The Birth of Seungcheon Agency
“Five billion won might be difficult.”
“I fully understand your position.”
President Baek continued without the slightest trace of disappointment.
“A no-name one-man agency versus one of the domestic Top Five. Even setting the signing bonus aside, the latter is the rational choice.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine. I knew it was unlikely when I asked. Putting this on you was already an imposition, Hunter Park.”
“I’m only taking one billion.”
“Excuse me?”
Until the moment he looked at President Baek, Minho had wrestled with the decision for a long time. Stamp that contract and twenty billion would land in his pocket. How was anyone supposed to turn that down?
“But even if I suddenly had twenty billion, I realized I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Gear up with rare-or-higher items? Join any of the Top Five and equipment support came as standard. The Hwarang hunters he’d met in that E-class gate had already proven as much. Buying unique-grade gear himself? Twenty billion wouldn’t even cover a handful of pieces—pointless.
“I even looked into your retirement plans, President.”
He’d considered buying a building, handing management over to his parents, and letting the money work. The idea simply didn’t tempt him. Why wouldn’t a guaranteed life of comfort and ease pull at him?
“I want to get stronger.”
Five years grinding as an E-class. He’d run more gates than any other E-rank, earned more money than most of them, and poured every last won into modifying and repairing undead. At first he’d only wanted to climb to D-class. The longer that life stretched on, the hungrier the ambition grew. Spite, maybe. Whatever the name, his body no longer knew how to be satisfied with D-class.
“Receiving systematic support from a major guild could be the better path.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be persuading me?”
“That was an objective observation.”
“But the more support they give, the more they demand in return, right?”
Team deployments. Forced participation in specific gate raids. Heavy restrictions on personal activity. Constant political tension with the other Top Five, and even gate access itself turned into a game of reading the room. You gained a great deal—and lost just as much.
“Working as a D-class, I discovered I can make quite a bit of money.”
President Baek himself had said it: no other hunter earned the way Minho did. Clearing higher-rank gates more often and keeping every scrap of the profit for himself was abnormal. So when he reached C-class, or even B-class—how much would he be making then?
“Won’t there come a day when twenty billion feels like pocket change?”
“With your potential, Hunter Park, that day will arrive soon.”
Well. Empty flattery or not, it felt good.
“That’s why I’m only taking one billion.”
President Baek’s competence. After a week of working side by side, Minho had felt it with absolute certainty. Before, the logistics before and after every gate had been endless: sorting monster by-products, selling off every valuable scrap one by one, signing forms in a dozen different places. All those tedious, time-eating chores now vanished into President Baek’s hands. Minho could focus purely on the hunt. Now he understood exactly how a non-awakened ordinary employee had climbed so quickly to an executive seat in a giant guild. Experiencing it firsthand made the reason crystal clear.
“Put the remaining four billion into founding the agency.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m doing this for myself. If your work efficiency improves, I benefit.”
A reverse investment, so President Baek could devote himself entirely to supporting Minho. The fact that the original five-billion signing bonus had been President Baek’s own money only made the whole arrangement funnier.
“How does that sound? My investment plan.”
Minho locked eyes with him. I’ve gone this far for you. You’re going to work even harder for me now, President.
Gulp—gulp—
President Baek drained a glass of cold water in one go, then set the glass down hard on the table with a solid thud.
“I will repay that trust.”
Repay? Just keep doing what he already did so well.
“Are you formally hiring those friends of yours as well?”
“Yes. If I want them to keep up with Hunter Park, I’ll have to work them even harder.”
That conclusion felt slightly off. Five question marks floated above Minho’s head.
“If they’re going to support you when you start clearing higher-rank gates, their ranks will need to match, won’t they?”
“Ah.”
“Getting them all the way to B-class will be difficult, but I’ll force them up to C-class one way or another.”
Uh. Uhhhhh. Well. If they were fine with it, then fine. Rest in peace, friends.
“May I release a press article about the contract?”
“Do we really need to?”
“We need to make your position unmistakable so the guilds will give up.”
In the short term the checks and sabotage would come; once Minho had firmly established himself, they would no longer be able to touch him.
“So they’ll try to check me.”
“The domestic Top Five do not want the current balance of power overturned.”
“One person flipping the entire board feels a little overblown.”
“It will flip. Absolutely.”
Sparks flickered in President Baek’s eyes. Yikes. If Minho didn’t want to disappoint the man, he’d have to work even harder.
They revised several clauses in the contract as well.
“Then let’s raise the minimum hourly rate a bit.”
Scratch-scratch—
“And set the commission at five percent. What, were you planning to boil grass for dinner?”
