The Day After the Storm
The day after Choi Seongcheol died, the South Korean stock market shot up in a towering rally. The index surged a full ten percent, foreign capital flooding in by the boatload — and every last won of it was because of the Judgment Seat. Investors the world over had concluded that his very existence had freed Korea from the threat of gates entirely.
The price of the world's securities markets moved in lockstep with the Gate Index. A high index meant a safe country, so money poured in; a low one, and it drained away — because when a gate breached, corporations and everything else went up in smoke along with it.
Korea's Gate Index currently stood at 55. With Choi Seongcheol dead, the market ought to have collapsed. Nobody cared. Every stock on the board bled red — in Korean markets, red meant gains — and corporations and investors alike cheered.
Even Nine Lab, whose trading had only just been resumed after being suspended for stock manipulation, tasted an upswing for the first time in ages.
"What a waste. If I'd just held on, I'd have made five times my money."
Jang Juhyeok stood in silence, staring at the chart on his monitor. The most ferocious bull run the Korean market had seen in years. If he hadn't married into that family, this was the opportunity that would have pulled in hundreds of billions of won.
"You really shouldn't still be thinking like that, boss."
A man seated at the computer spoke with a worried look. His name was Kim Seojin — a lackey who had followed Jang Juhyeok for twenty years.
"I know. I know, that's exactly why it stings. Am I wrong?"
"Fair point. A market this strong... how many stocks are even at their daily limit?"
"A shame. A real shame. I wonder how our dear Assemblyman's doing these days?"
"Assemblyman Kang Hansu? He leads the ruling party. I'm sure he's living comfortably."
"Ha. The old fox used to run schemes with me a hundred times over. Laundered his money beautifully."
Jang Juhyeok drifted back to the swaggering days of his youth — locking arms with the head of a collapsing company and fleecing countless retail investors. God, it had been delicious.
"Well, you made it big yourself, didn't you, boss?"
"Me? My situation's not exactly what you'd call laundering, is it? My father-in-law knows everything."
"...That's true enough."
Jang Juhyeok pulled out a cigarette and stepped outside. An endless garden sprawled before his eyes.
Hunter Management Bureau Director Cheon Ilguk had turned the problem over in his mind again and again. How could he open a dialogue with the Judgment Seat? He called for Kim Woocheol.
"Did he respond?"
"He read the short message from before, but there's been no reply."
"So that's a no, then."
"Hmm..."
Cheon Ilguk wrestled with it a moment, then spoke. "Then I'll have to persuade the government myself."
He headed straight for the National Assembly. The president could come after.
"So you're proposing we create a negotiation table?"
It was Kang Hansu, the ruling party leader, who asked. A former corporate chairman, he had clawed his way to party leadership through a relentless career, and he was a frontrunner for the next presidential election besides.
"Correct. We offer the Judgment Seat a place at the negotiating table — and draw him out into the open."
"...Then the offer had better be nothing trivial."
The Judgment Seat was a terrifying man who dispensed summary execution on the spot. Getting someone like him to come to a negotiation was impossible with an ordinary proposal.
"We give him investigative authority."
The assembled lawmakers frowned. Handing a single man the investigative powers of both prosecution and police? It was beyond absurd.
"Have you lost your mind? I understand full well that we need the Judgment Seat, but that would shake the foundations of the state."
"Even if we agreed, the president would never permit it — and neither would the people."
Cheon Ilguk had come prepared for resistance. He began to speak, relentless and unbroken.
"Rest assured, whether or not we grant him investigative authority, he will punish criminals regardless. As of right now, does anyone here have a way to stop him? No? Then we must make him an instrument of the state. The moment he receives investigative authority, his actions are vested with overwhelming legitimacy. And what follows from that? The public will come to see the Judgment Seat as one of us — and soon enough, they'll exalt him as a national hero, the pride of Korea. Even the S-rank hunters will find it far harder to meddle in national affairs than they have until now. And above all — the most important thing about granting him authority is this: it gives us access to him. Granting authority requires his identity. It's unavoidable."
He drove that last point home. Luring in the Judgment Seat was his sincere aim — but if that failed, he needed, at minimum, to unmask him.
