The Price of Revival
Jesus.
"I was watching the execution show at the plaza—no, the execution ceremony……."
Il-chul was trembling as he forced the words out.
"I'm not going to eat you, so take your time. Go on."
Won-goo said it while drawing a long drag on his cigarette. Around him, the crew was glaring at Il-chul with icy eyes.
They'd been in the middle of a break when they'd been forcibly summoned, so nobody was in a good mood.
Worse, Lee Hyun-sung's body lay sprawled out to one side.
Hyun-sung was still clutching Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver in a death grip.
"They were burning it…… and then smoke suddenly billowed up, and beastmen appeared."
"You're sure they were beastmen?"
"The smoke blurred my vision, but I'm certain. They were beastmen. Kkakdugi fought well enough, but he was outmatched. His head came off, and the beastmen took the body away. That's what happened."
"You're saying they took the corpse?"
"No, sir. One of them was still alive. It held out pretty well even in the flames."
"The one that held out—the one with the ponytail?"
"I believe so?"
"Good work. Go grab a fistful of those silver coins over there and buy yourself a drink."
"We're not exactly strangers, though. You don't have to do this."
"Take it, you punk. And you'd be better off not talking about today's business."
"Yes, sir……."
Il-chul pretended to relent and scooped up a handful of silver coins from the jar sitting on the table.
Once Il-chul had left, Won-goo turned to Jo Mu-sa.
"Mu-sa. Did you stitch him back up?"
"I did. But……"
"That's all I needed to hear. Everyone, keep your eyes on him."
"Shall we prepare the fu—"
"The what?"
"F-for Hyu-Hyunsung hyung's funeral?"
"That bastard's not dead."
At that, everyone turned to stare at Lee Hyun-sung in astonishment. Won-goo wouldn't crack a joke in a situation like this, which meant something was going on.
"Is it because of that Named item?"
Hye-ji asked while everyone else was still silent.
"That's right. He'll be up any minute now."
"Director Gong, what is that thing, exactly, in part……"
Mu Beob-sa normally kept his mouth firmly shut when things got serious, but this time he stepped forward himself.
"It's a Named item, what else? One with a curse among the most powerful you'll find on any Named gear."
"A resurrection ability?"
"Correct. Resurrection."
Everyone's faces filled with shock. In a world where human life was as cheap as a bug's, resurrection was an ability you almost never came across.
"And a power that great comes with a curse just as great. It drives you properly insane. The more times you resurrect, the worse it tears at your mind. Anyone who swings that thing around carelessly will end up as something no better than a zombie."
"So that's why you kept stressing mental resistance to Hyunsung hyung."
Mu-sa chimed in.
"Right. And it'll cost him another five gold coins, too. His disorientation symptoms are only going to get worse."
"So it's not something you can use recklessly."
"Obviously not."
"Then what if he's careful with his lives and uses it sparingly……"
"Still a problem. Just carrying it is enough to drive a man mad."
"Ah……"
Won-goo deliberately held back the words that came after. The truth was that Hyun-sung's Gift was essential to lifting that penalty.
Hyun-sung's Gift went beyond simply growing familiar with a weapon—it let him grow together with it.
The upside was that even a cheap kitchen knife could be nurtured into a legendary blade through continuous use. The downside was that he became bound to a single weapon.
And once synchronization with a weapon began, shaking it loose was no easy feat.
Just as Won-goo had planned, Hyun-sung had avoided using any one weapon for too long all this time, preventing synchronization from taking hold.
On top of that, he'd reinforced his mental resistance, cultivating the perfect soil for fully mastering Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver.
And then today, another emergency had erupted.
This was precisely the moment when Hyun-sung could not afford to lose his life twice.
From here on out, he needed to be raising his other stats to genuinely improve his combat power.
"Goddammit……"
With the plan thrown into disarray, the irritation was only natural. Worse still, something he'd thought was finished had turned out to be anything but.
Jerk!
Life suddenly flooded back into Lee Hyun-sung's body where it lay, and he bolted upright.
Everyone stared at him in shock. Without sparing a glance for anyone else, Hyun-sung bowed his head straight to Won-goo.
"I'm sorry, Hyeong-nim. I got got."
"You've got nothing to apologize for. It's my fault. I got complacent because we were inside the Shelter."
But Hyun-sung couldn't lift his bowed head.
"Raise your head. Now go spend gold coins. Put them into mental resistance. Five."
"Understood, Hyeong-nim."
"Actually, be generous—put in seven."
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
"Mu-sa, Suwon, Geum Chul-soo. Go with him. Back here immediately."
The crew filed out at once.
"Looks like everything we earned this time is about to walk right out the door."
"If we settle the accounts properly, we'll make back more than that."
"Still, you didn't plan on investing this much into Hyunsung, did you?"
"Can't be helped, Hye-ji. What's on your mind?"
Won-goo asked Hye-ji, who had been listening in. She was nearly as curious as Su-won, and Won-goo didn't think badly of it.
He was the kind of man who believed curiosity was an engine of growth, too. She'd eventually have to learn to distinguish the moments when curiosity should be exercised from those when it shouldn't—but there was no need to think that far just yet.
The mere fact that she was trying to think from multiple angles meant she was already adapting well enough.
"It's just……"
"Save the questions for when there's a lull. Just don't go quiet and lose the thread later."
"You believed Hyunsung-uncle's ability would trigger in his duel with the Dullahan, didn't you, Director?"
The corner of Won-goo's mouth crept upward.
"Why do you think that?"
"It's just my guess, but that cleaver of his…… I think the first resurrection might come without any real penalty."
"Now I'm seriously curious how you landed on that conclusion?"
"If the coin consumption were really that steep, I figured you'd have found another way."
