One Man's Treasure! #1
"Ha Ildo, who exactly did you arrange to meet here? Are you sure this is the right place? It looks like the kind of factory where ghosts would crawl out of. Wasn't this one of Ohsa Group's pharma plants?"
Dal-dal-dal-dal—.
I rode in Lee Jina's beat-up old truck to the meeting spot. It was a dilapidated warehouse out in Macheon City, the kind of place where you wouldn't bat an eye if a pack of post-apocalyptic Fist of the North Star warriors wielding steel pipes and wearing tire armor suddenly swarmed out and cracked you over the back of the head.
━Keong-keong…!
Of course, I wasn't worried in the slightest. After all, I had Keongkeongi, Angangi, and Kwangkwangi with me.
"Jina, you wait here."
The person who'd sent me that strange message had asked me to 'tell no one' about our meeting. So that was exactly what I intended to do.
"I'll give you ten minutes. If you're not back in ten minutes, or I haven't heard from you, I'm calling people in—or coming in there after you myself."
Coming from Lee Jina, those words were surprisingly reassuring.
Ttobeok, ttobeok—.
With that, I stepped into the factory. The interior looked like it had been abandoned for quite a long while—clutter everywhere, and box after box piled high, their contents and purpose a complete mystery.
"Hello? Is anyone here? You said you wanted to see me?"
I pulled out my phone and reread the message.
An extremely suspicious message—but the desperation in it was unmistakable. So as I was glancing around, someone abruptly appeared at the second-floor railing.
A man in a black hooded combat suit, wearing a carnival mask.
━Keureureung…!
Keongkeongi's fur puffed out in an instant. Then the masked man spoke.
"Get that Keongkeongi thing away from me! Khok!Etchwi!Khok!"
"That voice… Lee Jeonghun? Is that you, Jeonghun?"
Former S-Rank awakener Lee Jeonghun. After our fight, there had been all that fuss about him being taken into prosecution custody over Ohsa Group's assorted troubles and drug-related charges. The news had clamored about it for ages before finally going quiet, and I'd been wondering what he'd been doing with himself—apparently, the answer was summoning me to a place like this.
"Don't tell me you're here to demand a rematch?"
I asked. The memory of when I'd fought Lee Jeonghun right after first meeting Keongkeongi rose naturally to mind. With Keongkeongi at my side, my odds against a former S-Ranker like Lee Jeonghun would be roughly even.
But Lee Jeonghun frantically thrust out his hands and waved them in wild denial.
"No! I didn't come here to fight! I texted you, didn't I? Binnari is in danger! We have to go save Binnari! Ha Ildo, you're the only one I can ask! If it's you, I can trust you! Please help me!"
Some kind of trap…? Lee Jeonghun certainly had reasons to hold a grudge against me. It was true that I couldn't simply believe him at face value. And yet his expression looked genuinely desperate, carrying a kind of pleading force that shook the heart of anyone who saw it.
Even a fallen chaebol heir with a pretty face is still a gentleman—was that how the saying went?
"So what's going on?"
"It's a top-secret mission. Ha Ildo, everything I'm about to say—can you promise you'll never tell a soul?"
"I'm currently working for a certain government-affiliated team. Think of it as, well… a plea deal—I donate my talents in exchange for a reduced sentence."
So first I heard Lee Jeonghun out about how he'd been spending his days. He claimed to be working for a government team, and I'd heard the rumors before—that 'the government secretly employs skilled awakeners to do its dirty work.' It was the kind of urban legend that circulated on awakener social media.
"So the government black-ops strike team, 'Black Tiger'—that thing actually exists?"
I thought it was pretty cool, honestly. Specialists in the shadows who fought for the light. Their life direction was different from mine—I aimed for the light from the light—but it had a certain Batman vibe to it.
"…It's not actually called 'Black Tiger.' Ha Ildo, you really know absolutely nothing about our team, do you? That's surprising. I see… so you never heard anything at all."
Of course I didn't. Who was supposed to tell me about this stuff?
