A Deal with the Devil
I pulled the folder out from beneath the ramen bowl on the tray. Cheon Mari flipped through the documents inside one by one before handing a particular sheet to me.
“Take it. It’s a compiled file on the guild employees connected to those bastards’ parents.”
“Even if I look at something like this, I wouldn’t—”
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’ll be able to read this much just fine.”
In the end, I ended up reading the document she gave me. It was neatly organized, so it wasn’t beyond my ability to understand.
Their prospects look decent, but they’re hardly major players.
At best, they ranked as mid-tier guilds. Strip away the hype and they sat somewhere between small and mid-sized. That held true for all of them except one particularly large guild.
“Even if it’s tough right now, ultimately I want to devour every last one of those guilds.”
But the more I examined the files, the more a different question surfaced. At first, Cheon Mari had seemed focused on dealing with the drug addicts. So why was she suddenly talking about this? This was clearly a calculated move.
A good portion of our conversation so far had likely been her testing me, gauging my reactions. Was this what the experience of a regressor looked like? Goosebumps prickled across my entire body.
“...Exactly how?”
“After acquisition, we’ll drive the guilds into bankruptcy and resell them, firing ninety-five percent of the staff. We’ll secretly extract key personnel and assets to absorb their expertise and technology.”
It sounded absurd. Completely unrealistic. One wrong step and someone could end up getting stabbed.
“When you consider how many hunters are in that ninety-five percent, the risk is enormous. What if one of the fired employees comes after you with a knife?”
“Even if I get stabbed, it’ll be me who takes the hit. So don’t worry about it.”
“You say not to worry, but after hearing the details it’s impossible not to.”
“Didn’t I tell you earlier? This lady will become the greatest of all time. If I died to some random blind knife, how could I possibly claim to be the best?”
“You’re actually insane.”
We both let out small chuckles. My mind, which had been leaning toward refusal, was beginning to tilt in the other direction.
“Setting that aside, how exactly are you planning to devour the guilds? No—how are you going to tie the guild takeover to my testimony?”
“That’s simple! The child and heir of the highest executive or owner is a drug addict! There’s even circumstantial evidence of attempted murder! Kyah, can’t you already hear the reporters creaming themselves from here?!”
She placed both hands on my shoulders, her eyes practically rolling back in her head. The look was a cocktail of madness, greed, and wicked delight.
“Just having articles pop up everywhere will shake those guilds to their core!”
“A company would be shaken that badly just because the executive’s kid has problems? I doubt the company is run so poorly that it would collapse over something like that.”
“True. But what if the child goes missing for a long time and is later discovered brutally murdered? What kind of synergy would that create with the revelation that they were a junkie?”
My testimony was just the seasoning. This was the main ingredient. The child, missing for ages, found brutally murdered. For parents, there could be no more devastating blow.
Naturally, despair would lead to psychological instability. Instability would lead to more poor decisions. Unless they handed management over to professional executives, the company’s instability would have plenty of room to fester.
“Let’s roughly sketch a scenario. The drug addict enters the academy, then leaves fairly far away on a hunter assignment. ‘Someone’ leaks the information. While fighting Sword Masters from Nazi Germany or the Galacotede Empire who tracked them down, the kid gets kidnapped. After prolonged rape and torture, they birth dozens of fatherless children before finally dying.”
“Wait, why the hell are Germany and the Empire suddenly in this?”
“I said it was a rough sketch. It’s literally just an example.”
For an example, it was suspiciously detailed. It felt like she had tried something similar on other people before.
Whether she noticed my thoughts or not, Cheon Mari leaned her face closer and continued.
“Anyway, when a situation like that occurs, do you think the parents of Lim Hana’s friends will be capable of normal judgment and management? Could the guild possibly remain intact? What kind of gaze will the public direct at the fact that the drug addict died in such a manner?”
“...They’d probably make mistakes while frantically searching for their child or seeking revenge. The public would curse every action, calling it self-inflicted karma.”
“Exactly! And this kind of scenario can change completely depending on how we construct it.”
“We?”
“Yeah. After all, you want revenge and I want the guilds, right?”
You’re seriously not going to join this epic guild-smashing project? This is a rare opportunity, you know?
“Since our interests align, it’s only natural to say ‘we,’ isn’t it?”
She had gone this far. I had justification to participate. Refusing would be no fun at all. Behind her confident front, I could glimpse raw desperation.
Cheon Mari clearly saw this as her chance. So I pretended to agonize over it. I rested my arm on the table and rubbed my forehead. After letting some time pass—right when she started looking anxious—I spoke again.
“With this, how much damage will Lim Hana take?”
“The friends she was close enough to trust will all plunge into the abyss.”
“Impressive.”
“Actually, if it reaches that point, you and your friend might not even need to fight.”
“Why?”
“Because the actions of a junkie who lost all her friends, lost every place to lean on, and had everything destroyed are obvious.”
“You mean she’ll commit suicide?”
“Hmm, I don’t think so. She’ll probably grab your leg and wail and cry...”
That would be a headache. It was like removing a tumor only for it to swell up again.
When she saw my expression harden, Cheon Mari waved her arms wildly.
“Anyway! Personally, I think after going through revenge, devastation, regret, obsession, and pacifism, showing mercy through death isn’t bad. There couldn’t be a deed more overflowing with love for humanity than that.”
“Isn’t that less love for humanity and more like devastation, devastation, devastation, completely fucked, and hell?”
It was dizzying. As if her engine had started again, crazy nonsense began flowing from Cheon Mari’s mouth. The conversation hadn’t reached a full conclusion yet—I couldn’t let it veer off into the weeds.
