Stepping Stones
I will be heading to [Mugan] from here on.
The reason I joined [Geobhwa] was simple. There had been no other choice. The world had changed with the coming of the Tower — and my written-off life, the kind even my own parents had given up on thanks to my foul mouth and delinquent ways, turned around overnight.
Fuck. The world's turned into such a lovely place, hasn't it?
Back then, people had tried to fix me through oppression and violence, and every single time, I rebelled to the very end. It didn't matter whether it was those teacher bastards, or my parents — who did nothing but fight among themselves and dump the blame on me. I wanted to live my life my own way.
With this power...!
I wanted to prove it. That my methods, my thinking, were right. And anyone who got in the way could simply be cleared aside.
"Not one step further. Don't cross that line. You're a child who could become a hero."
While I was raging, trying to kill every obstacle in my path, someone appeared and blocked my way. It was an awakened who wielded fire — the first person I had ever met who was stronger than me. I was overwhelmed without being able to lift a finger, broken so badly I thought I was truly going to die.
"It's okay! I'll fix you!"
The words came with a tone brimming with confidence, and the moment that warm energy touched my body, the pain began to melt away. It was only later, when I crossed paths with them again at the ability-user containment camp, that I learned those two were Seo Yeram and Cha Yujin.
And then they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Would I stay locked up in this place — or become part of [Geobhwa] and become a hero?
A hero, huh...
If it meant standing beside people like them. I decided to let myself be taken in — by Guild Master Seo Yeram's promise to make me a hero, and by Cha Yujin's sweet-talking me into joining.
I'll be using the two of you as my stepping stones.
I had no intention of watching my life rot away in a containment camp. So I accepted the offer. And so I leaned on Cha Yujin, because I was needed; I looked up to Seo Yeram, our Guild Master, because I had to grow.
So this is [Geobhwa] — the guild I'd only ever heard about.
The number one guild in South Korea. Home to more S-Class hunters than anywhere else in the nation. It was here that I came to be noticed as a rising S-Class prospect.
And yet amid all those dazzling members, there was one who didn't belong.
Who's that...?
Mumyeong. S-Class Rank 1. The man Guild Master Seo Yeram always kept at her side. Which was why I assumed he had to carry the same kind of specialness I did — and I hoped. Hoped he would show the overwhelming strength befitting the S-Class Rank 1. With a pounding heart, I looked forward to seeing, through him, what the pinnacle actually looked like. His feats, never once made known to the world — I thought I'd get to witness them with my own two eyes.
Once. Twice. Through raid after endless raid, I gave everything I had to stay alive. My ranking shot upward at a blistering pace until I claimed the seat of S-Class Rank 3.
The others changed plenty, too. But one person had never changed — not even once. Not now, not ever. The Guild Master insisted on bringing him along every time, and he always stayed in the rear. Even while everyone bled and fought, he never moved. Without the Guild Master's orders, he did nothing at all.
Ah...
The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. That's simply how it goes.
And that was supposed to be the S-Class Rank 1?
Everyone hated him. No matter how little strength you lent, so long as you joined a raid, the results were shared and the money paid out — and that was a bitter waste, because it meant splitting what I and everyone else had bled so hard for with him.
I don't like him. That senior of ours...!
Within the guild, he went around with his mask off, flashing that easy grin at everyone. And conversation with him never went anywhere.
"Sorry. Yeram told me not to tell anyone. Said it was for everyone's own good. And I think she's right, too — someone could get hurt. I hate that."
Nothing but words I couldn't make sense of. It was suffocating. It made me furious.
Ugh, forget it. People like that!
Why was someone like that the S-Class Rank 1? I thought the day I'd understand would never come.
Why... am I... thinking about... the old days... and shit... right now...?
My memory was in disarray. What on earth had happened? Reality was only now, belatedly, beginning to register.
"Snap out of it! Shin Yuri!"
"Don't you dare lose consciousness! Not ever!"
...Wh...at?
Only then did the situation reach me. Through the haze of my dimming vision, I realized that everything around me had been painted red with blood.
It's... cold...
And then, one scene rose to the surface of my mind.
I had, without question, aimed for the back of Mumyeong — the S-Class Rank 1 — as the S-Class Rank 3 lightning user. I had gone all out. Faster than anyone, sparks crackling, afterimages trailing in my wake; even with time slowed to a crawl, I had swung a sure and decisive blow. Granted, with my gear and items destroyed, I had been far from full strength. But I'd believed it more than enough to crush those rotten guts of his and put him down. Part of it, too, was a deliberate test — I wanted to find out for myself whether the Guild Master's words were true.
I hadn't cared who was watching, and I had no intention of denying that my emotions had run ahead of me. Honestly, they weren't lines a man I'd always looked down on in my heart had any right to spout so insolently. But in the end, it was a losing hand. The man I'd dismissed as worthless had already registered me — and was looking down at me from above.
And the moment that scene resurfaced, far too late—
"....!!!"
