The Drive
The military council convened. It had been called to deliberate on how the passes would respond to unauthorized barbarians from Korea infiltrating the border.
Unlike the Hunter Association, the hunters of the Ignis Guild were not confining their monster hunts to the vicinity of Pamagok. I couldn't shoulder the entire border alone, which meant I needed the cooperation of the other commanders.
Two of the three passes stood empty, and I was stationed at Pamagok myself, bringing the total number of commanders to ten. Even my usual subordinates, who came and went from the audience chamber as if it were their own quarters, today lined up behind me in formal formation.
"W-we pay our respects to the Great General!"
"We pay our respects to the Great General!"
Their battle qi crackled sharply in the air. Honestly, they all loved putting on a show. Thanks to the display, the border guard commanders trickling in afterward were so intimidated that even seated at the table, they couldn't bring their backs anywhere near the chairs. The only ones who acted as comfortably as if they were in their own homes were Park Gyu and Bunhee.
"We pay our respects to the Great General."
"Welcome, Elder No."
Once even No Chil, who had come from the farthest post, had gathered, the council began. The sole agenda item had been decided in advance: the disposition of Lee Dowon and the Ignis Guild.
Anyone unaffiliated with the Association was, from our standpoint, no different from bandits or deserters. No—if judged purely by how they'd be treated, they ranked below even those.
Before I could so much as offer a proposal, furious reactions erupted around the table. They came mostly from the crowd who had once fawned over Gu Sam and trembled at the very thought of him.
"However lowly the beasts, their disposition belongs to the Great General alone, the one commanded by His Majesty to hold the border!"
"Those insolent barbarians must be taught the majesty of the Empire with their own flesh, and at once!!"
"Let every pass sortie together and take the heads of their leaders!"
"Agreed! I shall lead the charge myself!!"
"Everyone, calm yourselves first."
Judging by the Hunter Gallery's reactions, most of the South Korean public currently held a stance toward me and the Tianyu Empire that bordered on outright worship. Not that anyone could blame them—who wouldn't grovel before a goose that laid golden eggs they'd never tasted before?
One reason was likely that while we kept a wary eye on them, we had never actually turned spears against them. All the friction to date amounted to nothing more than the mistakes of Birang's party members.
But Ignis was, undeniably, one of Korea's Seven Great Guilds. If we hacked off their heads the moment they stepped over a line, the Empire's friendly image would inevitably start to wobble.
I wanted, as much as possible, to avoid any display that would make us look like the savages in reverse. Ideally, the Association itself would punish them, but the conditions for exercising that kind of control didn't exist yet.
Which meant that I, the sole voice of reason in this room, would have to step forward with a reasonable proposal. They'd all probably be satisfied.
"If they're that desperate to hunt, why don't we go out of our way to help them?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"What... what is that supposed to mean...?"
"I tried it once before, on one of you who is absent from this gathering, and found it quite remarkably effective."
"..."
"..."
Hm? Why the silence?
All we'd do was lure the monsters straight to wherever the hunters appeared and let them fight to their hearts' content. A monster drive, apparently—something that happened in the Tower now and then, I'd heard.
The moment I invoked Gu Sam's example, the faces of the three border guard commanders who had once run with him went deathly pale. No Chil, who had been with him at Reed Village at the time, was coughing repeatedly.
"Barbarian or no, to feed people to the monsters like that..."
"Those who provoked the Great General's wrath will now be put to death, every last one of them...!"
"Does that displease you? If anyone has objections, speak freely."
"N-no, not at all! The Great General's decision is correct a hundred times over!"
"Of course it is!"
By unanimous vote of the commanders, my proposal was adopted. Having gone to the trouble of opening the floor, I'd hoped to hear a variety of arguments, but not a single soul piped up.
It left a slightly bad taste in my mouth, but everyone had agreed, so it would be fine. The soldiers of the other passes weren't yet capable of driving monsters, so Pamagok would divide its forces to assist them.
With deployments settled, we waited for the Ignis Guild members to show themselves again—and before long, they did.
THUD! The hellhound's massive body crashed into the reed field. Baek Nayun, an A-Rank hunter of the Ignis Guild, extracted a magic stone from the fallen beast's skull.
Wind blades blooming from her hand had sliced through three skulls in a single stroke. As she gazed at the gem-like magic stone, a colleague nudged her.
"Let's move. We need to bag as many as possible and get out before we're spotted."
"Oh, and what if we are spotted?"
Baek Nayun was completely unbothered. By Lee Dowon's calculations, the odds of Yuhyeon's army attacking them were vanishingly small.
There were hunting grounds in the Tower too. When factions clashed over them, force was often the deciding factor. But this situation was different.
"How would those barbarians possibly know when or where we're coming out?"
"I heard they have some kind of surveillance network."
"And have we been ambushed even once so far?"
"No, but..."
"They can't stop us, period. And even if word somehow spread that we'd been attacked by an army, whose situation would that worsen? Theirs, not ours."
Anyone could post on a message board. If news ever surfaced that these people had actually killed someone—not detained them, not put them on trial—then even the Association would find it difficult to maintain its current friendly relations with Yuhyeon.
"Honestly, they should have just accepted the Vice Master's offer and come in quietly from the start. They brought it on themselves."
"How are we moving the magic stones?"
"There's an unregistered barge registered on the West Sea. Drop them there for now. Sell them in Korea and the Association will trace us."
The merchant ship Lee Dowon had brought to Korea carried monsters called Gigant Worms. Using them to slip past the Association's watchful eyes and enter the Hidden Stage, then transferring the harvested magic stones into the empty cargo holds—once they reached America, they'd secure far more substantial backing for the next run.
