Hotel Aristocrat
Ten years ago, when dungeons first appeared and people who awakened superpowers—hunters—came into existence, Jeong-Hoon gained a dream.
Someday he would become a hunter himself and conquer those dungeons.
And he would grow fabulously rich and live in a mansion like a palace.
"Congratulations. You've achieved your dream."
"…Where, exactly?"
It wasn't quite a palace-like mansion, but the splendor was grand enough that calling it a palace would not have been an exaggeration.
Thirteen floors above ground and eight below, yet the impression it gave was less of height than of length—a structure stretched wide and long.
A building raised with a futuristic design that had enlisted countless designers.
Hotel Lumen. A five-star hotel in Seoul.
The flagship of a hotel chain born after the world changed, and presently ranked among the finest hotels on earth.
Jeong-Hoon, who had quite brazenly claimed its royal suite, shook his head as he looked at the butler standing before him in a perfectly formal posture.
"Have you not become extraordinarily wealthy? You have achieved your dream."
At the butler's words Jeong-Hoon glanced at him, then let out a short sigh.
Becoming rich had mattered, yes—but the path itself, the awakening of superpowers, the hunting of monsters, the fame that would accumulate along the way, had all been part of Jeong-Hoon's dream as well.
"Well, it wasn't exactly the purpose of my life, so we'll set that aside."
Shaking his head, Jeong-Hoon recalled the orphanage where several children had shared a single small room.
After the world changed, his parents had awakened powers and become F-class hunters.
But only for a little while. They died in a dungeon, and Jeong-Hoon was shuffled from one state-run orphanage to another.
It was an age when hunters fell in battle nearly every day, and people died to the monsters that poured out of dungeons.
The orphanages were always full, and Jeong-Hoon's childhood could only be one of poverty.
Even when he left at twenty, the independence stipend he received was so meager that he bounced between PC bangs and jjimjilbangs.
"What do you find so amusing?"
"Ah, it's nothing. Pfft—!"
The moment before he came to the hotel—when he first met the butler standing before him, Joo Yeong-Cheol—rose in his mind, and Jeong-Hoon could not help the laugh that escaped. He struggled to smother it.
The first place Jeong-Hoon met Butler Ju, a man in his seventies, was a jjimjilbang.
At the time, Jeong-Hoon's body was in a wretched state.
Thanks to dungeons and hunters, day-labor work was overflowing. That was the only reason Jeong-Hoon, barely out of the orphanage, could scrape by at all.
In exchange, the work left him so wrecked that a day of wages meant a day of rest.
If the labor had been light, a PC bang; if it had been brutal, a jjimjilbang—that was Jeong-Hoon's cycle. That day his body was too worn, so he went to the jjimjilbang.
A quick shower, then he sank into the bath, and a long breath left him as every ache seemed to melt away.
He was surrendering himself to a comfort so deep he might have fallen asleep when an old man stepped into the tub.
A body so thoroughly trained that "old man" scarcely seemed to apply.
For an instant Jeong-Hoon wondered if he was a hunter—but a hunter had no reason to visit a neighborhood jjimjilbang, and calling the old man one felt like a stretch.
The profession itself was only ten years old, after all.
If the old man were a hunter, he would have made the news somehow—oldest hunter alive, that sort of headline.
So Jeong-Hoon simply took him for someone who had trained hard in his younger days.
That should have been the end of the encounter.
But the old man followed him into the sauna, and left when Jeong-Hoon left.
When Jeong-Hoon found a spot and washed properly, the old man settled right beside him and washed as well.
It was no coincidence, so Jeong-Hoon decided the old man was simply bored.
Even so, trailing him all the way up into the rest area of the jjimjilbang was going too far.
Only after Jeong-Hoon flopped down in an empty spot to sleep did the man finally leave.
"Weird old guy…"
Relieved, he was drifting off when he sensed someone at the next mat and opened his eyes.
It was the old man he had thought was gone.
