The Rabbit's Master
A team dinner was held at a private room in a pub.
“Um, could I sit next to you, Seo Ian?”
Im Hyunjin asked, raising her hand cautiously.
“What? Did you fall for me?”
Seo Ian laughed with a scoff, and to everyone’s surprise, Im Hyunjin nodded readily.
“You were just so cool earlier!”
Oh. As expected of a support-type with good sense.
Im Hyunjin had struck exactly at Seo Ian’s weakness with her praise.
Seo Ian, who had been acting indifferent with a scoff, suddenly transformed into a triumphant victor.
She straightened her shoulders and began to brag.
“She definitely would have said, ‘It’s cramped, so leave a seat open between us’… but she blocked that off just like that.”
Park Siwoo stared at them with an intrigued expression.
“Do you usually hate people sitting next to you?”
“Have you ever sat next to me? Not across from me, but next to me?”
My question was met with another question.
‘…Am I the only one who has?’
For a moment, I felt like I shouldn’t tell the truth.
What if I accidentally shattered their friendship?
Cracks in friendship = Teamwork destroyed.
So, I chose silence.
“Anyway, Guild Leader, please take the inner seat.”
“Master, please take the seat of honor.”
I don’t know why, but Park Siwoo calls me Guild Leader, and Hong Jehun calls me Master.
Seo Ian calls me her benefactor, and Im Hyunjin calls me Guild Master. This lack of consistency felt like a unique trademark of our guild.
“You guys treat me well, but… maybe we should unify our titles….”
“This is… truly….”
A bitter voice fell over Jegal Cheong’s head.
Although it was the interior of a luxurious accommodation, for Jegal Cheong, this place was no different from an interrogation room.
Still, the reason he wasn’t overly nervous was because he had kept his promise to them.
“Still, didn’t China make it into the rankings this time? We even secured the rewards for the month.”
“That’s true. It is, but….”
Jegal Cheong knew the reason.
It’s more annoying to see someone who was worse than you suddenly doing better than it is to see someone who was already great get even better.
And yet, Korea, which they had considered significantly below them, was suddenly in first place.
They had even cleared the special floor that everyone was certain couldn’t be beaten, seizing the throne.
“I don’t like it. It seems that fellow Kim Uju is pulling some strings.”
The whole world thought so.
But Jegal Cheong’s thoughts were a bit different.
“That could be the case, but I think differently. Just as Korea made Hong Jehun their number one for a while, perhaps they realized his limits and are trying to establish a new number one?”
“They have an excellent second-in-command like Seo Ian, so why go through the trouble?”
The man in the suit raised an eyebrow.
The atmosphere was still one of disbelief.
“Seo Ian is famous for having a bad relationship with the Association. Rather than raising a dog that won’t listen, it would be more convenient for the Association to raise a newcomer who knows nothing.”
“And you think just the Association’s backing could produce this result?”
“No. The important thing isn’t Kim Uju, but the Wandering Merchant, the rabbit. They must have cleverly funneled the rabbit’s help to one side.”
Come to think of it, I had forgotten.
While Kim Uju’s flashy performance caught everyone’s attention, the reviews and sightings of the Wandering Merchant rabbit hadn’t received much focus.
“But why does the rabbit only appear in Korea?”
“I don’t know the reason for that either. The rabbit appeared after I came to China. But one thing is certain: because of that rabbit, we can make Korea isolated.”
Jegal Cheong’s eyes gleamed with a strange light.
“Team Leader!”
“What!”
Telephone receiver in one hand, mobile phone in the other.
Team Leader Oh Wontaek pressed his thumb firmly over the microphone so no sound would leak out, urging Yoon Jinki to get to the point.
“I sent it by email!”
Checking the email, there were several news articles from China, summarized and translated into Korean.
“……Huh.”
No long words came out of Oh Wontaek’s mouth.
He was already busy trying to explain and deflect the activities of the Outlaw guild and its members, and now articles like these were popping up.
What kind of excuse was he supposed to use to deflect this?
What erupted from Oh Wontaek’s mouth wasn’t just a simple sigh.
It was his soul.
The next day.
Yoon Jinki burst into my house early in the morning.
My stomach was churning from the drinking party after finishing the special floor last night, and I was naturally feeling irritable.
But the moment I saw Yoon Jinki’s face, that irritation melted away like snow.
He had a deeply troubled expression, the kind where it wouldn’t be strange if he started crying right then and there.
Instead, concern bloomed in its place.
A grown man on the verge of tears? This wasn’t a trivial matter.
“Uju-hyung, could you please come to the Association with me? No, you must come with me!”
“……Let’s go, first.”
That’s how I was dragged to the secret room.
‘That’s not a slide.’
Team Leader Oh Wontaek was sitting in his chair as if he had slid into it.
His face looked soulless.
Like a piece of dried-out laundry.
I called his name cautiously.
“Team Leader Oh Wontaek…?”
Then, with a movement that sounded like a creak, his head, which had been facing the ceiling, moved toward me.
“Oh… oh? No, who is this! Isn’t this our Uju-nim!”
The Team Leader quickly lifted his body from the chair.
“If you were coming, you should have told us first, haha. First, please sit comfortably over here!”
He quickly unfolded the cushion he had been using as a pillow and laid it out where I was to sit.
Such immense hospitality!
Am I happy? Of course, it’s burdensome!
“The cushion is fine. Anyway, what brings you to call me….”
“Currently. A video is spreading at an incredible speed.”
“Is it the video of our special floor?”
“That’s correct.”
What a big deal that was.
