No Alternative
“Please. Please, I told you over and over not to cause any goddamn problems!!! Mister Kim!!! Please!!!!”
Volkov, the Association President, looked haggard enough that even without the interpreter I could tell exactly what he meant.
“The White House called me! The White House!! They told me to resolve Korea’s rift problem immediately. Like it or not, Korea is still an ally of the United States!! We have massive economic ties!! Mister Kim!! Do not drag international relations into your little pissing contest!! What the hell am I supposed to do, stuck in the middle like this?!”
Volkov was furious. Honestly, everything he said was true. I had put him through hell. I gave him an awkward smile and offered an apology.
“I’m sorry. You’ve been through a lot because of me.”
“I don’t want your apology. I want Korea’s rift problem fixed, now! I’ve told you time and again—America wants you people supplying Magic Stones in a stable, reliable way. We do not want you stirring up Korea and creating this kind of mess!! There are plenty of American citizens living there!! If a rift blows open and the entire country goes up in smoke, the fallout will be catastrophic!!”
I nodded.
“I understand. We’ll have a conclusion soon. Tell the White House the scenario they’re worried about will not happen.”
“Fine. We’ll let this one slide. But next time? I get why you hate Korea. But if you keep acting like a thorn up everyone’s ass, you need to understand that America’s patience has limits! Just! Quietly! Bring in the Magic Stones!! We’ll make sure you earn more money than you know what to do with!!!”
Volkov was practically foaming. He was pissed beyond reason. I figured I should offer him some real comfort—not the childish “I won’t do it again, I promise” kind.
“President Volkov.”
“What now.”
He lit a cigarette with pure irritation. I tossed him a magic word.
“We can’t keep operating without a name forever. We’re thinking of founding a guild soon. Haven’t decided on the name yet.”
“So what? You want a round of applause?”
“We’re going to found the guild and take it public. It should turn into a pretty solid company, don’t you think? A PMC specialized in rift clearance. Primary clients won’t be private corporations—they’ll be nations. Revenue streams: Magic Stones harvested from rift hunts, plus clearance fees paid by those nations.”
Volkov’s irritated expression shifted into something far more interesting.
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“One percent of the guild’s quarterly net profit, paid to you as dividends. So I’d like us to maintain a good relationship going forward. Frankly, we desperately need at least one person who can speak for us inside American society. And you’re the perfect man for that role.”
Volkov’s eyes spun like slot-machine reels. His calculations were lightning-fast. A moment later the rage had vanished clean off his face, replaced by the warm, generous smile of pure capitalism.
“I’ll handle the White House. Haha! The South Korean government has been yapping in their ear about all sorts of things, but I’ll make sure it gets smoothed over. I’ve got the connections—it’ll be no problem.”
“I trust you’ll take care of that side.”
“Mister Kim.”
Volkov leaned toward me. His face was still smiling, but his eyes were full of iron resolve.
“When I say I’ll put in a good word, that is strictly under the assumption that you and your guild people will resolve Korea’s rift problem in the very near future. If a rift opens in the Republic of Korea and the citizens there, the Americans living there, and every American-linked corporation go down with it, I will not be able to take your side.”
“Of course.”
“Korea is not a country that can be allowed to simply vanish. If you deliberately leave rifts open out of personal grudge and commit mass slaughter… the United States and the Western world will never look kindly on you.”
I have no intention of doing that.
That would be far too easy.
That isn’t the revenge I want.
Besides, I wanted my comrades and me to live well and eat well—not spend our lives under the international stigma of being mass murderers.
“I plan to finish it before the rift connected to Suwon fully opens. I guarantee there will be no catastrophe.”
“The sooner you force the Korean president to kneel, the better. If the fear that a rift might open in Korea spreads, America will feel the effects too.”
“That was already my plan. I’ve already made a few moves.”
I pulled out my phone without another word and showed Volkov the news articles plastered across the front page of a Korean portal site.
“What’s this? I can’t read Korean.”
“News articles. Ones criticizing the Korean president.”
“Given the situation in Korea, those are the kind of articles you’d expect.”
“It’s more than that. These are articles saying a new rift will open in the Suwon area tomorrow.”
Volkov’s eyes went wide.
“Isn’t that something Hunter Lee Yeonghak discovered? How do these people already…?”
“I leaked it on purpose.”
I wiggled the phone. The logo of a website called TCInside was glowing on the screen. Sitting at the top of the best-posts list was a thread I had shitposted a few hours earlier.
The content was simple: a rift would open near Suwon. Not an ordinary rift—a large-scale one that would vomit Level 700 monsters across a mana-contamination radius of several hundred meters.
It was pure “I heard from a guy who heard from a guy” rumor, but of course the Korean press never disappointed me.
“These days Korean journalists care more about click counts than facts, so a lot of them just scrape sensational posts off internet communities and turn them into articles. I used that this time. The moment it becomes clear this isn’t a fake post but the truth, the president will have no choice but to come crawling back to me. Quietly covering this up the way he wants will be completely impossible.”
Source: Rift Gallery. [View Original]
Community posts always appear. That day, another one hit the best-posts list. Everyone assumed it was fake and scrolled past. Aggro-baiting shitheads like that were a dime a dozen.
But gradually, ominous eyewitness accounts started showing up.
Fuck, I was hanging at my friend’s place when suddenly every computer and phone just died. Rushed home and writing this on a laptop. This feels like a rift-opening omen?
Posts about electronics exploding started flooding in one after another.
