A Gift
It had been roughly fifty years since towers first appeared across the world. That was also when those who awakened unique abilities began to be called hunters.
Monsters lurked inside the towers, and the mana stones extracted from the magic cores the creatures carried were worth a fortune. Thanks to them, the world's energy crisis had been largely solved and magitech engineering had flourished as well — but one problem remained.
"If the monsters are not culled from within, they will in time overflow and come flooding out."
"That's exactly why several nations have fallen. China, which was once remarkably similar to the country where you—ahem, where the Great General resides, couldn't withstand the pouring tide of monsters and ultimately collapsed."
"China? What business is it of mine how those barbarians fare?"
"……"
"Calling themselves the center of the world. Even their country's name is insolent."
As for why a Seoul street sign had ended up inside the stomach of that petrification mage I'd slain in the past — it seemed the creature had simply been one of the individuals summoned in the middle of the city. And if other floors of the tower likewise held monsters — magic beasts — then that explained why they kept crossing over into Pamagok.
In that case, the obvious answer would be to pool everyone's strength and scrub the tower clean. But according to An Junhyeon, Korea's current situation was apparently not so simple.
"It's not that our country's awakening rate is low. Per capita, we're actually among the highest in the world. It's just that the majority of the guilds currently operating in Korea don't station their headquarters or their core forces here."
"They betray the very land that bore them? Why?"
"Haah, well… it isn't really betrayal. It would be more accurate to call it the logic of capital."
The number of awakened players was finite. And the fact that a nation could face annihilation if it failed to properly clear its tower had set international competition ablaze.
When the towers first appeared, awakened individuals in Korea were not treated especially well. Foreign capital seized the opening, and in the blink of an eye, the country lost swaths of its finest talent.
Listening to all this, I found myself thinking that even if this world differed considerably from the modern era I'd lived in, these people had still come from my homeland.
Kinship. Or perhaps, nostalgia.
After fifteen years of crossing the threshold between life and death more times than I could count, my memories of my previous life had grown diluted — and yet the feeling was not so easily shaken off.
But that didn't mean I could change my demeanor here and offer them a handshake. I was, unmistakably, the Grand Marshal of Military Affairs of the Tianyu Empire — a Great General sworn to serve the Heavenly Emperor.
Their true purpose, and the attitude they would take the moment my identity came to light — both had to be kept buried, for the sake of the precious people standing behind me now.
"So what you are telling me is that you intended to hand our intelligence over to those who turned their backs on their motherland — kin to the very parents who gave them life beneath heaven."
"No, no, of course not! Our party — the ones who made the initial discovery — are pure South Koreans only, so this place became accessible to Korea alone! We were just weighing our options between the Association and the guilds; we haven't even decided which side to hand over access to—"
"Bunhee. Twist their juri a little tighter."
"Yes sir~!"
"KYAAAAAHK!!"
And so I twisted them. Certainly not because it felt good.
A while later, having finished the interrogation, I took a moment's rest and considered where things should go from here.
Hidden Stages belonged exclusively to the nation of the players who first discovered them. I couldn't imagine what business they'd have in Pamagok, but a resource only their own country could monopolize was immensely valuable — they would surely come again.
And this time, presumably, they wouldn't be idiotic enough to act hostile. Which meant I, too, needed to decide in advance how I would deal with them.
Truthfully, the answer had already presented itself.
I'll simply keep doing what I've always done.
From the standpoint of the Empire's people — though not my own — a barbarian once is a barbarian forever. And by the standards of this world, the more I learned about the hunters of modern Korea, the more astonished I became.
No distinction of rank or station, and they don't even bow.
They come from beyond the continent that the first Heavenly Emperor himself established as the axis of the world — and worse, if the leader they chose commits a wrongdoing, they say he'll carve him up with his own hands?
This was a super-barbarian, the kind of thunder-naked savage that might appear once in a thousand years. The moment his existence was made public, I could practically see the central officials foaming at the mouths and collapsing, coughing blood as they shrieked that the man had to be subjugated at once.
For now, I decided that detailed knowledge about towers, hunters, and the like would remain with me alone. All I had to do was seal Bunhee's mouth — she'd had a grand old time twisting the juri alongside me — so it wasn't a difficult task.
"Bunhee, come here a moment."
"Yes?"
I called for her the instant we returned to my office, then pressed what remained of the flowers and the vase into her arms.
When the armful of bouquet settled against her chest, it seemed to come alive with freshness all over again. Though of course, she was probably only thinking about burning the lot.
"Great General? This is…"
"Just call me Yuhyeon. The others do, too."
"Really? Yuhyeon-nim?"
"Yes. Anyway, good work today."
What would I have done without Bunhee? On the way to our destination, she'd stopped and checked every single disguised barbarian we passed — one careless move, and we might have missed the Birang Party entirely.
Afterward, she'd even hauled the unconscious prisoners under her arms and climbed back up the gorge without a word of complaint, and she'd helped with the interrogation to boot. This much of a reward was only fitting. She was no convict with a criminal record, so there was nothing to give her but praise.
