Another Choice (4)
Arrogant bastard. What? You think you’ll become some amazing hunter?
Top floor of the Taeseong Guild House. Han Yura’s office.
Han Yura, who had been staring out the window, ground her teeth while fuming with rage.
The secretary carefully studied her profile. She was seething.
I need to calm her down fast. Otherwise the next week is going to be hell!
So far, Han Yura had burned through more than ten secretaries. The one who had lasted the longest among them had learned how to read her quite well.
“He’s a nobody. Why would you waste any attention on him, Master? His future is obvious. The day will definitely come when he bitterly regrets this. Turning down such excellent conditions…”
Not every awakened person could work as a hunter.
When you looked at the ratios, trash traits were far more common. Link was simply one of them. Its ceiling had never been verified even once, while its floor was endlessly low.
“This Han Yura was disrespected. In front of other hunters, no less!”
Ah, so it wasn’t just the rejection—there was that reason too.
But wasn’t that something you brought on yourself by acting without any dignity, Master?
Everyone who mattered had already seen it. The incident could not be undone. She needed to move on.
The secretary took out a tablet.
“I’ll add him to the blacklist. If we make sure he can’t find a foothold anywhere, he’ll regret it too.”
Just like so many people before him.
The secretary, who had swallowed the rest of his sentence, waited for Han Yura’s decision.
“Add him right now.”
“Yes!”
With this, Shin Yuseong would never be able to join any guild that fell under Taeseong’s influence. The handful of major guilds outside that reach would have no reason to accept someone with the Link trait anyway.
The secretary was operating the tablet in the hope that this would improve Han Yura’s mood when—
“Haha! Already?”
Suddenly Han Yura burst into loud laughter.
What? She actually sounded delighted.
She was still gazing out the window, and the secretary could not see what she was looking at.
“Hold on. Don’t add him to the blacklist. It would be better to make him realize his place. Let’s see exactly what kind of fortune that bastard just kicked away. Find out where Shin Yuseong ends up and what happens to him.”
“Understood.”
She was someone whose moods changed as quickly as the weather, after all. The convinced secretary made a note.
“Now that that’s settled. What are you going to do next? Got anything planned?”
A sloppy question that skipped every bit of context. But the secretary understood it perfectly.
“How about arranging a meeting with the official in charge of mandatory dungeon clearing?”
Han Yura whipped her head toward the secretary. Slowly, a satisfied smile curved her lips.
“That’s… not bad. Push it through immediately.”
“Yes!”
The secretary had survived another day.
I stopped in my tracks the moment I stepped out of the Taeseong Guild House.
Towering skyscrapers. Cars racing along roads that had never collapsed. Pedestrians hurrying in every direction—it all dazzled my eyes.
Electronic billboards flashed, blasting flashy advertisements.
It was all a sight I had desperately missed. How many times had I longed to see it again?
This time, I won’t let the world fall to ruin.
It wasn’t some grand sense of duty.
Having already experienced the Doom Dragon once, I simply believed I had the highest chance of stopping it in this world.
I’m just doing what needs to be done. The Saintess used her self-sacrifice skill to send me back, after all.
I took a deep breath.
“Huu. The air is clean too. No weird smells.”
The stench of burning corpses, the foul odor of monsters, the pollution from countless collapsed factories…
All of it was gone.
The slightly hazy sky was a minor flaw, but this was the kind of clear day that would be rare in the future.
A family walked past me.
Must be nice.
I had no family.
Yet even someone like me who had never known familial warmth still carried the simple desire to live happily among people, day after day.
If that was the case, I needed to prepare for the catastrophe that was coming.
“Shall we go?”
Home.
However…
Standing with the Taeseong Guild House at my back, I ran straight into a major crisis.
I clutched my head. It was useless. I couldn’t remember.
“Wow, shit. Where the hell was our house again?”
Left or right? I couldn’t even tell that much right now.
What vaguely came to mind was that I had moved recently. Maybe I still hadn’t gotten used to the new place, so the memories refused to surface?
After several rounds of clutching my head and sighing so heavily it felt like the ground might collapse, I thought:
It should be written on the resume… But I can’t shamefully walk back in there and ask for my own home address.
With a touch of regret, I glanced back at the Taeseong Guild House once more.
Whatever. I’d just walk until my feet gave out. The memory would come back eventually.
Having decided, I started walking to the right.
“…I’m on my way, I told you. I’m almost there, really.”
Just then a man walked past me while talking on the phone.
“Huh?”
A spark of realization hit me.
Oh, right. Cell phones existed at this time.
The familiar device slid out of my pocket.
I still needed time to readjust to a world that had not yet been destroyed.
“…Master?” “Ma’am?”
“Ah, yes? Did you call me?”
The woman who had been staring intently at the monitor lifted her head in surprise.
Her voluminous golden-blonde wavy hair was striking; she was a beauty with gentle eyes.
“What were you looking at? I called you several times.”
“Sorry. There was a guild application, so I was reviewing the resume. What is it?”
“For our guild? A hunter? What kind of person? How strong is he?”
The large guild member forgot his original business and fired off questions like a machine gun.
They were desperately short on manpower, so an applicant was huge news. He showed intense interest.
Saint Guild Master and blonde beauty Yoon Sera awkwardly covered the monitor, looking troubled.
“Ah, sorry. I’m still debating whether to accept him, so disclosing personal details feels a little…”
“What’s there to debate? We’re short on people—shouldn’t we just take him? Or is his skill that bad…? Even if he’s only worth about zero-point-eight people, shouldn’t we still accept him?”
