The Name of Our Organization
In a derelict building on the outskirts of Nago Special City, about a dozen men stood in a perfectly straight line. Their lips were clamped shut as if they were terrified of something, and they remained frozen in place like soldiers enduring punishment. The reason they couldn’t move was the figure standing before them, brows furrowed in clear rage against the backdrop of Nago’s glittering night skyline.
“Huu…”
The androgynous-looking person swept their long red hair out of their eyes with an irritated puff of breath.
“Hey.”
They smacked the bat in their hand against their palm with a rhythmic thump thump, glaring at the men.
“What the hell did I send you useless bastards to Cheongang for?”
“T-to deliver the final blow to Cheongang’s stock price, which was already plummeting due to the string of incidents!”
“Right. I told you it was an extremely easy job—just set fire to a place already soaked in oil. And then?”
“Y-you ordered us to bring back a woman named Chae Yuha!”
“Exactly. So which part of that did you idiots actually succeed at?”
The men clamped their mouths shut in unison.
“Not a single damn thing, you brain-dead morons!!”
Boom!
The man on the far left was instantly engulfed in flames. A horrific scream tore through the air, accompanied by the sickening stench of burning flesh. The remaining nine men swallowed hard, cold sweat pouring down their faces as tension gripped them even tighter.
“Look, honestly, I didn’t even expect you to crash a train into the orbital elevator. Cheongang isn’t run by complete idiots—they weren’t going to just sit back and watch. Right?”
“Y-yes, sir…!!”
Boom!
The man who had answered was swallowed by furious flames and collapsed.
“Who the hell told you to answer and then drop dead?”
The red-haired figure let out a deep sigh that seemed to rise from their very core, then slung the bat over their shoulder.
“Alright, just one question. How the fuck do you lose fifty armed troops and still fail to kidnap a single woman?”
“......”
“Not answering?”
Crack!
With a crisp sound, the neck of the man in the center spun three full rotations before his head flew off and embedded itself in a pillar.
“Th-there was a guard next to her… that bastard was insanely strong…!! He didn’t seem like an Enhanced Human from the way he attacked us, but…”
“Even so, how the hell do you get wiped out by one guy?! That’s bullshit!!”
Crack!
Another man’s head spun wildly and was ripped clean off for speaking out of turn.
In the blink of an eye, four were dead. Six remained. The men desperately wanted to live.
“I’ll be generous and say it’s possible to get wiped out. Fine. But then you should’ve at least brought the woman back! You had that many people and you came back with nothing but your dicks in your hands? Are you proud of yourselves, you pathetic shits? Huh?”
“…B-but in the first place… just who is that woman?”
“What?”
“No matter how you look at it, she wasn’t an ordinary woman. And the strength of that guard beside her…”
“Wow, fuck. Do I really have to explain this shit to you worms?”
The red-haired figure tossed the blood-soaked bat aside carelessly, then pulled out a cigarette from inside their jacket—one that was nearly impossible to find anymore—and rolled it between their fingers before bringing it to their lips. Even without a lighter, flames sparked to life with a soft whoosh.
“She’s my older sister. Got it?”
“…Huh?”
“My sister who I was separated from as a kid, you worthless maggots.”
The red-haired person—Kirke—muttered the words almost to themselves.
“Ah, shit. I wasn’t planning to tell anyone.”
Kirke roughly scratched at their short-cropped red hair, then threw the precious cigarette to the ground and crushed it underfoot. A massive flame gathered in their palm.
“This isn’t working. You lot should just die.”
The fireball shot toward the six remaining men.
“By the way, what should we name our organization?”
The words came from Seolhwa, who had just woken up and was sipping warm tea. As if she had been waiting for the question, Chae Yuha immediately began rattling off absurd names like “Villainware” and “Madnald.”
“U-ueh… Those are terrible.”
A.G.O’s pure, honest evaluation instantly crushed Chae Yuha. She melted like soft tofu and flopped dramatically onto the sofa.
After that, Seolhwa, A.G.O, and Seokho tossed out countless ideas, but none of them felt quite right. They couldn’t settle on a single name.
“How about Maker?”
Nadja, who had stayed silent the entire time, finally stepped in to organize the chaos.
“Ooh! That’s clean and nice!”
“Hmm, it’s a name that can encompass many meanings.”
“U-ueh… You should’ve said something sooner…”
And so the organization’s name was decided without the slightest input from their leader. Even Chae Yuha, still sprawled on the sofa, let out a sly, wicked laugh upon hearing “Maker,” clearly pleased. Well, if everyone liked it, that was good enough.
Minos was home to countless broadcasting stations and their affiliated channels. Some possessed direct lines to Royal Road, while others barely managed to broadcast to the city’s outer districts. These stations were ranked from S to F in a system known as IBR. And beyond even that ranking—three channels that existed on an entirely different level—were the comprehensive channel Ark, the music channel MBN, and the political channel UBS.
“Huu…”
In the break room of Ark’s Cheongang branch, Director Park Seongtae let out a sigh so heavy it seemed the ground might collapse beneath him. Lately, the pressure from Cheongang Group’s relentless demands had grown unbearable.
A broadcasting station lived off the attention of its viewers. And Ark was one of Minos’s three major channels—a platform with immense power and influence. Yet some upstart company that had only recently gained recognition among the three major groups was…
‘Aaaah, I’m the CEO of Cheongang Group! Delete that Ark CCTV footage that’s already hit a million views the second this call ends!’