I organized everything we had discussed so far and brought the topic back to what I wanted to say next.
“So what exactly do you want from me, Cheon Mari?”
“Hide the crime testimonies and stories about Lim Hana and her gang—drug use, attempted murder, violence—until the right opportunity arises.”
“Well, that’s not difficult. I’ll keep them hidden until the time comes.”
“Also, I’d appreciate it if you could minimize encounters with Lim Hana and the rest of them.”
“Minimize encounters... That can’t be helped since we don’t know what might happen.”
Scratch, scratch. I carefully wrote the contents down on a blank sheet of A4 paper. It looked like a conversation log, but it wasn’t simply organizing the discussion.
It was a contract.
- What the two of us must pursue together.
- What Cheon Mari demands.
- What Kang Sian demands.
- ※Promise not to betray.
Although it held neither magical nor legal power, leaving a physical contract was meant to give each other trust.
“Now it’s my turn to ask. Sian, what do you want from me?”
“Hmm...”
“Like I said before, if things go well, I can just give you financial gains in the hundreds of billions.”
“No, the money part is fine.”
I had no idea what would happen to people, and accepting such a huge sum could itself become a form of debt. Besides, even if Cheon Mari was a rich heiress, gathering that much money would require tremendous strain. Rather than forcing compensation, it was better to invest the funds into handling the work itself.
I spoke of something more urgent than money.
“Instead, train me so I can become a hunter. If that’s too much, exercise is fine too.”
“Hunter training? Exercise?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s you or the master who taught you. As long as I can learn, anything works.”
It was something I had thought about countless times while hunting the boss and dragging her back to the village—the fundamental question of whether I could truly become a hunter. But the more I pondered it, the clearer the conclusion became. It wasn’t about whether I could. It was that I had to.
Without this, there would be no revenge, and my chances of survival would shrink dramatically. Of course I could learn at the hunter academy, but there was no reason for me to do so. Why learn from mediocre instructors when I had the self-proclaimed greatest of all time—the hidden boss of the game—who would become a powerhouse in the future? Learning from her would be several times more effective.
So I kept sending her somewhat desperate looks. The result, however, was lukewarm.
“That was what I originally planned to do anyway.”
“?”
“The doctor even told me. ‘Mari seems to exercise quite a bit. Take your boyfriend and make him work out too.’”
“......”
“Hehe, I’ll teach you properly with the full EX-grade hunter training course, so don’t worry too much~”
“Huk.”
After several rounds of review, the deal with the devil was finalized. We finished signing the contract shortly after.
“But the topics we’ve been discussing... Are these really normal conversation subjects for middle school first-years?”
“...Now that you mention it. Still, since we understand each other, maybe it doesn’t matter.”
Was that how it was? Then I suppose it was.
Since the other side was already showing nearly everything, honest conversation didn’t seem like a problem. So I decided to resolve a question that had often crossed my mind back in the ruins.
I asked in great detail about both ‘the reason Cheon Mari treats Kang Sian so well’ and ‘the real reason she fed me that expensive magic growth agent.’
“Uh, uhm...”
“It’s just a simple question. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“No...”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected this prideful girl to answer properly. I had simply thrown it out there, planning to drop it if she stayed silent.
“It’s that... When I thought about it carefully, I realized I bullied and hit you way too much back in elementary school...?”
Huh? She was answering this smoothly? The same Cheon Mari with her iron pride who hated admitting her own mistakes? It was shocking enough to reverse the Earth’s rotation by twenty-four hours.
I listened to her words with a genuinely surprised expression.
“Plus, I thought that if I had stayed by your side, things wouldn’t have gone this far... and that I should keep my loyalty... so... That’s why I gave you the magic growth agent. Moreover—”
Sorry for hitting you so much in elementary school. Sorry for doing so many shitty things while you kept accepting them. Sorry for playing with you despite the past. The general message was that she felt sorry and acted out of loyalty.
The kind of content that made me want to say, If you knew that, why didn’t you fix it sooner?
“Uh... You’re just telling me this outright? Are you really Cheon Mari? Or are you sick somewhere?”
“Ah, no, fuck! You’re the one who asked! I finally worked up the courage to answer, and your reaction is like this? Damn it!”
It could have been a lie from a regressor who calculated every profit and loss. But the way she stuttered, grew agitated, and her earlobes burned bright red made it seem genuine.
I drastically revised the prejudices I had held in my heart. At this level, she was far more of a friend than Lim Hana could ever be.
The past was behind us. Now that we were on the same boat, I immediately stood up. I stretched out my arms and gave her a light hug.
“Wha—what are you—”
“Just... thanks. It seems like you’re the only friend I have.”
Though it was only words and actions, this was the best I could do.
Cheon Mari froze in surprise, her mouth opening and closing like a wriggling worm. She looked completely lagged. I was about to sit back down to calm her when—
“...Friend!!!!!”
I had honestly expected her to curse and throw a punch, calling it cringy. Instead, she suddenly accelerated, stretching her arms out to hug me back.
“Kek.”
The action itself was similar to what I had done. The problem was the intensity. I felt a strange pressure in my chest. I tried to pull away, but it didn’t work. Cheon Mari simply kept squeezing me tighter.
The situation had gone far beyond reasonable, to the point my breathing was becoming labored. I had every right to get angry, but judging by her state, I needed to act with tact. I decided to endure it for now.
I gently patted her back.
Still, since she’s a friend... it should be fine.
Probably.