“Mm… I’ll take your opinion into consideration.”
“Yes! We need to be able to clear dungeons stably!”
After the guild member left,
Yoon Sera’s eyes scanned the trait and ability fields.
Link—connected with a top-grade swordsman. Growth time required, so immediate activity will be difficult, but potential exceeds S-class hunter.
Could this be real?
Theoretically it’s possible. If someone overcomes those absurd odds, Link is a trait that could even connect to a transcendent being from another dimension.
Still, claiming it reached above S-class seemed excessive.
Even if promising abilities can be anticipated, there’s no way to confirm potential that reaches S-class.
There was also the possibility that it was mere bluffing, taking advantage of how non-intuitive Link’s powers were. The note that it would be hard to prove immediately had been laid out as well.
However.
What truly made Yoon Sera agonize was a different section entirely.
Hunter Yoon Sera. During the Taeseong Guild interview, I received an offer regarding a testimony of a certain nature. They said that if I testified to the Association, they would allow me to join Taeseong. However, my memory of the events differs. Therefore, I refused the request for testimony…
In addition, I have become interested in the Saint Guild and sincerely wish to join.
This was something Shin Yuseong had deliberately written alongside his application to quickly inform her that Taeseong was targeting her.
Han Yura… so you were scheming something after all. The same old tricks.
If she had been questioned about that day’s events without any preparation, it would have been extremely awkward.
Reminding herself to prepare countermeasures, Yoon Sera pondered how to handle
Shin Yuseong.
This grateful man who had given up joining Taeseong and refused to give false testimony.
Why wouldn’t she understand?
The rambling note on the resume was clearly meant as a warning directed at her, Yoon Sera.
Yoon Sera looked around the guild office.
A small number of staff were each busily working at their tasks.
The Saint Guild, which had banded together under the cry to overthrow Taeseong, was in a poor state.
From interference with recruitment to various forms of suppression, they were barely holding on against Taeseong’s checks.
In a situation like this, even one new member would be helpful, but…
Ha, what should I do? If it had simply ended with refusing Taeseong’s testimony offer, maybe. But if he joins the Saint Guild, Han Yura definitely won’t stay quiet.
You refused my offer and ran straight to Saint to tattle? Shin Yuseong, I’ll destroy you together with Saint!
She could already picture Han Yura’s furious face.
It can’t be helped that she already hates me and our guild, but I should at least prevent this man from suffering. He might end up on a blacklist for no reason.
Yoon Sera didn’t know.
That Shin Yuseong had already earned Han Yura’s deep hatred.
Yes, I think this is the best way.
Having finished her deliberation, Yoon Sera carefully began drafting a reply.
Hoping this would prove to be the wise choice.
Thud.
I set a box of cola on the floor. There had been a mart on the way home, so I bought it on impulse.
Paying no attention to the other miscellaneous luggage, I neatly lined the cola cans up inside the small refrigerator.
Even if I drank five cans a day, this was enough to last a full six days.
Satisfying.
In the final three years of my previous life, I hadn’t even managed to drink thirty cans total.
“This world really is worth protecting.”
My obsession with cola wasn’t anything special.
I hadn’t liked it much before the Doom Dragon appeared.
But once I was thrown into a world that could end at any moment and lived in America, I naturally fell in love with the taste.
Just as smokers reach for a cigarette under stress, that refreshing sensation had been my only joy in that bleak reality.
Later, when it became impossible to obtain, the thirst only grew worse.
“I really lived in a tiny place, huh.”
A cramped one-room apartment with a single small window. The layout was simple, yet the memories refused to surface clearly.
In my previous life, I had moved here and then entered the Taeseong Guild dormitory not long afterward.
Still, even if it was small, a safe sanctuary was an absolute necessity for me.
“The email I sent to Yoon Sera earlier… still no reply. That aside, the Saint Guild really was quite small-scale.”
Information I had looked up online.
The Saint Guild had been marked by Taeseong. Thanks to that, it seemed to be suffering damage from every direction.
It had been founded with the explicit goal of overthrowing Taeseong, after all. And Han Yura was exceptionally skilled at using schemes to wipe out such groups.
I also learned one interesting fact.
Yoon Sera had once belonged to the Taeseong Guild.
I didn’t know why she had gone independent or why they now hated each other. There seemed to be complicated circumstances involved.
“It’s one hundred percent that witch Han Yura’s fault. I’ll have to meet the current Yoon Sera to be sure, but she doesn’t seem like a bad person.”
I needed to join Saint with this body as quickly as possible.
Thinking that, I began my preparations.
I took a shower, finished a delivered meal, and of course opened a can of cola.
After thoroughly securing the door, every preparation was complete.
It was time to use my trait—Link.
Because my body became completely defenseless while using Link, a safe location was essential.
“It’s been a while.”
I thought of my Link partner, soul contractor, and master.
Namgung Hyeok, the Thunderous Sword Respect!
The expert from the Namgung Clan that often appeared in martial arts novels. He was my Link partner.
He was a martial artist from an unfamiliar dimension and a man of few words, but his skill was truly…
“He’ll be shocked when he sees how I look now, won’t he?”
He might even make a worried face upon seeing that I had lost all my martial arts.
Chuckling, I lay down on the small bed and steadied my breathing.
“Master, your disciple is on his way!”
I activated the trait.
Link