Demon Realm Unification (1)
That day's meeting of the Saetbyeol Demon Realm team leaders was unscheduled. Unscheduled meetings were only ever called for one of two reasons — sheer institutional inertia, or a genuine emergency. In the hunter business, it was always the latter.
"Damage reports, please. Team by team."
Yeo Baek, leader of Team 2, looked around the table, and the team leaders began to speak.
"Team 4. One rehabilitation hunter hospitalized with serious injuries. One sent to the infirmary with minor wounds."
"Team 9. One rehabilitation hunter sent to a healer. Five N-ranks hospitalized, all serious."
"Team 6. Both rehabilitation hunters lightly wounded. One N-rank dead. Six N-ranks seriously injured."
The violence had outrun even their worst imaginings. The Branch Director's brow tightened.
"The hazing has gone too far. Shouldn't someone have stepped in?"
"They don't only throw their weight around by withholding covering fire."
Yeo Baek agreed a hundred times over that it had gone too far. In her own team, Jeong Ho-min had drawn his longsword on the non-awakened hunters and come within a breath of a head-on clash.
"Mostly they trade looks, freeze people out, needle them a little at a time. We can't stand over them and watch for an entire shift, can we?"
They simply had no countermeasure yet.
"Headquarters' guidance is to let it blow up once at the start, then move on."
"True enough. Before the gates opened, none of this would have been imaginable. What did you do about Team 6's dead?"
"Processed as missing inside the gate."
"Good. Well done."
Missing inside the Gate. If a corpse never came out, that was how they wrote it up. In a large-scale gate like the Demon Realm, it happened more than a few times a day. But frequency was no guarantee that a thing could be gotten used to.
"Is there really no answer to this? Somebody say something. Well?"
The Branch Director met the team leaders' eyes one by one. Then, right beside her, a hand went up. Choi Jong-hyeok.
"Team Leader Choi?"
"Don't tell me you mean to throw the guiltier side into the lava and kill them."
"You think that man hasn't tried it? This is a problem of feelings. That's why even that didn't settle it."
Team leaders and Branch Director alike went pale.
"At root, I believe the problem is a stable environment in which people have the leisure to make enemies of one another."
Choi Jong-hyeok went on.
"Leisure to make enemies? A stable environment? What are you talking about? Explain it properly."
An unexpectedly sane sentence had come out of him. The Branch Director's eyes narrowed.
"The shortage of awakened personnel is a problem only we team leaders have felt. Non-awakened hunters have no way to sense it."
"Right. The danger's the same for them either way. And the truly dangerous beasts are ours to kill regardless."
"So, to the non-awakened, the arrival of rehabilitation hunters means nothing more than more superiors they have to watch their step around."
"Right."
"There's resentment, too — that they're ex-convicts. They have more than enough psychological room to turn that revulsion into action."
"We know all that. Skip it. So?"
The Branch Director, Yeo Baek, every team leader in the room — all of them fixed on Choi Jong-hyeok's mouth.
"I propose a Boundary Zone development project, to dismantle the opposition between rehabilitation hunters — and, more broadly, artificial awakeners — and non-awakened hunters, and to expand Saetbyeol Guild's foothold inside the Demon Realm."
Choi Jong-hyeok had the office staff throw the slides they'd prepared onto the screen.
"A Boundary Zone development project?"
Saetbyeol's mining sector was marked there in the shape of a fan, and the narrow fans to either side of it were picked out in emphasis.
"At present the Demon Realm is quartered from the central passage of each cardinal direction, but the cavities near the borderlines have never been taken."
"Right. Everyone's wary of crossing the line, and because that wariness means those zones never get cleared, the strong beasts have piled up there."
"There are named specimens that killed awakened hunters and raised their own grade doing it."
"I know. They use weapons, don't they? They've even sorted out which guns hit harder — take a rifle on the body, dodge the grenades."
Those narrow fans were crowded with the names of named specimens. Monsters that had grown strong on the rehabilitation hunters and low-rank hunters of every guild. The named beasts that had killed three or more awakened hunters were registered in the status-window system through each guild's intelligence team.
"Right now, every time we move to hunt them, they cross the borderline and hide in another guild's territory."
"So they know we can't cross into one another's ground."
"Pursuit was too costly, and we never had the numbers to encircle them. But there are signs the situation may change."
