A Country Without Common Sense
The press conference shook the nation.
Choi Boksun checked the news on her phone every single day.
How would her son's death be handled?
"In a country with any common sense, a man who died defending the nation would be recognized as killed in the line of duty!"
Thinking of her dead son, Seo Yeongcheol, she said it every day, burning with rage. She had even shuttered the gukbap restaurant she ran, waiting each day for her son to be granted line-of-duty status, for those responsible to be punished, and for him to be laid to rest at the National Cemetery.
But reality did not move the way she wanted.
After Hunter Kim Seongho's shocking press conference, things began to slide in a strange direction.
"Isn't this all the Progressive Party's fault? Ten years ago, when the first gate opened — they were the ones who wrote the Gate Special Act, weren't they?"
Voices calling for mourning and line-of-duty recognition for her son were nowhere to be found.
"Is the problem the law itself, or the administration that enforces it? No — who holds final command over the armed forces? Isn't that President Yu Myeonghak? This is clearly the president's responsibility. Why are you dragging the Progressives into it?"
Instead, people started fighting. Conservatives, Progressives — the whole thing collapsed into political logic, and the public tore into each other.
And little by little, another narrative crept in: that the hunters themselves were the problem.
Hunter Kim Seongho's interview has become the talk of the country. Seongho invoked the common sense of the Republic of Korea and demanded proper treatment for two dead men.
But we cannot simply accept this press conference with open sympathy.
Their actions are shaking national security itself.
A soldier's duty is to defend the nation. Even when accidents happen and people fall, soldiers must protect the country. No matter how deep the anger, we cannot endorse conduct that plunges the nation into crisis.
When one considers the fear and anxiety the public felt during the Suwon Rift incident, Hunter Kim Seongho's words do not feel purely righteous.
No matter how many people had died.
No matter how furious they were over unjust treatment — opinions began to pour out that holding the entire nation hostage and shaking it was still unjustifiable.
Bit by bit, the atmosphere of mourning for Hunter Lee Sangmin and Hunter Seo Yeongcheol faded away.
Choi Boksun watched the news without rest, over and over. She turned on the television and listened to what people were saying.
But the news never carried what she wanted to hear.
People were too busy tearing each other apart.
The Conservatives accused the Progressives of dodging responsibility. The Progressives insisted the root problem was not them but President Yu Myeonghak.
The public splintered in every direction, spouting that no matter how angry Kim Seongho was he shouldn't have done that, that a pack of selfish bastards had fled to America, that villains shaking national security were peddling two dead men as an excuse.
What Choi Boksun wanted to see — mourning for her dead son — was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, the issue had grown so large that the Ministry of National Defense finally opened an internal investigation.
With reporters swarming and digging into everything, the Ministry could no longer bury the matter the way it used to.
The man who had directly caused the deaths of Hunter Lee Sangmin and Hunter Seo Yeongcheol was Base Leader Cho Geunseong.
A man with so much filth on him that he had been announced dead in a gate accident, Cho Geunseong was the primary cause — but reporters who caught the scent dug further, and word began to surface that the real culprit sat above him.
"There are reports that Division Commander Ji Jacheol, who commanded the military units and hunters in Daejeon, was colluding with Base Leader Cho Geunseong! What is your response?"
"The matter is currently under investigation."
"There are claims that while Cho Geunseong controlled the hunters, Division Commander Ji Jacheol intercepted the supplies and medical goods that should have gone to them, committing military procurement fraud — and that Hunter Lee Sangmin died because he never received proper treatment. Is that true?"
"As I stated, it is under investigation."
Circumstantial evidence piled up pointing to Ji Jacheol as the true core of the problem, but the Ministry of National Defense repeated only that it was investigating, dragging the inquiry out as slowly as possible.
They knew perfectly well.
That even a scandal only held attention for a moment.
That given time, the public would forget.
And the timing was excellent.
The public barely paid attention to the Ministry's statements.
"You're the ones who created Stray Dog — the Conservatives!!!!"
"The laws and systems that laid the foundation for this were written by the Progressives!! How is this our problem!!"
Instead, the people were too busy fighting over whether Conservatives or Progressives were to blame. Pure voices of mourning for the two dead hunters were steadily buried under the sensational remarks of politicians.
A sluggish Ministry investigation.
A fractured public opinion.
And in the middle of it all, Division Commander Ji Jacheol — the man at the root of the problem — was quietly reassigned and dumped in some remote backwater post.
A month passed.
Nothing had changed.
Line-of-duty recognition for Hunter Seo Yeongcheol and burial at the National Cemetery never even received a proper discussion.
One day, Choi Boksun stopped looking at her phone and the news.
She went to find Hunter Kim Seongho.
"This isn't right. My son is dead — this isn't how it should be."
She wept.
Weeping, she poured out her rage.
"A person died...... Think of him as your own child! If your own child died, would you just fight over politics and all the rest of it? How can this not be recognized as a line-of-duty death!!!"