Just as my curiosity was swelling on several fronts, Lee Jeonghun said, "We shouldn't be wasting time like this," and swept his gaze around the room with a strangely anxious air. Then he spoke, dead serious.
"Our Korean team was the first to enter the Storm of Time and Space that just appeared. Not Cha Yura, not Seo Yerim—the team I work for entered the rift unofficially, ahead of everyone else."
"You're serious? That colossal T-Rank rift?"
"Yes! It was a truly horrific place. We had no choice but to beat a hasty retreat, and that's when we left Binnari behind…! If we stay like this, Binnari is going to die…!"
Binnari. I wondered what kind of code name that was. So it was a teammate, then. Which meant Lee Jeonghun was now reaching out to me to save one of his own.
"The team decided not to rescue Binnari. Their stance is that you can't make a huge sacrifice for something small. And besides, Korea is still officially in the position of never having approached the Storm of Time and Space at all…!"
If the multinational S-Rank alliance Argonaut, entering after them, discovered 'Codename: Binnari'—abandoned by a Korean government team—Korea would be getting raked over the coals by every nation on Earth.
"Right now, that bastard of a team leader is planning to detonate Binnari. To destroy the evidence! A cold-blooded son of a bitch. How could he do that to a teammate…?"
Self-detonation…. A heavy chill settled over me. So even now, in Korea, there were people fighting with their lives on the line without me ever knowing. Stories that would never show up in any search engine, I figured.
"But I want to save Binnari. Ha Ildo, you're the only person I can ask."
Pat—.
Lee Jeonghun grabbed my hand.
"Please, just help me! I know perfectly well that things between you and me haven't been great! I'll apologize for all of it! Just help me! If we leave things as they are, Binnari is going to die!"
It's a law of nature that beautiful people's pleas hit harder. Even I could tell that much: Lee Jeonghun genuinely, deeply treasured that Binnari person.
"Fine. What exactly do you need me to do?"
"…You'll really help? Really…!?"
"Of course I'll help, but shouldn't I at least know what I'm signing up for first?"
"……!"
Lee Jeonghun's face was a portrait of sheer shock. Apparently it had never occurred to him that I might actually hear him out, even after begging for help.
Jjak—.
He slapped his own cheeks.
"Ha Ildo, I don't think I need to explain much. It's a rescue operation you've done plenty of times. We go into the T-Rank rift and bring Binnari back. Simple on paper. The problem is that the location is anything but simple."
Chak—.
Lee Jeonghun held up a tablet PC for me to see.
"See it? Inside the Storm of Time and Space, there's a massive tower-shaped structure like this. The structure itself is one giant rift, essentially. You and I need to punch through the storm and get inside."
"Alright."
Dugeun—.
My heart pounded hard. The largest rift in recorded history. And I was about to go inside it.
Parreureu—.
I trembled faintly with excitement—though I couldn't let it show, because this wasn't an adventure. It was a rescue operation, a grim, no-room-for-error mission.
Letting out a small breath, Lee Jeonghun went on.
"Right, I understand being nervous. But it's not like the entire tower is T-Rank…! We're headed for the lower levels, and you can think of that area as roughly B-Rank on average…!"
The storm that had formed over the Pacific and the tower within it supposedly contained layer upon layer of different biomes, each with wildly varying danger levels. The place where Lee Jeonghun's teammate Binnari had lost contact was estimated to be an average of 'B' rank.
"If it's only B-Rank, your team didn't need to bolt like that, did it? Jeonghun, you're at least A-Rank even at your worst right now."
Lee Jeonghun was the man who'd gone through the unprecedented event of his awakening stage actually dropping. But even a rotten mackerel is still a mackerel—he was an elite who'd earned the right to be called an A-Rank awakener. On top of that, he was a 2nd-generation awakener alongside Seo Yerim and Yu Ari, a veteran with plenty of field experience all the way up to T-Rank rifts. A team containing a man like that had to be full of formidable operators.
And that team had fled in a panic from something merely B-Rank?
