The Birth of a Monster
Leaning against the rooftop railing, hyung stared blankly into empty space.
A cigarette that had already burned down completely was still held in his hand.
"Hyung?"
I asked, tossing the word out casually.
He slowly turned his head to look at me. His focus was wavering.
"Hey.... Say that one more time. How many chapters a day?"
"Fifteen if I keep my day job. If I go full-time, twenty should be doable."
"..."
Hyung scrubbed his face dry with both hands.
It wasn't just a simple number.
In the web novel market, serialization speed was directly tied to revenue. The difference in earnings between an author who posted one chapter a day and one who posted two or three wasn't a mere two or three times. Reader immersion and the rate of new reader influx scaled exponentially.
"Let's do the math," hyung muttered.
"Being really conservative.... Let's say one chapter brings in a million won in sales. This is the early paid period, so it might drop later—we'll factor that in."
"Yeah."
"But you're saying you can write fifteen chapters a day?"
His voice trembled.
"Then arithmetically.... That means you can produce fifteen million won a day?"
"On pure calculation, yeah. Of course I won't upload all of them every day, but building up a stockpile means we can keep the series going long and stable."
"Whoa...."
Hyung let out a hollow laugh.
"And if we add distribution to other platforms on top of that?"
"If it blows up there, the Munpia revenue could end up being pocket change."
"Webtoon adaptation?"
"According to Representative Kang, once the webtoon is confirmed, the influx jumps several times over again. And the licensing fees are separate."
"What if.... Just what if, it even goes to drama or games?"
Having said that much, hyung closed his mouth.
It was a sum beyond imagination. Calculator-breaking territory.
"There's only one conclusion," I drove the point home.
"Mega hit."
"..."
"Coming this far and still fretting about the company, fretting about making a living.... That's not being realistic. That's just being scared."
I looked him straight in the eyes.
"I've already thrown in my resignation. What are you going to do, hyung? Keep grinding under that pathetic bastard toward a future with no hope? Or are you going to take on a new challenge with me?"
Silence.
Only the wind hummed across the rooftop.
Hyung dropped the spent cigarette butt to the floor. Then crushed it out firmly under his shoe heel—as if grinding his own hesitation into dust.
"Author-nim."
He lifted his head. The look in his eyes had changed. No longer the eyes of a worn-out office worker.
"Yeah."
"Would I even be any help?"
"Just having you by my side is enough of a boost. Nobody reads numbers and contracts better than you, hyung."
"Haha."
Hyung burst into a short laugh.
"Thank you for acknowledging my existence, CEO-nim."
Then he dusted off both hands.
"You little shit."
"...?"
"All the things I've been holding back—I'm going to say every last one of them today before I walk out."
Hyung roughly yanked his necktie loose.
"Let's go."
"Where? Home?"
"Huh? No way."
He grinned. A smile full of murderous intent.
"Round two."
"..."
"Our author-nim already said everything he needed to and left, but I just sat there and listened. I've got my own share to claim."
"Oh...."
"Shall we? Before we set up the corporation, let's clean up the surroundings nice and tidy."
Hyung took the lead and opened the rooftop door. The slumped shoulders from when he'd come up were nowhere to be found. A majestic stride. Even my heart following behind him swelled with grandeur.
This is why a person needs real ability.
With a fat wallet, there was nothing in the world to fear.
At the same moment.
Executive Director Choi was glaring at the resignation letter sitting on his desk.
"Ha.... This crazy bastard."
Rage surged up.
How dare he. How dare a mere subordinate throw a resignation letter at his superior—and with threats, no less?
"As if you could even quit. Putting on a tough act...."
But the end of the sentence trailed off.
Kang Minjun's eyes. Those hadn't been the eyes of someone lashing out in a fit of temper. They had been the eyes of a man with something solid to fall back on—overflowing with composure.
What if he actually quits?
Fear seized him.
It bruised his pride, but he had no choice but to admit it. Eighty percent of Ad Like's performance was being generated by Kang Minjun and Park Do-hun.