Team Leader Choi paused. The signs of change were the rehabilitation hunters recently thrown into the field.
"Use the rehabilitation hunters and swallow that ground?"
"If we had even one more awakened hunter to seal the far side of a lava cavity, the hunt would be far easier."
"Not bad."
Understanding him, the Branch Director's eyes lit.
"Even the ones that aren't named — there are plenty of orcs out there that have eaten their fill of people and gotten strong. Bullets alone barely touch them."
"From the non-awakened hunters' side, they'll need the rehabilitation hunters' help. And the rehabilitation hunters will be desperate for covering fire."
The mood of the conference room turned over.
"Why is this actually good? Why is he being ambitious?"
"So it isn't just beat them all to death?"
"Won't they fight even harder for a while?"
"But in the end they'll cooperate, because they'll have to. And once they do, the feelings will drain out of it."
Yeo Baek felt something closer to outright rejection.
What?
Choi Jong-hyeok seemed to have become an entirely different man from the day before.
"Fight a common enemy long enough, and cooperation becomes habit."
She was not the only one who thought so.
"This is the first time you've stepped forward like this, isn't it?"
"That's what I'm saying. He was the type who just killed whatever beasts he was told to kill."
"Did a dead lover show up in his dreams?"
Every team leader looked at Choi Jong-hyeok with expectation and doubt sharing the same face.
"So then we'd get to mine more magic stones?"
"Yes. That's correct."
"I'll admit you surprised me. This doesn't sound like something the Team Leader Choi we usually see would say."
The Branch Director gathered that consensus into a question.
"Can you tell us how you came to prepare a project like this?"
"As you said, this project is not entirely my own thinking."
The roughness went out of Choi Jong-hyeok's eyes as he answered.
"Then?"
"Today, in Team 1 as well, the non-awakened hunters tried to force a conflict. Hunter Jeong Jae-ha and Hunter Lee Hae-il closed it wisely."
"How?"
"They built a situation in which everyone had to fight a C-rank demon together."
"A situation in which they had to fight together."
"I took their idea and extended it in a direction that would serve the guild as a whole."
That was the moment every team leader learned the name Jeong Jae-ha.
"I thought he was just a rookie who was decent with a blade..."
"Wait. So Team Leader Choi snatched up two talents like that?"
"He's yielded every time until now — and he was holding out to grab them the moment aces showed up!"
"This is actually good. Like those kids said: internal unity always needs an outside enemy."
"Push any deeper and the yield won't grow much anyway, not with the time it takes the porters to make the round trip to the cavities. If we can expand sideways, all the better."
The team leaders tossed their words out, bright with expectation. The Branch Director's expression was so radiant it seemed to wash the lights around her pale.
"But if we press right up to that borderline and seize the cavities, won't the other guilds take it as a challenge?"
She asked it like a last confirmation.
"Once the operation is underway, our beasts could cross into their territory too, couldn't they?"
Yeo Baek focused until she would not miss even the sound of Choi Jong-hyeok breathing.
Don't tell me he actually...
Choi Jong-hyeok quoted the same person once more.
"Today, Hunter Jeong said this."
The smile at the corner of his mouth did not belong to Choi Jong-hyeok, mad hunting-team leader of the Saetbyeol Demon Realm branch. It was the bold, brimming smile of Choi Jong-hyeok, ace of Saetbyeol headquarters' raid team.
"...!"
She did not properly hear what came next.
"Waaaaaah!"
The hunting-team leaders had erupted as one.
The Branch Director shot to her feet and swung a fist.
"That's it! That's it! Jong-hyeok! Fuck! I knew you still had it in you!"
Every one of them lived on the pride of belonging to the strongest guild. And to them, the title of the best was given only to those who never stopped challenging.
I owe Athlete Jeong a meal. A lavish one.
Yeo Baek thought of Jeong Jae-ha, and a quiet smile touched her mouth.
"Saetbyeol! Saetbyeol! Saetbyeol!"
"Choi Jong-hyeok! Choi Jong-hyeok! Choi Jong-hyeok!"
"Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha!"
The man who had lived as the world's greatest swordsman seemed to have pierced not only a beast's carapace, but Team Leader Choi's hesitation as well.
When I came in to work the next day, the guild felt wrong.
"Hyung-nim. Something's stirring, isn't it, sir?"