It was, for all intents and purposes, outright plunder, but the Seven Great Powers had been bleeding the Association dry in exactly this fashion for years. Hidden Stage or not, they had zero intention of making an exception.
"The moment they send us even one S-Rank, it's game over."
"Our guild doesn't have anyone besides the current roster here—the rest are all American personnel. They wouldn't be able to enter this place."
"Then they'll hire a Korean from another guild. The Association's doing it right now, aren't they? That brat from the fallen Shin clan."
"No way... you mean that prophecy monger?"
Not many S-Rank hunters were currently based in South Korea. And most of them, for various reasons, weren't exactly dependable fighting assets.
"I haven't heard anything about that. If an S-Rank got involved, wouldn't that be a problem for us?"
"The Association can't afford an open feud with one of the Great Powers. And even if Shin Yuyu herself wanted to interfere, she can't touch us."
"Why not? I heard she's got a temper like a wildfire."
"Because the ancestors she serves still haven't given up on this country."
After the Tower rose, the Shin family was destroyed. They'd produced multiple awakened wielders of considerable power, but holding back the monsters flooding out of the Tower for fifty years had simply been beyond them.
Even after becoming restless spirits who could not pass on, dwelling in the divine artifact of their last surviving daughter, they remained unable to lay a finger on the Great Powers who had offered them no help back then. The will that bound them to this world was the protection of South Korea itself.
"Because if they disappear too, this country is genuinely finished. So while she can cast magic, she can't unleash her unique ability carelessly."
"Come to think of it, isn't this all 'raising the national prestige' anyway?"
The old truth that those who sell out their country live comfortably for generations applied in every era alike.
They were just about to move on to other monsters when a searing heat stirred across Baek Nayun's senses. The air did feel strange—something other than mana was spreading through it—but it was closer to a familiar sensation than anything else.
"What's wrong?"
"Don't you feel that heat all of a sudden?"
"Now that you mention it... something over there looks like it's burning?"
The reed field was ablaze. The wind was blowing in precisely the opposite direction, and yet the flames were advancing steadily toward the Ignis Guild members.
Speed-wise, the hunters were far faster, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was something else entirely. To escape the flames, a massive horde of monsters was sprinting at full tilt directly toward them—away from the smoke.
"What the hell—?!"
"Is it a natural disaster?"
"Are you kidding me?! It's obviously manmade—anyone can see that! Get to the rift, now!"
"Wait, there's someone up ahead!"
A soldier, mounted and wielding a single spear. He was steering the enraged monsters like a guide dog, and as he came charging straight at them, Baek Nayun finally realized: they were being driven.
She began readying her spell and shouted to her companions.
"Stop him! We have to knock him off that horse before he gets close!"
"Damn it...!"
The distance was still wide open—this was entirely manageable. Wasn't this a force of over ten people, mages all of them?
The moment the soldier flinched under the downpour of spells, they'd wedge themselves between him and the monster horde, leaving him paralyzed with indecision until he was shot down. At her signal, judged precisely thus, the hunters unleashed a coordinated barrage on the rider.
However.
"He dodged it?"
"We deflected some of it!"
"Why is he so fast? His horse is speeding up too!"
"Ah—... look out!"
She'd intended to halt him somehow before he could lead the monsters all the way to them, but it was already too late. The soldier had punched straight through the Ignis Guild members in an instant, then reined his horse to a stop a short distance behind them.
And when he glanced back at them, Baek Nayun realized her hand had been severed. Then, before she could even throw herself toward the rift—
The monsters, retargeting onto the far closer prey, swallowed them whole in a heartbeat.
.
.
.
.
"Mission complete, Commander."
"Good work, Chunsik."
"It is Jo Un."
"Ah, the One Against a Thousand, was it? Dangerous business, growing stronger the more enemies surround you—but useful all the same."
"Even before I learned battle qi, I crossed countless battlefields such as this one. It is second nature to me."
"Is that so?"
"Indeed. Unjung Fortress had no shortage of the Yu clan's enemies. Once, the forces of three rival houses converged upon us all at once—and when I smashed through their encirclement and rescued the eldest son of Lady Mana, what happened today pales in comparison to..."
"Bunhee, is your side all wrapped up?"
"Yes-sir~!"
I waved off Chunsik's nostalgia tour with practiced ease. If the casualties among the hunters they'd sent kept piling up like this, even the Ignis Guild would have no choice but to pull out.
The problem was that this was nothing more than a stopgap. The magic stones here performed roughly ten times better than the Tower's standard output—and in qi-saturated Pamagok, the difference could reach twenty or thirty times. They wouldn't give up; they'd come back with full preparations, certain of it.
"Honestly, we may need to deliver a proper warning at least once."
Even back in my office, I kept turning the problem over in my mind, toying with the God's Rod Lee Dowon had gifted me.
I need someone who can move freely to Earth, who isn't bound to the Association, who can deliver my warning—and who possesses enough power that the Seven Great Powers won't dare touch them afterward.
Oh, and they'd have to be obedient, too. Who on earth fit that description? I was erasing the faces surfacing in my mind one by one when—
KWAANG!
The staff in my hand fired off a final spark of its own accord and exploded. So much for a prototype—they'd apparently skipped the safety features entirely.
As I shook the shredded skin from my palm, a shrill scream drifted in through the hole the blast had punched in my door.
"Y-you're insane...! You almost blew it up again!"
I opened the door to find Shin Yuyu sitting on the floor, clutching an enormous book to her chest.