Source: Rift Gallery. [View Original]
The post about the Suwon warning sirens hit best again. From there it spread across every community in seconds.
Seunghee you awake? Ban this fake post already.
You trying to scare the dog-bros with this fake shit?
Wait… this is real? Articles are coming out.
????
Fuck is this actually real?
Somebody screenshot the articles and post them!!
Yu Myeonghak that fucking bastard. I knew from the moment the outpost got wiped.
No hunters left—how the hell do we even clear this?
Information spread like a plague.
Breaking: Rift Opens in Suwon.
Is the Republic of Korea Finished?! Disaster in Suwon!
Why Suwon Citizens Must Evacuate Right Now!!
And the journalists who mindlessly shoveled those stories without a single fact-check, slapping on every sensational headline they could invent to farm more clicks. In less than half a day, the entire nation knew a rift was opening in Suwon.
It hit the major networks. And the politicians who could smell an issue from a mile away opened their mouths.
“President Yu Myeonghak—how incompetent can one man be? The economy wasn’t enough; now you’ve thrown national security into the trash as well. Level 700 monsters are about to pour out of Suwon!! Our Yellow Progressive Party can only express our deepest outrage at this fact!!……”
Once the talk reached that level, citizens who could no longer sit still poured into the streets. Even a rift opening in Apgujeong and spitting out slimes had been terrifying enough to drive people insane. Now they were being told a super-massive rift was opening in Suwon.
And the hunters who were supposed to clear it? Gone. The outpost inside the Gate? Gone. That was what was driving the entire nation into pure, screaming panic.
“President Yu Myeonghak, take responsibility!! Take responsibility!!!”
Without anyone needing to organize it, Gwanghwamun Plaza began to fill. Every citizen wanted this nightmare resolved as fast as humanly possible.
“Why did the outpost inside the Gate get wiped out?! Why did perfectly good hunters flee to America?! Uncover the full truth!!”
“Bring those hunters back from America right now!!! The country’s about to collapse!!”
Some citizens made perfectly reasonable demands.
“The problem is these men in their twenties these days. Back in our day military service was way harder and the pay was garbage. We still went, we still protected the country. You hear me? That’s what we did.”
“But now these kids getting two hundred a month throw a little tantrum and just fly off to America? That’s treason. Even if they come back they need to be punished severely.”
“It’s because all these young men do is sit around playing those LoL or whatever games. No grit left in them.”
Korean men really are a social evil, huh? Look at the mess they made by running off to America after causing nothing but trouble.
I’m a woman living in Suwon and my hands and feet are shaking from fear. This whole shitshow is because those Korean male pests had zero grit and just bailed.
You can tell Korean men have no sense of responsibility just by looking at how many deadbeat dads there are.
The idea that I have to keep living skin-to-skin with these irresponsible deadbeats is terrifying.
Smash every last pair of balls.
Plenty of people just screamed abuse for the hell of it. A whirlwind of words and text messages slammed into Seoul.
And at the eye of that storm, inside the presidential office of the Blue House, President Yu Myeonghak stared blankly at the ceiling with a face that looked ten years older.
“So. Defense Minister. You’re telling me you couldn’t find anything usable as evidence. Is that it?”
“I’m sorry. We do have one shot taken from relatively close range, but the wyvern moved so fast the afterimage is too severe—you can barely make out a shape.”
“……Understood. You’re dismissed.”
The Defense Minister left. The president looked at the next person.
Ju Cheolwu, President of the Hunter Association.
“You’re fired. Get out of my sight and never show your face again.”
Ju Cheolwu—no, just Ju Cheolwu now—couldn’t manage a single word as he left the office.
Only the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs and the president remained.
“Senior Secretary.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Is there really…… really no option other than going back to America?”
“We could send the female hunters currently in the military into the Gate, or we could re-conscript the retired hunters who are currently in hiding somewhere. But either way, the odds of successfully clearing the rift are low.”
“Why?”
“First, they lack experience. Female awakeners were kept out of the Gate for safety reasons, so their actual entries are few. When they did go in, it was mostly just outpost management. Retired hunters will have lost their edge. If you send people like that into a hunt with no outpost, the raid success rate drops dramatically. On top of that, whether we can even locate the retired hunters before the rift opens is completely unknown.”
President Yu Myeonghak closed his eyes.
How the hell had everything gone this completely to shit.
“Those bastards are traitors. Traitors!! They stabbed the Republic of Korea in the back and ran!! On top of that they’re shameless thugs trying to extort money!!”
Yu Myeonghak exploded out of his chair in rage. The Senior Secretary answered the outburst.
“And they are also currently our only alternative for clearing the rift, Your Excellency.”
“……”
“According to the Hunter Association investigators, the rift is already in the process of opening. Three days at the latest. As early as tomorrow morning.”
President Yu Myeonghak’s head dropped.
“Those green little bastards…… those insolent little bastards……”
He trembled with fury, but even he knew there was no alternative.
The fact that an irregular, unpredictable rift just happened to start opening the very next day after he rejected Hunter Kim Seongho’s proposal was already pure shit luck. But the concrete information had spread so fast that he couldn’t even mount a response.
Time.
If he’d only had three days, he could have thrown every scrap of administrative power into scraping together retired hunters and throwing them in. He hadn’t even been given that.
What choice was left?
“Contact the American Hunter Association President. Tell him I’m going to Nevada tomorrow.”
Yu Myeonghak spoke in a voice that sounded half-dead.
“I need to meet Hunter Kim Seongho again.”