The Shadow of the Backseat
Under the dim lights, two men sat facing each other. The room looked like one of a club or bar, with an expensive bottle of liquor and fruit platters on the table, but neither of them seemed interested in the drinks or snacks.
As the lights brightened a little, their faces came into view. They were Kang Kijun, the Blade Guild leader, and Han Jeong-u, the leader of the Hellfire Guild. Then the door opened without so much as a knock, and Jo Seunghyeon, the leader of the Evil Spirit Guild, walked into the room.
"You're a little late."
"It's only five minutes... cut me some slack."
Jeong-u chided him, but Seunghyeon brushed it off lightly and took the seat in the center. The three men, gathered in secret, had one thing in common: they were all in charge of the raid district covering Paldal District in Suwon, and they all belonged to the Great Demon faction.
"Mr. Jo Seunghyeon. Did you find out?"
It was Kang Kijun, the Blade Guild leader, who asked cautiously.
"Yes. Of course. I know one of the executives at the Settlement Center, so I asked him."
"And?"
Light flared in Kijun's eyes. Jeong-u, pretending not to care, also shot over a sly look of interest.
"They say Wraith received a settlement payout in the hundreds of billions of won under its exclusive rights this time."
"Damn... they swallowed all that up by themselves!"
At Seunghyeon's words, Kijun let out a bitter groan, and Jeong-u frowned as well. It was infuriating. If guilds like Hellfire or Blade had exercised their priority rights, they could have split the payout among themselves, which made the whole thing even harder to swallow.
"For reference, I'm talking about the guild's net profit."
Clearing a raid also awarded rewards to the guild as a whole. Add to that the percentage kickback from members' settlement money going back to the guild, and Wraith, by triggering its exclusive rights, had ended up with profits worth hundreds of billions.
At Seunghyeon's words, Jeong-u shook his head, and Kijun bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. Everyone was seething. In the heavy silence that followed, Kijun clenched his fist and spoke.
"With things like this, just where on earth is Ju Hyeri...?"
Rage overflowed from Kijun's eyes.
"If you think about it, isn't the reason we gave up our priority rights and let Wraith gobble everything up because of Ju Hyeri? Even now, if we could just..."
He was in the middle of venting when the door behind him opened and a huge man strode in. Nearly two meters tall and built like a bear, he was Ju Hyeong-geun, the leader of the Great Demon Guild.
The atmosphere turned icy at once. Jeong-u and Seunghyeon averted their eyes, and only then did Kijun belatedly sense someone behind him. He turned and found Hyeong-geun glaring at him from the doorway.
"J- Ju Hyeong-geun..."
"My little brother's missing, and you're back here gossiping behind his back? You enjoying yourself?"
Murderous intent dripped from his voice. Kijun quickly stepped aside, his face twisted in pain.
"S-sorry."
"If you want to live, shut your mouth."
"Understood."
Kijun might have been the guild leader of Blade, a Silver-tier guild, but his Hunter rank was only B-Class. He had no choice but to buckle under the pressure of an upper-echelon A-Class Hunter deliberately pouring out his killing intent. Jeong-u and Seunghyeon didn't help him either. They seemed keen on avoiding any stray fallout.
"Still, what brings you here?"
Jeong-u asked carefully. He hadn't told Hyeong-geun the time or place of their meeting, so the sudden appearance had left him more than a little rattled. Seeing the three of them all stiff with tension, Hyeong-geun bared his teeth in a grin.
"I brought you all a present."
As he finished speaking, Hyeong-geun drew something from inside his coat: a mana stone black as the deepest darkness.
*
"Mr. Kang Hyun-jun! It's me! Choi Han-seok!"
The office door flew open and Han-seok hurried in. He had been told he was leaving an hour ago, but Hyun-jun still let out a short sigh at the unexpected arrival. It was sudden, but not unwelcome.
At first, Han-seok had seemed cautious when they met, but as they drank together and grew more familiar, his honest, easygoing personality came through. Fortunately, Hyun-jun didn't dislike people like that.
[Choi Han-seok: A believer who trusts in justice.]
His nature, glimpsed through his true name, wasn't bad either. He didn't seem like someone bad to keep close, and in fact, Han-seok and the ace of the regular raid team had already helped Hyun-jun and the Wraith Guild during this raid.
"I'm here!"
"I didn't expect you to come this fast."
Hyun-jun said, shaking his head. It hadn't even been a week since they drank at the bar. He had said he would treat him to drinks, but he had expected the man to come with a bit more time to spare.
"Haha! I just wanted to see you, Mr. Kang Hyun-jun."
That was not something he wanted to hear from another man. It seemed Han-seok was using this drinking appointment as an excuse to build a closer connection with Hyun-jun. The fact that Hyun-jun had become a lower-tier S-Class Hunter was no secret in Hunter society. The rumor had already spread far and wide.
Even though A-Class Hunters wielded enormous influence in South Korea, they still couldn't be compared with S-Class Hunters, the ones called transcendents. Usually, a Hunter reached the realm of S-Class after awakening a special ability. Even at the very bottom of that tier, they enjoyed immunity from certain judicial procedures and received various privileges and benefits, including tax reductions.
"You're not here to shake down my wallet, are you?"
"Honestly, that isn't not part of it."
Han-seok answered with disarming honesty.
"The place we went to last time was good, right?"
"Yes. The atmosphere was nice, and overall it wasn't bad. Let's go there."
