A Nation Held Hostage
Guild Sura had announced it was withdrawing from every gate below S-rank.
According to their statement, they intended to hold that line until sd1234 — the man known as the Judgment Seat — showed his face. Barely two days after Choi Jinwoo's death, the move was so brazen that not only public opinion but the other guilds themselves began to raise their voices.
The backlash was overwhelming. Even the fact that they were only keeping S-rank gates struck people as off. If you're going to do it, do it all — why stop at S-rank?
Whatever the public thought of it, Sura's message had landed exactly as intended.
Yoon Hayoung, head of Valkyrie, read Sura's announcement and let out a hollow laugh.
"Is this guy insane or what?"
"Looks like it, actually."
Lee Seongjun beside her nodded in agreement. "How many gates does Sura clear, and they want to hand them all off? We're drowning as it is — the man's a lunatic."
Someone had to absorb Sura's workload if the gates were to be kept under control. That burden would fall on the Bureau and the remaining guilds.
"I'd guess this is aimed at exactly the reaction you're having, Master."
"A pervert? He wants me to curse him out? Oh, I'll give him plenty."
Yoon Hayoung and Choi Seongcheol had never gotten along. For that matter, no S-rank hunters ever did — by definition, they were all vying for the same power.
"No, I mean the real play. He's dumping all the blame onto the Judgment Seat. You're all suffering because of the Judgment Seat. That's the narrative he's building."
"So he does politics too. And he does it dirty."
"It's actually pretty effective, though. If public opinion turns against the vigilante, the executions stop meaning anything."
"So the rest of us should just take the losses for him, is that it?"
"Well. Something like that, yeah."
"Who does that man think he is, a king? Get ready."
"Ready for what?"
Hayoung rose from her seat and pulled the sword hanging in the corner of the room from its mount.
"We're going to Sura Guild. I'm not making my kids work overtime every night."
"Wha— hold on, wait!"
Lee Seongjun hurried to stop her. She clearly meant to square off against Asura himself, and Valkyrie's strength alone was a little short for that.
"It might be better to apply pressure together with Cheon Ilguk."
"Ha. Do you know how long that old man and Seongcheol have been in bed together? He'll bend over backwards to help. If anything, he'll try to talk me out of it."
"Hmm... still, on our own it's a bit much. Let's at least gather statements from the Bureau and the other guilds—"
"Shut up and get ready. That will go over so well with a man like Choi Seongcheol."
The moment she walked out, a resigned Lee Seongjun called for a car.
"Director, what do we do?"
Having confirmed Sura Guild's position, the Hunter Management Bureau convened an emergency countermeasure meeting.
"Do about what? They're telling us to clean up after them, aren't they?"
"We have to stop them."
Baek Jooho, head of the Gate Management Division, spoke with grave concern. "If only we could. Korea's Gate Index is at 55 right now. If Sura pulls out, it drops to 45. That is a national emergency."
The Gate Index was a quantified measure of how much control a nation held over its gates. Below 50, containment became difficult; drop to 40 and you required foreign assistance.
"No — they said they'd keep managing S-rank. So we're looking at about 50, aren't we?"
"You know full well that 50 is still a crisis. Why are you doing this, sir?"
"Forget talking Seongcheol down. That's a waste of time."
The Director knew Choi Seongcheol all too well. He was a cunning creature who knew exactly how to wield his own strength.
"Several dangerous gates are active right now — ones assigned to Sura. The capital region has enough manpower, but the provinces are a serious problem."
"Then dispatch hunters to the provinces. Request support from the nearby guilds too."
"And the islands? Most of the island gates were Sura's responsibility. We don't have the personnel to cover those as well."
"Hmm..."
The Director frowned.
At some point, Choi Seongcheol had stepped forward and volunteered to take the island gates — Baengnyeongdo, Ulleungdo, and the rest — under Sura's banner. The Bureau and every other guild had thrown both hands up in welcome. No hunter dreamed of getting posted and stuck on some island. Only now, looking back, did it seem there had been a reason.
"Put every helicopter we have into rotation and open them up to the other guilds. I'll clear it with air traffic control myself."
"Understood. But the hunters on the ground can only hold out so long. Unless Valkyrie or Cheon Ilguk steps in aggressively, a breach is only a matter of time."
The two men's conversation carried on, and Kim Woocheol, seated among the attendees, found his eyes drifting back to the Director.
What the man had revealed yesterday had shaken him badly.
No new S-rank in ten years — and the reason is the S-ranks themselves.
South Korea had produced not a single S-rank hunter since Choi Seongcheol. Japan and China next door, meanwhile, had each turned out at least five.
According to the Director, that was no accident: the S-ranks — Choi Seongcheol foremost among them — had orchestrated it. The rationale bordered on conspiracy theory, and yet it was disturbingly logical, and there was evidence to back it up.
Not that it could be fully trusted yet.
So the S-ranks are blocking the A-ranks' Blossoming...
Blossoming. A concept of breaking through a wall — and to do it, a hunter had to cross the threshold of death again and again. Through it, a hunter grew exponentially stronger.
The Director believed that everything — the undoing of all of it — might begin with the Judgment Seat.
Lee Hocheon woke in the morning and checked the news. Sura's announcement had thrown everything into chaos.
Keeping the S-ranks to themselves, huh...
It was a bold gambit, no question — but they had refused to give up the one thing that mattered most: the S-rank gates. Revenge, it seemed, was not worth surrendering everything for.