Her legs gave out and she sank to the floor.
The will that had burned in her.
The belief that justice would surely be carried through.
Watching what this country did, all of it had curdled into pure disgust.
"I want to leave this country! I won't live here anymore!!"
She wailed.
Kim Seongho did not hold her.
"Rest, Mother."
He left the room in silence, leaving Choi Boksun's screams behind him.
Choi Boksun had given up. Kim Seongho had no intention of doing the same.
"From now on, I'll do things my way."
The master of the house had ignored the stray dog's demands.
So what then?
You bite.
For a full month, while the Republic of Korea outside the gate boiled over from my press conference, we had been building the walls of our base inside the gate.
Massive, towering walls of solid concrete and rebar. The American hunters who had helped with construction took their fair pay and returned to their own bases within US territory, and we were now putting up the facilities we needed one by one inside those walls.
And in the center of the guild building at that base, the party leaders, Yeonghak, and I sat in silence, listening to our mage, Go Jaewan.
"Following what you said yesterday, hyung, I packed several mana potions and paid a visit to the military base where Division Commander Ji Jacheol was stationed. I used Ghost Form and Optical Stealth, entered the quarters where that bastard was sleeping, and read the memories inside his skull with Psychometry."
"And?"
"Everything the reporters were shouting about was true. This bastard was lining his pockets with Cho Geunseong. If Cho Geunseong was in bed with the merchants in the garrison district, this son of a bitch had his hands on the supply chain. You remember Sangmin dying because there was no medicine to treat him? That was this bastard's work."
"......"
"On top of that, he's the one who went out of his way to cover for that bitch Kim Yejin who killed Yeongcheol — tried to get her leave so she could go home. Turns out he was very interested in 'proper treatment for female soldiers.' And for all that, he'd been reassigned several times over sexual harassment."
The sound of grinding teeth cut through the room. Yeonghak lit a cigarette.
I forced down the rage boiling up inside me and looked at Go Jaewan.
"Good work, Jaewan. Division Commander Ji Jacheol — that bastard goes on our revenge list."
"Yes, hyung. And one more thing."
Go Jaewan laughed as if he couldn't believe it.
"Something Association President Volkov confirmed for us...... Sangmin had a mother."
"He had a mother?"
"I thought the kid had no parents."
"His father died of cancer when he was in high school, and his mother left home when he was very young. They were essentially strangers. But this bitch collected the ten-million-won compensation payout that came out when Sangmin died."
The air in the room went cold.
We'd heard this story before.
Human garbage who wore the title of "parent" like a name tag — the second they heard a hunter had died and ten million won in compensation was available, they came running like a bullet, took the money, and blew it all.
"Just my personal opinion, hyungs, but this bitch used Sangmin's death the same way. We put this bitch on the revenge list too?"
I looked around at the others after hearing Go Jaewan out, confirmed that most of them agreed, and nodded.
"Fine. She's on the list. So."
Yeonghak opened his mouth.
"How do we do it?"
"We can't do it out in the open, right? So we kidnap them quietly into Eldorado, where we can handle things clean. I'll draw up the kidnapping plan. After that, the specifics of how we take revenge — I'll leave that to you, Yeonghak."
Yeonghak clenched his fist.
"Leave it to me, Seongho."
"Yes. The kidnapping plan will go roughly like this."
I set a pencil and an eraser on the table.
"That woman claiming to be Sangmin's birth mother is a civilian, so attention on her will be low. Jaewan — she's yours. Knock her out with magic, put Ghost Form and Invisibility on her too, and bring her out. Load her into a vehicle waiting nearby and drive straight back to Daejeon. Got it?"
"Understood."
"And Ji Jacheol. That bastard is sitting in the middle of a military base, so it's more complicated. But not impossible."
I pointed to a large glass jar sitting in the corner of the room.
Something slime-like swayed inside it.
It looked like a slime, but it wasn't one.
"A doppelganger. Jaewan — you brought Ji Jacheol's hair, right?"
"Of course."
Go Jaewan carefully held out the hair.
I took it, opened the jar, and fed it to the doppelganger inside.
"In about a day, that thing will transform into an exact copy of Division Commander Ji Jacheol. Then one of our mages takes the doppelganger, uses the same Ghost Form and Invisibility, infiltrates the base, and starts a fire in Ji Jacheol's room. The critical point: there must be absolutely no casualties other than Division Commander Ji Jacheol."
"We have a fire-element mage in our party who can control flames with precision. We can use him."
I nodded at the leader of Party 41.
"Set fire to Ji Jacheol's room and throw the doppelganger in. While the doppelganger gets roasted crisp, we kidnap the real Division Commander Ji Jacheol. That's my plan up to there. After that—"
I looked at Yeonghak.
A savage smile was already curling at the corner of his mouth.
The look of a man who had already decided exactly how to make those two suffer.
Yeah.
If it was Yeonghak, he'd finish them in ways no one could even imagine.
"Yeonghak will handle the rest."