His father had said it until his ears were calloused.
—You just handle the management. The actual work is all done by Manager Park and Assistant Manager Kang. Your role isn't to stick your nose in—it's to create an environment where those two can focus on their jobs, understand? If those two leave, this company is nothing but an empty shell.
He knew. That was exactly why his inferiority complex exploded even harder. He hated that the company's fate—no, his own position—was being decided by a mere two employees.
So he had deliberately squeezed them harder. Reminding them that outside the company's fence was hell, trying to make them know their place.
And yet it had come to this.
Should I report this to Father?
No. If Father found out Kang Minjun had thrown down his resignation and walked out, he would slap Choi across the face first thing.
But Park Do-hun is still here....
Kang Minjun was young and unmarried, so maybe he'd walked out on a reckless impulse. Park Do-hun was different. He was a family man with a wife and child. There was no way he would quit that easily. If he could just hold onto Park Do-hun, he might even persuade Kang Minjun to come back.
That was when it happened.
Bang.
The door flew open again.
Executive Director Choi reflexively lifted his head.
Kang Minjun and Park Do-hun.
Phew.
He let out a silent sigh of relief. Of course. They'd been gone less than ten minutes and already come back. Must have gone up to the roof for a smoke and finally faced reality.
Choi carefully managed his expression. He smoothed the hardness from his face and opened his mouth, putting on a show of magnanimity.
"You're back? Sit down."
"..."
"I got a little heated earlier myself. You two said some harsh things too. No matter how angry you get, this is a company.... Throwing a resignation letter isn't exactly polite."
Choi casually pushed the resignation letter aside and cleared his throat.
"We'll pretend it never happened, so let's try again. I'll just have someone else handle that golf thing this weekend...."
"No."
Park Do-hun cut him off.
Choi's eyebrows twitched.
"Manager Park?"
"Take this."
Park Do-hun pulled a crumpled envelope from his pocket. And set it down on Executive Director Choi's desk, right next to Kang Minjun's resignation letter.
"...What?"
Choi's brain short-circuited.
"It's a buy-one-get-one free special. Figured Minjun might get lonely going out alone."
"P-Park, Manager Park. Have you lost your mind? What about your kid! Are you in your right mind right now?"
"I am. Perfectly clear-headed."
Park Do-hun yanked off his necktie and threw it onto the desk—like a slave casting off his chains.
"You."
Park Do-hun pointed a finger straight at Executive Director Choi.
"You, you?"
"Yeah, you. Choi Hyeong-seok."
"Y-you crazy bastard...!"
"Shut your mouth and listen."
Park Do-hun's voice thundered through the office. This was not the quiet, obedient Manager Park of everyday life.
"I put up with it because I'm a family man, because I'm a dad—and you actually thought I was a pushover?"
"..."
"I've spent my entire youth cleaning up the shit you left behind. Drawing red lines on proposals you couldn't even read, pretending to 'confirm' them. Going out to client meetings, getting wasted, causing disasters—and me cleaning them up!"
Park Do-hun slammed the desk. Choi flinched and shrank back.
"So now go ahead and try running things with that 'directing' you're always bragging about."
"Hey, hey! Are you two really doing this?!"
"If you drag your feet on processing our resignations? If you're late filing the four major insurance termination reports?"
Park Do-hun smiled coldly.
"Then I won't sit still either. You know I've got every client CEO's number in my phone, right?"
"...!"
"If I walk out, start a new company, and call them all up saying, 'I left because it was impossible to work with Executive Director Choi'—what do you think happens?"
Choi's face went ashen.
This industry was a war of connections. If Manager Park—who had held the actual work in his hands—decided to pull the clients away, Ad Like would be left as nothing but an empty shell.
"Th-that's the kind of unethical—!"
"Then did you treat your employees like that because you had so much professional ethics?!"
At Park Do-hun's roar, Choi's mouth snapped shut.
Park Do-hun looked down at him with pure contempt.