Holding a tray with sikhye and boiled eggs, the old man met Jeong-Hoon's gaze and began peeling an egg.
"Uh, excuse me, what are you—"
"If you do not supply proper nutrition, the body breaks down. Please eat a little before you rest."
The old man thrust the sikhye and eggs at Jeong-Hoon mid-protest, and Jeong-Hoon, unable to fight his hunger, took them.
"Ah—yes. Thank you."
Faced with the sudden gift, Jeong-Hoon simply thanked him and ate.
Even when he came to a jjimjilbang he usually went hungry for lack of money; the sikhye and eggs tasted especially good.
"Would you care for more?"
"Ah—no. That was plenty. Thank you."
Watching Jeong-Hoon demolish the food in a flash, the old man asked with formal courtesy; Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
Perhaps because the counter staff had taken one look at the old man's lean frame and handed him the small size, the robe strained ridiculously over muscle ready to burst—and yet the kindness he had shown a stranger made him look like some immortal come down from the heavens.
"You labored hard today; you will need more than that. You need not refuse."
"…Excuse me?"
The old man's next words smothered that gratitude; Jeong-Hoon eyed him with suspicion.
"The work at the dungeon logistics center is never easy, today or any other day. And sorting supplies for a joint guild raid party is more exhausting still, is it not?"
"Hey."
It was hardly a secret, but the fact that the old man knew what Jeong-Hoon had been doing that day sent wariness surging up.
Both his parents had been hunters, but only F-class, and both had fallen mid-raid.
He himself was a day laborer living hand to mouth.
When someone approached the bottom rung of society with clear intent, suspicion was the only sensible response.
"Are you from the guild alliance?"
"Why would you think so?"
"This raid is huge, so they need a lot of porters—supply crews, I mean. I heard recruitment's been rough."
People usually pictured dungeon raids like an RPG: a few hunters forming a party and going in to fight monsters.
The word itself invited that image.
Reality was a military operation outsourced to the private sector.
Hunters might possess superpowers, but modern firearms still did more of the monster-killing than those powers ever did.
The dungeon logistics center was a hunter-specialized shipping hub that supplied guilds with those firearms and everything else a raid required.
Even in an age that left dungeon raids to private hands, the government could not simply let military-grade munitions circulate freely among civilians.
So the government had established the dungeon logistics centers and controlled them, regulating every shipment that reached the hunters.
Following that train of thought, Jeong-Hoon decided the old man must be from the logistics center.
"I've done a lot of work at the logistics center, so you figured I'd be perfect as a pack mule—a supply hand—and came looking for me, right?"
He had almost said "porter," then hastily corrected himself.
People casually called them porters, but the official title was supply crew.
Their job was to support the hunters—managing and carrying ammunition, rations, and every other piece of gear, issuing them when needed, and hauling away monster corpses.
Add the abuse hunters dished out inside a dungeon, and the work easily outstripped even the worst courier gigs for sheer misery.
Above all, the chance of dying was extremely high.
"I have absolutely no intention of setting foot in a dungeon, so get that through your head. Oh—and thanks for the sikhye and the eggs."
Cutting the old man off before he could speak, Jeong-Hoon shook his head and turned away.
His parents had died in a dungeon. The desire for revenge was there.
This was an age that treated successful hunters like celebrities, and Jeong-Hoon admired them too.
He still held the clear dream of someday awakening powers, becoming a hunter, clearing dungeons, and growing rich.
That did not mean he intended to charge into a dungeon and die like a dog.
"Not a bad line of reasoning. But no. Absolutely not. Why would I put Jeong-Hoon-nim in danger?"
The old man's genuine bafflement made Jeong-Hoon's face twist.
If the guess was wrong, then the old man's knowledge of him—and this excessively polite manner—made no sense at all.
"I am called Joo Yeong-Cheol. You may simply address me as Butler Ju."
Seeing Jeong-Hoon's confusion, the old man—Butler Ju—bowed his head with formal respect and introduced himself.
