Home Sweet Destroyed Home
Back home, Ji-hoon planted his hands on his hips and let out a long sigh as he surveyed the wreckage of his living room.
“Ha….”
“Choco.”
“I haven't even said anything yet.”
Choco awkwardly shuffled his little bear paws against the floor.
“'Easy' my foot. You went 'easy' the way a wrecking ball goes easy. Actually, forget it.”
His body was a tiny cub, but what was packed inside was an S-rank boss monster. A Giant Bear's strength and mana stayed exactly the same, no matter how small you squeezed him down.
“So let me get this straight. An Orpheus guild member tried to break in through the window, and Choco just launched them straight out?”
“And then, out of pure rage, you fired off your quill missiles?”
What Orpheus had actually been after, of course, was his parents.
“And after that was a defensive stand?”
“Hardly worth calling one. Choco attacked, and the guild members were too busy dodging to do anything else.”
“And then the Bureau showed up to clean up the mess?”
“Yep.”
Once he had the full picture, Ji-hoon pressed a hand to his forehead. The window and the wall next to it had been blasted clean off the building. How exactly am I supposed to explain this to Mom and Dad?
“Woo-jae, you should've stopped him at least.”
“Hyung… how was I supposed to stop Choco…?”
Woo-jae muttered as he fiddled with his battered shield for no particular reason. Ah. Right. Choco had crushed that too.
“…Sorry about that.”
“It's fine, hyung. But seriously, are you okay? You got kidnapped, remember?”
“Not a scratch on me. Honestly, it was kind of relaxing.”
Poppi wasn't wrong. This wasn't exactly a situation where Ji-hoon could scold him. So instead, he reached down and patted Choco's head.
“Good job, Choco. Thanks to you, it ended at just this much.”
“Yeah. Your reward: I'll make you jerky.”
Choco shot up onto his hind legs, practically vibrating with joy.
Woo-jae watched quietly as the griffin and the giant bear preened over a single word of praise, then leaned in and lowered his voice.
“Hyung, the Bureau said to get ready to move. Do you have anywhere to go?”
“They said they'd find me a place.”
“Huh? Why would they?”
“Something about keeping tabs on me as a person of interest, apparently.”
Nobody had actually said that out loud, but it wasn't hard to guess. He'd been kidnapped by Jin Seo-yoon, and he'd tamed an S-rank boss monster. From the Bureau's perspective, of course they'd worry he might suddenly develop other plans.
“Speaking of which, where are your parents?”
“At our place.”
“Are they angry?”
“They were pretty mad that you wouldn't pick up the phone?”
Bzzz— bzzz—
Across the room, the phone sitting on the desk began to shake.
“Look at that.”
It was his mother. Ji-hoon reached for it on reflex—
Click.
“Huh?! You're NOT answering!?”
“I'll call back later. If I pick up now, it's just going to give me a headache.”
Forgive your unfilial son, Mother.
I shall install you in a luxury apartment before long.
Ji-hoon offered up a silent prayer his parents would never hear.
“Anyway. Let's think this through.”
As he said it, Ji-hoon started laying out food on the dining table — the room-service spread he'd smuggled back from Hotel L.
“Let's eat while we talk.”
Even the most gorgeous scenery means nothing on an empty stomach. You had to be full before your brain could make good decisions. He hadn't told Jin Seo-yeon that for nothing, after all.
“Here — Poppi, Choco, this is yours.”
The two of them dove into the chicken with abandon while Ji-hoon and Woo-jae worked through the steak and salad.
“Mmm~ so atmospheric.”
A late dinner with a wall-sized hole where the window used to be. His romance levels had officially maxed out.
“Hyung, aren't you being a little too relaxed about all this?”
“About what? I've thought everything through.”
It was, admittedly, an absurd situation from every angle. Dangerous, yes — and strange. But the most important question was this: why had Jin Seo-yoon and Orpheus gone so far as to resort to kidnapping?
They could have just overwhelmed me with force if they'd wanted to.
Was it really about persuading me? Dragging me into the guild to squeeze profit out of me? That didn't justify the risk.
“Mmm….”
Ji-hoon chewed thoughtfully on his takeout steak. Woo-jae had been watching him for a while now, and finally spoke up.
“Hyung… you're not thinking of joining a guild, are you?”
“Not really? Don't see the need.”
“Right. See, that's because you're strong.”
Ji-hoon tilted his head. “You can't call an F-rank strong.”
“You're F-rank, sure — but your kids are S-rank.”
Woo-jae pointed at Choco and Poppi. “I've fought alongside Choco, so I know. Unless you've got an S-rank tank, nobody's stopping him. And Poppi the griffin over there….”
Envy, jealousy, and open admiration all flickered across Woo-jae's face as he looked at Poppi.
“Honestly? I want to be him when I grow up.”
“Be like Poppi? Seriously?”
“Sure, sure.”
“Hyung, there's stuff you don't understand about— GYAAH! Mercy, Poppi hyung-nim! I retract my claim! I retract it!”
Under an indiscriminate barrage of wing strikes from Poppi, Woo-jae finally caught his breath and explained. “His mana is flawlessly refined. Beautifully ordered. That's exactly why it's so hard to gauge how deep it goes.”
And this was coming from a solid A-rank tank — a rising ace widely tipped as the next generation's star.
Ji-hoon paused, considering whether Poppi really measured up to that. Well. Jin Seo-yoon did go flying in a single hit. Even granting that it was a surprise attack — it had been Poppi who put Korea's number-two hunter within a hair's breadth of combat-incapacity.
“So that's why they're trying to recruit me.”
