Chapter 56
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 56
Chapter Title: Misunderstandings Breed Misunderstandings (4)
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The Association staff dispatched to the scene of a fight between Hunters were already feeling dizzy, unsure how to handle the situation.
A moment later.
A new model Ferrari approached one side of the residential street.
An Association employee approached Soo-hyun as he got out of the car.
Forced to make a U-turn simply because he was nearby after finishing a business trip out of town, Soo-hyun was not in a good mood.
With one hand in his suit pocket, Soo-hyun grumbled.
“Hunter bastards. Not a single one of them is right in the head! Not a one! Why leave a perfectly good dungeon to raise hell outside? Am I wrong? Who’d give a damn if they fought inside a dungeon?”
The man gave an awkward laugh at Soo-hyun's complaint-filled muttering.
“This way, sir.”
He followed the man’s lead into the alley.
He’d received a report about Hunters fighting in the middle of a residential area, but he didn’t know the details.
With a hand on his hip, Soo-hyun looked at the A4 paper taped to Ji-han’s body and muttered.
“Sounds like something a cop would say.”
Fights between Hunters were rare, but they happened from time to time.
Soo-hyun scanned the field agents who had responded to the report.
“So, what’s the problem?”
If it were a simple brawl, there would have been no reason for Soo-hyun to come all the way here during his return from a business trip.
“We were dispatched after receiving a report about a fight, but by the time we arrived, it was already like this.”
The man glanced at the unconscious Ji-han.
Soo-hyun unwrapped a lollipop from his pocket and popped it into his mouth.
The man began to sweat as Soo-hyun just stood there, silently sucking on the candy.
“Actually, we received a flood of reports from various places around the same time. About a hundred of them, all prank calls.”
“So you were late finding this? You son of a bitch, what kind of lunatic dares to make prank calls to the Association! Then how did you find him?”
The man broke into a cold sweat at Choi Soo-hyun’s outburst.
“A passerby reported it to the police. At first, they thought it was a simple assault, but people nearby testified that it was a fight between Hunters, so we were dispatched. And…”
“What else!”
“Yes. There were some security cameras nearby, so we collected them, but… all the files were corrupted. A fight did happen, but we have no evidence.”
“It just keeps getting better and better.”
Though his words were sarcastic, Choi Soo-hyun’s mind was racing to grasp the situation.
Hunters who were crazy enough to get into a real-world brawl usually didn’t bother with such trivial details.
The fact that someone had coordinated prank calls and corrupted CCTV files to match the timing of the fight was proof that it had been deliberately orchestrated.
“Ah, and about the house where the fight first broke out. There’s a rumor that the Hunter living in the semi-basement there is the suspect.”
The lollipop in Soo-hyun’s mouth cracked in half.
He had a feeling, and he was right.
Normally, Choi Soo-hyun would have ignored the dispatch order and gone straight home to enjoy a spa day.
‘Seeing the location, I had a bad feeling… And why the hell isn’t Kang Han-gyeol answering his phone?’
The candy shattered into smaller pieces with a rough crunch.
As Soo-hyun chewed on the fragments, the man continued his report.
“Upon investigation, he’s a Hunter from the Aria Guild. Kang Han-gyeol, a C-rank. We’ve already contacted the guild.”
At the mention of Han-gyeol’s name, Soo-hyun sighed internally, thinking, *I knew it*.
When it came to troublemakers, no one could beat Kang Han-gyeol.
Without showing any emotion, he turned his gaze to the fallen Yoo Ji-han.
Soo-hyun had never seen the man before.
The question remained as to what purpose he had, and why he had attacked Kang Han-gyeol.
He was under the impression that the incident at Sky Garden had been properly handled with Yoo Se-yeon.
‘The remaining candidates are Seo Ji-hoon or someone from the Raon Guild. Is this guy from Raon? That aside, he really did a number on him.’
The situation was becoming more and more confusing to Soo-hyun.
While he could understand the circumstances of the Hunter who followed them into Sky Garden, Han-gyeol wasn’t foolish enough to let a Hunter who showed up outside a dungeon go.
It was clear there was a good reason why he had beaten the man to within an inch of his life but left him alive.
“What about this guy?”
“We plan to request his cooperation as soon as he wakes up.”
“‘As soon as he wakes up,’ my ass. Hey, at that rate, when are you going to get any work done? Didn’t you say a few buildings were damaged?”
Soo-hyun took out his phone and accessed the HN admin app.
He grabbed the unconscious Yoo Ji-han’s hand and pressed his thumb to the screen.
The field agent standing next to him gaped.
“Wait a minute. That’s illegal…”
Accessing a Hunter’s personal information on HN without their consent was strictly illegal.
As the man panicked, a woman who appeared to be his superior crossed her arms and shook her head, signaling him to let it go.
「Fingerprint not recognized.」
“What? What’s wrong with this thing?”
Soo-hyun wiped the phone’s screen with his sleeve and tried again.
「Fingerprint not recognized.」
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“Someone give me a phone. Quick.”
Soo-hyun reached a hand back, hurrying the woman.
The agent in front handed Soo-hyun his own phone, which was already logged into his account.
Despite three attempts, the fingerprint recognition failed.
Soo-hyun returned the phone and tried a different approach.
