They Crossed the Line
With Jeong-Hoon, Butler Ju, Ko Yu-Yeon, Woo Do-Il, Lee So-Hyeon, and Han Si-Eun making for a sizable party, they split into two cars for the trip.
Riding alone with Butler Ju in a high-end sedan fit for a president, Jeong-Hoon spoke to the butler behind the wheel.
"Ko said it would be fine, but will it really be okay?"
"It will be fine, Gaju. Do you happen to remember Guild Master Yang of the AP Guild?"
At Butler Ju's counter-question, Jeong-Hoon nodded at once.
After all, the very thing weighing on his mind right now was that same AP Guild.
"They used back-channel pressure to have him arrested. The only official penalty Lumen could hand down was revoking his membership, right?"
"Are you also aware that the AP Guild Master confessed to every crime and is currently serving a life sentence?"
"What? Already?"
It had been less than a month since the AP Guild's corruption came to light.
Jeong-Hoon had never imagined the trial would already be over and the man behind bars.
"Apparently the AP Guild Master begged and pleaded until they locked him up for life on the spot."
Even so, the speed of the whole process was absurd, and Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
The pace of the ruling simply made no sense.
"The judge, recognizing that the man's membership had been revoked, also had a hand in hustling him into prison as quickly as possible."
"What? What does that even mean?"
"There is an agreement the family signed when it transferred the Hunter Association to the state."
The government that had seized the Hunter Association had been stunned by the ranks of the vassals registered there.
They had glimpsed the face of a group that possessed enough force to overthrow the nation whenever it pleased.
So they granted Lumen, which had surrendered the Association with its eyes wide open, several special privileges.
"Among those privileges is the right for Lumen to step in and punish anyone who touches a Lumen client, and the right for Lumen itself to punish anyone whose membership Lumen has revoked."
"So if the other side throws the first punch, we get to hit back. That's just private justice, isn't it?"
"It is simply a superior version of the authority most major corporations already hold as insurance against guild disputes."
At Butler Ju's calm explanation, Jeong-Hoon nodded blankly.
He had almost forgotten, because becoming Gaju had kept him out of danger—this world was an irrational place where a Non-Awakened could lose their life at any moment to a hunter's unjustified violence.
Small guilds like Odyssey usually set up shop in hunter industrial complexes—the hunter equivalent of knowledge industry centers.
So Jeong-Hoon had expected to head there. Instead they drove into a deserted mountain and stopped in front of a temporary building made of shipping containers, and he looked puzzled.
"Is this Odyssey's office?"
When Jeong-Hoon asked So-Hyeon, who had climbed out of the car behind them, she shook her head from side to side.
"Absolutely not. The guild office is in the hunter industrial complex."
"This is a safe house the Odyssey Guild Master and his clique prepared for emergencies."
Butler Ju made no attempt to hide his distaste as he used the word "clique" to belittle Odyssey.
"Is that so? Then why come straight here instead of the office?"
"I'll explain that."
Ko Yu-Yeon, who had ridden with So-Hyeon, suddenly appeared at Jeong-Hoon's back. Jeong-Hoon nodded and turned around.
Learning about the safe house was good, but arriving so abruptly left the situation hard to grasp.
"Before we came here, I issued a declaration of war to Odyssey in Lumen's name. Just as predicted, we then observed the Guild Master and his group moving this way."
Odyssey had twenty-eight members in total. Of those, seventeen—including the Guild Master—had taken part in the Guild Master's corruption.
In other words, steps had already been taken so the innocent guild members would not be harmed.
If a quiet declaration of war was issued, the Guild Master and his clique would try to go to ground. With Lumen's mark on them, fleeing abroad was impossible.
That left only running somewhere inside Korea, so they would head for the safe house Lumen already knew about. That had been the prediction.
"It matched up with astonishing accuracy."
"Not astonishing—only natural."
Ko Yu-Yeon wore a proud smile. Jeong-Hoon let out a short sigh.
He was certainly competent, yet he felt less like a lawyer and more like a detective.
On top of that, the constant need to show off and brag was starting to weigh on Jeong-Hoon.
"Well, you did a good job. Then let's go finish this."
He had planned to smash them with force anyway, and he shrugged, deciding it was fortunate the place was so deserted.
Taking that as a signal, Ko Yu-Yeon stepped forward and casually crumpled the iron door barring the temporary building's entrance.
"What is this?"
"...Oh my god. What the hell did that guild-master bastard do?"
The moment So-Hyeon looked past the iron door Ko Yu-Yeon had torn away, she staggered with a wave of dizziness.
Woo Do-Il, standing beside her, quickly caught her and held her up.
And though not quite as strongly as So-Hyeon, everyone present felt a similar shock.
What lay inside the building was nothing like a well-appointed safe house.
A crack hung in midair like a shattered pane of glass.
Faint light leaked through the fissure.
"...Shouldn't we report this?"
No one standing there failed to recognize what it was.
Jeong-Hoon knew it well; he had stepped through one only a few days earlier.
"Hiding a dungeon in a safe house? These people are completely out of their minds."
A dungeon gate that looked like broken glass meant the dungeon had not yet been cleared.
If it had been cleared and the core destroyed, the space itself would have split open so the interior was visible, not cracked glass.
In short, this dungeon was uncleared, and Odyssey was using it as a hideout.
"This isn't just crossing the line..."
Anyone with common sense in the world today knew the truth.
Even a low-rank dungeon became dangerous if left uncleared for too long.
Clearing a dungeon required equipment.
So Jeong-Hoon had hesitated even after discovering it, yet the problem was solved more easily than expected.