"Feels like they're gearing up for a big tournament."
Ordinary office staff were running in every direction. The non-awakened hunters, who had been trading cheap talk all over the floor, had gone stiff-faced, as if they'd caught the scent of something that was not ordinary.
"You're here."
I went up to the office as ordered the day before, and Choi Jong-hyeok was already there.
"Sit."
It felt as if something large, and entertaining, was about to happen. I met Lee Hae-il's eyes once, then sat facing Choi Jong-hyeok. He switched on the screen.
"Do you know the situation in the Demon Realm itself?"
A detailed map of the Demon Realm gate came up, the powers that had carved it apart marked in color across the near edge.
"Saetbyeol in the east, Murim in the south, Angel in the west, Ironblood in the north. Four guilds quartering it. That's my understanding, sir."
Lee Hae-il answered him, and Choi Jong-hyeok nodded.
"In the long term, we mean to leave only Saetbyeol in this Demon Realm."
"Yes, sir!?"
"Sir?!"
Lee Hae-il could not nod at that. Neither could I. Was this really the scale of thing a person heard on their third day?
"No need to be shocked. It has always existed as a final objective, and the other guilds are ultimately moving toward the same end."
I couldn't even tell why he was telling us. Wasn't this Team Leader Choi Jong-hyeok, the man who had meant to beat rehabilitation hunters to death? Then the look I had seen on him yesterday cut across my mind.
"You don't seem to have finished explaining, but may I ask one thing?"
I raised a hand, carefully.
"From now on, if you're curious, ask whenever you like. Yes. What is it?"
The answer came back in an atmosphere utterly unlike the one he had taken with Jeong Ho-min on the first day. That atmosphere was already an answer in itself. My heart kicked with anticipation.
"This is awkward to say, but I heard you don't trust rehabilitation hunters like us, Team Leader Choi. And yet—"
I pressed it because I wanted to hear it in his own voice. Choi Jong-hyeok cut me off and gave an answer even I had not imagined.
"Did I tell you to forgive me for being too damn good?"
"Sir?"
The voice was solemn, as if a great boulder of the mountain had learned how to laugh.
"...!"
For a moment I had no words. The answer far outran anything I had expected. From here on, we were one team.
"No need to be so tense. I've only given the branch's hunting operations a measure of consistency. I'm not saying we declare war on the other guilds tomorrow and charge in. What I've told you today, you may even post on Huntranet."
"Yes, sir. Yes."
Lee Hae-il answered, dazed. I smiled, quietly. So I had proved it. And to the person in a position to give the most.
"It will take years, and if things go according to plan, we may never clash with the other guilds directly at all."
It was a larger, longer plan than I had thought. Past relief — this was something to rejoice over. An athlete is treated properly when a tournament is being prepared. Right now our team seemed to be preparing a very large one. The kind of tournament whose challenge alone would raise the standing of the whole team.
"One more question, if I may. If it succeeds in a few years, what happens?"
"The Demon Realm will belong to our Saetbyeol. For me, a chance to become an executive. For the two of you, a chance to enter headquarters with me."
I called up what Su Seong-min had said about Team Leader Choi, back in Sejong.
Passed over for executive again, and back to throw another fit.
I bore down and ran the numbers in my head. I didn't know how many years this Demon Realm Unification project would take. But if it succeeded, it was large enough for Team Leader Choi Jong-hyeok to pin on an executive's title and walk into headquarters. Run the Scorpion Crew suppression alongside it, and our sentences ought to be finished around the time Demon Realm Unification ended.
"That assumes, of course, that you still mean to be hunters after your sentences are served. You may refuse my nomination, take your severance, and retire."
"Of course I want to. Gladly. I'll live as a hunter, and I'll die as one."
"Ah. I'll just live as one, sir."
Then I could walk into headquarters a fully free man. The chance to work in the same building as Chae-ha had come faster than I had thought. Until now, the only A-rank hunter I had seen in the Demon Realm was Team Leader Choi Jong-hyeok. Even Su Seong-min had spoken as if an A-rank working the field were something unusual. Kill a beast, and no matter who landed the blow, some of its mana could be absorbed by the hunters nearby. Then this might also be a chance to build my experience and my stats alongside the best coach there was. I stopped the thought there. For a competitor, worrying past this point was practically a crime.
"What do you need us to do?"