Park Siwoo had warned me.
That people from other countries were also inside the Korean special floor.
The reason they entered was obvious, wasn’t it?
They must have been there to record the strategy video.
“It doesn’t matter if that spreads. Even if they watch it, they won’t be able to copy it easily.”
If it were something that could be easily copied?
Then yesterday, Seo Ian wouldn’t have been dealing damage, but smashing the foreigners’ recording devices instead.
Why Seo Ian, you ask? I couldn’t think of any other suitable candidate.
Anyway, even if I thought it might be better to hide it since there was some information that could be leaked, I had a simple reason for leaving them alone.
Because other countries also need to climb the Tower so their own don’t explode.
The panic that followed after Canada met that fate is still a terrible memory.
That’s why I was planning to enter the overseas Towers after some time had passed.
I heard it from Park Siwoo.
That elixirs are one of the items enchanters avoid making because they take too long.
He said the fact that you need material items other than Ticks to make elixirs, besides recovery potions, also plays a part.
That’s why he said people wait for the rabbit.
Anyway.
The defense-piercing elixirs that feel almost essential when passing phases, and the elixirs needed after that.
Shouldn’t I release some stock to foreign countries too?
I didn’t want to cause a second Great Depression starting from Canada.
Because I, who was recommended for resignation in a single day from a company I was working at just fine, was also a victim of that massive, irresistible disaster.
Some might ask.
Why go through the trouble of selling elixirs, which don’t even have a fixed price, at such high values?
But isn’t there that saying?
‘You cannot patent the sun.’
That’s what Jonas Salk, the man who developed the polio vaccine, said.
And like the aforementioned statement, he didn’t patent the vaccine to save children.
Of course, clearing the Tower isn’t something that directly saves people.
But in conclusion, isn’t it synonymous with saving people?
Isn’t it a romance to want to follow in the footsteps of a cool person?
“It is the special floor video that is spreading, but….”
I woke up from my thoughts at Team Leader Oh Wontaek’s voice.
“To be specific, it’s a video containing Kim Uju using the exact same mist that the mercenary rabbit uses.”
Ah, is that all. So that’s why you came to pick me up with such a long face early in the morning?
I smiled leisurely.
The issue caused by the consistency between the mercenary rabbit and me.
I had already anticipated it.
There are no eternal lies, anyway.
I can’t live forever separating myself from the rabbit.
I’d be found out eventually.
But I had already thought of plenty of ways to ‘well’ utilize the mask of the rabbit until then.
Ah, for reference, the only one who knows I am the rabbit is Seo Ian.
Park Siwoo seems to have figured it out, but let’s treat that as an exception.
Anyway, I maintained my smile and shrugged my shoulders as if it were nothing.
“It’s thanks to the rabbit, I guess. My Tower Merchant is the rabbit, right? I asked him to sell it to me because the mist looked good, and he gave me something with similar performance?”
“Kim Uju-nim’s Tower Merchant is the rabbit?!”
Oh Wontaek was shocked, and Yoon Jinki, who was beside him, stood frozen with his mouth wide open.
“Ah. Did I not mention that?”
I hadn’t.
I remember.
Perhaps it was because the attention on the rabbit had been burdensome until now.
And because I was anxious about protecting my own body.
But now that I have my own side, it would be fine to subtly appeal that the rabbit is mine.
“Then China wasn’t spouting nonsense?!”
“We might have truly been monopolizing it!”
I don’t know what the two of them are talking about, but first.
“Anyway, that’s how it is.”
“So that’s why your climbing speed was so fast.”
The two people’s quick acceptance.
“By any chance… is it Kim Uju-nim’s capability to have the rabbit meet other people as a Wandering Merchant?”
And the question.
“The rabbit wanders around of his own volition.”
If I said I could send him specifically, I might end up with more work.
Send him here, send him there.
I’d have to go there myself, not send him.
I will go where I want, when I want, by my own will.
“Then, by any chance… could the rabbit go into other countries’ Towers to help?”
“Probably? I couldn’t get a proper explanation because of the system’s restrictions, but he said it would become possible before long.”
I do have to intrude into overseas Towers, anyway.
It’s just that it’s not right now.
“Anyway, I actually have something I’ve been thinking about.”
“Something you’ve been thinking about?”
“Yes. But I think I’ll need the two of you’s help with this part.”
At my words, the two of them began to look puzzled.
“…You know our TF team was disbanded, right?”
“Ah, of course….”
The two people with sad expressions.
“It would be better to give the outsourcing to the place you already gave it to.”
Perhaps noticing the meaning underlying my words, their expressions smoothed out as if ironed.
“Instead, I want to add a few more conditions.”
Increase the Tick conversion rate?
That’s a given.
Just in time, a place where these people are needed has appeared.
That night.
Countless citizens were busily moving through Gwanghwamun.
They suddenly started to stop their steps one by one.
And then they looked up to stare at something.
At the end of their gaze were countless electronic billboards hung on high skyscrapers.
And a breaking news report was in full swing there.
The press conference opened by Team Leader Oh Wontaek.
He explained the reason why the rabbit appears in Korea.
Leaving open the possibility of appearing in other countries.
They started throwing out bait that would force other countries to act favorably toward Korea.
The monopoly theory of the Korean rabbit claimed by China.
Korea did not directly refute it.
Instead, they acknowledged and accepted it as if it were nothing, and instead contained the meaning that if you want to use it too, you should be tactful about it.
Now the whole world would know.
Who they should trust, look upon favorably, and join hands with.
Which country that is.