Because It's Fun
"You know, I asked those people from the Mixed-Blood Human Rights Committee about this once?"
Fortunately, subduing the remaining gates took next to no effort. Personnel had been allocated for precisely this purpose from the start, and the hunters stationed at each one were all conveniently mediocre.
Riding the flow of Shukuchi as I went, it took roughly thirty minutes—including the subduing itself—to sweep through the ten-odd gates. In effect, the guild never got the chance to mount a single real resistance.
Which, for me, was convenient.
Aww, and you call yourselves one of Korea's top guilds? Your skills are absolutely~ pitiful.
...Well, I'd expected as much. Seoa's guild wasn't some small-time outfit run by the seat of its pants, but I'd never assumed from the beginning that every single member was in on this. At that scale, information leaks were inevitable no matter what, and frankly, it's not the kind of thing you brag about.
On the contrary—an experiment this size would necessarily involve a considerable number of people.
So how was the upper management handling information about this project?
Obvious, really. Ten to one, they'd set up a dedicated team. It wasn't one or two people involved, after all, and having every person connected come sprinting out of the woodwork each time the plan hit a snag would be downright farcical.
They'd also have steered clear of high-rank hunters wherever possible. Given the possibility—even the faintest one—that a single high-rank hunter might go at this hammer and tongs, the risk was simply too great.
A slice of the guild's upper echelon, plus a horde of low-tier hunters to handle the fieldwork. And then, a handful of high-rankers like Seoa who'd stumbled onto the truth by accident. Realistically, that had to be the whole picture.
One might lament the absence of high-rank firepower, but from the guild's perspective, massacre and extinction wasn't a lever you got to pull lightly. At the end of the day, "we attempted the domestication of monsters, oh well" and "we attempted the domestication of monsters, and when the subjects misbehaved we fed them to other monsters" carry unavoidably different consequences.
More than anything, what those people had truly feared wasn't the blade—it was the pen. Most hunters would tuck tail and bolt the moment they heard the guild's name.
Unfortunately for them, I was neither most hunters, nor was I holding a pen instead of a blade.
"You see, in Greco-Roman mythology, there's this monster called the centaur."
"Yes! Yes!"
"There are actually all sorts of legends about where centaurs came from, right? An angry goddess transformed some spirits, or a spirit that became a horse mated with a human or a god... that kind of thing."
"I-is that so?"
"Right. And the point is, the centaur is a race born from a horse-turned-something and a human-shaped something getting it on. A mythological mixed-blood, you could say."
"A perfectly plausible account, yes."
"That's what I think too. But here's the weird part."
"S-something weird...?"
"When I look at half-bloods—kids born between a human and a monster—exactly half of them piss me off. But when I look at a centaur, they piss me off like crazy."
"Wh-why on earth would that be?"
"Beats me, buddy."
"Pardon?"
"Hey, use your head—if I knew that, would I be sitting around like this? I'd be strutting around in a fancy gown living the white-collar life."
"Huhh..."
"Anyway, that's how I came to a certain conclusion."
"A-and what would that be?"
"Nitpicking over species and origins and every last detail is a pain in the ass. So I just decided: if something pisses me the hell off, it's a half-monster. If it only half-pisses me off, it's a mixed-blood."
And with that, I gave the chain in my hand a tug, and a low grrrk of a whimper brushed past my ear.
A half-monster type—the spoils of this particular gate.
"So. Why did you people do it?"
"Pardon?"
"Me, sure—I'm like that, so fine. Surely you haven't suddenly developed an appetite for a deep philosophical debate on the difference between mixed-bloods and half-monster types?"
"..."
"I honestly cannot fathom why you pulled this garbage. You even planted a bomb in its head."
"P-pardon? A bomb?"
"Hah. Look at you backpedaling."
Apparently this man was a psychopath entirely devoid of even a basic philosophy of respecting life. Admittedly, staring at monsters tended to stir the same feeling in me.
'No. Not allowed.'