They drove over. When they reached the bar, the two of them went into a private room. As soon as the ordered liquor was set down, Han-seok filled Hyun-jun's glass and dropped in a single ice cube.
"I'll say it again, but thank you, really."
He refilled the empty glass again and again. Thanks to his mana, he didn't get completely drunk, but a pleasant buzz had begun to settle in when Han-seok cautiously laid out the situation he'd been dealing with all this time.
Until not long ago, his finances had been in poor shape, but thanks to Hyun-jun's suggestion, things had recovered significantly. It had been a coincidence, but it was because of that that Han-seok had opened up to Hyun-jun and come to like him.
"I'm glad it worked out."
"Same here."
The drinking was nearing its end as well. After paying the bill, Hyun-jun and Han-seok headed toward where the car had been parked. It was Friday, and because they were in a busy commercial district, there was nowhere nearby to park, so Han-seok's attendant seemed to have left the vehicle a little farther away.
"What is it with people calling it Friday drinking night..."
"Aren't you the one who called me out on Friday drinking night, Mr. Choi Han-seok?"
"Ah? Right, I guess so. Haha!"
Han-seok, who had been grumbling in complaint at Hyun-jun's point, gave an awkward laugh. Hyun-jun shook his head and kept walking.
"Let's take a shortcut."
He knew the area well enough.
"Sounds good."
"We'll have to go through an alley. That's fine, right?"
"What is there to be afraid of when an S-Class Hunter is right here? Haha!"
Since the age of dungeon raids had begun, public security in South Korea had worsened like everywhere else, but as Han-seok said, there was no such thing as a robber bold enough to threaten an S-Class Hunter.
"Let's go."
He entered the alley first. And then.
Hashashin's sinister laughter warns you of danger. Someone nearby is weaving an evil plot.
At Hashashin's warning, Hyun-jun drew up his mana and swept the surrounding area broadly. Powerful mana reactions were clustered together. They had tried to hide their mana, but they couldn't escape Hyun-jun's sharp search. That was the problem. He might have been able to pass through quietly, but once he spread his senses with mana, the other side realized they'd been found and began to move.
Hashashin's sinister laughter warns you of danger. Someone is aiming for your heart.
The warning continued. At first it had simply mentioned an evil plot, but this time it warned directly that someone was targeting his heart.
"Mr. Choi Han-seok."
"I know."
As expected of a veteran A-Class Hunter, he had noticed the enemies closing in stealthily. A staff was already in his right hand.
"Magic Missile!"
It was a low-tier spell, but the number of Magic Missiles generated with the activation word exceeded twenty.
"Go."
No sooner had Han-seok spoken than the Magic Missiles surged outward like a storm in all directions.
"Kuh!"
"Ugh!"
With heavy thuds, three men in black masks came crashing down. Seeing that, Hyun-jun let out a short breath and shook his head.
"Ninjas..."
Or something dressed like the assassins you only saw in martial arts stories. He didn't know who their boss was, but they had clearly read too many martial novels and taken them to heart.
"More incoming."
Hyun-jun said. By then, he had already drawn his sword from the subspace pouch.
"I'll intercept them. Magic Missile!"
Once again, dozens of Magic Missiles shot upward. But this time was different. The dozens of mana shots, each wrapped in blue light, were swallowed all at once by black flames and erased from existence. It happened in an instant.
"At least A-Class!"
Han-seok warned him, but he didn't seem especially tense. Hyun-jun knew exactly how strong he was. An A-Class Hunter was no match for him unless they were among the very top.
"I was preparing sacrifices for the rite, but it seems an unexpected prize has fallen into my lap."
Perhaps using Fly Magic, the man descended slowly from the sky and landed lightly. He wore a black mask. His upper body was in a white shirt, but it was splattered with so much red blood that no one could tell what he'd been doing until just now.
It wasn't clear which guild's enforcement division he belonged to, but the important thing was that the fact he used the word "rite" made it likely he wasn't in his right mind.
"A demon worshiper...?"
Hyun-jun muttered the thought aloud before he realized it. With the worsening security, strange cults had begun to appear, and demon cultists were one such breed.
"No. I'm on an entirely different level from such vulgar things."
"Listen to that tone. He's a terminal middle-school chuunibyou case."
Frowning, Hyun-jun pulled a shield from his subspace pouch. Since the enemy looked like a mage, he intended to close in.
"I’ll rely on you for cover."
"Leave it to me."
No sooner had he heard Han-seok's answer than he kicked off the ground and hurled himself at the masked man.
"Wind Cutter!"
Behind him, he heard Han-seok shouting the activation word, and he aimed the Aura Blade-infused sword at the black-masked man's throat.
"Scatter!"
Black flames burst outward. They looked like petals scattering in the wind. Hyun-jun leaped back nimbly, and the four Wind Cutters failed to pierce the fire, dispersing into empty air.
"You are strong. It seems I'll have no choice but to reveal my true form."
He lifted a hand to his mask and drew his mana upward. Sensing that ominous shift, Hyun-jun also began circulating his mana and drew the Butcher's Dagger.
"Sword Control!"
The Butcher's Dagger, wrapped in mana, shot forward for the masked man's throat.
"It's already too late! I'll show you the power granted to me by that one!"
Before the Butcher's Dagger could land, black flames swallowed his body. A horrible scream burst out. When the black flames vanished, there was no masked man in the bloodstained shirt left there, only a grotesque creature wearing a hideous shape.