The Siamese Frog Contract
Kane was waiting alongside Wang-ko, the leader of the Angler team that had been brought in for this hunt.
Won-goo and Wang-ko knew of each other, but this was the first time they had come face to face.
As mentioned before, Won-goo had little interest in getting involved with Anglers, and the feeling was mutual. If anything, the Anglers tended to look down their noses at ordinary survivors. Few people communicated directly with beastmen, and those who did were mostly Anglers themselves.
Wang-ko was a mountain of a man with skin like granite, small eyes, a nose the size of a fist, and a thick, bloated frame. He was bulky, sure — but not so much muscular as simply heavy. Too much fat to call muscle-bound, too much muscle to call merely overweight. No matter how you looked at him, he was a man who would score terribly in a physiognomy reading, and right now his face was scrunched up as if he'd just chewed through something rotten.
Won-goo didn't like it. Experience had taught him that partnering with men like this never ended well. Nothing good ever came of it.
"Mr. Won-goo, there's a job we'd like to commission from you."
"Somehow I had a feeling this was coming."
"You run the finest mercenary outfit in the shelter, don't you?"
"That doesn't mean I take just any job."
"That stings. You're calling my commission nothing?"
Kane's massive nose twitched as he spoke. "You're a VVIP client, Shelter Master. And from the look of things, you want help hunting a large monster, am I right?"
At that, Kane and Wang-ko both turned their heads to look at each other.
"See? I told you he'd come out swinging like this. Right, Wang-ko?"
Wang-ko answered with a curt nod.
"Am I wrong, then?"
"The Siamese Frogs are for the professionals to handle. You were called here because there's something that needs doing before that."
"Something two of your outfits need handled beforehand? Ah — the internal feud still isn't settled, is it?"
At the phrase internal feud, Wang-ko's face twisted even harder.
"There it is. That's exactly why we called you — to help clean up this family quarrel, isn't it?"
Once again, Kane and Wang-ko exchanged glances.
"Surely you can see your way to helping, Mr. Won-goo?"
Won-goo shook his head, firm and final. "I don't do business with Anglers. Even if the Shelter Master himself asks."
Kane tossed out several more offers after that — sweet ones, all of them — but Won-goo didn't budge an inch. When the offers failed, Kane shifted to something halfway between persuasion and threat. Still, Won-goo refused.
The verdict: flat rejection.
The negotiations ended with nothing to show for them. Wang-ko shot Won-goo one last glare and stormed off, while Kane and Won-goo stayed behind for tea.
"I'm genuinely hurt, Mr. Won-goo."
"Hurt or not, my hands are tied. Never getting tangled up with Anglers is an iron rule of mine."
"Was something that bad done to you?"
"Forget the past — just tell yourself we walk different roads. We're going entirely separate directions, so what's the point of getting entangled? And why are you trying to complicate things, Shelter Master?"
"What's that supposed to mean, Mr. Won-goo?"
"The Siamese Frog. There's a specific reason you absolutely need it, isn't there?"
"……!"
Kane rushed to hide the alarm in his eyes, but it was already too late.
"That's right. I hear someone high up in the Jonggwanwi is coming, no?"
"Where on earth do you get this information, Mr. Won-goo?"
"That, I'm afraid, is a genuine trade secret. And doesn't it strike you as odd? Since when has the Shelter Master cared about anything outside the shelter? The Cheonmok affair was different — that touched on shelter business."
"Shh! Quiet! Mr. Won-goo, do you have any idea how dangerous that kind of talk is?"
"Honestly…… is this place bugged or something? A man with such an imposing figure — why is your gallbladder the size of a pea?"
The moment Wang-ko was gone, Won-goo dropped the act and showed his true face.
"In any case, it's true that I need the Siamese Frogs. That's why I commissioned the hunt but…… hah…… it's complicated."
"That's exactly why you need to vet who you contract with. What are you going to do if you hire a crew mid-feud and things go sideways?"
"Which is why I called you, Mr. Won-goo. To end this internal quarrel quickly. This is the sort of mess you resolve so well."
"We're field survivors. We live off what we hunt — large species excluded."
"You're quite good at hunting people, too."
"That, I do well, sure. But Anglers outnumber us a hundred to one, and they're mostly lunatics — there's no coming out of a fight with them unscathed. We're not the kind of outfit that throws bodies into a grinder for one big payout like the Anglers do. We don't take jobs this dangerous."