I forced the surging bloodlust back down. The gates had been subdued, but our evidence recovery rate sat at roughly one in three. Meaning nearly two-thirds of the monsters had been killed.
Not by me. By the guild.
You monsters!! Those merciless guild bastards!! Well done, keep it up!!
Which meant that, as of right now, I was in no position to carve a watermelon punch bowl out of a monster's skull.
"Hey, you sulking?"
Grrrk!
"How have you even stayed alive this long, huh, buddy? Would've been better for everyone if you'd just died ages ago. You wouldn't hurt anymore, and I'd be happy. Minus the guild, that'd be a perfect world, wouldn't it?"
"Wh-what is the reason for this?"
"What?"
"You must want something from me!"
"No, even if you put it that way..."
The sight of him squeezing his eyes shut and wailing like a man struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky wrung a laugh out of me before I could help it.
"Man, so many questions today. Your job's gone by tomorrow anyway—shouldn't you be scouring the job boards or something?"
"The guild has plenty of hunters who had nothing to do with this!"
"Oh? Funny thing about that. There are no hunters left who said they'd rather not get tangled up in this. Someone got rid of them."
As I added that with a snicker, the gate manager clamped his mouth shut. At least the man had some sense of shame in him, apparently.
Not that it mattered.
'Fuck does that have to do with me?'
Anyone eavesdropping might have mistaken me for a crusader out to realize social justice. But the truth was simple—there was exactly one reason I was standing here: they'd pulled a con on my disciple, and it pissed me off. All this useless legwork, instead of hunting down the guild's power brokers one by one, existed for that reason alone.
"Besides, why are you asking me to realize social justice? Call the cops."
My job began and ended with publicizing this affair and then watching, nice and close, as the guild got ripped apart by it. With the guild's backing gone, how would the people who'd been blackmailing Seoa behave? Could they really keep up that high-handed attitude?
Well, I'd say it's not possible~ Not in the slightest.
So I had to ask, once more: why did they do any of this in the first place? If they'd genuinely cared about their fellow hunters, avoiding this sort of thing should have been the bare minimum.
At that, the manager's face burned crimson with shame. Unlike the stone face he'd worn moments ago, he was evidently aware—at some level—that no amount of packaging could disguise what they clung to as a betrayal of the human race.
"B-but don't you understand how much benefit humanity would reap if we succeed in exchange and domestication with monsters!!"
"No. I don't."
"...Enormous benefit! Your actions right now might be seriously hindering the advancement of the human race!!"
"Don't care anyway."
"Wh-why?!"
"'Cause it's fun."
"Pardon?"
"Because in this world, wiping every last monster off the ledger is all of humanity's fondest wish."
I'd asked, sure, but honestly I couldn't have cared less. As a result, our conversation settled into a comfortable silence: me dutifully reciting lines from some classic masterpiece, and the manager writhing before me, desperately mining them for meaning that wasn't there.
Then it hit me, a beat late.
Wait, hold on—exchange with monsters? Domestication?
'Holy shit. They're out of their minds.'
If that was truly the goal these bastards were chasing, things had come dangerously close. A world where you needed someone's permission to kill a monster? What would you call that if not hell?
Boo hoo, widdle baby Park Woochan says monsters gotta die.
"Anyway, moving on. So what's your plan now?"
"Pardon?"
"I said, what are you going to do? Look, I get it, you've got your convictions. But didn't I tell you I intend to throw all of this out into the open? Surely you don't think the guild will still be protecting you after that?"
"...Th-then how about you? If this goes public, how do you suppose the guild's high-rank hunters will react?!"
"They won't."
"Pardon?"
Another idiotic remark, another involuntary click of my tongue. I'd snagged this guy because he looked every inch the intellectual—turns out he was nothing but a desk ornament.
Setting aside the fact that the man who'd pulled off this entire stunt wasn't about to start quaking over some guild high-rankers—would those hunters even react at all?
"What?"
"Oh, come on. It'd be far weirder for a bunch of blade-for-hire mercs to sincerely rally behind your speech about humanity's grand cause. They probably just found out by accident, saw there was profit in it, and looked the other way. Whether that profit was their lives or the money they'd sunk into this little venture."
