Chapter 41
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 41
Chapter Title: Raon Guild (1)
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When I remained silent, Park Si-woo clicked his tongue and answered reluctantly.
“I told you to take the video down.”
It would’ve been nice if you’d just said that from the start.
Contrary to his calm face, Park Si-woo was quite impatient.
“Then let’s start with the annoying matter.”
“The Hunter Association has requested an aptitude test for you. For the record, I was against it.”
An aptitude test. Just as Park Si-woo said, it was truly an annoying matter.
Normally, when Hunters awaken, they undergo a certain period of training as trainees.
During that process, they do take something called an ‘aptitude test.’
They do, but…
How strong could a newly awakened kid possibly be?
It was basically just a way for the Association to check for promising prospects or potential troublemakers.
The status window only listed one’s abilities; nowhere did it say ‘A-Rank Hunter’ or ‘B-Rank Hunter.’
The ranking system was nothing more than a convenient way for the Association and Hunters to manage things.
Park Si-woo briefly recited my personal record.
“Kang Han-gyeol, unaffiliated throughout his time as a student. Estimated rank: D. Victim of an accident in a Fake Dungeon during the final dungeon exam, after which he suddenly began serving a god. Became a C-Rank Hunter within three months of awakening.”
There was nothing particularly unusual about the record.
The jump from D to C was a bit fast, but I certainly hadn't used any tricks.
“It’s all true. What did I do wrong?”
“Your actions yesterday were excessive.”
“Does the Association have time to be interested in a Hunter like me?”
“Didn’t I just say? I was against it.”
Park Si-woo kept giving me cryptic signals.
If Park Si-woo, a guild representative, was personally opposing it, no Association official would have the power to object.
For it to be pushed through anyway meant it was the will of someone so high up that even Park Si-woo couldn't stop them.
‘Who could it be?’
It wouldn’t be Choi Soo-hyun.
No matter how hard I thought, no one came to mind.
After a moment, I gave up trying to figure it out.
If they were truly interested in me, we would meet eventually, whether I liked it or not.
There was no reason to stir up trouble already.
“Yesterday’s incident was a… a little excessive, wasn’t it?”
“I’m glad you realize that.”
“It doesn’t really sink in when you say it with that deadpan face, you know?”
“Believe it or not, I was quite surprised. If there’s anything else that might surprise me further, I’d appreciate you telling me now.”
His expression barely changed, so I thought he wasn’t surprised at all.
Then again, even I had to admit I might have gotten a bit carried away.
I quietly raised both hands.
“There’s nothing like that. Everyone has a special move or two, right?”
“I suppose you don’t have an ultimate move, then?”
“You call that a joke? I don’t… well, I can’t say I don’t! Damn it. Ah, whatever. What’s the point if I can’t even use it?”
I deliberately showed Park Si-woo the ‘Ring of Ishtar’ that Choi Soo-hyun had given me.
“That’s Choi Soo-hyun’s ring.”
“He lent it to me.”
“I know.”
The 5% that always bothered me in my status window was the amount of power I possessed.
“The aptitude test isn’t a big deal, so just get it over with.”
“By any chance, if I do well on the test, could I become an A-Rank Hunter right away or something?”
“That won’t happen.”
Park Si-woo drew a firm line.
My overall abilities were still C-Rank.
The only glimmer of hope was that my stamina was barely B+.
To become a B-Rank Hunter, you needed a certain number of completed dungeon raids, a certain amount of contribution points, and a letter of recommendation from an A-Rank Hunter.
It was a complicated system in many ways.
I made a blatantly annoyed face.
Park Si-woo uncrossed his legs and tapped the glass table in front of him with his fingertips.
“Next is the matter of my apology.”
He leaned back on the sofa, crossing his arms.
His posture was the very picture of arrogance, but it didn’t particularly bother me.
But did I have any reason to receive an apology from Park Si-woo?
No matter how I thought about it, the opposite seemed far more likely.
As the silence stretched on, the one with something to say finally spoke.
“Choi Soo-hyun came to see me yesterday. All the way to my house. I thought I had treated you quite well, but this is unfortunate.”
He was talking about the Choi Soo-hyun incident.
Even while discussing something that should be upsetting, Park Si-woo’s expression remained largely unchanged.
He was just as peculiar as Choi Soo-hyun.
“He was going to find out soon anyway, so what’s the big deal about telling him first? Weren’t you two friends? The one who hid it is in the wrong. Is it my fault?”
Park Si-woo stared at me in silence.
I reluctantly apologized.
“Alright, I’m sorry. All I did was tell Choi Soo-hyun what happened in the dungeon.”
“Choi Soo-hyun seemed interested in your god. What’s that about?”
“I feel like the tables have turned here, but it’s just as it sounds.”
“Do you really think you can sway Choi Soo-hyun?”
Sway him? That guy’s mind was made up a long time ago.
I was a little anxious, but not without confidence.
Besides, I wasn’t the one who brought up the name of the god Soter in the first place. The reason Choi Soo-hyun was delaying joining was likely to get his own affairs in order.
Park Si-woo must have had his own suspicions about why Choi Soo-hyun was being so nice to me.
He was clearly asking now that yesterday’s events had led him to a rough conclusion.
“If Choi Soo-hyun were to serve the same god as you… he must be aiming for a partnership contract. What a hassle.”
“A partnership?”
“That’s a story for later.”
Park Si-woo brushed it off, as if there was no point in explaining it now.