He had followed Jeong-Hoon since the baths, yet this was the first time he had offered his name.
"And I am the man who will serve Jeong-Hoon-nim from this day forward."
"What? Me?"
The claim was so absurd that Jeong-Hoon did not even think to call it a scam.
Jeong-Hoon had believed he had no living relatives at all.
He was wrong. There had been one—his grandfather's younger brother's son, his father's cousin, and thus Jeong-Hoon's first cousin once removed.
His grandfather's family had apparently been immensely wealthy. His grandfather, however, had rebelled against the household, severed all ties, and left.
But with Jeong-Hoon's cousin once removed, the line of succession had run dry.
So that man had secretly set people searching until they found Jeong-Hoon, and upon his own death had named Jeong-Hoon the heir.
As a result, a day laborer who had worried about every meal had, in an instant, become the head of a chaebol empire.
Recalling that such a momentous story had been delivered in a jjimjilbang by an old man whose too-small robe strained over muscles ready to explode—Butler Ju—Jeong-Hoon could not help laughing.
"Still, couldn't you have come to collect me in some dramatic, impressive way? Why a jjimjilbang?"
"Because that day, Gaju's inference was approximately half correct."
"Inference? What I said that day… the porter thing?"
He had carefully corrected himself to "supply crew" when he thought Butler Ju was from the logistics center. Now that he knew better, Jeong-Hoon said "porter" without a second thought.
"Indeed. Exactly as Gaju observed, the guilds were struggling to hire porters for the raid, and certain parties were moving with the intent of recruiting day laborers such as yourself."
Butler Ju had meant to meet Jeong-Hoon in a more impressive fashion, but the need for haste had driven him into the jjimjilbang.
He had stuck to Jeong-Hoon's side and kept watch so that none of the recruiter-porters could approach.
"They chased me into a jjimjilbang just to hire a porter?"
"When guilds move as a unit it looks grand, but strip away the surface and there is little of substance. Promise an incentive to logistics-center workers already on payroll for every porter they bring in, and they will come running of their own accord."
Watching Jeong-Hoon reject the approach based on pure speculation, Butler Ju had judged the odds of refusal high—and yet, for the slim chance that mattered, he had hurried all the same.
"And as you learned at the hospital, in three more days Gaju would have collapsed from overwork or malnutrition."
"Ah—that was a shock, yeah. I had no idea my body was that far gone."
He had believed he was fine, but Jeong-Hoon's condition had been genuinely dangerous.
A host of ailments born of malnutrition had forced him into concentrated treatment.
From the day he met Butler Ju he had done nothing but lie in hospital beds; only today had he finally entered Hotel Lumen, the family's de facto stronghold.
"Gaju is the first to ascend to the seat of family head while still in a hospital bed."
At Butler Ju's words Jeong-Hoon remembered the abbreviated investiture held in his hospital room to fill the vacant seat at once, and a bitter smile touched his lips.
"…Not exactly a first to be proud of. Do you really have to call me Gaju, though?"
"I understand it may sound a trifle theatrical, but it is tradition."
At the word tradition, Jeong-Hoon snorted a laugh.
"If there were a lot of people, maybe. But it's just me. Doesn't Gaju feel a little much?"
"Just one person? The blood of the family is indeed Gaju alone—but there are those who serve the household, myself included."
At Butler Ju's rebuttal, Jeong-Hoon looked around the royal suite where he was staying.
A luxury room whose nightly rate ran into the hundreds of millions of won.
Yet Jeong-Hoon had no reason whatsoever to worry about the cost.
One of the businesses belonging to the family he had inherited was Lumen itself.
He had been told the family held many such enterprises, though he had not yet grasped the full picture.
One thing, however, was certain—
"Butler Ju… what exactly am I supposed to do as Gaju?"
"Whatever Gaju desires. That is the purpose for which the family exists."
—that Lumen and countless other businesses, an inexhaustible fountain of wealth, all existed for Jeong-Hoon alone.