Welcome to Underground The Secret Organization"s Risky Undertaking
Part 2
The four issues mentioned above can be solved by gradually acc.u.mulating trust from performing well on small/odd jobs. I can do the job properly, and in truth, my psychokinesis is upwardly compatible with existing methods. If I continue to pile up results, it"ll definitely eventually bear fruit. With time, it"s a sure win. Especially in regards to the s.p.a.ce launch industry. Kaburagi-san said that her university friends seem to be making plans to start up a venture company, so she"s been hinting at how our future psychokinetic rocket launch company may be useful to them. She"s been making reference to launch plans and showing them flyers about it (and also strongly warning them to keep the psychokinesis a secret), so hopefully, if everything goes well, we"ll have our first psychokinetic launch in about two years from now.
But you know? It"ll be a bit difficult for me to just sit around and wait for such a long time. And how long will it take anyway? Maybe two, three years? That may seem like a short amount of time, but if something goes wrong, I could end up waiting five, maybe up to ten years for this to be successful! It takes time to gain people"s trust, and during that time, we"ll only make a small amount of profit. With that being the case, we"ll also have to operate our secret organization on a tight budget during that time as well. Therefore, while advancing the discussion of breaking into the s.p.a.ce launch industry, we also want to find a way to easily make a lot of money in the short term.
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Gathering meteorites is the fifth option for earning money, and it doesn"t have the same issues of credibility that the first four methods have. Since no one really knows where exactly on Earth meteorites have fallen, even if I use my psychokinesis to collect the meteorites from s.p.a.ce, if I just give the elementary-schooler excuse of "I just found it somewhere and picked it up", no one will be suspicious of it. Despite it possibly being worth 1 million yen (9129 USD). Picking up lost items is the best.
However, there are two problem with this method. First, you can"t sell meteorites easily without a certificate of authenticity. Second, I would have to search the entire universe for the proper stones. The certificate problem can be solved by asking someone who works in the right field to certify them, so the real problem is searching for the meteorites.
I can only psychokinetically use my five senses through my [Sixth Sense]. When I do, it feels like I"m observing things through a dummy of myself made by psychokinesis. I can"t use it for something like an area search. Well, I may be able to do it if I manipulate my psychokinesis like a folding fan by spreading out a [Psychokinetic Membrane] and allowing my five senses to completely cover the membrane, but that would be extremely difficult. I would have to deploy a [Psychokinetic Membrane] and expand it to cover a huge range while simultaneously spreading out my five senses. As of right now, this is still something that would be difficult for me to do. I need more training.
I also considered physically transporting asteroids from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars to Earth, but, as one would expect, it"s impossible. After steadily training to increase the range of my psychokinesis, I can now extend it around the entire Earth, but the moon is too far away for me to reach. So trying to reach all the way to Mars is unreasonable. Even if I gradually increase the range of my psychokinesis, it would still take anywhere from a few years to over ten years to reach the asteroid belt. Of course, that also a.s.sumes that the my psychokinesis will continue to experience infinite growth. Additionally, I would stand out while transporting the asteroids. I can"t use my psychokinesis to make the asteroids invisible or otherwise camouflage them.
It is currently possible for me to gather meteorites. It"s possible, but it"s difficult, conspicuous, and would involve a large amount of luck.
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The sixth possible method for earning money is using psychokinesis to generate electricity. This one is my personal favorite. There are many private hydraulic and wind power generation facilities. However, many lack good locations for power generation, so their output ends up being insufficient. There are also facilities that are becoming old and obsolete and/or in danger of declaring bankruptcy. Most power generators follow the principle of "producing power by turning a turbine", so it should be OK if I just turn the turbine with my psychokinesis. I can take the generator/turbine from the local decommissioned nuclear power plant.
I wanted to start making preparations to build my own power generation facility and generate an intense amount of power, but I"m currently unable to due to not having enough capital to invest in the facility. So for now, Kaburagi-san is going around to poorly managed wind farms and giving them this sales-pitch,
"Want to improve the efficiency of your power generation? Look no further! This technology will increase the performance of your generator. How this technology works is private information that can"t be revealed to the public, but you don"t have to worry about a contingency fee, and we will compensate you if there"s damage."
As a result of going around to several companies, we finally got one company to agree to it! So, let"s try it.
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The next day, after exchanging contracts with each other, the amount of power generated rapidly increased due to the "mysterious" technology. The manger who made the contract with us was just after the reimburs.e.m.e.nt we would give them if it failed, so he was completely overwhelmed by the increase in power generation efficiency. He confirmed it three or four times before the power increased so much that it caused the measuring device to fail.
However, this threw the site into a state of chaos. The generator"s rate of operation was now perfectly ideal, with the turbine suddenly spinning rapidly even though it was a low-speed wind farm with barely any wind. On top of that, the blades start rotating at 8 AM and continue until noon, and then they start rotating again at 1PM and continue until 5 PM, for a total of 8 hours a day. I"m just turning the blades of the turbine while obeying the Labor Standards Act1, but looking at it, it seems like the blades themselves are working with the intention of following the Labor Standards Act. Because of that, a protest movement declaring "Apply the Labor Standards Act to humans, even the blades follow it!" was created, though unfortunately, all it produced was more chaos. It seems like it may take a little while for the chaos to calm down and for us to be paid according to our contract.
If everything goes well, we"ll earn 1 billion yen (9138000 USD) a year. It"s a win. It"s a bit tedious to do nothing but turn blades with my psychokinesis, but if I think about how I"m earning 1 billion a year for it, I can find motivation to do it. I can even take some time off if it"s too difficult, since the contract states that Kaburagi-san earns income according to the amount of power generated.
