Repair Complete
The Baekyang Guild.
Headquartered in Gwacheon, it was one of the rising guilds that had lately been stacking up impressive results and drawing the media's eye.
And its guild master was A-rank Hunter Shin Ye-eun.
"Haaaaah……"
She was currently slumped in her office chair, sighing so hard it seemed the floor might give way beneath her.
The reason was simple. Not long ago, the blacksmith who had been handling the Baekyang Guild's equipment had cut off all contact without a word of warning.
Rumors swirled. Some said he had died in a demonic-energy explosion. Others claimed demonic-energy poisoning had scrambled his brains. Still others insisted an overseas guild had reached out and he had skipped the country altogether. Whatever the truth, it did not change the conclusion: she was in serious trouble.
"…Do I actually need to hire a dedicated blacksmith?"
Korea's representative Top 10 Guilds. Opinions differed on which among them was the strongest, but the ten guilds all shared one thing in common.
Each of them kept at least one blacksmith-class hunter on the inside.
In this world, S-rank equipment was rarer than S-rank hunters. And the blacksmiths who could repair and enhance that equipment were rarer still. There was even a saying that merely awakening with the blacksmith class was enough to start you at a salary in the hundreds of thousands.
The catch, of course, was that the people who had actually collected that paycheck for more than a year could be counted on one hand.
"The dagger I was using was about to explode, so I tossed it… and now when am I supposed to get a new weapon? I'm actually going to lose my mind."
Their regular dungeon raid was in two days. On top of that, they had poured every last bit of cash into expanding the guild building recently, so there was no money left. And even if there had been, there was no guarantee she could find equipment that performed as well as her old dagger inside of two days.
In other words: she was screwed.
Just as she was sinking into despair, wondering whether she ought to take out a government loan, the office door burst open.
"G-Guild Master…!"
"……What's going on?"
"Well—something just showed up in front of the guild……"
What the employee held out was something roughly wrapped in newspaper. From the silhouette alone, it looked exactly like a dagger.
And stuck to the parcel was a single sticky note.
A sticky note that read:
"……"
She took the package from the employee and carefully unwrapped the newspaper.
Inside was, in fact, a dagger. And not just any dagger—one that looked exactly like the one she used to carry.
"…What is this? A replica?"
"I don't know either, Guild Master. When we ran it through the demonic-energy meter, the reading was normal—no, it was actually cleaner than when you first purchased it, but…"
"……"
"…Ah, Guild Master! There's another note here!"
The employee picked a sticky note up off the floor and handed it to Ye-eun. She started reading what was written on it at once. Surely this time there would be some hint as to what this mysterious object actually was—
"……"
What kind of lunatic went around tasting their equipment.
Ye-eun felt the tension drain right out of her. But then, telling someone not to do something was the surest way to make them want to check. She did not stick out her tongue—but she did lean in, put her nose to the dagger, and take a sniff.
Sniff sniff.
"……What is that smell."
It was not unpleasant. Almost savory, even. For reasons she could not name, it smelled… homey. Familiar.
Where on earth did this… ah.
The smell of a cat's paw pads. That warm, toasty scent people called toe-bean smell. It was exactly like the cat her family had kept at her parents' house when she was little.
But why would a weapon smell like that?
"……"
"Shall we send it in for a detailed inspection?"
"…No. I'll take a look myself."
The questions still had not been answered, but Ye-eun wrapped her hand around the dagger's hilt in a stance so familiar it was almost muscle memory.
First, a light swing.
Whoosh.
"……Huh."
That grip. That weight. Even the sharp sound of it cutting the air. No matter how she looked at it, this was the very dagger she had been holding and swinging until just a few days ago.
Who in the world…?
Had that blacksmith fixed her dagger as a last act of conscience before he left?
No. There was no way that rude bastard would do charity work without taking money. And she had discarded the thing in the first place.
Turning that over in her mind, she swung the dagger again.
A second time.
Whoosh.
……If not that, then could it be—
A third time.
Whoosh.
The dagger sliced through empty air just as lightly as before. …No. Not entirely the same.
"…! G-Guild Master…?!"
"Yes? ……Huh?"
A dark crimson mist began to pour from the tip of the dagger.
Shhhhing…
From inside the mist came the unending sound of edges striking edges. It was a mist made of blades.
The bladed fog that had sprayed out in several streams gathered into one mass and formed a ring.
And then.
"……"
"……"
Through the cascading dust, Ye-eun and the Baekyang Guild employee opened their eyes.
A cool breeze touched their faces.