"So then—"
What actually happens if this goes public in a blaze of glory? Would the hunters, enraged at losing their cash flow, come swarming with murder in their eyes?
In my professional opinion? Not a chance.
Making a fuss like that amounts to confessing you were involved. Ten to one, the vast majority would retreat into solemn self-reflection—we never imagined such horrors were happening—and such.
Which is to say, honestly, I wasn't worried at all. The target was some guild or other claiming to be one of Korea's Big Three. The hunters who'd devoted themselves as humanity's shield had, all along, been quietly pushing for cooperation with monsters?
The other guilds would be lucky if all they got was knives in their backs. News this explosive would force not just the uninvolved hunters inside that guild but the entire industry to distance themselves—loudly, and on the record.
In an era when thirty percent of the Korean population was said to have lost family to monsters, partnership with monsters? Public sentiment would never, ever tolerate it.
Which meant every hunter with an image to protect would have to be the first to expose Seoa's guild. Show even a hint of lukewarmness and they'd be torn apart as one of those, guaranteed.
Besides, a flaw this catastrophic wasn't the kind you could paper over with a fat check.
Media suppression? Honestly, I figured the government folks would be thrilled.
Facing the Great Invasion—an unprecedented crisis—the government had had no choice but to deify hunters in the name of national unity. Fine. They could've milked the image back then and left it at that, but once the invasion ended, hunters became social titans wielding monstrous power and popular support. The government had scrambled in every direction to prevent the warlord-ization of hunters, sure, but how long could that hold?
And in this knife-edge situation, a massive scandal detonates out of nowhere? The Blue House spokespersons would issue their regrets, sure—but the government itself would be dancing in the halls.
In short: the moment this blows, the guild is finished. Almost certainly.
"Th-that's impossible!"
"It's not. That's the whole point."
Heheh. A light laugh slipped out.
So—why, exactly, had I been walking this man through every single step of the logic?
"See, I heard a little story about you?"
"Pardon?"
"The other gate managers were all just out to line their own pockets, but our friend here actually had some vision."
"Th-thank you?"
"Oh, don't mention it. It's simple fact. Of course, I can't stop what I'm doing now. But doesn't it strike you as just a bit unfair, that a man worried for the future of our nation gets treated the same as those shameless bastards?"
"...!!"
The eyes of a man who'd been dead on his feet minutes ago suddenly lit up like a struck match.
"Think about it. The guild is dissolving either way—no one will be left to protect you. Which, conversely, also means the guild can't come after you. So it works out fine, doesn't it? Bluntly speaking, they betrayed you first. Look at this security—sloppier than a screen door, and they're doing this kind of work. You really think it would've gone down like this if even one high-rank hunter had been posted here?"
"Th-that's exactly what I said! I told them again and again, but upper management wouldn't listen!"
"Well, of course they wouldn't."
High-rank hunters were, for all intents and purposes, idols. Have one of them parked permanently inside a gate and anyone with two eyes would get suspicious. Besides, what difference would one high-ranker have made? They were already flailing hopelessly against Seoa.
But rather than correct that little delusion, I laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Then the guild that dismissed your opinion—the guild that so dishonored a mind like yours—doesn't it deserve a fitting reward?"
"...Now that you mention it, yes. I gave myself to a greater cause, but the guild's current attitude is a bitter disappointment. I'm beginning to suspect they were only ever out to fill their own pockets."
"Right. Well reasoned. A round of applause for your courageous choice."
And that's one witness, secured.
Not a lie, either—once this went public, the guild wouldn't have a second's slack to lay a finger on him.
But I could.
'I don't know about the others, but you're dead, pal.'
One look and I could tell—unlike the other managers, this bastard was tangled deep in the whole affair. So don't be too heartbroken, friend. I'll send the guild down with you, just to keep the road from getting lonely.
And with that.
The preparations to carve one of Korea's Big Three guilds clean in half were complete.