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Finally, another favorite of mine, underwater resource salvaging. At the bottom of the ocean, there lies rare earth elements2 and methane hydrates3. If you sell them, you can make good money off it, but it"s necessary to invest an earth-shattering amount of money in order to do underwater mining. That"s where my psychokinesis comes in. I can use my psychokinesis to dig out the deposits of methane hydrates and rare earth elements. It"s that simple. It"s like picking up a stone that has fallen into a puddle for me.
But it"s no good to just dig them up. It also has to have impurities, such as mud, removed and be fully purified. Because I can"t easily do that with my psychokinesis, we would have to entrust it to another company. We talked to an acquaintance of Kaburagi-san"s from when she was at university, who was setting up a venture company in that industry, and entered a business partnership with them. Kaburagi-san brings the resources to the surface from the bottom of the ocean via a "mysterious technology", and the venture company her friend manages, Kaneyama Tech, will handle purifying, processing, and selling them. It"s a win-win. They"ve already started doing trial runs of refining the withdrawn resources.
Even if it"s a failure, we"ll still have 100 million, which is hard to argue against, but what"s even better is we can use this processor connection. Now, we"ll also be able to do things like order equipment for our secret organization members from Kaneyama Tech. And because Kaneyama Tech is in the same boat as us, they"ll keep our secret. It"s unlikely that they"ll betray us/leak information.
The above-mentioned ways of raising money were going well, but there was a small problem.
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Kaburagi-san was now single-handedly taking responsibility for business planning, interest rate calculations, negotiations and etc. She was so busy that she could die, and I felt really sorry for her. I tried to help as well, but I was nothing more than a hindrance. I"m in charge of psychokinesis, which is the foundation of our plan. Kaburagi-san is in charge of everything else that"s needed to make the plan become a reality.
However, though Kaburagi-san was extremely busy, she also seemed to be enjoying herself. She told me, "You know, seeing what I planned actually become reality is a lot more fun than merely increasing my delusions." If you say it like that, it"s extremely convincing. Thinking up money-making schemes that make use of my incredibly powerful psychokinesis… if our roles were reversed, I would definitely make crazy and delusional business plans. It seems that the delusions taking place in Kaburagi-san"s head have become more realistic.
Kaburagi-san really was too busy though, so she decided to reduce the scale of her stocks and money game. She then fully took on the role of being the intermediate negotiator for our jobs that make money using my psychokinesis. She"s a beautiful and wealthy young woman who offers mysterious technology to various businesses. She really is acting like a executive of a secret organization. Back when I was still looking for an a.s.sistant, having a secret organization was just a vague idea, so I"m really happy to see it finally start to come together…though I think it"s not good to be so enthusiastic about making money like this.
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That wasn"t the problem though. The problem occurred from the inside.
It was Shoutkun.
Shoutkun"s superpowers got "awakened" safely. His power was as easy to understand as Toukchan"s was. He can emit freezing cold air from his hands. I call it [Ice-steroid]4. The growth rate of Ice-steroid is 1.4 times every two days (there"s one day of growing pains in between). It"s the type that grows more powerful instead of there being an increase in active time, so the basic training is similar to my psychokinesis. On the first day, he was able to emit a temperature of 0.2°C (32.4°F) without any time limit. Instead, when the temperature is lowered below the limit, there"s a burden on Ice-steroid and he suddenly feels tired.
So now we"ve begun the standard ESP"er basic training period… but don"t forget, Shoutkun is an ordinary middle-school boy. He was so excited when his superpower awakened that, needless to say, he went a bit overboard. In his enthusiasm, he tried to secretly show off his ability to his friends, even though his superpowers are supposed to be kept secret (fortunately, Toukchan managed to prevent him from revealing them). He also played around by freezing the water in plastic bottles and even sabotaged the school bathrooms by freezing the water in them. I also saw evidence of him destroying an ant nest by pouring water down it and freezing it, which is a definite warning sign of him being dangerous. He"s tried to violate all five of the secret organization"s rules, you know?
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I realize now that Toukchan is far more obedient and mature than most kids her age. Right. Shoutkun is just reacting like any kid his age would. Shoutkun is, so to speak, in the protagonist"s position in light novels; he"s an ordinary student that"s gotten caught up in the extraordinary. And once a light novel protagonist gets drunk on his own power, he gets carried away. I guess I should be glad that Shoutkun didn"t behave more protagonist-like until now.
This is "that thing", right?
In order for the protagonist"s character to be fixed, they get beaten up in a "defeat event" and are instilled with a (sense of duty).
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Footnotes:
1: The j.a.panese Labor Standards Act was created in 1947 and is part of the system of labor laws that are in place in j.a.pan. Labor laws cover everything from minimum wage to discrimination. ⇒ j.a.panese Labor Laws
2: Group of 17 elements found in the Earth"s crust. They"re used in a variety of technologies, and because it"s difficult to find large deposits and refine them, they"re worth a lot of money. ⇒ Rare Earth Elements
3: Methane hydrates are formed when a large amount of methane gets trapped in water and creates an ice-like structure. j.a.pan is looking into mining methane hydrates as a way to have its own energy source by extracting natural gas from them. ⇒ Methane Clathrates/Hydrates
4: Originally "aisuteroido" (アイステロイド); "ais" (ice) + "steroido" (steroid). Doesn"t really work in English since "ice" isn"t spelled with an "s", so "ice-steroid" was the best I could do.