Seeking the Aid of the Baekya Guild
The world was fixated on the movements of the Rank 1 S-Class hunter who had emerged from the portal and declared his retirement.
Even as most reactions hardened into criticism and public denunciation, there were those who saw the whole affair through an entirely different lens. Among them, two people were exchanging opinions in the meeting room of the Baekya Guild.
Yoon Sihyeon, Guild Master of Baekya and the Rank 4 S-Class hunter of the Republic of Korea, renowned for his cryomancy, glared at the Rank 1 S-Class hunter on the screen.
"...A monster."
It was a clichéd reaction, but there was no other way to put it into words.
All the man had done was plant his foot upon the ground. A single, utterly simple act, and yet the aftermath it unleashed made eyes bulge. If he had willed it, a massacre could very well have unfolded right then and there.
Watching the faintest glimpse of the Rank 1 S-Class's power play out over and over, Yoon Sihyeon sank deep into thought.
Most awakened were not strong from the start. The common path was to hunt the Tower's monsters, gradually accumulate experience, and raise one's level of mastery step by step.
But as an S-Class powerhouse, he could feel it in his bones: the man must have wielded that overwhelming strength since long before the Tower even came to exist.
What he could not fathom was how someone possessing such power had lived quietly as an ordinary human being all this time.
"What did the investigation turn up?"
His younger sister Yoon Sia, the Vice Guild Master of Baekya and its de facto secretary, let out a sigh.
"Nothing to show for it. I'm ashamed to say."
Within the guild's walls, they were not family but strictly Guild Master and Vice Guild Master. In her role as secretary, Yoon Sia bowed her head deeply and formally. It meant the investigation had gone nowhere.
Given all the data they had compiled over the years—data that should have been amassed by default on a Rank 1 S-Class who belonged to their rival, the Geobhwa Guild—the silence was damning. But the answer had been negative.
"You truly came up with nothing at all?"
"Embarrassing as it is, that's correct."
Competing as it did with Geobhwa, Baekya was a guild with considerable renown in its own right. Information advantage was an indispensable asset, so they had invested in it freely—spared no expense hiring talent for it. And yet they had failed to dredge up a single thing about the Rank 1 S-Class.
...How curious.
For information to be buried this thoroughly meant the state itself had been controlling it directly. And if that control had stretched unbroken from long ago all the way to the present, it was proof—proof that the secret was worth the effort, and that the danger of exposing it ran proportionally deep.
The sudden retirement announcement, too. What on earth happened behind closed doors?
The final-floor raid of the Tower was the event the entire world was watching. Countless guilds barred from participating, and Baekya alongside them, could hardly afford not to prepare for what came after.
If the raid failed, they would have to respond accordingly. But if Geobhwa succeeded—then they would be worrying for the very survival of the guild.
After all, Geobhwa's Seo Yeram had never made a secret of her ambition. The grand unification of Korea's hunter guilds: a collective that would stand above even the government and the Hunter Association, with everyone placed beneath Geobhwa's dominion. And once that happened, the world Seo Yeram dreamed of would rule this nation outright.
I never did like that woman.
Her thinking was arrogant to its core—befitting the strength of a Rank 2 S-Class, perhaps, but insufferable all the same. That was exactly why, when she had come peddling her offer for Baekya to join Geobhwa, he had refused on the spot and founded his own guild instead.
The other S-Classes had been swayed by her silver tongue and signed on, folding themselves into Geobhwa's ranks. But Yoon Sihyeon, by temperament, despised having anyone perched above his head. That didn't mean he harbored ambitions as excessive as Seo Yeram's. As long as he could protect the world of his family and friends, that was enough for him.
His sister Yoon Sia, for her part, dreamed rather different dreams.
"I'd like to meet him, at least once."
"...Guild Master, honestly, I can't recommend it. He's a retired hunter, after all."
Even filtered through a screen, the man's presence was anything but welcoming. More than anything, that gaze of his terrified Yoon Sia. It wasn't even fixed on her, and still it carried such intensity that she felt it might see straight through to her innermost thoughts. He was the last person on earth she wanted to face.
"We do it anyway. All it takes is preparing a suitable price."
In any case, one thing was certain: there was discord inside Geobhwa. Now that the man had retired, recruitment might be off the table, but information would still be within reach.
The armor discarded in the plaza had been examined and confirmed as garbage dressed up in a gaudy shell. It was not hard to infer what kind of treatment he must have received within Geobhwa, for the Rank 1 S-Class to have been handed equipment of such wretched quality.