Their intent was so transparent that it actually let some of the steam out of him. If they truly meant to squeeze him, they should have abandoned the S-ranks too.
After all, he had visited the gates yesterday to check his own abilities.
I can cover everything up to A-rank.
Using the small hours of the night, he had toured every gate from C-rank to S-rank — just a taste at each entrance. He could kill everything inside with his skill alone, and without it, he could handle anything up to A-rank on his own two feet.
Even if one breaks, I can respond.
An A-rank breach would cause real damage, true — but nothing worth comparing to an S-rank. And unless the government had lost its mind, it would clearly rush to clear the high-grade gates first. Which meant anything that did break would be B-rank or below.
At that level, killing the boss alone was enough to suppress a breach with ease.
I'm not the one who's going to be under pressure.
If anything, the pressure would fall on Sura Guild. The moment a gate broke, the public would stop blaming the Judgment Seat for the damage — because the Judgment Seat would be the one solving it.
And the other guilds won't just sit on their hands either.
Common sense said no sane institution would tolerate an act of unilateral hostage-taking like this. Someone was bound to step forward.
The ones who have to endure this aren't on my side.
Meanwhile, the manager of Judgment Day had organized Sura Guild's criminal roster and sent it over shortly after Choi Jinwoo's death.
"You may not enter."
Sura's hunters barred Yoon Hayoung's way. She gave a faint smile, then let her expression harden.
"Move. Unless you feel like dying."
The hunters swallowed hard — but their master's orders were absolute: no entry without an appointment, no exceptions. Not even for Yoon Hayoung, the woman they called the Brain God.
"Not moving? You do realize you can't stop me anyway. You really want to take a beating before I walk in?"
"..."
"Fine, fine. Have it your way."
Crackle—!
She cracked her fists together and violent sparks burst across her knuckles. The hunters immediately fell back and drew their weapons.
But in that brief, split-second gap, she was already inside their reach.
KWA-BOOM!
Her fist buried itself in one hunter's face and cratered the floor beneath him. The fallen man convulsed as if electrocuted, electricity dancing across his body.
The hunter beside him looked down at that sight, felt his will to fight drain away, and lowered his weapon.
She strode through the entrance, and Lee Seongjun hurried after her. The interior of the building rang with the sharp, unhurried click of heels on marble.
"Hello there?"
Having marched straight to Choi Seongcheol's office, she waved a hand in greeting. Yoon Hayoung was a full ten years his junior.
"I was planning to call you soon. Impatient as ever."
"What, were you going to offer me money? Oh dear, whatever shall I do. I'm just drowning in it."
She took a seat, dripping sarcasm.
"A hundred kilograms of Divine Metal. Will that do?"
Hayoung's face twisted at the offer.
Divine Metal was an alloy refined from mana stones, used in the crafting of weapons and artifacts. Its manufacture demanded cutting-edge technique and astronomical expense, making it extraordinarily rare. In all of Korea, only Sura Guild could produce it.
"You refused to sell it no matter how much we begged. Family must really matter to you."
"I've got nothing to discuss with a woman who can't even land a marriage. Endure it for ten days."
"...Ten days for a hundred kilos of Divine Metal. Come on, throw in a little more. You'd have given the old fossil Cheon Ilguk more than that."
"A hundred and ten. Not a gram more."
For all his earlier refusal to budge, she accepted the offer without another word. The whole world was trying to buy Divine Metal, and in an entire year, not even ten kilograms had been secured.
A week passed.
No gate had broken yet, but the hunters were worn to the bone. The same people who had spent the first days cursing Sura Guild were now swinging that arrow straight at the Judgment Seat.
"Coward won't come out. Just keeps killing criminals and hiding."
"At this rate we die before the criminals do. Bastard."
The Judgment Seat offered no response of any kind, and simply kept executing.
School violence. Random assaults. Hunter-on-hunter violence. As if intent on ripping assault out at the root, the attackers were punished without mercy.
And as the scope widened to include assault, hunters began dying in numbers too. The overwhelming majority of them wore Sura's colors.
"Sura guys did like throwing punches... can't say this isn't a taste of their own medicine."
"The guy who jumped me got it too."
Under the Judgment Seat's relentless consistency, public opinion that had favored Choi Seongcheol began to shift, degree by degree.
The problem was the gates.
And on the eighth day, at last, what everyone had feared came to pass.
On the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province, a gate broke for the first time in three years.
Monsters poured out, and the civilians evacuated with practiced speed.
The media rushed out footage from the scene alongside the report.
A massive gray one-eyed monster — a good five meters tall — was striding toward the city with an axe in hand. Behind it came a tide of wolf-like and boar-like creatures. All told, the horde numbered well over two hundred.
A dozen-odd hunters who arrived shortly after moved to intercept them. On paper, the odds were crushing — but kill the boss, and the rest would fall apart.
The viewership climbed at a frantic rate, and before long every broadcast platform in the country was carrying the live feed.
Just as the two sides were about to clash, the one-eyed monster dropped its axe.
A wolf monster's body split cleanly in half.
The hunters locked in standoff seized the opening and surged forward —
— and then the monster's thick arm rose into empty air.
And at a horrifying speed, it began to throttle itself.
Crack. Crack.
The sound of its vertebrae snapping went out live to the entire nation as the one-eyed monster toppled forward, face-first into the ground.