— the agony slammed into every inch of my body.
"A... aaagh... agh...!"
A scream tore out of me, ugly beyond words.
"Stop thrashing!"
"What are you doing?! Help her!"
Having barely grasped where I was, I forced my head up through the agony to look at the man standing in the distance. The sight reached me through my blurred vision: he was slowly lowering the one foot he still had raised.
All he did was... kick me...?
It must have been an impact vast enough to sever memory itself — enough to simply crush an S-Class hunter's hardened body. On par with that tattered excuse of a boss bastard.
"F...uck...."
The curse spilled out on its own, aimed at that senior bastard. He'd been hiding his strength — and by an overwhelming margin, at that.
Son of a... b—
Maybe all this time — me, all of us — we had never been anything at all. And with doubt toward Guild Master Seo Yeram, who had buried this truth from the very beginning, taking root inside me, I slipped into darkness.
I looked at Shin Yuri, sent flying and smashed into the ground in a wretched state. Her upper and lower body torn apart messily, embedded in the pavement — it was an ugly sight. At some point, her blood had begun to spread, staining the ground around her.
An S-Class body won't die instantly from just this.
Cha Yujin's treatment — begun the moment she grasped what had happened — was in full swing. Just as I'd seen with Yoon Sihyeon, the light she spread was rapidly knitting the body back together.
"Ugh...!"
Her face was drawn with strain; she appeared to be pushing her mana to its very limit.
Right — she's only just come out of a raid. Her mana hasn't fully recovered.
Guild members hurriedly brought a mana recovery potion to her lips. A few others had stepped forward, wary, in my direction — and at the center of them stood Seo Yeram, holding her ground firmly and glaring at me.
"......."
Her expression was grave. I could glimpse her struggling to conceal the turmoil beneath it. The faces of the [Geobhwa] members were quite the sight as well — as if they simply could not believe what they were seeing.
I paid Seo Yeram and [Geobhwa] no mind. Instead, I inclined my head toward the reporters and citizens who were belatedly registering the scene in shock.
"I will be heading to [Mugan] from here on."
The declaration came, calm and flat.
"You are free to do as you please. Let me say it once more: I intend to resist with everything I have. As you've just seen."
The sight of Shin Yuri — until moments ago S-Class Rank 3 — collapsing without even managing a proper exchange was being broadcast live, in real time. In the silence, I turned and faced Seo Yeram.
"So — what will [Geobhwa]'s choice be, Guild Master Seo Yeram? South Korea's finest elite, holder of the nation's largest roster of S-Classes, are you not? Will you step forward for the citizens watching?"
"......"
The pinnacle of this country — the summit Seo Yeram desires. Such a thing demands the acknowledgment of the entire nation, and if she backed down here, she would lose no small measure of the public's hearts. Her record alone made that clear: she had consistently moved against those who broke the law, especially in incidents involving the awakened. Letting the criminal before her walk away would be fatal, even for her.
Shin Yuri had been one of those cases, too.
Seo Yeram threw herself into awakened incidents not merely to raise her public profile. It was to get her hands on useful talent — with her strings into the government, judicial problems could be smoothed over with ease. But the situation now was very different. The protagonist's power was a trauma to Seo Yeram. It was so overwhelmingly strong that she had planned to use him as an insurance policy one day, fully intending to discard him when the time came; for the road ahead of her, the fewer variables, the better.
"You... what exactly... are you...?"
Before any calculation, Seo Yeram simply could not make sense of the me standing before her. No — disbelief was the only sane response. I had inflicted critical injuries on Shin Yuri. That was never the kind of action the protagonist — a man utterly terrified of killing or harming anyone — would have taken.
Had it been my original self, she might have been confused. But the me of now is plainly different.
The complete opposite of everything Seo Yeram had blindly believed until now.
"Guild Master! Your orders...!"
"If we all go at him together!"
"We can take down that criminal bastard!"
"We have to make him pay for what he did to Yuri!"
The elites of [Geobhwa] were livid over what had been done to Shin Yuri — and unable to accept what they had just witnessed, they seemed bent on writing it off as a fluke.
Well, none of them are at full strength right now.
A defeat here might well make a rather convenient excuse for them. I had no intention of correcting that mistaken notion.
Crushing [Geobhwa] on my way out wouldn't be so bad, but...
A headache was slowly beginning to build. I knew, intuitively, that it was an omen.
I do owe Cha Yujin in more ways than one. Unexpectedly, at that.
I turned my back on [Geobhwa]. In passing, I flicked a single glance toward [Baekya]'s Yoon Sihyeon and Yoon Sia — and there it was, the expression twisting across her face, one I had never seen even in the original novel.
Well, then.
I had said all there was to say, and there was no longer any reason to remain here. Just as before, I poured strength into my right leg and rolled the ground with the tip of my foot. In that instant, with a tremendous roar, the floor caved in and shattered as though it had detonated — and leaving no small devastation in my wake, my body was already cleaving through the open air, faster than the eye could follow.