"Good deduction. You're right, Hye-ji. That's exactly the nastiest part of Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver. At first, there's no problem at all. It lulls you into letting your guard down—and then it devours your mind."
"So that's how it…… works……"
"Most Named items are like that. They carry powerful curses, and if you don't understand how to use them properly, they drag their wielder to ruin. Burn that into your memory."
"Yes, sir……"
Hye-ji liked Won-goo for how decisively he answered her questions.
But something about how his explanations always carried a note of lingering finality unsettled her in a way she couldn't quite name. It was almost as if he were teaching her the rules of survival in preparation for the day they'd part ways.
She would soon learn, however, that this was no special arrangement of any kind.
Won-goo simply understood the apocalypse better than anyone, and that was why he was a man always prepared to accept change the moment it came.
"If the lecture's over, let's discuss the incident. How do we play this?"
"We have to catch him. It's a golden chance to score big points off that elephant bastard."
"With beastmen involved, won't beastmen be mobilized too?"
"If that were an option, the Shelter Master wouldn't have come crawling to us in such a panic. The shelter's run like a dump, but even so, there are lines that have to be kept."
"What lines would those be, in part?"
"For a shelter to keep operating, a certain percentage of administrators has to remain stationed inside it at all times. And if they strip the shelter bare to hunt down administrators who've fled? The whole shelter goes into shutdown. That's a no-go in its own right. The moment a shutdown happens, an investigation comes down from above immediately. And at that point, Kane could beg until his nose unravels into silk thread and it still wouldn't fix anything."
"Is that a constraint placed on the administrators so they can't pull stunts like they do now?"
Hye-ji again. Won-goo nodded his agreement.
"Correct. That's probably part of the intent. Imagine an administrator marching out of the shelter to monopolize territory. Everything falls apart. Administrators exist to administer. That's it."
"Hoo…… when you lay it out like that, it's quite the deadlock, in part."
"Which is exactly why Kane came to us."
"As important as our relationship with the administrators is, beastmen are a different story, no? How exactly are we supposed to beat beastmen?"
"Haah…… that's the real bastard of a problem, but Kane's the one bleeding urgency right now, so we'll see where the negotiation goes. Dammit…… no wonder I kept feeling like I'd missed something. Elders, none of you caught wind of anything?"
"Me? I'm the sort of man who follows Director Gong's decisions, in part."
"Even so, if you caught a whiff of something, you should've said so. The bastard who carved the Trainer into thirds is obviously the main event…… and we all let that slip past us."
"I assumed he'd been dealt with before he could even use his techniques, in part."
"I brushed it off just as lightly. I just never imagined it would come back around as a backstab."
"Are beastmen really that strong?"
"Strong, Miss Hye-ji. They've got human-level cunning bolted onto animal-grade physical ability—they couldn't help but be strong, in part."
Mu Beob-sa answered without missing a beat.
"And on top of that, you have to look at ordinary beastmen and beastmen employed at the shelter as entirely different animals. Their equipment—every last piece, top to bottom—is draped in gear rated Gold or better. At this point in time, that's broken. Flat-out broken. You'd be better off going after an Auger swarm."
"No methods in mind for dealing with them, in part?"
"None whatsoever. How are we supposed to take down a shelter administrator at this stage? Even the tourists are brutal enough…… and the administrators' gear is so broken you can't just overpower them. Unless the shelter itself hands out equipment, it's not happening."
"The administrators' equipment here? Could that be arranged, in part?"
"That would be difficult as well, I'd imagine."
"Director Gong! All done. The pathfinders are deployed. Something will surface before long."
Sanghae appeared, announcing himself. He must have been running around nonstop—he was drenched in sweat.
"You didn't just use the pathfinders you always work with, did you? This is no laughing matter. It's genuinely important."
"You think I can't read the room that well?"
"Then I'm relieved."
Soon after, the rest of the crew returned with Hyunsung in tow. Nothing about Hyun-sung's appearance had changed, but there was a new depth to the look in his eyes.
Hyun-sung immediately handed the card back to Won-goo.
"Let's go. Time to see the elephant."
"Well, I never thought I'd live to see the day I got a free meal off the Shelter Master."
A spread of dishes covered the table. None of it was food from Earth, so the shapes were strange and the aromas distinctive—but nothing tasted off.
The crew was already eating at a respectful distance.
"Enough with the temper, Won-goo-ssi. I'm genuinely begging you, setting everything else aside. This has to be resolved."
"You run contracts for a living—do you have any idea how big this job is? There's your relationship with the Shelter Master to consider, too."
"Right. Exactly."
"But how are we supposed to catch an administrator? The equipment they carry……"
"You don't need to worry about that."
"……?"
"It's been disabled."
"Er…… is that even possible?"
"It is. I handled it cleanly. No problem at all."
"So the runaway administrator is nothing more than an ordinary beastman now?"
"That's right."
"Just a beastman, then…… How many tourists did he take with him?"
"Twelve in all. As I keep saying, the tourists don't matter. Just catch the administrator."
"I'm well aware."
"Can it be done?"
"Beastmen…… you have to assume a baseline of thirty gold coins or better, and there are twelve of them…… That's no ordinary job, you know?"
"That's exactly why I'm asking you, Won-goo-ssi. I don't care what it costs. Bring him in as fast as possible. No—even dead or alive doesn't matter!"
"That was already agreed upon. Very well. You said I could spend as much as I liked, yes?"
Kane nodded rapidly.
"The personnel in Sabats won't be enough. We bring in Named."
Named were survivors whose names alone carried weight—figures of legend, in abundance. What set them apart from outfits like contract agencies was that Named operated solo or in very small units.
"……?"
"A generous budget works miracles that didn't exist before. The budget. We'll draw up just the one contract covering it, and then I'll see this job through to the end, personally."