The Party and the Partner
Fortunately, he didn't press the matter any further than that. After all, it was something he'd left in our hands to begin with.
So what we actually discussed was what came next.
For instance, how to dispose of the materials from the venerable dragon.
It went without saying that the bulk of the materials ended up in my hands. Well, I had been the backbone of the subjugation, after all.
Call it fortune or misfortune, but the enemy had been a dragon. Frankly, a single scale alone would have been more than enough to craft Yeeun a full set of equipment. That was simply the way of super-large monsters.
And this hadn't been just any monster — it was a dragon. A Middle Eastern dragon, at that.
There wasn't a single part of it worth throwing away. On top of that came the traits unique to Middle Eastern dragons: bury the head in the earth and its intelligence would recover; learn to work the blood properly and you could distill restoratives of outstanding potency. Creatures that breathed poisonous miasma, yet somehow delivered miraculous effects in all the strangest places.
The problem was that none of it was particularly useful to me.
No — to be precise, I didn't use monster materials at all. Something about them just felt wrong. And more to the point — after swallowing one fragment of that thing and suffering every convulsion known to man, was I supposed to drink a potion made from dragon blood?
Insane. I'd sooner pay a premium to trade it away for something similar.
Which was why the equipment I used had never once known the phrase "cost-effective," but for me it was well worth the price.
This time, however, even that wasn't an option. Even the Hunter Association didn't keep things in its warehouses that could be traded for materials of this caliber. As a result, most of this haul would have to be liquidated for cash.
I did briefly consider setting aside a few scales, in case Hayeon or Seoa wanted to touch up their equipment someday... but the thought of it made my stomach turn, so I gave up on the idea.
I'd sold it off at a fairly reasonable price, so the Association wouldn't be taking a loss either. For the first time in a while, I could throw work to the rendering-house crews, and it might go some small way toward helping rebuild the city besides.
I was thinking of throwing a party.
And so—
I genuinely, absolutely could not understand what the hell this bastard was saying right now. Had he finally lost his mind...?
No, wait. The one who went insane was you, you bastard who lusted after the lips of an underage high school girl. You absolute—
Still, he wasn't just spouting nonsense. Quite the opposite — he had a surprisingly legitimate reason.
"You're aware, I trust, that the mood in the city right now is at rock bottom."
"And knowing that, you want to throw a festival? Your head's what's at rock bottom, you idiot."
"Hm."
"Hold on! I get what you're trying to say, but calm down first. I don't actually get it, but I'll calm down too."
"Good. Then I suppose an explanation is in order?"
Seungjun's explanation, distilled into a single sentence, amounted to this: the mood in the city had spiraled into the worst it had ever been.
It was only natural. It had been three years since the Second Great Cataclysm ended — three years of people soaking in peace — and then a super-large gate had torn open without warning. The citizens were wandering the streets wearing the faces of people who'd watched the world end.
If that had been the whole of it, it would have been the ordinary tragedy you see everywhere. The timing, though, was terrible. It was late autumn now, early winter just around the corner — and with a city half-destroyed in these conditions, there was a very real chance of catastrophic secondary damage to follow.
Seungjun, in turn, saw an opportunity in exactly that.
He would contribute funds to the city's reconstruction under his own name. At the same time, the focus would shift away from the gate's incursion and toward the conquest of gates. The party we'd just been discussing was part and parcel of that plan — a show staged to overturn the plague of gloom spreading through the city like an epidemic. As always: treat the hunters who had repelled this attack as heroes, and pump them up.
...Well, it wasn't impossible. It had, in fact, happened any number of times before.
But still.
"So what?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, isn't that the sort of thing politicians do? Not you?"
"Even granting that, consider the situation. Right now, the majority of citizens have been reduced to refugees by the ghouls' incursion. A party plastered with my name front and center would almost certainly draw nothing but scorn."
He laid it out himself: the fund for reconstruction, the image work to reverse the public mood, widening the guest list under the pretext of offering the citizens some consolation. At absolute best, opinion would split fifty-fifty. Honestly, I couldn't call it anything but a deficit.
On the contrary — those were the rebuttals I could come up with the moment I heard the plan. It sat wrong with me to assume that Seungjun simply hadn't thought of them. There had to be another purpose.
I thought so, and in fact he wasn't trying to hide it.
"We announce the Third Great Cataclysm."
"...What?"
And then. The plan that came out of Seungjun's mouth was astonishingly bold.
"Think it through, Butcher. This is our chance."
"What chance?"
"Until very recently, the Third Great Cataclysm was a dream within a dream. Am I wrong?"
Well, unless you were spectacularly tone-deaf, it was a subject you'd have hesitated even to bring up.
"Exactly. And that circumstance is precisely why the New World Order has been able to run wild."
"Hm?"
"Because no one could ever put the Third Great Cataclysm on the public agenda."
