LUNA Price: $0.000001. It was over. $40 Billion of global wealth, gone in a week.
Min-jun closed his short positions. Total Profit: ~250 Billion KRW.
He sat in his Mapo apartment. The silence was heavy. The servers were quiet. He read the stories online. Suicide hotlines were trending. People had lost their pensions. Do Kwon was silent on Twitter.
Min-jun felt a cold hollowness in his chest. He had been right. He had won. But this victory felt different. Beating Hyuk-jae at the shareholder meeting felt like justice. This... this felt like witnessing a massacre.
"Grandpa," Min-jun called out.
Byung-ho walked in. He looked shaken. He had watched the news. "Min-jun... did we... did we do this?"
"We didn't build the bomb, Grandpa," Min-jun said, standing up. "We just pulled the fire alarm before it exploded. If we hadn't shorted it, it still would have collapsed. Just a week later."
Min-jun picked up a set of keys from his desk. The keychain was heavy leather. "Pack your bags."
"Where are we going?"
"Hannam-dong. The apartment is finished."
Min-jun looked at the key fob. The Hannam The Hill. He was moving to the fortress. He had survived the Crash of 2022. He was liquid. He was sovereign.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
But there was one loose end. Jin Hyuk-jae.
Min-jun’s phone rang. It was Jin Seo-yoon.
"He's gone, Min-jun."
"Who? Hyuk-jae?"
"Yes. He... he disappeared from the hotel this morning."
"Did he...?" Min-jun didn't finish the sentence. The window.
"No," Seo-yoon said. "He didn't kill himself. He ran. He cleaned out the hotel safe—petty cash, the silver, everything. He left a note for the staff apologizing for unpaid wages."
"Where did he go?"
"We checked the flight logs. He didn't fly. We think he took a smuggler's boat from Incheon. Probably to China or Southeast Asia. He's running from the loan sharks."
Min-jun walked to the window of his Mapo apartment one last time. He looked across the river toward the Grand Daegwang Hotel. The lights were off. The tenant had fled.
Hyuk-jae was gone. The Prince had become a pauper, running through the night with stolen silver in his pockets. The revenge was complete. The Daegwang Group was dismantled, absorbed, and repurposed. But the enemy was still alive.
"Let him run," Min-jun said quietly. "He's not a tiger anymore. He's just a rat in the sewer. And rats don't survive long in the wild."
He turned off the lights. The Mapo era was over.
[TRANSACTION LOG]
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Date: May 7 - May 12, 2022
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Operation Icarus:
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Action: DUMP UST ($350M) to trigger de-peg.
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Action: CLOSE SHORT LUNA.
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Entry: $80.00.
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Exit: <$0.01.
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Profit: ~250 Billion KRW.
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Asset Status:
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Total Liquid Assets: ~1.2 Trillion KRW ($1 Billion USD).
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Real Estate: Daegwang Construction (100%), Hotel Land, Hannam Apt.
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Daegwang Group: Effectively dismantled and absorbed.
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Volume 4 Conclusion:
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The Era of Unicorns ended in a bloodbath.
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The Shadow Sovereign has ascended.
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