Come Back
The talks that had dragged on for nearly three hours continued their fruitless spinning in place.
"This is a clear violation of international law!! What possible reason could there be for committing such an illegal act? You coveted Korea's high-level hunters!! Because you knew you could use them to bring back high-level Magic Stones!!"
"Do you have evidence of that? Do you have proof that the American side deliberately mobilized hunters inside the gate, ordered them to invade another nation's territory, and instructed them to bring foreign hunters back?"
"Even without evidence, can you not see how blatantly the situation has unfolded that way!! What humanitarian aid?! This is closer to industrial espionage — an attempt to steal another country's talent!"
"Do you have any idea how much psychological distress those hunters pleaded under? You keep repeating that it looks that way from the circumstances, without a shred of proof — but we have the testimonies of hunters who naturalized to the United States. They say the Republic of Korea exploited them."
"Nonsense! Absolute nonsense!! Claims fabricated to suit their own convenience!"
"And they also testified about dozens of mutant wyverns attacking the base. Not one or two people — dozens of testimonies, all identical. Even after hearing that, do I still sound like I'm lying?"
"They colluded!! They were people full of grievances from the start!!"
Association President Ju Cheolwu was desperate beyond measure.
But against the American side's rebuttals, backed by the clear evidence of naturalized hunters' testimonies, he was running out of things to say.
"I never knew a country like Korea could exploit its soldiers to this degree. We cannot agree to forcibly driving people who have already escaped back into a nation with no respect for human rights."
And in the midst of it all, the EU as well.
"You hold their families hostage and threaten them? Is the Republic of Korea a terrorist organization?"
Russia too.
"God's ascetics are beings who deserve respect. India's countless practitioners will not forget this fact."
India, too, was pressing China and Korea.
It was over.
For anything resembling pressure to take hold, more than half the parties at this summit needed to agree on something — but the atmosphere now was such that, far from a majority, they had to worry whether even China might turn on them.
Why all of a sudden!!! Why!!!!
Ju Cheolwu was seized by a fierce urge to thrash the association presidents from Russia, the EU, and India.
We agreed to pressure them together!! And India, famous for its neutrality all this time — why the hell is it suddenly acting like this!!!
He screamed inwardly, but no answer came.
Of course not — Ju Cheolwu still had no idea that Kim Seongho had tamed two hundred wyverns.
Just yesterday.
At Association President Volkov's contact, the association presidents of each nation who had entered the gate had watched a formation of wyverns filling the sky, flying in perfect formation — and upon hearing that these flying wyverns might aid them, they had immediately swung over to the American side. Ju Cheolwu had no way of knowing any of that.
Russia, with vast territory but a sparse population, had so many rifts to deal with that it set aside its longstanding rivalry with the United States and everything else — it needed the wyverns.
India had no reason to refuse wyverns that could make its practitioners even stronger.
The EU, too, wanted to side with America at the talks and receive support from wyvern riders capable of a triple combo of supply transport, troop transport, and aerial support.
Thanks to that covert backroom maneuvering, right now —
Korea was thoroughly isolated in the conference hall.
"That will be enough. I don't think I can listen to any more of your baseless demands. These talks end here."
In the end, Association President Volkov rose from his seat with a weary air, concluding three hours of meaningless verbal sparring.
The European, Indian, and Russian sides rose as well.
But China and Korea could not.
China was glaring at Ju Cheolwu as if it meant to devour him.
Having suffered such humiliation in front of everyone, China's irritation was only natural.
And Association President Ju Cheolwu's expression was so grim it would not have been strange if he collapsed on the spot.
We're finished. Fuck!!! We're finished!!!
He had to bring them back somehow.
If he could bring back Kim Seongho and Lee Yeonghak, that would be ideal — but if he couldn't, he at least had to bring back the ones who had been re-conscripted.
In a situation where every single hunter available for duty inside the gate was desperately needed, the loss of over two hundred hunters was a devastating blow.
The Association President title itself might as well have flown off with those hunters.
Having gained nothing whatsoever, Association President Ju Cheolwu left the conference hall and climbed into his limousine.
Now that it's come to this — I'll handle conscripting domestic hunters.
Find people with high mana affinity as quickly as possible and conscript them. If he handled this well, there was still a chance the president wouldn't cast him aside.
There's still a chance. I can keep my position!!
Just as he was calming himself with that thread of hope —
His phone began to ring furiously.
He answered at once.
Judging by the fact that a Hunter Association staff member was calling, it was likely about the detained hunters' families.
"Hel—"
But it wasn't.
Something far bigger.
Not a problem for his career — an incident that could turn the entire Republic of Korea upside down had erupted.
Ju Cheolwu's face went whiter than snow.
"A-Apgujeong? A rift has opened again?"
A single, shocking piece of news spilled from his lips.
"You brought them?"
"Yes, hyung-nim!"
"Good, good. Leave the slimes over there."
Lee Yeonghak watched with a satisfied smile as the swarm of slimes, the moment they were set down from the baskets, caught the scent of the rift and scurried toward it.
Slimes.
Level 1 monsters. Honestly, calling them monsters was a stretch.
The point of these things was that there were enormous numbers of them.
