Novus Ordo Seclorum
Tae Siyoung.
At long last, I had a name — and a thread to pull on.
And from here, all that remained was to follow the tail.
"Who exactly is this guy?"
"Even if you ask me that, son."
The old man, who had been grumbling and rubbing his arm, soon opened up without reservation.
Yeah. He was a strange one from the start, now that I think about it.
"Strange how?"
"Hmm. Well, for starters, the reason he enlisted in the military was suspicious as hell."
"The reason?"
The suspicious phrasing came out instantly.
No, wait — I'm not talking about that Tae Siyoung fellow.
I mean this old man here.
This was a man who, until very recently, hadn't so much as suspected the existence of that organization. And now he was calling things suspicious……
'You're not just talking out of your ass, are you, old man?'
Before I knew it, my gaze had turned doubtful.
But whether he read my mood or not, Brigadier General Cheong Joonpil launched into his explanation with utter seriousness.
"Look, it's true, isn't it? Who the hell volunteers for the army these days?"
"Uh, can you even say that, old man?"
"Only because we're the only ones listening."
But contrary to my skepticism, there was a certain logic to what he laid out.
Sure, the resident registration system was a relic of the pre-Cataclysm era — but the military was the exception.
A closed environment.
A structure built to enforce the collective will.
You could bet your ass military service records were still being managed separately.
Which meant, conveniently, that Tae Siyoung's information was still on file.
"Far as I can tell, that boy was interested in the military's systems from the very beginning."
"Systems?"
"That's right. To be precise — the rank system, I'd say."
"Ah."
Well, well.
Now that I could understand.
The rank system.
In short, it meant the classification system used today by the Hunter Association of South Korea and hunter organizations across the world.
And that rank system was, at its root, intimately tied to military structure.
Why?
Because the Americans built it!
'Otherwise there'd be no reason to use the alphabet, obviously.'
Let's be blunt here. Rank systems and all that — at their core, they're nothing more than a standard invented for human convenience.
In other words, a set of sorting labels.
And among them, the single most reliable criterion for determining a rank was the minimum firepower required to kill the monster in question.
Namely:
A monster requiring a fully armed soldier was E-Rank.
One requiring an entire platoon was D-Rank.
One requiring military hardware — tanks, bombers — was C-Rank.
One requiring missiles was B-Rank.
And one requiring a nuclear weapon was A-Rank.
The US military had analyzed the forces available to them at the time and allocated them according to need.
The same logic applied today, when hunter ranks are determined by the monsters they can hunt.
For the American military, what mattered was securing the firepower to guarantee a kill — nothing more, nothing less.
And then.
The thing he had been interested in was……
S-Rank.
"Exactly right."
One step beyond that was the S-Rank.
Literal as it gets — the Special rank.
After all, no power on modern Earth exceeded a nuclear arsenal.
In other words, S-Rank meant, quite literally, beyond classification.
No one could even say how much firepower it would take to bring such a target down for certain.
It might fall to two nukes — or it might shrug off a hundred. An enemy of the unknown.
And to the military, the unknown meant one thing: a natural predator.
The same went for the notion that A+ was the highest rank by conventional standards.
Because from the very beginning, "S-Rank" had been a label for things that fell outside the scale.
Monsters no nuclear weapon could kill.
Hunters who could slay such monsters with nothing but a sword and a sword arm.
Either way, they were beasts that stood far, far beyond the standards of modern human society.
"His aptitude was decent from the start, but he was one of those kids whose growth curve was especially steep, you see."
And indeed he had been.
C-Rank in civilian life. B-Rank upon enlistment.
And A-Rank by the time of his discharge.
No doubt some talent was involved — but those were numbers no amount of talent could produce without effort. Not even close.
And then.
'At this point he's all but certainly S-Rank, huh.'
The skill to bring down Do Joojin, an A+ rank hunter, in a head-on fight.
Even granting that Tae Siyoung, a former soldier, was exceptionally strong against human opponents, the result stood unchanged.
By the time he revealed himself to persuade Do Joojin, the advantage of ambush was gone.
And in that situation, to take down an A+ rank hunter without so much as a scratch — that meant a gap in weight class. A real one.
He'd raised his own specs to enter the military, honed himself further within it.
Just as he'd climbed the ranks that way, had he absorbed the underworld into his own experience the same way?
'What monstrous ambition.'
The obsession with S-Rank.
The reason a career-military hunter had, at this point in his life, thrown in with a secret organization.
Perhaps the secret to that, too, lay somewhere in there.
"So what happened?"
"Hmm. Well, according to his commanding officer's evaluations, he was a positively ascetic young man……"
That was the story.
Ascetic and devoted to nothing but his own training — that was Tae Siyoung.
But his fellow soldiers, unable to keep watching, had apparently urged him at least once to pick up a hobby.
No problems on duty, but not a single real conversation with anyone outside of it, apparently.
So in the end, pretending it would be rude to refuse, he went out with his unitmates exactly once — and after that, a balance fell into place between his training and his life.
What a heartwarming little anecdote.
But knowing what Tae Siyoung went on to do, there was no way in hell I could take it at face value.
Because — hold on.
"So what was this hobby, exactly?"
"A social club."
"Huh?"
'What the actual hell. That came so far out of left field.'
A training-obsessed nutcase suddenly joining a social club?
Apparently catching my reaction, the old man let out a hearty laugh and started explaining all over again.
"One of his unitmates back then came from a fairly well-off family, you see."
"Heeoh. Like a Bilderberg club, sort of thing?"
"Don't use fancy words with me. It flusters me."
"Ah — right. So?"
"Hmm?"
"I mean, what was this club, exactly?"
Social clubs come in more varieties than any single word can hold.
Horse racing clubs. Book clubs.
Call it a club all you like — at heart, they're friendship circles, every one of them.
