Kim Young-cheol's Party (2)
I'll let you keep your lives.
If they had drawn steel, he would have made corpses of them, not cripples. They hadn't, so he would leave it exactly where he had first drawn the line—broken, and nothing more.
Whoosh!
The Shadow Knight and the Shadow Assassin, hidden until now inside Jinsoo's shadow, tore free of it and took form.
Boom!
The Shadow Knight's shield crashed into the man's upper body.
"Ghk!"
The hulking man hit the floor and rolled, both arms twisted at grotesque angles, half his face caved in.
Shk-shk-shk!
The Shadow Assassin hurled daggers at the woman. They punched into both shoulders and both knees.
"Aaaagh!"
Blades buried in the joints of her shoulders and knees, she screamed and thrashed across the ground.
"What was that?"
"A fight!"
The players still in the restaurant whipped their heads around at the impact and the scream.
"Oh, come on. It's already over."
"That's Kwak Jinseong. He got completely wrecked."
"What's that pitch-black thing? A summon?"
The crash and the screams were quickly buried under the chatter of onlookers, and people came pouring out of the lounge, the meeting rooms, and the lodgings. Among them was Kim Han-ul, the officer in charge of rookie players.
"What in the world is this?"
The scene before him threw Kim Han-ul badly off balance. He had known Kwak Jinseong's party disliked the two newcomers. He had not expected it to come to blows.
The rookies won?
The fight itself was shocking enough. Far worse was the fact that the two newcomers he had written off as worthless trash—and stopped paying any attention to at all—had beaten Kwak Jinseong's party. And done it with ridiculous ease.
To think he was hiding summons that strong.
The only summon of Jinsoo's that Kim Han-ul had ever seen was a single baby kitten. It hadn't looked strong, and he had barely sensed any mana from it, so he had assumed the rest of the man's summons were just as negligible. That had been a spectacular misjudgment. The residual mana rolling naturally off the summon with shield and sword, and off the one with daggers, was anything but ordinary.
Kim Han-ul's thoughts snarled. Cleanup came first.
"Healer! If there's a healer here, anybody, get a heal on them!"
He raised his voice and called for help.
Heal
Rapid Recovery
At his shout, healers among the onlookers stepped forward and treated the pair. Recovery skills, however, were not omnipotent. The wounds closed quickly, but shattered and caved-in bone, severed ligaments, and torn tendons were beyond a full restoration. A higher-level recovery skill might have managed it. For healers at the level of Floor 100, the limit of their ability was a moderate improvement.
The injuries were severe enough that a long convalescence would be required before either of them was truly whole.
"Why did you attack those two?"
Kim Han-ul turned the question on Jinsoo.
"It was self-defense. They attacked first. If you don't believe me, ask the witnesses."
Jinsoo answered in an even tone.
"Even if they struck first, your response was far too excessive. You must at least have known those two belong to Daehan Guild. Daehan Guild extended you its goodwill. Is this how you repay that kindness?"
Jinsoo let out a short, scoffing laugh.
"They picked fights with us on a regular basis, and I endured it. I even gave them a courteous warning that I would not keep enduring it if they continued. They ignored that warning, crossed the line from provocation into an actual attempt to do us harm, and I defended myself. You call that excessive? Leaving their lives attached at all was, by my own measure, a considerable courtesy—in light of the goodwill Daehan Guild showed us. Not that I ever wanted that goodwill to begin with."
The only reason Jinsoo had taken room and board from Daehan Guild was to avoid the attention and friction that came with standing out. He had concealed his shadow summons for the same reason. The moment he ran into Kim Young-cheol's party at the hunting ground earlier that day, all of it had come to nothing.
"Since it's come to this, we can hardly stay here any longer. We'll be going elsewhere."
It wasn't as if he lacked points. There was no need to keep leaning on Daehan Guild for lodging and meals.
"Th-that's... I mean..."
The moment Jinsoo announced he was leaving, Kim Han-ul stumbled over his words, his face tight with dismay. His job was to bring the useful rookies into Daehan Guild.
I judged those two weren't worth taking in.
He had figured that recruits with pathetic ability and nothing but pride would only cause trouble if he forced them under the guild's banner, so he had deliberately left them alone. He had been hoping the week would pass and they would vanish from in front of him.
He had been wrong.
He had summons strong enough to put Kwak Jinseong and Kim Hyejeong down in a single exchange.
He had never imagined it, not even in a dream.
I have to secure him. No matter what.
Failing to recruit a summoner of that caliber while the man was under temporary protection would be Kim Han-ul's mistake. And if it also came out that he had written the pair off as trash and deliberately ignored the trouble around them?
I could lose the party leader's seat.
Kim Han-ul had already been tapped to lead Daehan Guild's new party, the one being assembled from the elites in the Starting City. If this blunder surfaced, he might be demoted to an ordinary party member—or, in the worst case, assigned as leader of some understrength party like Kwak Jinseong's, the kind that couldn't even fill its roster.
"No, no. There's no need for you to leave. I'll use my authority to extend the period of free room and board. So why not stay as long as you like?"
Having barely pulled his thoughts together, Kim Han-ul spoke in a rush.
Kwak Jinseong and Kim Hyejeong aren't exactly high-tier, but putting them down in one blow is another matter entirely.
He himself had no confidence he could render either of them unable to fight in a single exchange.
Those are only the summons I can see. There may be more.
If he brought Jinsoo into Daehan Guild and then onto his own party, his standing inside the guild would rise, and the party's combat power would climb sharply with it.
"That won't be necessary."
Jinsoo cut him off coldly, rose, and started walking.