And that those numbers made them food for countless low-level monsters.
Following Kim Seongho's instructions, Lee Yeonghak had quietly flown into Korean territory with a few hunters while the talks were underway. Then he had scraped up a massive quantity of slimes from the forest and released them near the Korean base.
Once roughly a thousand or more slimes had been gathered, the creatures that had been milling about in confusion instinctively clustered together, pooled their mana, and began generating a rift. Lee Yeonghak and the hunters then doused those slimes with the large quantity of mana potions they had received from Association President Volkov.
A rift that would normally have taken weeks to form due to low internal mana concentration was conjured in an instant — and its location, just as Kim Seongho had intended, opened near Apgujeong.
The moment the rift opened, the slimes poured in a writhing mass onto Korean soil, and Lee Yeonghak and the hunters kept ferrying more slimes across to the other side.
"Hyung-nim. People aren't going to get hurt from this, right?"
"You ever seen anyone get hurt by a slime? Those things take three days to digest a single scrap of meat. They'll just squirm around in a big clump until some soldier who got a tip-off shows up and unloads a magazine into them."
At Lee Yeonghak's words, the hunter who had been hauling slimes looked at the tiny rift floating in midair and burst out laughing.
"True — a rift that size has such a small area of effect that unless you get right up next to it, oil won't ignite and gunpowder won't explode. Keep ten meters of distance and bullets will still fire fine."
"Exactly."
Apparently worn out from moving hundreds of slimes by wyvern from the forest, the hunter lit a cigarette and stepped up beside Lee Yeonghak.
"Hyung-nim. Why are we even doing this?"
"Can't you tell just by looking? To scare the hell out of the Republic of Korea. To make them crawl back to us on their knees."
"But slimes are Level 1 monsters. All they know how to do is hide in corners and squirm around eating moss, mold, and rotting corpses. If we were going to threaten them, wouldn't stronger ones have been better?"
"Seongho said no — innocent civilians and soldiers could die. And according to him, slimes alone are more than enough to scare them."
"Would they really be scared of those?"
At the hunter's question, Lee Yeonghak gave a crooked smile.
"The Korean public has no idea what monsters exist inside the gates, how the situation works, what Eldorado's characteristics are, or how hunters hunt. Nothing."
"Well, that's true."
"They don't give a damn about hunters to begin with. So they don't know what a slime is, or how dangerous they are. What matters to those people is that a rift opened — and that it opened in Apgujeong."
The first time a rift had ever opened on Korean soil. An incident that killed thirty-four civilians.
And among the dead had been a pregnant woman and a child — a shocking tragedy.
Ten years later, the Apgujeong Incident still lived on as a vivid nightmare in the minds of the Korean people.
"A rift opens in Apgujeong and some writhing things they've never seen before come pouring out — of course they'll panic. And what's even more terrifying is that the base inside the gate is gone, and the hunters who were supposed to guard that base aren't there."
Lee Yeonghak laughed out loud.
He wanted to stick his head through that tiny rift and watch how people were reacting — but he held himself back.
"I'm curious. In a world where the guard dogs who protected the house have vanished — how will the homeowners act?"
President Yu Myeonghak stared blankly at the sky.
In a short span of time, every kind of person had come to see him.
Ruling party and opposition figures. Reporters, so-called experts, business leaders — and on and on.
They had all screamed that a rift had opened in Apgujeong and monsters were pouring into Korean territory.
Why hadn't he stopped this?
If citizens died, would he take responsibility?
The rift had been open for barely a day, but in that single day, far too much about the Republic of Korea had changed.
He was now the biggest bastard under heaven.
The internet was flooded with sharp mockery aimed at him, and his approval rating had effectively hit zero.
In the face of this unprecedented crisis, every project he had been frantically pushing forward had ground to a halt.
The work of logging high-mana-affinity men who hadn't yet been identified into the database was paralyzed, and re-conscripting discharged hunters was no easier.
The moment they heard a gate had opened in Apgujeong, they had gone to ground so thoroughly that finding the hidden discharged hunters was harder than solving the gate problem itself.
The mana-affinity physical examination issue for men in their teens, twenties, and thirties — already the target of every curse imaginable — was now being torn to shreds as an attempt to shove untrained people into a death trap.
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
A phrase that fit his situation perfectly.
"Goddamn it."
He had quit smoking years ago over approval ratings, but in this moment he had no choice but to light up.
Only one option remained.
The option he had never wanted to choose, even if it killed him.
"This is selling out the nation's pride!!! Bowing our heads to traitors who committed acts of rebellion!!"
The choice that required the Republic of Korea to bow its head to mere individuals — to set aside pride and everything else.
He had roared the words, but no answer came back.
President Yu Myeonghak finished his cigarette.
He started to light another, then stopped.
Only one option was left, and the blade pressed against his throat was closing in by the second.
Smoking more and racking his brains wouldn't produce some other brilliant plan. He knew that better than anyone.
The president picked up the phone.
"Relay this to the American Hunter Association President."
He spoke in a bleak voice.
"Tell him I want to meet Hunters Kim Seongho and Lee Yeonghak — and ask him to arrange a meeting."