"Burn all of it as you like."
"Really? Not leaving a single one?"
Bouquets sent from every walk of life to congratulate my ascension as Great General. Some of them had been picked by my own subordinates' hands.
The flowers pressed against Bunhee's chest bore Chunsik's name tag. The blossoms were dandelions and lilies.
Together, their meaning was parting and love unchanged.
"Mm. Absolutely all of it. Don't leave so much as a trace that they ever existed in this world."
"Kyaaah! Yuhyeon-nim, I really, really, REALLY like you!"
I felt I'd already received every confession a man could expect from a woman in a lifetime — but it gave me no pleasure whatsoever. Truth be told, there had been one more purpose behind today's patrol besides searching for traces of Earth.
I wanted to correct, even a little, Bunhee's habit of squealing I like you! at anyone in reach and acting like she'd grant any request whatsoever the moment you handed her something to burn. I'd cautioned her several times, but seeing her bounce about so recklessly, it seemed she still had a long way to go.
Oh well. They say to correct something you must first understand it — but who could possibly understand that girl's mental state?
Presumably it was never the business of a mere common man like me.
With that thought, I began chipping away at the backlog of work I'd neglected over the busy day.
Bunhee lived in a staff residence a short distance from the military headquarters. There were no women among Yuhyeon's subordinates, and Yeonri lodged together with the other servants in the outer quarters — which meant Bunhee's dwelling was, in effect, a house all her own.
Some might grow melancholy at having no friend to share a meal with, but that simply wasn't her nature. Only one thing mattered to Bunhee: a warm flame to heat her side.
In that spirit, she was in an excellent mood. Today's kindling: the freshest half of the chrysanthemums from among the bouquets, a single young arborvitae tree growing behind the residence — and a marten pelt she'd smuggled out without Yuhyeon knowing.
"Hehehe~ hehehehe~!"
"My, General Bunhee."
She had just left Yuhyeon's office with a light step when she ran into someone she knew on the street.
It was Old Woman Yang, who ran a mending shop and eked out a living doing piecework alterations on clothing issued by the government.
She often gave Bunhee the leftover scraps of cloth, too.
"You seem to be in high spirits today."
"Yep! Today was the absolute best day ever!"
"Did a young man give you flowers, perhaps?"
"Huh?"
Smiling kindly at Bunhee, who was hugging an armful of bouquet with a vase strapped to her back, the old woman said:
"When a man gives a woman flowers, it's his way of conveying his heart to her — a token of the affection he harbors."
"Uh… oh, really?"
"To press this many flowers, of so many different kinds, into your hands — he must cherish you a great deal, General Bunhee."
"Well, I've gotten lots of them before, so…"
Bunhee's head tilted. The flames drifting through her mind along the pull of gravity clumped together in one place — and the empty space they left behind began to fill with Yuhyeon's face.
The things he had done. Among the group that came to raze Pamagok, he had punished only her comrades and spared her, even granting her the freedom to come and go as she pleased.
The warmth she'd felt when he took her hand and asked her to come along on the patrol. The memory of how he'd approached her, wounded himself, when the barbarians attacked — it all flowed back like a muddy current.
"You're beautiful, General Bunhee, and kind-hearted too… with such a lovely face, I do hope you'll find yourself a good match. This old woman will be rooting for you."
"Uh? Uh… okay. Sure."
After parting with Old Woman Yang, she was walking along in a daze when yet another figure appeared before her — the peddler she'd crossed paths with before.
"Aigo, General Bunhee! I was just looking for you all day."
"Hello there?"
"That cotton cloth I told you about. One look at it and you can tell — it'll catch fire beautifully."
The moment he spotted her, he glanced around once to check whether Yuhyeon was nearby, then hurried over and held out the oil-soaked fabric. It was the kindling they'd spoken of before.
"I'll give you this as a gift — might I ask just one small favor in return? It's nothing, truly. It's been so long since this humble man has forgotten a woman's warmth, and I'm terribly lonely… if you'd only lend me your hand for a moment—"
"No."
"I beg your pardon?"
The man asked again, visibly taken aback.
"Wh-why so sudden… m-may I ask the reason?"
"Hmm…"
It wasn't deliberation — the refusal had burst out of her on pure reflex. Even turning it over in her mind afterward, she couldn't pin down exactly why.
"Who knows?"
"Ah…"
Without even accepting the cloth, Bunhee brushed past the merchant. Her head was more tangled than usual, but the whole way back to her quarters, the sweet scent of the flowers against her chest kept bringing Yuhyeon to mind.
Somehow, she felt wonderful.
Meanwhile, at the same moment — at the Hunter Association headquarters in Korea.
Park Ingyu, Director of the Strategic Countermeasures Division, was in a meeting with the mage of the Birang Guild who had come seeking them out.
"You encountered two residents… and your side was the one who acted first?"
"Sniff… that is…"
By the time Lee Jihye's account had run its course, someone murmured into the bone-chilling silence that hung over the conference room.
We're insane.