Have I been overestimating Seo Yeram?
The Seo Yeram he knew was pathetically, brutally meticulous. She would never have neglected the treatment and management of her own S-Classes—not when her ambition demanded better. Which meant the Rank 1 S-Class might well have been a man far easier to exploit than anyone had guessed.
And yet today's events suggested that situation had just changed.
So this is as far as I can get right now.
Anything beyond this would require meeting him face to face. They couldn't even obtain basic personal details like where he was currently living, so the immediate priority was to trace his movements from the plaza in real time—CCTV footage, eyewitness reports, anything they could pull.
He had, of course, already given the orders.
Yoon Sihyeon sat waiting for the fresh news that would come when someone opened the meeting room door. And just then, he heard the sound of the door swinging open.
So—where should I be heading right now?
Flipping through my knowledge of the original story, I started mapping out zones that could sustain a long-term disappearance.
The first candidate was the Hunter Containment Facility in Yongsan District. It came equipped with special systems capable of sealing away a hunter's abilities, or damping their power drastically down to that of an ordinary civilian. Given how far beyond the rules the protagonist's strength was, I couldn't be sure how low it could actually be brought—but as a training ground for learning to slam the brakes on myself, it would serve nicely.
The problem was that there was no way to slip inside under a false identity, not right now. Even if there were, I'd need to remain hidden for a long stretch of time, and the moment I was discovered inside, the odds were high that the government and Seo Yeram would catch wind of it and come looking. And given the nature of the facility, I might even end up trapped—sealed in, isolated.
Next option.
The second was infiltrating the lawless zone known as Mugan. It sat on the outskirts of Seoul, a gathering place for those who rejected the Association and the guilds and refused to live under the state's control. It was also a district steeped in every cliché of the hunter genre—pleasure quarters, black markets, illegal auctions.
Even powerhouses who had refused a rank entirely and yet rivaled S-Class in strength had gathered there, which was precisely why the government could never simply erase it. In the original story, it was also where the protagonist, liberated from the rift, had built up his power and bided his time, waiting for his moment of revenge.
There was a ten-year gap between then and now, but as a reader I knew the place intimately—down to its finest details—which made it an excellent spot to vanish into.
The problem, once again, was getting in.
Those who have committed no crime cannot live in Mugan.
That was the single founding principle the place was built upon. Back then, the protagonist had been branded humanity's traitor, so Mugan had welcomed him with open arms. But I had only retired; I hadn't committed any crime yet.
Of course... chances are I will soon enough.
If Geobhwa pinned the blame for their failed raid on me, then the moment that story hit the airwaves, Mugan would welcome my position as well.
The problem is timing.
I had to make it to the outskirts of Seoul without anyone catching a glimpse of me along the way—dodging the CCTV cameras plastered across every street and the eyes of the citizens themselves. And since I still had no brakes, my strength and abilities were effectively off the table. Short of a genuine emergency, I would have to restrain myself as much as possible.
It was stifling, I'll admit. The temptation to cut loose and use my power freely gnawed at me. But I couldn't. This world might have been a novel once—but it was undeniably reality now.
Anyone watching me might have called me ridiculous for it. Still, I didn't want to hurt anyone. Killing was no different. This world had not yet shown me malice or done me harm. Whatever grudge I held belonged to the original author—or whoever the mastermind was—who had transmigrated me into this body. I had no desire to swing this power at people who were simply trying to live their lives.
...Here we are.
Where I had headed straight after slipping out of the protagonist's home was the guild tower bearing the insignia of Baekya.
Yoon Sihyeon and Yoon Sia—the siblings. Of the two, Yoon Sia was a figure of real importance in the original story. Ten years from now, in a world dominated by the government and Geobhwa, she would lose her home and her guild, and even Yoon Sihyeon would be murdered. A fugitive afterward, Yoon Sia would cross paths with the protagonist in Mugan—beaten, broken, half-dead—and come to aid him in his revenge.
She, too, would be nursing a burning hatred toward Geobhwa and Seo Yeram, surviving on vengeance alone. By both her backstory and the arc of the story itself, she was destined to become the protagonist's comrade.
I gain the aid of the Baekya Guild.
I lowered my head and pulled the mask back over my face. If the negotiation went well, the question of where to hide—whether the containment facility or Mugan—would resolve itself. I had to make certain that it did.
Without a moment's hesitation, I walked into the guild tower.