"Try running the place with skills worse than an amateur's. I'll grab some popcorn and watch. Consider it pure luck that this ends here, just because of your connection to the president."
"Let's go, Minjun."
"Yeah."
We walked out of the executive office without looking back.
From behind us came Choi's desperate scream.
"Ah, wait! Hey! Don't you dare leave! I-I'll call the president right this second.... J-just wait!!"
It was almost pitiful.
But we didn't stop.
The reason we could walk out so confidently: both sides knew that if this turned into a real fight, the company would take far too much damage.
And more than anything—we already had an opportunity waiting for us that was far more secure and far better than this worthless company.
The afternoon of the paid conversion day.
Munpia headquarters, Content Team office.
The PDs' eyes darted frantically across their monitors.
"Team Lead, have you seen the metrics?"
"I'm looking. This is insane."
The team lead clicked his tongue.
The Regressed Hunter is Merciless.
In just three hours after going paid, purchase count had already broken ten thousand.
This wasn't a simple hit. This was the birth of a mega-hit that would become the best work of the entire year.
"Which management company?"
"Studio Nangan. The place Representative Kang Suk-woo just founded."
"Kang Suk-woo? Ah, that guy. So he finally landed a real prize."
The team lead nodded. If it was Kang Suk-woo, he could be trusted. His eye for works was top-tier in the industry.
"Have we identified the author?"
"Yes. I spoke with Representative Kang—he's a complete raw rookie. Apparently a salaryman."
"A salaryman?"
The team lead's brow furrowed. A flicker of concern passed through him.
"That makes me nervous."
The chronic problem with working authors. They start strong on pure grit, but once they try to juggle company work, they burn out physically and the serialization schedule collapses. Then they miss updates, go on hiatus after hiatus, and the whole thing fizzles out in a classic case of a strong start and weak finish.
"Is it safe to go big on the promotion? If the author runs, we're the only ones who take the loss."
"Ah, about that part."
The assigned PD wore a strange expression.
"I was worried about the same thing, so I asked.... He says he has a stockpile."
"How much? Around twenty chapters?"
"A hundred chapters."
"...What?"
The team lead dropped the mouse he was holding.
"How many?"
"A hundred. And they're already finished manuscripts that have gone through quality checks."
A brief silence settled over the office.
A hundred chapters. Even posting one a day, that was three months of material. And a rookie—a salaryman, no less—had stockpiled that much right at the moment of going paid?
"Huh...."
The team lead reached a conclusion.
"We can't treat him as a simple rookie."
"Right?"
"He's more seasoned than anyone. This isn't just a quality issue."
Most new authors were desperate to show their work as soon as possible. The moment they had a stockpile, they uploaded it and spent every waking second watching the reactions. But to restrain that desire and stack a hundred chapters? That was impossible without enormous mental fortitude and planning.
"And look at the reactions right now. The readers are going completely feral."
The comment section was pure praise. The plot never dragged, and every single chapter delivered that satisfying payoff. Future quality was essentially guaranteed.
The team lead made his decision.
"Hey."
"Yes, Team Lead."
"Every promotion, every ad, every banner we've got. Scrape them all together."
"All of them?"
"Yeah. Dump everything on it."
He pointed at the graph on the monitor.
"This is a stock that's going to work. We're not just rowing when the tide comes in—we're bolting a motor onto the boat."
"Understood. I'll lock in the scheduling right away."
"And contact the management side. Tell them to delay multi-platform distribution as long as possible. We'll take a long exclusive first-run window and match the terms."
"Yes, sir!"
The PDs began moving in perfect coordination.
The team lead checked the sales status of the work one more time.
On the very day of paid conversion, sales were already approaching eight million won. Unless something went wrong, it would easily clear ten million.
"Maybe...."
The team lead muttered.
"This isn't just the best of the year. We might be looking at the birth of an all-time masterpiece."
The hearts of the industry people who had just witnessed the birth of a monster began pounding violently, catching the scent of money.