What do I do?
He didn't want a reprimand from above, and he coveted the raw force of the summons Jinsoo commanded.
"If you leave like this, it may look as though you assaulted members of Daehan Guild and fled. Do you wish to become an enemy of Daehan Guild?"
Anxiety pushed him into a threat, and he knew it was a bad move the instant the words left his mouth.
I was too hasty. Too many eyes on us.
Worse, the remark had exceeded the limits of his authority. Still, it produced a result. At Kim Han-ul's words, Jinsoo stopped.
Right. He's had time to learn how Floor 100 works. He won't want Daehan Guild for an enemy. Hold him here first, then talk him around.
Pin him with the threat, then soothe and persuade him with words, and Jinsoo might yet end up on his party.
"If you'll cooperate with me, I'll see that this matter is cleaned up properly. So for now—"
Jinsoo cut him off and asked it outright.
"......"
For a moment Kim Han-ul was struck dumb, as if he had swallowed his own tongue. His mind went blank. He couldn't make sense of it.
Did I mishear him?
Daehan Guild was one of the great guilds that ruled Floor 100. Among the guilds Koreans belonged to, it was the largest of all. To Kim Han-ul, Daehan Guild was a kind of absolute sanctuary. He simply could not accept what Jinsoo had just said.
"W-what did you just say?"
"I asked if you want to make Daehan Guild my enemy."
Jinsoo meant it. He had kept his head down and hidden his strength to avoid a nuisance, not because he feared Daehan Guild or any of the other great guilds.
"You lunatic! Who the hell do you think Daehan Guild is?! Do you actually want to die?!"
Kim Han-ul took enormous pride in having become an officer of Daehan Guild, and from where he stood Jinsoo's words were nothing short of an outrage. No one could say such a thing unless he held the guild in contempt.
The Tower was a world where the strong devoured the weak, and Daehan Guild was strong. Even if a guild member had attacked first, even if there had been threats, even if there had been discourtesy, looking down on Daehan Guild and spitting out arrogance like that was something he could never tolerate.
Kim Han-ul's eyes went bloodshot, killing intent pouring off him—and the first to react were Kwak Jinseong and Kim Hyejeong, who had been lying low as the dead after taking their treatment. The moment the two of them drew their weapons and leveled them at Jinsoo, the surrounding members of Daehan Guild seized their own and closed in, ringing Jinsoo and Shin Sua.
"Apologize right now and say you'll join Daehan Guild, and I'll forgive you."
Kim Han-ul stared Jinsoo down, confidence written all over his face.
"So this is how Daehan Guild recruits new members. I refuse."
Shaaa—
The words were barely out of Jinsoo's mouth before his shadow summons revealed themselves. Shin Sua summoned her stone golem as well and cast blessings and protection skills, bracing for a fight.
A single twitch would have been enough to ignite the standoff. Kim Han-ul bit down on his lower lip.
I didn't do anything wrong. That bastard insulted Daehan Guild. If I let it slide, the guild becomes a joke. Punishing him is the only proper response.
He finished rationalizing it to himself and was on the verge of giving the order to attack.
A voice thick with mana shook the interior of the guild house.
It belonged to Kim Young-cheol, leader of the party that had come down to the Starting City to hunt the out-of-spec monster. He had dragged his party through the hunting grounds like a man combing for lice, searching for any trace of the creature, and come up empty. In the end they had decided to resume the search tomorrow and returned to the guild house in the Starting City to rest—only to walk in on a fight a breath away from breaking out, and to roar at the sight of it.
"Brother Young-cheol!"
Kim Han-ul called out, his voice bright with relief. True to his meddlesome nature, Kim Young-cheol knew everyone and was close with a great many guild members. Kim Han-ul was close enough with him to call him brother.
"Perfect timing. That bastard over there—he did this to our guild members, Kwak Jinseong and Kim Hyejeong..."
He launched into an explanation. Naturally, it had been edited in his favor.
"And that's how things ended up like this."
Kim Young-cheol listened in silence, and his face crumpled. When he spoke, his voice was packed with anger.
"Hey, Kim Han-ul. Do I look like some brain-dead idiot who can't tell right from wrong?"
"What? No! Absolutely not, hyung!"
"Then why are you feeding me that bullshit? A rookie who's been quiet this whole time suddenly attacks guild members for no reason—and inside the guild house?"
"Th-that's..."
"And as if that weren't enough, he up and insults Daehan Guild out of nowhere and picks a fight with every guild member here? Jiwoong. You tell me. Is what Han-ul said actually true?"
The man he singled out, Oh Jiwoong, was competing with Kim Han-ul for leadership of the new party.
"Well, the way it happened was..."
Oh Jiwoong laid the whole thing out as it had actually occurred: how Kim Han-ul had tried to fold Jinsoo and Shin Sua into Kwak Jinseong's party and the attempt had gone sour; how Kwak's party had kept picking fights with the two of them; how Kim Han-ul had treated them as trash and meant to throw them out once the week of temporary protection ended; and how Kwak Jinseong and Kim Hyejeong had been the ones to attack first.
"It's true Kim Han-ul was in the wrong, but that man, Lee Jinsoo, also looked down on Daehan Guild and slighted—"
"Enough! Why are you mixing your personal opinions into a report?"
"I-I'm sorry."
Kim Young-cheol rebuked Oh Jiwoong sharply. Then he turned to Jinsoo and bowed his head.
When Kim Young-cheol lowered his head and apologized, the members of Daehan Guild—Kim Han-ul and Oh Jiwoong among them—stood with their mouths hanging open.