"What's down there? Something that made you run. What was it?"
"……."
At my question, Lee Jeonghun's expression stiffened ever so slightly.
Lee Jeonghun thought back to when his team had first entered the tower in the storm. The strange vegetation, the alien environments, the precious mineral they'd harvested there—Mana Hydrolite. The tower was, quite literally, a treasure trove for humanity.
But—a treasure vault always has its guardians. The guardian had been strong, and retreat had been the only option.
'…Ha Ildo, sharp as ever.'
Lee Jeonghun kept a careful watch on Ha Ildo's expression. If the startled man flatly refused to help, Lee Jeonghun truly had no one left to turn to. But Ha Ildo's attitude was dead serious.
"So something WAS down there. Tell me what it was. I need to know what we're up against so I can actually prepare."
"…Right. There's a dangerous creature. It reacts to strong mana. We couldn't get a proper look at it ourselves, but it was terrifying. Ha Ildo, I'll say it again—you're the only one I can ask."
"An unidentified monster on the loose in a B-Rank rift, and we're going in to retrieve a teammate who got left behind. Hah. Takes me back. We ran missions like this all the time, back in the day."
Seuk—.
Ha Ildo gazed into the distance, as if leafing through old memories. Then his eyes swung back to Lee Jeonghun.
"So—everyone on your team tried to talk you out of it, and you're so desperate to save this Binnari that you're begging me of all people? That teammate must be someone incredible to you. Is she your girlfriend, by any chance?"
"Uh, well…."
Lee Jeonghun hesitated. He had no idea how Ha Ildo's attitude might shift if he learned that the Binnari they were rescuing was, in fact, a single AI Dog-Squirrel.
'You're going back to that place and risking your life for one AI drone? Lee Jeonghun, are you out of your mind?'
The moment of Team Leader Kang Cheolmin's furious rebuke came flashing back to him. What would Ha Ildo say if he found out they were risking everything for an AI?
"…She's my precious teammate. Important and precious…."
Unable to bring himself to lie outright, Lee Jeonghun gave a vague answer. It was the truth that Binnari mattered to him—but Ha Ildo didn't press any further. He seemed to lose all curiosity about the rescue target and turned instead to planning the operation itself.
"So it's just the two of us going in? You're handling the means to punch through the storm and enter the rift yourself, right? Any other teammates besides me?"
"I can arrange our way in, but—no, there's no one else. Contacting you took me ages of deliberation as it was!"
"Tch. Still, two people is way too risky. I was thinking of recruiting a few trustworthy people on my end—that okay? Time is everything in a rescue operation, so we need to get people assembled fast!"
At Ha Ildo's words, Lee Jeonghun jolted in alarm.
"No S-Rankers like Seo Yerim or Cha Yura! They draw way too much attention! Korea has officially never entered the Storm of Time and Space. We have to hold that line."
"Relax. I'm not so clueless about the political situation as all that. You said B-Rank, and I know just the people for the job. Some of them you know, some you don't. All of them are people I can trust."
Seuk—.
Ha Ildo tapped away at his phone and fired off a text to someone. Five minutes later—
"Sunbaenim, what on earth is going on? Summoning me out of nowhere like this! Something covert AND urgent? What kind of secret, pressing business could you possibly need to conduct with me in a place this secluded…!"
Ttogak, ttogak—.
Someone appeared, the sharp click of high heels ringing out. It was Yu Ari, her face lighting up at the sight of Ha Ildo—until she noticed the man standing beside him, and her features immediately twisted into a scowl.
"Lee Jeonghun. What are YOU doing here? Why are you with Sunbaenim? And—well, it's been a while, hasn't it?"
Sweat poured down every inch of Lee Jeonghun's body, like a mouse standing before a snake. Of all people, Ha Ildo had called Yu Ari!
Then Ha Ildo stepped between them, smoothing things over as he spoke.
"Ari. Like I said in my message, everything we're about to do stays secret until the day we die. This is Lee Jeonghun—he says he's a government operative. We're planning to go rescue one of his teammates."