Food Shortage
A month had passed since the Demon uprising.
The PS Association had officially launched. Its president was Jang Seung-Woo—one of only two SSS-class hunters in all of Korea.
Though he was an SSS-class, he had never led a guild, operating instead as a free hunter with a vast network of connections. That made him the perfect fit for the role.
At thirty-eight, the power of his SSS-class rank had preserved the youthful looks of a man still in his late twenties. Yet the eyes of this battle-hardened veteran held no spark of life as he slowly opened his mouth.
“They call me president of the PS Association, but I have no intention of using this seat to line my pockets or throw my weight around. I just figure the scope of the work I’ve always done has gotten a little wider. I’ll handle it the same way I always have.”
It was such a modest ambition for the founding president of a brand-new organization that the reporters could not hide their disappointment. Jang Seung-Woo himself, however, showed no reaction to those disappointed faces.
He had known from the moment the offer arrived: the PS Association was not an organization he would ever fully control.
The reporters had expected fireworks when a free-roaming SSS-class hunter who had never even founded a guild accepted the presidency. Their disappointed stares did not faze him for one simple reason.
Just sitting in this chair pays off my debt to Lumen. Nothing I can do about it.
Lumen—now the Aurora Group—had bankrolled his rise to SSS-class. Without that debt, he would have refused this troublesome post without a second thought.
“Isn’t that a little too passive for the president of an organization carrying the hopes of the entire nation?”
No one had opened the floor to questions, yet after Jang Seung-Woo finished stating his “ambition” and fell silent, one reporter quietly raised a hand.
The gesture could have been called rude, but the other reporters nodded in agreement; the room was not about to let it slide.
“……I.”
Jang Seung-Woo shook his head and spoke. He had no intention of wriggling out of the awkward question with some polished political answer.
“I figure just taking the job of PS Association president is already plenty aggressive enough. Don’t you?”
He simply laid his laziness out in the open.
A few chuckles broke out at the remark, but not a single person condemned him. It was not fear of Jang Seung-Woo that held them back; it was the simple truth that, no matter what crisis erupted, he had never once stepped forward to take the lead.
He would rush to the scene and respond with all his might—but he never took charge. That was the defining trait of the SSS-class hunter named Jang Seung-Woo.
Viewed in that light, his words were surprisingly persuasive. The reporters began to marvel instead at the influence of the Aurora Group, which had managed to coax this eternal crouching dragon into the PS Association with such painstaking care.
In the press room the retort had drawn wry laughter, but watching it on television, Jeong-Hoon could only offer a bitter smile.
“Was he really the best we could do?”
“If we want to keep the PS Association from turning into a political animal, he is the perfect choice.”
Butler Ju, freshly returned from a full month of uneventful recovery, nodded as he answered. Jeong-Hoon sighed.
Everyone already knew the Aurora Group’s hand had been heavy in the Association’s founding. That was precisely why Jeong-Hoon—chairman of the Aurora Group—had skipped the launch ceremony and was watching from home instead. He had poured every ounce of care into selecting the president.
Someone whose appointment would not look like blatant Aurora influence, yet who still fell within their sphere. A hunter with high public recognition. And someone who would refuse to dive into the Association’s internal power struggles, content merely to keep the scales balanced from the sidelines.
In all of Korea, only one person fit the bill: Jang Seung-Woo.
The other SSS-class hunter was a government man and had been off the table from the start.
The problem was that Jang Seung-Woo, even as an Aurora pick, was scrupulously neutral. Seizing control of the PS Association therefore fell entirely to the Aurora Group—more precisely, to Kang Hwa-Rim, the representative they had dispatched.
“We’ll just have to hope Secretary Kang handles things well.”
“If it is Hwa-Rim, she will steer the PS Association exactly as the Gaju intends.”
Jeong-Hoon shrugged. Butler Ju smiled gently.
He had fretted while recovering from his injuries, knowing the Organization’s all-out assault had begun. The Family had weathered it magnificently. And in the cleanup that followed, Hwa-Rim’s efforts toward establishing the PS Association had been anything but small. That was why Butler Ju could speak with such certainty.
Besides, she was a former member of the 12 Vassals—still in her prime, merely stepped down out of a sense of responsibility after an unfortunate incident.
“Well, at least with the PS Association up and running we can catch our breath on this side. But where the hell have those Organization bastards gone to ground?”
“……With that many people vanishing all at once, their trail is bound to surface soon.”
The PS Association existed. For a full month the Family had laid contingency plans; they were now ready for an all-out war the moment the Organization struck. Yet the enemy that mattered most refused to move.
Even while they cleaned up the aftermath of the previous incident, the hunt for the Organization had never paused. Still they had found nothing. Jeong-Hoon’s impatience showed, and Butler Ju shook his head.
“That fool will hit the limit of his patience soon enough and show his tail.”