"That's not happening."
Kang Hansu rejected it flatly. The other legislators nodded along.
"Concentrating investigative power in one man's hands is the death of democracy."
Cheon Ilguk let out a bitter smile. You're just afraid I'll come investigating you. He left the National Assembly.
"Haah..."
Yoon Hayoung heaved a sigh. Valkyrie had agreed to take over the S-rank gate that should have been Choi Seongcheol's responsibility. The problem was that they had cleared an S-rank gate barely two weeks ago. The exhaustion hadn't fully faded yet — and neither had her guild members'.
"Seonho-yah. Aah, come on."
Lee Seonho brought over an iced Americano. Yoon Hayoung crammed the coffee into her mouth in great gulps, then crunched mercilessly through the remaining ice.
"What about the Divine Metal?"
"We've made offers to three core engineers for now. We told them we'd meet whatever conditions we can, but their asking price is brutal."
"...Just pay it. All of it."
"Understood. But isn't entering another S-rank gate right now pushing it?"
"What choice do we have? Even that old fossil at Cheongeom is nursing a headache over it."
Keeping six S-rank gates from breaching would require two guilds moving at full clip.
"It'd be nice if the Bureau would handle even one of them. They said they've already contacted Japan, right?"
The Bureau had arranged for Japanese assistance in anticipation of Choi Seongcheol's death.
"Yes."
"Looks like I need to have a word with the Bureau myself."
She rose from her seat.
"Right now? Do it by phone."
"This isn't a phone-call conversation. If more S-rank gates pile up on top of this situation, we can't respond."
"Got it."
"Oh, and contact the press too. Tell them to give the Judgment Seat hell. 'Because of you, our people are dying.' If he wanted to kill Choi Seongcheol, the least he could do is take responsibility."
"...You're joking, right?"
"Am I?"
Lee Seonho nodded. She had meant every word of it.
"Yoon Hayoung is here?"
Baek Jooho, head of the Gate Management Division, went out to receive her. Conversations with S-rank hunters were exhausting affairs. He listened patiently to her for the better part of half an hour.
"One S-rank gate is doable."
"That's our Director Baek for you. The Bureau's sitting on plenty of money — this is exactly the time to spend it, don't you think?"
Borrowing a single S-rank hunter cost upward of a hundred billion won. The state rarely lent them out at all, wary of exposing their strategic assets.
"We won't be accepting help from Japan."
At Baek Jooho's words, Yoon Hayoung tilted her head.
"Pardon?"
"We'll handle it ourselves."
She still couldn't make sense of what she was hearing. How exactly did a Bureau without a single S-rank hunter intend to clear an S-rank gate?
"I'm not following."
"We intend to clear it with A-ranks alone."
"What?"
For a moment Yoon Hayoung thought she'd misheard. A-ranks could not clear an S-rank gate — that was simple fact. She opened her mouth, dumbfounded.
"Ah. You're trying to thin out your A-rank surplus, aren't you? Cleanly, so no ugly questions get asked. In a gate, just like Choi Seongcheol. Am I right?"
She said it half in jest, but her expression was dead serious.
"We intend to make it an opportunity for blooming."
The Bureau Director had explained that Korea's decade-long drought of S-rank hunters was the S-ranks' own doing. Because they had always handled S-rank gates in perfect safety, the A-ranks below them had never been given the chance to cross the threshold of mortal danger. It sounded like a stretch — but there had been testimony from a hunter out of Sura Guild that Choi Seongcheol absolutely despised seeing A-ranks distinguish themselves in S-rank gates.
"No — Director Baek, have you gone insane? If you send A-rank hunters into that gate, every one of them dies."
"You needn't concern yourself with that. We'll manage."
"Haah... why would a man who's actually experienced S-rank combat say something like this? They die. All of them. Every last one."
Baek Jooho knew it too. But only those who endured that crucible ever became S-rank hunters. To show the firmness of his resolve, he gave no answer.
"Fine. Sure. It's your call. But since it obviously won't work, make absolutely sure you bring a Japanese guild in. If a gate breaches, that's not our problem, right?"
"You needn't worry about that either."