He wasn't wrong. It had been a full three years since the Second Cataclysm ended — an interval you could call either "already three years" or "only three years." People were still floundering in the swamp of peace. Merely raising the possibility of a third invasion marked you as tactless, so everyone hushed it up. It was an idle fantasy of the most complacent kind; a dream of endless comfort.
And dreams, as a rule, scatter like mirages the moment you wake. The mood hanging over this city now was no different from the cries of people who'd opened their eyes mid-slumber.
That was why the New World Order had been able to strut about so freely. Nobody had been willing to believe in the existence of terrorists actively trying to ignite a Third Great Cataclysm.
But now.
"People have been woken from their dream whether they like it or not. It's time they faced a reality that is no longer delusion. Truth be told, that's exactly why I'm telling you this now."
"...What?"
"To cut to the chase: you'll take part in the party too."
Of course, mentioning the Third Cataclysm didn't mean we could simply catch them. If anything, they'd use the atmosphere of a society thrown into deeper confusion as a shield and slither off in every direction like loaches — that was exactly why our hands had been tied against them all this time. Doubt toward society. Suspicion of one another. For those creatures, no camouflage could be more convenient.
In other words—
Draw a clean line between friend and foe. Publicize their existence to a select few, and press them to declare themselves allies. At the very least, if they were enemies, confirm the fact that they were enemies. That was Seungjun's real gambit.
He'd laid the groundwork already: the demon that surfaced at the Academy earlier this year, the secret research lab subdued in cooperation with the Association — and now this incident besides. They had to be rattled. Any labs of theirs still undiscovered were living on borrowed time anyway, so this had probably been a calculated throw of the dice: might as well go out with a bang.
But the man across from him was Choi Seungjun. He took a subject too distasteful for the agenda, lashed the Third Cataclysm to it, and moved a step ahead. Under his plan, the possibility of a Third Great Cataclysm would now rise to the surface.
Using the restless mood of society as their shield had suddenly become risky — because Seungjun's ploy had them worried. That was why he was inviting me to the party as well: to put pressure on their collaborators. The name value of a former-and-current S-rank hunter known as the Butcher would go a long way. Add Lee Joongoo to the mix, and it amounted to nothing less than a full-frontal squeeze.
We of the Academy will stand on the opposite side of you. And what will you do? Or rather — let me ask it the other way. Even after all this, you'd still aid them? That means making humanity's strongest your enemy. Are you truly prepared for that?
That was what he intended to imply. Only Choi Seungjun would refuse to just brush himself off after taking a fall.
Well, it was quite the event. Nobody would be fool enough to deny the possibility of a Third Cataclysm at this point.
"So, uh — who exactly are you inviting?"
"For a start, you'd best invite every member of your little club."
They were already targets of that organization anyway, so this would be a signal that they were firmly on our side. Not a bad move. Friend or foe hardly mattered — it was an established fact that those creatures had the kids in their sights. If anything, it would serve as a warning to the tendrils of the New World Order: you were thinking it'd be fine to poach a student or two while keeping a low profile, weren't you? Here's humanity's strongest, offering them his protection.
"Will you manage to get all of them to attend?"
"You still have the suit from last time, I take it?"
"Do I look like a child to you?"
"Then we're settled. Go have one made in my name. We'll need to fit your partner for one as well."
"...Huh?"
"...Hm?"
And there lay the problem. Seungjun, a chaebol heir from the cradle onward, had requested — with excessive, offhand naturalness — that I bring a partner as well.
"Ah, will you be taking the goddess again this time? Come to think of it, no need to fit a new dress in that case."
"What? Why the hell would I bring her?"
"Don't ask me. It's your problem."
"No, it's my problem, that's the point."
When I shot back at him as if he'd said something absurd, Seungjun let out a dry laugh of pure disbelief.
"What are you even saying at this point?"
A remark with layer upon layer of subtext packed into it. For my part, though, I remained thoroughly at a loss. I mean, last time I'd just taken whoever happened to be free, in order... Cursing under my breath. Who's the one making this sound like a couples' mixer?
Try as I might, there was simply no one I could bring to a public function. Annoyingly. No — honestly, genuinely.
"Why isn't there anyone?"
"If you're that hard up, just bring Lee Yeeun."
"Are you insane?"
"...Are you serious right now?"
"No, that's—! I was the victim in that situation!"
I pounded my chest with a resounding thud-thud. Naturally, it didn't land in the slightest. Of course it didn't. I'd have thought the same thing in his place. And even if I hadn't been, I suspect he'd have filed it away regardless as lifelong drinking-table ammunition — not his problem, after all.
"More importantly — is the headmaster of an academy even allowed to recommend that kind of behavior?"
"What could possibly be wrong with it?"
"Excuse me?"
"Granted, I have no idea when you and Lee Yeeun became that kind of item."
This son of a—
"But you've earned the right to happiness too, now. You'd agree, wouldn't you?"
Looking at his face as he argued back in that solemn tone, I was almost afraid to ask what delusion he was laboring under.
And so—
"I, uh... was that actually such a serious topic...?"
That was all I could manage, trailing off into evasion.