Half of the office—on the thirteenth floor, at the very top of the building—had been blown clean away. This was a building that would have taken nothing more than a few scratches even if Ye-eun, an A-rank hunter, had swung a weapon with everything she had.
"……What the fuck."
What the hell was this thing.
"Ugh…… it's awful. Have you no more of that candy? My tongue still feels coated."
"We're out of scorched-rice candy… would you like a red ginseng drop? It's rather sweet in its own way."
"Anything will do, just give it here. Nom. …Bleh, ptoo, ptoo! What is this?! It tastes worse than dirt!"
"……Red ginseng candy is good, though."
Ptoo ptoo ptoo ptoo.
I will never understand Carson's taste, not even in ten thousand years.
Earlier I had asked Chloe whether this world had desserts, and she had shown me something. Djonk? Dyunkku? Something along those lines. He should have bought some of those ahead of time, tsk tsk.
"Uuuugh……"
"Shall I go out and buy something? If I ask for what elementary schoolers—no, what little girls like, that should work."
"Ugh… never mind. As if I could not endure something as trivial as this……"
"I'm sorry. I asked too much of you…"
"Tut. Too much, nothing of the sort. It merely tasted a bit off. My power was not lacking in the slightest."
It was, in fact, lacking.
My mana had drained right out of me. My hands were shaking. My eyes stung a little, too. But if I said I was spent after fixing a mere five items, I would lose face as a Demon Lord.
I needed to find a way to recover my power, and soon.
"A word, Carson."
"Yes, my Lord."
"The dagger, and the rest of them—why did you return every last item to its owner? I am sure you had your reasons, but I find it somewhat difficult to understand."
"Ah, as to that…"
Which was why I was not pleased with Carson's decision. All he had to do was show them the items I had repaired and tell them to bow their heads. Or at the very least, demand gold and jewels.
But he seemed to have had a plan of his own.
"First of all… those items were never ours to begin with."
"You said they had been thrown away."
"Thrown away is not the same as ownerless."
Carson's explanation went like this. Modern equipment, if mishandled even slightly, could cause accidents involving demonic energy, and so a record had to be kept from purchase all the way through disposal. That was how he had been able to look up those records and return the weapons to their original owners in the first place.
It was a violation of the rules, so he would not take money for it. Fine. Any demon who understood honor would do the same. I followed him that far.
However.
"You might at least have told them that I was the one who did it."
"Pardon?"
"Of course, I understand it would be embarrassing to go around saying our Demon Lord possesses such a paltry authority, but……"
"…N-no! That isn't it at all!"
Carson started explaining himself, cold sweat pouring off him. He could have just told me all this in advance.
At any rate. Apparently the real reason was something else.
"Hah… Suppose, for a moment, that someone learned you could enhance a piece of equipment worth ten billion—no, a million gold. What do you think they would do?"
"They would naturally bring me a million gold… no, five million gold at the very least, and bow their heads, would they not?"
"I would love it if people thought that way."
"……?"
"But some people think like this: if we just snatch that child and lock her up, we won't have to pay a thing."
"……"
"That is the kind of era this is. Especially among those strong enough to meet your standards, my Lord—whether they like it or not, that way of thinking tends to become second nature."
I was stunned.
A subordinate, as I had always understood it, was a being who marveled at their master's greatness, who praised you for merely breathing, who would die if you told them to die. The filthy ones who spent all their time plotting to stab you in the back had been maybe one in a million. And now they were the majority?
"……Then there is no one left who would stand at my side? Of course I have you, Carson, but still…"
"Well… it is not as though there are none at all."
"Hm…?"
"Just wait a little, my Lord."
Looking at my dejected face, Carson flashed a grin. It was the most self-assured expression I had seen on him since I had awakened.
The largest awakened community in Korea. The KR Hunter Gallery. Commonly known as HuntGal.
Not every user of HuntGal was actually awakened, of course. Real awakened. People pretending to be real awakened. People living for the day they became real awakened. People who just liked stirring up trouble. And various others besides, all packed into a very active community.
And today, an issue had set that Hunter Gallery on fire.
The scale of the damage varied. There were places like the Baekyang Guild, where a building had been blown apart. At one guild, equipment had gone berserk inside a dungeon and torn into another guild's members.
Fortunately, none of the incidents had led to casualties. But a string of simultaneous equipment-related accidents was more than enough to grab the attention of a community that had been bored out of its mind.
It was enough that conspiracy posts like this one started going up.
And then.
The morning after the incidents, a post with the following title sat at the very top of the gallery.