"Hah……" Kane heaved a long sigh.
"Do you really need the Siamese Frogs that badly?"
"I do. But Mr. Won-goo — aren't you better off with me staying on as Shelter Master here?"
"I am."
"Then help me out. With the Siamese Frogs caught, I keep my seat, and I keep looking after your interests. You've noticed it lately, haven't you? The patrols passing by more often, just like you asked. And your people — unless they cause a real ruckus, my guards look the other way. You know it's true."
"That was settled in an agreement long ago."
"……."
Kane's shoulders sagged into gloom. Then Won-goo tossed out a question.
"How much did you contract for?"
"……?"
"You signed a contract promising to bring back a Siamese Frog, didn't you? Grade 7 large species…… I'd guess you opened somewhere around a thousand coins?"
"Fifteen hundred."
"Ooh. That's substantial."
"That's how urgent it is, Mr. Won-goo."
Fifteen hundred gold coins. A staggering sum — though by the Anglers' operating patterns, it wasn't really all that much.
Split fifteen hundred coins among two hundred Anglers, each walks away with roughly seven or eight. But because payouts were weighted by contribution, the rank-and-file who joined the hunt actually took home about four or five coins apiece.
That was the going rate for risking your life against a monster so monstrous it could pass for a beast-god — a true large species. The reason the fishing grounds stayed in business, paradoxically, was that most of the Anglers who joined died.
There was no obligation to pay coins to the dead. Which meant the survivors split the whole fifteen hundred among themselves. If only fifteen walked away, each came home with a hundred coins.
An astronomical sum. Enough to turn a man into a monster in his own right with a single round of coin enhancements.
And yet the Anglers spent surprisingly little on enhancements — for men called monsters, that is. The reason was simple: running a fishing ground devoured staggering amounts of capital.
Large species didn't appear on a schedule. From the moment one surfaced to the moment it was landed, enormous stretches of time could pass, and enduring those stretches meant the coins they earned couldn't all be poured into power.
On top of that, Anglers were compulsive gear junkies. Equipment with gut-wrenching price tags — they'd snap those up one after another without blinking. And the extravagant living was a given on top of all that.
Even Won-goo's crew, who enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in Shelter Sabbath, couldn't hold a candle to them.
After a hunt ended, the handful of surviving Anglers lived in open, obscene luxury. Every single day a festival.
This, more than anything, was why Won-goo refused to ever entangle himself with Anglers.
They were cut from a different cloth entirely.
It wasn't that Won-goo never spent money. Compared to his crew, he spent plenty. But he only spent what he'd set aside after securing his future.
He would never adopt the Anglers' brand of fatalism — when the money runs out, I'll just hunt again.
"You have a map of the area, I take it?"
"Up to the vicinity of Cheonchu Mountain."
The land had been split apart and reassembled. Otherworldly structures were sprouting up across it. At this point in time, nobody possessed an accurate map — not even the top-tier Pathfinders. The beastmen might have, perhaps, but no one else.
Kane spread the map across the table. It was a bare-bones chart marking only the immediate surroundings of the shelter.
Won-goo measured out a hand-span from Cheonchu Mountain with a board marker and circled the spot.
"This here is Buri Island. And this vicinity is where the male and female frogs have been appearing."
"What exactly are you getting at, Mr. Won-goo?"
"Hear me out. You're such an impatient man."
Kane nodded.
"Now — the Anglers' route of approach is this line here. Don't ask me how I know. It's simply the fastest way, and their protocol routes them through it. Otherwise they'd have to swing around toward Buri Island, and as you know, that side is heavily guarded. If they touch it, it means open war between the Anglers and our shelter. The Anglers aren't reckless enough for that."
"I suppose not."
"If the shelter's asking them to clean up the internal feud, odds are those Anglers will clash again along their original route. So while they're busy fighting each other, we slip into the interior of Buri Island and take the Siamese Frogs ourselves."
Won-goo sketched the directions across the map as he laid it out.
"……!"
"That way, even if that Wang-ko — or whatever his name is — wins the feud, it's no skin off your back. You'll have your Siamese Frog either way. Though between us, it'd be better if the men hired on the other side came out on top."
"You mean you'd take the Frogs while the Anglers are busy tearing each other apart? Can you manage it without them?"
Won-goo let a slow smile spread across his face.
"That depends entirely on how much you're willing to pay, doesn't it?"