Rather than snapping his fingers to summon Yeo Tae-Hyeon, the car that had brought Ko Yu-Yeon and the other three was loaded with an enormous quantity of gear.
Enough equipment for an elite small guild to clear a small-scale dungeon.
"We packed it purely as a precaution, but it worked out well."
When Jeong-Hoon cast a suspicious glance, wondering whether they had known this situation would arise, Butler Ju answered evenly.
"Well, the important thing is that thanks to the equipment, we were able to go in."
Once inside the dungeon, Jeong-Hoon nodded roughly and looked around.
Back with the Orc Lord it had been a wide plain.
Now it was a cavern that truly lived up to the name "dungeon."
"Pretty livable for a cave, isn't it?"
He had expected a cave to be nothing but damp and pitch-black, yet it was surprisingly dry.
Cool air even felt pleasant. Lights were installed on the ceiling as well, so the place was illuminated.
"Odyssey must have done this."
"They intended to use it as a safe house, so of course they would."
They had prepared a place to lie low until the heat died down, so even a cavern-type dungeon would have been made comfortable and well-equipped.
Once that thought settled in, Jeong-Hoon felt some relief that the ordeal might be lighter than expected, yet he did not let his guard down.
This was a dungeon left uncleared for a long time.
Any danger could appear at any moment, and that would not be strange.
"Chairman Lee, you seem pretty used to dungeons. Didn't they say you're a Non-Awakened?"
"Huh? I've been inside once before."
So-Hyeon spoke up after watching Jeong-Hoon tense and scan the surroundings with practiced eyes. He nodded as he answered.
With four Awakened of S-class or higher present, a Non-Awakened like Jeong-Hoon keeping watch might have looked comical.
Yet by the book it was exactly the right thing to do.
No matter how high-ranked the Awakened, every person who entered a dungeon had to stay alert.
"Oh, right. Doctor, since we're inside a dungeon I might end up using my power unconsciously. Is that okay?"
"It doesn't matter. Use it as freely as you like."
So-Hyeon no longer valued her own life much. What weighed on her was Jeong-Hoon and Si-Eun, who were willingly spending their time for her sake.
So she had asked Woo Do-Il, intending to avoid anything that would strain her body—yet the answer she received was the opposite of what she expected.
"Is it really all right? I got Hunter's Disease from throwing my power around, you know."
"Even if you push yourself harder than before, your lifespan will not shorten any further."
Little was known about Hunter's Disease, so many misconceptions had spread.
One of them was that because the disease came from overusing power, using more power would burn through the remaining lifespan even faster.
It was true that overusing power past the limit caused the body to collapse.
But once that limit had already been crossed, the power itself grew stronger. The body's collapse did not accelerate further.
Using the power or not using it made no difference at all.
"A representative example is the fact that even an F-class Awakened is superhuman compared to an ordinary person."
"Yes, and? Don't tell me an Awakened's physical ability is also a power, so they're constantly activating it?"
"Exactly so. The misconception spread only because pain accompanies every use of power."
Even though she herself suffered from Hunter's Disease, this was the first So-Hyeon had heard of it, and she looked at Woo Do-Il with open suspicion.
If it were true, she would never have simply waited on a hospital bed for the day she died.
She would have killed as many monsters as possible right up until her final moment.
"Then why hasn't this been announced?"
"Because the criteria for when Hunter's Disease develops are still unknown, so in the end it is only armchair theory."
In other words, announcing it would be meaningless. So-Hyeon looked ready to flare up.
Yet Woo Do-Il continued calmly.
"The reason pain rushes in when you use power is simple. Unconsciously suppressing the pain of your body collapsing is itself a use of power."
Power could not be used without limit.
There was the condition of the day, and the output of power available according to rank.
If the power that had been suppressing the pain of Hunter's Disease was redirected elsewhere, of course the pain would be felt.
"That sounds like a problem."
"I doubt you will need to push your power that hard, but if such a case arises, take this."
"A painkiller? I already took one this morning."
"It is stronger than the one you normally take."
"Director Woo, do you really think a patient will understand with an explanation like that?"
Ko Yu-Yeon, who had been watching Woo Do-Il simply hand over the painkiller with that brief explanation, cut in.
His expression said he was not merely picking a fight; he genuinely had something to say.
"It is stronger than the painkiller she normally takes. What further explanation is required? Do you want me to spout specialized medical knowledge?"
"That is not it. How much stronger than the usual dose? How thoroughly can it suppress the pain? You have given no explanation of that sort at all."
At Ko Yu-Yeon's look of frustration, Woo Do-Il only shook his head in return.
"Those things vary from patient to patient. How am I supposed to speak with certainty?"
"You can at least compile statistics and say that on average it is roughly so many times stronger, can you not?"
Woo Do-Il refused to make careless statements about individual differences among patients; Ko Yu-Yeon insisted on speaking from statistics about the drug's efficacy.
Neither man was wrong, so Jeong-Hoon simply nodded and watched their argument unfold.
"Butler Ju, are those two not getting along very well?"
"It is the worst. Among us, no one has a worse relationship than those two."
Normally he would have lowered his voice and mentioned the 12 Vassals, but with Si-Eun, an S-class hunter, present he simply used the word "us" and offered a bitter smile.
"I don't mind if they don't get along, but I hope their bickering doesn't create a difficult situation."
In an ordinary dungeon, Butler Ju and Han Si-Eun alone would have been more than enough firepower, so no difficult situation would arise.
But this was an uncleared dungeon left abandoned for a long time.
No one knew what dangers might appear, and Jeong-Hoon let out a sigh.