Even if the term "social club" has long since degenerated into meaning a rich men's hangout, the principle holds.
A club needs a center of gravity.
Even if camaraderie matters more than the club's stated purpose, you still need the occasion that brings people together in the first place.
"It was a party club, from what I hear."
'Mother of god.'
It was the answer I'd been half-dreading.
In one word: they were literally just there to have fun.
It clashed not only with the Tae Siyoung history I'd just been told, but with everything I knew about the man himself.
A murderer with a military background, in a party club……?
No, wait — come to think of it, if you compared him to a loan shark or something, it didn't fit half bad. Confusing.
I urged him on through that muddled feeling, and the old man, energized now, kept going.
"Apparently he owns a members-only salon. Throws a banquet there every single night, they say."
"Every night?"
"Could be an exaggeration. But more likely, attendance simply isn't mandatory."
"Ah."
In other words: the doors are open every night, come if you feel like it. That kind of arrangement.
'More serious an operation than I expected.'
That was my honest impression.
A salon run on a strictly members-only basis.
The payroll to staff and manage it, day in and day out.
And the food and drink consumed there — knowing the nature of such clubs, none of it would come cheap.
That was far too grand a scale for a handful of army buddies dropping by.
"You probably know a few of the members yourself, come to think of it."
"Huh?"
"Nowadays every social club's just a young people's hangout, but they used to be gathering places for high society."
"I see."
Well, if that was the case, it made sense.
And here I was wondering how a few army brats could afford to book out a whole salon.
"That's exactly why I was so skeptical when you first brought all this up," said Brigadier General Cheong Joonpil.
Which, fair. From where an old man sat, what else could you think?
A gathering place for this many luminaries.
If someone suddenly started rambling about a Third Great Cataclysm, of course it wouldn't feel real.
But for me, it was exactly the opposite.
Tae Siyoung, so interested in the military that he'd chosen to enlist of his own will.
Then one day, on a unitmate's recommendation, he visits some social club.
After which he eases off the obsessive training, mingles with his comrades, and — discharge.
And then he suddenly turns up with S-Rank-class power, enlisted as a foot soldier of a secret organization?
Yeah, no.
The way I saw it, the club was what killed his interest in the military — not the other way around.
Suppose it was true that Tae Siyoung had joined a secret organization gunning for the Third Great Cataclysm. When did that actually start?
Looking at it coldly, the prime suspect was, once again, that damn social club.
His behavior changed around the time of that club.
And yet the Tae Siyoung of today, after relentless training, had attained terrifying strength.
If there was a catalyst somewhere, you couldn't help but suspect the connections he'd made in that club.
The timing was just too perfect.
"Honestly — for all your posturing, you're thinking the same thing I am, aren't you, old man?"
Because otherwise, there'd be no reason to investigate a mere social club in this much depth.
Nine times out of ten, he'd already concluded in his own head that the club was dirty.
Same reason he'd gathered this intel in advance, anticipating my questions.
But.
Even if he could judge it objectively, the words "Third Great Cataclysm" still carried a heavy, crushing weight.
That was exactly the kind of reservation the old man was wrestling with.
"Well, even so, it's hard to believe every single member of that club is a tentacle of that organization."
And yet.
That organization was structured almost like a cell network.
And among what it needed — as promised to the Hyunin Society — were politicians who could put the right words on the floor of the National Assembly. Or genuine heavyweights who could command even high-rank hunters with a crook of their finger.
And the only place such people regularly gathered was, precisely, there.
"Knew it."
As if he'd read the answer off my face, the old man said that with a quiet sigh.
And at the same time—
"Here."
"Huh?"
"Knew this was coming, so I came prepared. Invitations."
Across the peculiarly hard grip of a soldier's handshake, two luxurious envelopes fluttered.
Oh. Right.
He did say strictly members-only.
Naturally there'd be invitations, then.
"Where'd you even get these?"
"Where'd I get them? They're mine, that's where."
"Ahh."
No wonder he'd dug this deep — the man himself was on the list.
Well, sure. A man called the supreme power broker of the current military brass? A club like that would bite their own hands off to invite him.
The problem was that the man in question was hopeless at this kind of socializing.
I stole a glance at the envelope's surface.
The paper had looked expensive at a distance, but under my fingertips it was so soft it felt almost unreal.
And there, in one corner of the envelope—
A golden signature, brushed in flamboyant cursive as if it had been signed in passing.
Novus Ordo Seclorum?
"That's the club-and-salon's name, I hear. Apparently they founded it back when the First Great Cataclysm had settled down, hence the name."
Hmm.
Isn't that the second motto on the Great Seal of the United States?
Granted — if you truly believed a new age was coming, no name could fit better.
Though what actually arrived was a new age of a different kind: the Second Great Cataclysm.
Well. Let's file that one away for later.
"Why are there two of these, though?"
"Hmm?"
"Huh?"
"No, what kind of question is that? An occasion like this — obviously it's couples' attendance."
"I'm sorry, what?"
And then—
Toward me — who had asked that half-joking, ready to quip that one of them was a freebie — a peculiar look from Brigadier General Cheong Joonpil nailed itself to my face.
"Hm?"
"Couples' attendance?"
"No — I mean, think about it, it's obviously—!!"
Come to think of it, a certain fact had just drifted back to me.
Brigadier General Cheong Joonpil.
During the Second Great Cataclysm, after the entire upper command had been ground to paste, the man who clawed his way to where he stood now.
At the same time, a soldier whose battle record was so fitting that every accusation of favoritism had died on people's lips.
This man — called a bolt-from-the-blue commander, a hero of national salvation — was, by the numbers, still young.
However.
Setting that aside — that rumpled necktie.
And that dizzying fashion sense spoke for themselves: the man was still a widower.