"Wasn't the deal supposed to go through at fifteen hundred?"
"This involves separate work on top of it. Naturally you'll have to pay more. We don't handle large species as a matter of policy."
"If that's the case, why am I doing business with you at all?"
Kane's nose twitched briefly.
"Because this contract costs you absolutely nothing, Shelter Master."
"Explain."
"Think it through. Settlement happens after the hunt, doesn't it? You'd have structured the Anglers' contract the same way?"
"Go on."
"However it plays out, you get your Siamese Frogs in the end, and that's all that matters. If we go and catch them, you pay us. If we fail and Wang-ko's Anglers somehow succeed, well — that works out fine too. The remaining option…… now, that one would be an unpleasant business."
"……."
"I'm simply asking you to weigh where the profit lies."
"Even so, raising the price only deepens your loss, Mr. Won-goo."
"It doesn't. You were planning to meddle in the Anglers' affair, weren't you? Why isn't that in the budget?"
"……."
"……."
A silence stretched between them.
"I don't have any more coins. This is everything I've scraped together over the years, Mr. Won-goo."
"Aigoo, who said settlement comes in coins only? We accept payment in kind."
"In kind……?"
"Open up that warehouse of yours. All of it."
"……."
Kane's expression turned grave.
"No need to weigh every ounce. I already know there are weapons rotting away in your armory."
"Those are for the…… for the shelter administrators to use."
"I know."
"And if word gets out that they've leaked……"
Won-goo snorted with laughter.
"Hasn't plenty of it already leaked?"
"Even so, it could come back to bite me."
"Shelter Master, I even know about your dealings with the Jonggwanwi. You think I'd worry about this? Besides, isn't every piece of equipment in there crippled to half its real performance unless it's stamped with the shelter barcode?"
The reason the shelter's administrators were so formidable lay in the equipment they carried. To forestall any aggressive intervention beyond the shelter's walls — just in case — the gear had been rigged to fall short of its true power the moment it left home turf.
"……."
"It's already flooding the market out there, so a little more leakage changes nothing. And if you're worried about a reckoning, put it in writing in the contract."
Kane's head dipped in the smallest of nods.
"You're confident you can catch them, then?"
"Naturally."
"Everything is on a postpaid basis. The moment you bring me the Siamese Frogs, I'll settle the bill."
"That's exactly how it should be."
After the meeting with Kane, Won-goo returned to his office, bag still in hand — a stop there before heading to Neoguri's shop.
He gathered the crew and walked them through the situation. A large species. A Grade 7 monster. Judging by how the Curse-Shamans — a subspecies of goblin shamans — ranked somewhere between Grade 4 and Grade 5, the Siamese Frog really did qualify as a dangerously powerful species.
Still, the crew trusted him. If Won-goo had agreed, he had to have a plan. And true to form, he began rattling off everything he knew about the male and female frogs without missing a beat.
"The Siamese Frog ranks low for a large species. Low rank means no special abilities. It's simple. It's got the raw physical power you'd expect from a large species, and its tongue is its main weapon. That tongue is blisteringly fast and strikes over long distances — it can snatch prey from fifty meters away or more."
"Over twenty meters long and more than seven meters tall, and……"
"Right. Small, for a large species."
"That's small?"
"Plenty of large species get far bigger. Anyway, the pair relies on that tongue. You can think of the speed it snaps out and retracts as roughly bullet-grade. And what does that mean? Hesitate for even a second, and you'll be diving straight down the Siamese Frog's throat."
Worry began to creep over the room. A frog more than five meters tall. Monsters of pure size were common enough, but not every oversized creature earned the large species classification — which meant the Siamese Frog was genuinely that formidable. Everyone listened, hanging on every word.
"Faster than a bullet — so we just die the moment it attacks? How exactly are we supposed to catch this thing?"
"The Anglers throw newbies in as bait. Even a large species can only swallow so much in one gulp. While it's busy devouring the bait, the main attackers slip in under its belly and strike. That's the Angler playbook."
"Then we……"
"We approach it differently. We use the Trailer."
"……?"
"A Siamese Frog only goes after prey it can coil its tongue around. Which means it won't put anything too large in its mouth. It flicks that tongue at prey the size of gnats — and to that thing, that's what a human is."
"So something the size of the Trailer would be……"
"It won't even try. Exactly. And that is the key to taking down the Siamese Frogs this time."