Until then they simply had to reveal no openings and keep accumulating strength. Jeong-Hoon nodded at the butler’s assessment.
“True. With numbers like that they still have to eat. Sooner or later the tail will stick out.”
The Family already held Korea in an invisible grip; simply watching the food supply for a force that large would eventually flush them out. No one knew the exact headcount, but the sheer number of criminal Awakened they had broken out of prison made it obvious their rations would run dry before long.
That was reassuring—yet ever since the incident a month ago, an itch of unease had never left Jeong-Hoon’s skin.
Thuk!
The Jan-sal Yong-Ha unleashed punched straight through a Demon’s heart without mercy.
Wooooong! Crack!
A magic circle flared in Yong-Ha’s fist as he clenched the heart; it collided with the sealing power that clung to the organ.
Grrrind!!! Splat!
The circle gnawed away the seal’s force until the heart finally burst. Golden light bloomed and then faded—like a candle flame snuffed out.
Yong-Ha kicked the Demon’s corpse aside and shoved it away.
“Hoo… efficiency’s great, but damn if it doesn’t wear me out.”
As an original SSS-class it would have been effortless. Dropped to S-class, the work strained him. It was too delicate a process to hand off to any other officer of the Organization; only the leader himself could perform it.
Utterly spent, Yong-Ha paid no attention as the Demon’s body crumbled to dust and vanished. He simply shook his head.
For the past month he had continuously turned the Awakened criminals broken out of prison into Demons, refining the research. The conclusion was clear: manufacturing Demons to attack the Family was inefficient. Their strength was real enough, yet the moment Jeong-Hoon laid a hand on them they simply ceased to exist—worthless weapons.
So he had researched a different method. This was the result.
Demons were created through the power of the seals. Therefore each Demon carried a faint residue of that sealing force—and that residue remained linked to the core of the seal itself. Rather than hunting down seals that were nearly impossible to find, he was using Demons as an indirect means of assaulting them.
The Demon was destroyed, yes, but it was far more useful than needlessly provoking the Family and putting them on high alert. Better still, the side effect of tampering with a seal—an Incursion—never occurred.
“Master, well done.”
“Ah, Uncle Silvio! Nah, nothing worth calling ‘well done’ about this.”
Yong-Ha wiped his hands roughly with the handkerchief Silvio offered and forced a bright grin, masking his exhaustion. The research was succeeding; the unsealing progressed smoothly. The problem was food, and the Organization’s mood hung heavy because of it.
While Yong-Ha had been reviving, the Family had hounded them relentlessly. They had preserved their manpower, but every last hideout had been smashed. This place was the only sanctuary left to the Organization.
With members flocking in from every corner of the world plus the kidnapped criminal Awakened, the headcount was enormous—and so was the food consumption. Members slipped out in small groups to buy supplies from ordinary markets, but it was like trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol.
Solving the shortage required either dispersing the members or establishing a stable supply route. They could do neither. Scatter the members and one wrong step would get a tail stepped on—and then they would be finished. Every major Korean corporation that could have built a reliable pipeline had already cut all ties with the Organization.
“How many days can we last?”
“Not even a week now. We’ve already cut the criminal Awakened down to the absolute minimum. There’s nothing left to ration.”
“That’s a real problem. Can’t have the comrades going hungry.”
The criminal Awakened were expendable—raw material for more Demons—so minimal rations were fine. The Organization’s own members were not. Every single one of them was precious combat power. Even an Awakened, if they could not eat or sleep properly, suffered a fatal drop in fighting strength. When they needed to stockpile power for the coming war with the Family, combat degradation from empty stomachs was a bone-deep wound.
“An army advances on its stomach, after all.”
If the problem had been lack of money it would have stung less. They had money in abundance—they simply dared not spend it for fear the Family would notice.
“We could create Demons, stir up chaos, and use the diversion to haul in a large food shipment all at once.”
Yong-Ha shook his head at once.
“Uncle Silvio, if we do that we’ll be forced into the final battle with the Family before the next food run even arrives.”
“……A decisive battle with the Family is inevitable anyway, is it not?”
“True, but if we’re driven into it by empty bellies, morale collapses and we’d have to fight with our backs against the wall. Last-ditch all-or-nothing.”
That was the worst possible form of decision-making. A last stand taken only because there was no tomorrow was the choice of a fool of a commander. Yong-Ha shook his head again.
“So I’ll handle the food problem myself. I’ve been looking into a few things—got a lead.”
He shrugged and turned a gleaming gaze on Silvio. The murderous presence that flashed in those eyes made Silvio flinch and take an involuntary step back.
Yong-Ha was undeniably weaker than Silvio now—yet the aura coiled deep inside him was nothing to take lightly. The revived Yong-Ha had seized a strength that transcended mere rank.