If that was Choi Soo-hyun’s game, I decided to let them sort it out themselves when the time came.
I’d heard about the annoying task, and I’d apologized to Park Si-woo.
All that was left was the command.
The word ‘command’ didn’t sit well with me.
“Finally, regarding the command. You will be participating in a joint dungeon raid with the Raon Guild. They made the initial nomination, and I did not oppose it.”
Park Si-woo stated clearly that he did not oppose the Raon Guild dungeon expedition.
Therefore, it was an order.
‘What a straightforward guy.’
He was uncomplicated and direct, which I actually liked.
“You keep having friction with the Raon Guild.”
The orc I saw during the first field materialization, and now this Mothman—both were fields the Raon Guild had intended to handle.
The first time ended as a minor incident, but this time, I had broken through a barrier set up by a Raon Guild Hunter and taken care of the boss. There was no room for excuses.
I couldn’t say it was completely unintentional.
“On a different note, about that CCTV incident from before. Just as you said, the Raon Guild guys filed a false report with the Association.”
“See, I knew it. I told you they were suspicious.”
Park Si-woo gave a slight shrug, evading a direct answer.
It wasn’t anything new for guilds to report to the Association in a way that favored them.
The Association was aware of this and let a lot of it slide.
The problem was the recent sharp increase in the failure rate of C and D-Rank dungeons.
Unlike in the past, C and D-Rank dungeons weren't particularly dangerous, but they were the most common type to appear.
“Do you know someone named Ahn Joo-hye?”
“The female Hunter who went into the dungeon with me.”
She was the Hunter I had planned to investigate before Kim Yoo-han ruined it.
“A few days ago, she requested to speak with me directly.”
It was extremely rare for a D-Rank Hunter like Ahn Joo-hye to have a one-on-one meeting with the guild representative, Park Si-woo.
However, since Park Si-woo had just heard about the Raon Guild from me and was investigating, he decided it was worth meeting her.
Ahn Joo-hye confessed to Park Si-woo that she was the one who caused the ant cave incident.
“Apparently, there’s someone approaching Hunters, offering to grant their wishes if they do a single favor. I’d heard rumors, but I never thought it was connected to this. In any case, it seems she wanted to join the Raon Guild.”
“She believed such a foolish thing?”
If a stranger appeared and offered to grant your wish, being suspicious should be the normal reaction.
I was so dumbfounded I was at a loss for words.
“Scams like that have been around forever, so it’s not particularly surprising. When you’re struggling, you’ll clutch at any straw. I can understand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ahn Joo-hye has been a D-Rank Hunter for seven years.”
“She didn’t seem like someone with seven years of experience.”
Ahn Joo-hye looked to be around my age, maybe a year or two older.
I didn’t remember hearing her age, but I knew she wasn’t old.
If her experience was disproportionately long for her age, there was only one thing to suspect.
“Just how old was she when she awakened?”
“Fifteen.”
If she awakened at fifteen, seven years of experience was certainly possible.
Ahn Joo-hye explained that the mysterious man told her all she had to do was enter a dungeon, wound the boss monster, and implant a single shard of glass.
Considering that glass shard was the medium that turned into a ‘Thought-Form,’ it was clear that man never had any intention of granting the Hunter’s wish.
“I investigated the Hunters who died in recent failed dungeons.”
Hunters like Ahn Joo-hye who had been stuck in the same place for a long time, those who deluded themselves into thinking they were being treated unfairly, or those with massive debts. Their stories were all different, but they had one thing in common.
They were all mired in a misfortune they believed was the worst in the world.
Someone was intentionally targeting only such Hunters.
“That’s vile.”
To exploit people at their lowest moment… whoever it was had a truly twisted hobby.
“It is vile,” Park Si-woo added, as if in agreement.
Currently in Korea, there was a specific place that would suffer the most from the rising failure and death rates in C and D-Rank dungeons.
“The first, as you know, is our guild.”
Though the public derided Aria Guild as a guild of minor gods, it remained a major guild that had secured the most Awakened Ones in Korea.
Many Hunters said they would rather be in Aria Guild than face discrimination in other guilds.
The number of Hunters serving major gods was hard to ignore, but so was the larger number of those who didn’t.
Every year, Aria Guild handled 30-40% of all C and D-Rank dungeons that appeared in Korea.
“And the second?”
“The Raon Guild.”
“The Raon Guild handles a significant portion of the remaining C and D-Rank dungeons. They’ve apparently been experiencing similar incidents recently.”
“You mean someone approaching their Hunters, like with Ahn Joo-hye?”
“Yes. That place has just as many people with complicated stories as we do.”
“Complicated stories?”
“There are such matters.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, but rather that it’s a difficult topic to discuss.”
If it was a difficult topic, it could only be related to the god Lux, whom the Raon Guild served.
The majority of the Raon Guild were Hunters who served the god Lux.
In Aria Guild, aside from the guild representative and the executives known as masters, there wasn’t much of a hierarchy among the general Hunters.
The Raon Guild, on the other hand, was very strict in that regard.
The higher the contribution points offered to their god, the better the treatment within the guild.
The Raon Guild, which was the second most active in clearing C and D-Rank dungeons after Aria, must have already suspected that something was amiss with the current situation.
Thinking about it simply, the only guild that stood to gain from an increase in the Raon Guild’s dungeon failure rate was Aria Guild.
“It seems they suspect us.”
This is a total turf war.