was more useful to the people of Earth.

Moreover, she was the wife of Jungbum, an earthling. She had a better grasp of the languages of Earth.

Therefore, she was frequently called forth for advice on matters related to the Moon and the labyrinths. Of course, the person who sought her the most was the Mayor.

“We've created a basic stratagem. Well, it isn’t much of a stratagem. We’ll conduct a surprise attack on Armstrong city. After we chase out the monsters, we’ll use the defensive weapons inside the city that are still intact. When we are successful in driving out the monsters, we’ll start construction. We’ll turn Armstrong city into a fortress.”

Of course, the details of the plan had to be fleshed out to increase the probability of success.

“Then why are you here to see me? If you need the portal, you can ask me anytime. I’ll open it for you.”

“Is there any way we can make Armstrong city more secure?”

“Mmm.”

Plu-El became lost in her thoughts for a brief moment.

“I think the only method is to synchronize the four cities. I can think of nothing else.”

“So there is a way?”

The Mayor had been grasping at straws. He had thrown a hail mary. However, he received a positive answer. He felt as if the bells were ringing in heaven.

“I don’t know for sure. This information was passed down through the generations, but we lost a lot of it in the process. It was said that an unbreachable domain could be created if one awakened the capital city, the fortress city, the holy city, and the mage city. Of course, it's useless against Grenoid.”

“Basically, it's a legend.”

The Mayor couldn’t hide his disappointment.

“It indeed is. However, I believe there is a high chance that it's credible.”

“I guess it's better than having nothing. Now, the problem we have to solve is acquiring the four cities. Don’t we only have three of them?”

“Yes. Mr. Sungyoon has the capital city. I possess the holy city. Aruwen possesses the fortress city.”

“What about the last one? Do you know where the Mage Gem is?”

Plu-El shook her head from side to side.

“I'm sorry. We don’t know the whereabouts of the Mage Gem. Either it went missing before our people came up to the Moon, or it was lost after we brought it up to the Moon.”

“I see. Thank you for answering my questions.”

In the end, the Mayor hadn’t earned anything meaningful from this meeting. His shoulders drooped as he exited the room; it was almost a pitiful sight.

The mayor exited the room, but Sungyoon didn’t follow him out.

“I heard you met my mothers-in-law.”

“Yes, they came a couple of days ago.”

“How was it?”

Sungyoon was called the Knight, and he had gone through all kinds of hardship. Yet, he became nervous when asking the question.

Thankfully for him, a smile appeared on Plu-El’s lips.

“As expected of the women he chose, they were good people.”

“It seems you had fun.”

Sungyoon relaxed his tense shoulders.

“Hoo-hooht! Yes. We talked a lot about him. They told me about the Jungbum I didn’t know, and I told them the Jungbum they didn't know. In many ways, we talked a lot about his various sides.”

Plu-El had chatted a long time with Hweeyoung and Aiin.

“I’m glad that you got close to them.”

It wasn’t just for Plu-El. Things going well put Sungyoon’s mind at ease too.

“Is Soyoung doing well?”

It was Plu-El’s time to ask the questions.

“She is doing well. My wife and my mothers-in-law are taking good care of her. She's getting along very well Shinhae. The two girls have become inseparable like best friends.”

“That's good to hear.”

With her personal matters resolved, Plu-El only had a few worries left in her life. One of them was Soyoung.

“Well, the family tree is a bit messed up.”

“Family tree… is messed up?”

Plu-El repeated his words. She wasn’t used to the Korean expression, so she looked worried.

Sungyoon quickly clarified his words.

“It's nothing. It's just Shinhae and Soyoung are close in age. Shinhae refers to my mothers-in-law as her grandmothers, while Soyoung refers to each of them as her mother. This is causing a bit of confusion. Shinhae calls Soyoung Unni, but on paper, Soyoung is her aunt.”

“Ah. I see! That's indeed a problem!”

Plu-El understood what it meant for a family tree to be messed up.

“That’s the extent of the problem we face. The only other problem is that Soyoung sometimes gets sad without you. However, that’ll be solved soon. It's only a matter of time before you are released.”

“I am causing you a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t mind it.”

Sungyoon had gained beneficial information from Plu-El. Above all else, she was also his mother-in-law.

“The trial against Fabion will start soon.”

Plu-El's smiling face stiffened in a moment.

“Most probably, you will be called in as a witness. Please don’t hold anything back. Let everyone know what you suffered under Fabion's hands. You can't lie, but at the very least, the truth will—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

A cold smile appeared on Plu-El’s lips.

“I don’t have to make anything up. Their actions were so rotten that I don’t need to embellish them. I kept a list in my head. I have all of it down.”

***

The day of Fabion's trial arrived. A lot of reporters had gathered around the courthouse. Even foreign reporters had come.

Sungyoon sat in the audience with Hweeyoung, Aiin, and Jimin. It had been very hard to get a seat in the public seating area. Fortunately, the government had reserved seats for him and his group.