“Yeah. For Orpheus, that's actually the civilized route. In other countries, they've tried kidnapping or even killing a high-ranker's entire family to force them to sign.”
“Huh….”
He asked why anyone would go that far, and Woo-jae explained it came down to gate clearing and management.
“The real money is in management. Once a gate's been cleared, the higher its rank, the better the byproducts you can harvest from it.”
“Mana stones, monster drop items, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly. On a genuinely lucky day, one billion won is nothing — you can pull in ten.”
It wasn't just about the number. It meant that in the ten years that had passed on Earth while Ji-hoon spent a hundred years grinding through Hell, the very scale of money had changed.
“That's why they're falling over themselves to recruit you — they think you contributed to clearing an S-rank gate. Baek Kang-hyun's a public servant, so he's off the table.”
“What about you, though? You were in that raid too. Weren't there a few A-ranks there as well?”
At that, Woo-jae pulled several slips of paper from his pocket. “Got those too, obviously. Actually, I was just coming back from an offer when I got here — Baekryeon Guild, today.”
“Where'd they approach you?”
“Just a normal meeting at a café. Why?”
Damn it all.
Why is mine a KIDNAPPING?
Whether or not he sensed the fire boiling in Ji-hoon's gut, Woo-jae fanned the business cards out across the table. “Anyway, that's five cards from today alone.”
Two of them were from the national Top 5 guilds — Baekryeon, the number-one guild, and Eden, the pinnacle of gate and mana-stone research.
“You… you're really doing well for yourself, huh.”
“You got an offer from Orpheus too, hyung.”
“That wasn't an offer. That was a threat.”
Still, even all this didn't quite add up. Recruiting an F-rank shouldn't have been hard. Dangle enough money and he'd obviously bite — that much was a given. So why? Why go to all this trouble to persuade him?
“Wait a second….”
An F-rank. A Poppi who could overpower an S-rank hunter. Choco, an S-rank boss. And a returnee, back after a hundred years.
—There have been many returnees lately, but none of them possessed any special abilities.
And on top of that, the Commissioner's own remark that returnees were increasing by the day. Which meant what they were really watching for was…
Do they think I'm a being who can detect — or even generate — S-rank dungeons?
It wasn't just about clearing an S-rank gate. Merely creating a gate, or triggering its creation, would be valuable in itself. Which would explain why they couldn't risk damage to his body or mind — because they still hadn't figured out the conditions for generating or inducing gates.
But no, come on. There was no way.
“There are plenty of way more impressive people than me out there.”
“You little—!”
I'm having a life-or-death realization over here! Ji-hoon wound up a fist at each of them—
Ding—
A text from Baek Kang-hyun.
“Hoo… You're the only reason I'm holding back.”
So the Bureau had hunted down a place for him even while working overtime. That building had fire insurance too, right?
Ji-hoon was about to reply that he'd come over and sleep there tonight when—
“Hwaaam….”
A yawn escaped him. It was nearly midnight already. Watching Woo-jae fight off exhaustion while Poppi and Choco demolished the chicken in seconds and immediately started sniffing around for his homemade snacks, he made up his mind.
“We'll move tomorrow.”
One day of rest, then move in the morning. What was one night under the stars, after all?
“Feels just like a rooftop room. I like it. Let's sleep under the stars.”
After telling Woo-jae they'd move tomorrow, he called his parents back too.
He absorbed a full round of cursing, but the moment he sent over the address and photos of the apartment, their attitude flipped on a dime.
He decided to clear up his parents' misunderstanding tomorrow. With the call finally over, Ji-hoon half-heartedly tidied the least-destroyed corner of the living room, dragged a blanket over, and lay down.
“Pretty romantic, right? You can even see the stars.”
“Uh… yeah….”
Worth it, then — dragging Woo-jae here against his will. The kid seemed fairly satisfied, or so Ji-hoon thought for exactly one moment.
“…That's exactly how I feel right now.”
So much for stars. Ji-hoon stared blankly as raindrops fell through the open sky-hole and slowly soaked the room, and quietly let loose a string of six-letter profanity.
Naturally, they slept that night at a motel down the street. And only the next day — right before the move — would he learn just how wise that choice had been.
The top-five guild Eden.
Guild Master Yoon Do-ha was in a meeting with Jin Seo-yoon, fresh from her medical treatment.
“So you lost him?”
“Lost him — and made a deal with Baek Kang-hyun.”
Ugh, I've lost my mind, haven't I.
Hearing her mutter to herself, Yoon Do-ha leaned forward with interest. “But you did at least observe his mana signature?”
“I did. Lee Ji-hoon's mana. F-rank, through and through.”
So there was nothing special after all, Jin Seo-yoon said. But—
At her next words, Yoon Do-ha's eyebrows twitched.
“But here's the thing. The F-rank was wielding S-rank equipment. What do you make of that?”
“An F-rank… wielding S-rank gear…?”
Yoon Do-ha fell into thought, then spoke slowly. “Impossible. Even if he managed it, the strain would damage his body.”
“Then that alone should be explanation enough.”
The S-rank griffin-feather necklace she'd worn around her neck. She had snapped it deliberately — and Lee Ji-hoon had shown no reaction whatsoever.
“So either he's unusually resistant to mana fluctuations, or he's got at least one A-rank-or-higher resistance skill. Or else….”
Yoon Do-ha cycled through every hypothesis he could conjure, then stopped mid-sentence and turned to gaze out the window.
“Ha. I really do need to bring him in. Quickly.”
Tiny blood vessels were creeping into the corners of Yoon Do-ha's eyes, one by one.
“Just imagining what kind of extraordinary mana that man is carrying — I'm already trembling with excitement.”