‘Aaaah, I’m the CEO of Cheongang Group! Delete that exposé video by that Aker named A.G.O or whatever the moment this call is over! What? It can’t be deleted? Then it’s fine if I dig up dirt on her and bury her, right?’
‘Aaaah, I’m the CEO of Cheongang Group! Delete that train footage that’s being shared all over Insta the second this call ends! What? You don’t have the authority to touch posts uploaded to Insta? What kind of nonsense is that?! Delete it now!’
How could they treat him—Park Seongtae, branch director of the comprehensive channel Ark—like this? When he thought about the hundred or so hair strands he’d recently transplanted now falling out because of this stress…
“Aaaargh!! That son of a bitch Cheon Taewoo!!”
The rage boiled up from deep inside him.
“What’s wrong, Director? Did you get another call from that bastard at Jotgang Group?”
Producer Jin Taehyeon had just come from the pantry carrying an armful of snacks. He sat down politely beside Park Seongtae, whose forehead was now gleaming under the lights, and asked.
“No, it’s not that. The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. A newborn company that got lucky digging up Enhanced Human technology and suddenly thinks they’re hot shit.”
“I don’t like Cheongang’s CEO either. The potential viewership from all the Akers that bastard got killed off is probably astronomical.”
“Come to think of it, A.G.O got her personal info leaked by that guy and died too, didn’t she? Ugh, now I’m angry again just thinking about it.”
“Exactly. Why did you even approve a Vitaloid account in the first place?”
“A.G.O made pretty good videos. If I didn’t give her a chance, who would?”
Jin Taehyeon let out a sigh, clearly fed up with Park Seongtae’s elitist attitude that had started up again.
“It’s a good thing you denied everything. If they’d caught you on even one thing, you and A.G.O would’ve been holding hands on your way across the Jordan River together.”
“A.G.O had that much investment value!”
“Director, the way you’re living, you’re definitely headed for rock bottom one day.”
Good grief. How could a producer be so clueless about his director’s feelings? Park Seongtae grumbled internally as he snatched one of the snacks Jin Taehyeon had brought and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Whatever, whatever. It’s all in the past. No point clutching at straws now—it’ll just give me a stomachache.”
After about five minutes of rest, Park Seongtae and Jin Taehyeon left the break room and headed back to the studio. The hallway felt strangely empty. Some employees who had eaten a heavy lunch were sprawled over their desks, fast asleep.
“What the hell? Why is everyone passed out?”
“…Something feels off.”
Unease rising, Park Seongtae and Jin Taehyeon quickened their steps toward the studio. What they saw when they arrived was—
“You’re here?”
Five villains perfectly coordinated in costumes made from Nadja’s Special Visual Tracker Ver. Optical Camouflage.
“Who the hell are you people?! How did you get in here?!”
“Now now~! Calm down! Why don’t you sit down so we can talk?”
When the slow-to-catch-on Park Seongtae flew into a rage, Seolhwa dragged over chairs and forced both men to sit. At that moment, Park Seongtae quickly scanned the studio. Employees were scattered haphazardly across the floor. Their chests were still rising and falling—they were merely asleep, not dead. They clearly didn’t want to cause a big commotion.
Park Seongtae sneered inwardly.
‘How sloppy. So sloppy.’
Despite appearances, he was a true professional who had endured every kind of hardship to reach the position of Ark branch director. His body was equipped with an emergency protocol sensor that activated the moment he was injured, a miniature camera for recording in crises, and a recorder that ran 24/7. Not only that, he had memorized the exact locations of every calling signal installed throughout the studio that could be activated in emergencies.
“Where should we start…”
The woman in the blue hood, who seemed to be the leader of the group, spoke hesitantly. From the look of her, she was clearly a rookie. He had crushed countless people with faces like hers to get where he was. There was no way he would fall now.
‘Hey, Jin Taehyeon.’
Park Seongtae gave a subtle signal with his eyes to the man beside him.
‘What?’
‘Take it out.’
Receiving the signal, Jin Taehyeon pulled a long flash rod from his sleeve and gripped it tightly. At the same time, he began counting silently in his head.
‘Now!’
Flash!
The flash Jin Taehyeon detonated flooded the studio in an instant. It was a staggering 1000 lumens—bright enough to make even an Enhanced Human flinch for a moment. The second the flash went off, Park Seongtae leapt from his chair and frantically pressed the three calling signals installed in the studio one after another.
‘Done!’
It was a success. In less than a minute, the special police who received the alert would storm the studio. Once they arrived, it was game over. Unless these were the rumored First Generation, there was no way the special police would lose in combat!
However—
Click. Click click.
No matter how many times Park Seongtae pressed them, he felt no current running through the calling signals.
“W-why isn’t this working?”
Park Seongtae muttered in confusion. Jin Taehyeon, seeing his expression, realized they were screwed and broke out in a cold sweat.
“Hmm?”
The woman in the blue hood, who had been standing there awkwardly like a novice just moments ago, curled the corners of her mouth into a grin.
“Mister, what are you doing right now?”
Her eyes glowed with a crimson light.
“Were you trying to call for help?”
“…We’re fucked.”
“…I told you we’d end up in the gutter one day, didn’t I?”
Both Park Seongtae and Jin Taehyeon lost all will to resist and obediently sat down on the chairs Seolhwa had prepared for them.
Maker
Founding Day 1
Temporary seizure of public channel Ark (Cheongang Branch) — SUCCESS