「No ID found for this fingerprint. Would you like to register an ID?」
“Wow.”
The man who had glanced at Soo-hyun’s phone screen widened his eyes.
Soo-hyun let out a quiet whistle.
* * *
Aria Guild Headquarters, main conference hall.
The space could accommodate over a thousand people, but fewer than thirty were currently inside.
There was no special reason for booking the main hall.
It was a simple matter of a hastily scheduled meeting, and it was the only room available.
The rules for booking the main conference hall were quite strict, but since the meeting was being led by Park Si-woo, one of the guild representatives, such regulations were meaningless.
There were six people from the Aria Guild, but that was just the core group; the actual number was larger.
The A-rank dungeon they were about to tackle, [Cockatrice’s Farm], had been selected as a ticket dungeon for the upcoming raid.
A total of twelve tickets could be obtained from Cockatrice’s Farm.
The number six came from the fact that the Aria Guild and the Raon Guild were clearing the dungeon jointly.
The dungeon was not only A-rank but also a three-strikes-out dungeon, having been failed three times already.
Statistically, lower-level dungeons were more prone to frequent rifts.
For higher-level dungeons, artificial rifts were more common than natural ones.
“Artificial” referred to rifts caused by frequent failures.
Typically, an A-rank dungeon could be attempted four or five times. S-rank dungeons could be attempted up to ten times.
As a bonus, the more frequent the failures, the more the monsters learned, raising the difficulty of the clear.
‘Damn it, I lost my phone and now this.’
Just as I’d feared, the meeting had already started.
After explaining my situation at the lobby, I managed to get a temporary ID and finally made it to the conference room.
When I opened the door, I saw a group of people gathered near the stage.
I couldn’t understand why they were using such a spacious conference room for fewer than a hundred people.
Park Si-woo stood before the stage, speaking while a presentation was displayed on a massive projector screen.
Our eyes met.
“Hah, take a seat.”
Because he was wearing a microphone, even his sigh echoed through the speakers.
“Ouch.”
I sat down in an empty seat without thinking and bumped my arm against the armrest.
My arm, broken by Yoo Ji-han, still hadn't been treated, and the impact sent a jolt of pain through it.
About thirty Hunters were seated in three rows.
There were five Hunters in the front row, about eight behind them, and the rest were in the third row.
Having arrived late, I had no choice but to sit in a corner of the third row.
There were two familiar faces in the same row: Min Sung-taek and Kang Hyun-seung.
Unlike me, who had been unable to go on dungeon expeditions for various reasons, those two had been entering dungeons consistently.
Their skills were similar, they saw each other often, and recently, they had even started working as a team.
Min Sung-taek, who spotted me first, gave a slight wave.
I was still completely disoriented from rushing in, so I just gave a quiet nod back.
Park Si-woo had a record of clearing the four-times-failed Cockatrice’s Farm with just three people.
“The thing to watch out for is that worm… no, ahem. The Heolgeryong. Normally, it wouldn’t be a major issue, but since the place has been stirred up three times, it’s likely become quite a headache. The creature is highly venomous and reproduces quickly, so it’s almost certain that most of the water will be poisoned. Solving our drinking water needs inside the dungeon will be nearly impossible. Therefore, we will be limited to the water we bring from outside.”
Park Si-woo’s explanation continued.
It was rare for a guild representative to personally lead a briefing for an A-rank dungeon.
That was true even if it was a three-strikes-out dungeon.
Part of it was because of the Raon Guild, but still.
‘His pride must be seriously wounded.’
I had heard that the team for the last failed attempt was one that Park Si-woo himself had assembled.
A guild representative’s capabilities weren’t just about being a good fighter.
Koreans… what kind of people were we?
The people of… delivery. No, wait. Battle.
We were ridiculously good at fighting.
In fact, the average skill level of Korean Hunters was high compared to other countries.
But being a good fighter and being a good leader were two different things.
Skill was a basic requirement; the rest was a battle of leadership.
To have a supposedly foolproof expedition fail, and for that same dungeon to become a ticket dungeon that he now had to share with the Raon Guild—it was only natural that his pride would be hurt.
To top it all off, the Raon Guild had gone ahead and held its own meeting.
That was as good as saying they had no intention of cooperating properly.
It was amazing he had tolerated it this far.
Park Si-woo advanced the PowerPoint slide.
The screen suddenly went black, cutting the presentation short.
To an outsider, it might have looked like an accident, but it wasn’t.
“That’s all for the basic rundown. Now for the next part. As I said at the beginning, I never thought the previous team would fail. I’m not saying this because I’m holding a grudge or feeling regretful.”
Most leaders didn’t like to expose their own failures. But Park Si-woo was different.
He was a man who had immense faith in his own decisions.
A woman in the front row raised her hand. When Park Si-woo gave a slight nod, she spoke.
“I’ve read that report as well. It certainly felt excessive. A friend of mine was on that team, but… the report was missing the most important details.”
“Is that so? I recall writing it quite diligently. Since there’s no reason for my memory to be wrong, that must mean you didn’t read the report properly. That report should only be accessible to A-ranks and above. Am I to assume you think I deliberately omitted that as well?”
Park Si-woo shot back without missing a beat.
Honestly, it was pretty entertaining.
‘But my arm hurts!!’
I wanted to cry.