Hweeyoung and Aiin looked extra fierce today. They were pressing down on it right now, but their hearts were filled with anger. It looked like they were about to explode.

On one hand, they didn’t want it to be true, on the other, they felt resentment toward the men on trial. These contradictory feelings clashed within their hearts.

The judge overseeing the case called the court to the session, then he laid out the crimes charged against Fabion. The audience either groaned or cussed in low voices when they heard the detailed explanation of the charges.

Dongin, Hyunwoo, and those intimately related to the crimes were in the dock.

Hweeyoung and Aiin didn’t even blink as they glared at Dongin and Hyunwoo.

“Defendant.”

The judge spoke in a low voice devoid of emotions.

“Do you accept these charges leveled against you?”

“Hell no! This is all bullshit! I’m innocent!”

Dongin yelled.

More curses could be heard from the public seating area, and the curse contained venom now. The judge stopped the trial to call order to the spectators.

The lawyers representing Dongin laid out their defense. Since Dongin was filthy rich, he had hired an all-star lineup of lawyers. The lead lawyer was eloquent and charismatic. He used these characteristics to the utmost as he defended Dongin.

The battle between the prosecutor and the lead lawyer went on for a long time. Soon, the time to call the witnesses to the stand arrived. The prosecutor brought forth Plu-El, and the media immediately focused their interest solely on her.

She was an alien who had lived on the Moon. This fact was enough to make her the center of attention.

The prosecutor asked Plu-El some questions, and she answered all of them.

However, she refused to even look at the members of Fabion. Just seeing them made her insides boil.

Dongin and the other accused strongly reacted against her words, and their lawyers heard answers with all their focus. They were trying to find any weakness in her testimony.

In stark contrast to all of them, Hyunwoo was silent. It seemed the judge picked up on this abnormality, so he called him out.

“Mr. Sung Hyunwoo. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Hyunwoo quietly stood up from his seat. He looked at his surroundings as if he were searching for someone. His eyes briefly stopped on Hweeyoung, Aiin, and Jimin, then fell at Sungyoon. Their eyes met.

Grin!

Hyunwoo smiled. It was out of place, but he displayed the smile of a prankster.

“Respected judge.”

As if he were reading lines in a play, Hyunwoo spoke in a slightly exaggerated manner. He then pointed toward the prosecutor.

“He got it wrong.”

The prosecutor's face distorted, and all the accused nodded.

However, Hyunwoo’s next words shocked everyone.

“I guess he isn’t wrong, but he doesn’t know much about what we did. Do you really think that was all Fabion did?”

“W-what?”

Dongin couldn't say anything. He just kept opening and closing his mouth. The spectators became noisy once again, but Hyunwoo remained calm as he continued.

“Did we attack the Moon people? We did. If their story was spread across Earth, our business of gathering moonstones would've been adversely affected. Did we kill Jungbum? We did. He knew the truth, and he was trying to reveal all the information to Earth. We had no choice but to kill him.”

“You... you crazy bastard! Stop that right now!”

Dongin rushed toward Hyunwoo. However, Hyunwoo possessed the supernatural body of a Connector, and he had put his life on the line to fight battles over the years. Of course, Dongin, a normal middle-aged man, couldn't stop him.

“The place where we reported Jungbum had died was not the right one. Jungbum indeed died in the tunnel of the Great Labyrinth, but it was the Great Labyrinth that's currently under Fabion’s management. Woo Sungyoon was searching the wrong tunnel. He wanted to find Jungbum's traces, but it was in vain. Fabion had illegally entered many tunnels.”

Jimin’s hands shook, and Sungyoon firmly gripped them.

“We also did human experimentation. We wanted to create something like the Flesh Gems of the Moon people. So we used the corpses of the Moon people we hunted down as ingredients for our experiments. We sometimes also ambushed other Connectors to acquire corpses. Ah! There was a pretty big story two years ago where an entire party of Connectors went missing. Well, we were behind that. At the time, our experiments had progressed very far, so we needed a lot of corpses.”

Plu-El's eyes turned bloodshot as she glared at Hyunwoo.

“Mmm! This might not be considered much, but we also interfered in the business of Hahn Jimin, Hahn Jungbum’s daughter. The brat wanted to find traces of her father, and she was tenacious. She became a thorn in our sides, so we used the trash named Kim Soobin. Soobin was to kill Woo Sungyoon, the Connector affiliated with her company. However, as expected of the Knight, it didn’t work against him.”

Sungyoon’s face started to harden.

“The terrorist attacks that have been considered the catalyst for the downfall of Armstrong city, we carried them out. When Woo Sungyoon seized Plu-El, we were worried that she would spill the beans. So we diverted the attention of the entire world. We made it so that Armstrong city's defenses were extremely weak. We did it because we wanted an opportunity to eliminate Plu-El.”

In this maelstrom of shock and surprise, Hyunwoo looked at peace as he grinned.

“That’s all I can remember right now.”