Yoon Hayoung stood. On her way out the door, she threw one last remark over her shoulder.
"Well, good luck getting A-ranks to line up for their own funerals."
The door closed, and Baek Jooho sighed. Just as she'd said, the odds that A-rank hunters would volunteer were vanishingly thin. Why would anyone gamble their life when they could live comfortably, earning plenty? It was precisely for this reason that the Bureau Director had grown even more certain Korea's future was dark.
"Who knows. If the man upstairs says open the gate, we open it."
Reading the posts written by the victims of the Nine Lab affair, Lee Hocheon fixed his next direction with certainty. White-collar criminals.
In some ways these were far graver crimes than drunk driving or school violence — and yet the sentences were lighter, and the public barely grasped their weight.
Because direct evidence is so hard to come by.
Economic crime left no visible damage for the eye to see, and it unfolded over years. By the time a victim realized they'd been swindled, everything was already finished. They felt stupid for having been deceived, blamed themselves — and with no evidence, they couldn't even file a report. Most simply suffered in silence and leaned on the mercy of time to keep living, but for some, families were destroyed and they ended their own lives.
South Korea was extraordinarily lenient toward economic criminals. There had been a case where a man who embezzled two hundred billion won was sentenced to a mere three years. Even when a victim's suicide followed, the courts ruled it unprovable — the reasons for suicide were "complex."
The United States, by contrast, applied a principle of zero tolerance and handed down sentences exceeding a hundred years. American economic criminals had, in fact, drawn their last breaths behind prison walls.
Wasn't it someone who said there are plenty of stupid people in the world, so money is easy to make?
Those were the words of a certain marketing entrepreneur — the same man who'd also let slip that health supplements only sell when they're expensive.
Stock manipulation first.
Without access to the Day of Judgment, identifying individuals was difficult, but the victims were posting in droves. The Nine Lab crew had been shown on the news being taken into custody, faces obscured. That was as good a place to start as any. Even with their faces hidden, so long as he perceived his target, he could kill them.
A river of blood was about to flow. The powerful were concentrated here more than anywhere else.
Seong Taejin, Korea's number-one ranked hunter, loved nothing more than drinking tea in his sprawling garden. Today, as always, he brewed a cup of white tea and savored it slowly. Everything about his bearing spoke of nobility — even his face had the look of an old scholar.
"Splendid."
Seong Taejin let the gentle breeze wash over him. It felt as though the crushing stress Choi Seongcheol had inflicted on him were simply blowing away.
The Judgment Seat.
He shook off the thought. When resting, one cast aside every stray notion. Only then was this hour not wasted.
But soon his brow twitched. In the distance, he could see someone running toward him in haste — and news carried at a run was never good. All the stress he'd worked so hard to forget came flooding back.
"Hah... hah..."
The man sprinting toward him was Jang Juhyeok. He dropped to his knees before Seong Taejin without a moment's delay.
"What is it?"
"It's... it's..."
Jang Juhyeok fumbled out his phone and pulled up the internet. He searched for the Judgment Seat and held the news articles up for his father-in-law to see.
Article after article of economic criminals dead — and every single one mentioned the Judgment Seat. He had begun executing white-collar criminals now, too.
"Tsk, tsk."
Seong Taejin clicked his tongue. Killing criminals without resting a single day — the man was a monster among monsters, through and through.
"Father. Please, save me."
Jang Juhyeok began to beg. In the past, he had amassed trillions of won through stock manipulation, and with that fortune he had married Seong Taejin's daughter — ten years his junior.
"Juhyeok-ah."
Seong Taejin called to his son-in-law. When his daughter had first brought the man home, he had been pleased by his wealth. Money, after all, was never a bad thing to have more of. But a background check revealed that his assets were built on fraud. He'd considered throwing him out — yet the money he possessed was far too dear to forfeit. So he had given his blessing. To his daughter's marriage.
"Yes, Father."
"I'm glad you came."
Seong Taejin took his hand and helped him to his feet. Jang Juhyeok couldn't fathom why his father-in-law was acting this way.
"If you die, my daughter and my grandchildren inherit the estate, don't they?"