Scribble—
“No performance bonuses?”
…
The contract President Baek had drafted to prove his passion. Passion pay was still a little much. As they fixed one clause after another, Minho belatedly noticed the most important field was blank.
“The company name is empty.”
“Ah. When I drafted the contract nothing came to mind, so I left it open.”
President Baek lifted his pen and set the tip against the empty line.
— Seungcheon Agency
“Seungcheon?”
“Looking at you, Hunter Park, you’re the textbook case of a dragon rising from a stream. That’s what inspired it.”
An enormously grand name. More dream-interpretation than hard fact. And yet—
“I like it.”
The word settled comfortably on the tongue.
…
The news spread primarily online. Baek Seonghyeon leveraged both personal connections and cash to push the story. His reach was far smaller than it had been during his days as a Chilseong director. Even so, the “Guui-dong Necromancer” hype had not yet cooled, and the issue ignited almost instantly.
Korea’s strongest hunter. A living legend of the Rift Bureau. Director Jeong Seungil of the Counter-Abnormal Bureau read the articles and smiled faintly.
“Interesting.”
“You just smiled, didn’t you?”
Chief Jeon Hyeyeon of the First Division of the Counter-Abnormal Bureau nearly jumped out of her skin. Her stone-faced superior almost never smiled. In nearly ten years of working together she could count the times she had seen that expression on one hand.
“A D-class hunter chose his own path.”
“You haven’t forgotten where you work, have you?”
Jeon Hyeyeon pointed at the nameplate sitting on the desk.
“Can’t be helped. We’re underpaid.”
“And the highest-ranking person in this underpaid organization is you, Director.”
Jeong Seungil cleared his throat lightly.
“But is it true?”
“If you cut out every detail, how am I supposed to know what you mean?”
“That Park Minho kid. They say Mir offered him fifteen billion.”
“Yes.”
The Rift Bureau took “information flow” extremely seriously. Director Jeong Seungil in particular, thanks to his heroic reputation, had more than a few people moving intelligence for him under the table.
Jeon Hyeyeon muttered as if she still couldn’t process it.
“Yong Cheonwoo offering fifteen billion…”
The strongest among Korea’s S-class hunters. The sole success story among the Top Five who had built a massive guild with nothing but his own two hands. There were many titles for Guildmaster Yong Cheonwoo, but those who knew him well spoke of something else entirely: a narcissist who lived solely for his own brilliance.
That was probably why.
“Mir never throws money around.”
“True.”
Talented hunters would grow on their own even without heavy investment, he claimed. Of all the Top Five, Mir spent the least on recruitment. The reason they could still hold their place among the five without lavish spending was simple: countless hunters sought the personal tutelage of the strongest S-class, Yong Cheonwoo.
“Then why are we…”
The only SS-class hunter in the country, a man who had already surpassed the strongest S-class. Director Jeong Seungil himself trained hunters, so why was recruitment so unpopular?
Jeon Hyeyeon let out a light grumble.
“I already told you. Because we’re underpaid.”
“You don’t have to keep emphasizing that.”
She had joined out of a sense of duty as a hunter and the desire to learn under Director Jeong Seungil. Some days she just wanted to cry.
Satisfied with the jab, Jeong Seungil answered.
“I hear Guildmaster Yong Cheonwoo personally observed Hunter Park’s sparring session.”
“He watched it himself and then threw fifteen billion at him?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens. Talent so outstanding that even Yong Cheonwoo personally named a fifteen-billion figure…”
Yong Cheonwoo was the sort of man who believed the only person superior to him was Director Jeong Seungil. What exactly had Minho shown in that sparring match to make the living embodiment of narcissism open his wallet so extravagantly?
“Did you see something in him as well, Director?”
“I never watched him fight in person.”
Jeong Seungil played it off lightly.
“But you must have felt something.”
“The undead he commands stared at me from beyond the darkness.”
He recalled their meeting at the gopchang restaurant. The presence lurking in Minho’s shadow. Its raw power had been weak. Yet the undead dwelling in that abyss had looked as though it were measuring him.
“That has to be your imagination.”
Jeon Hyeyeon rejected the idea at once.
“How could a D-class hunter’s subordinate possibly gauge an SS-class’s skill?”
“It was only a feeling.”
One thing was certain: Minho’s undead subordinates were far from ordinary. Jeon Hyeyeon could not agree with that assessment, but she did not deny that Minho’s potential itself was extraordinary.
“Chilseong offered ten billion, right?”
“They raised it to twenty billion.”
“Eek.”
“Of course, after today’s announcement those numbers no longer matter.”
The relative ease with which they had obtained each guild’s confidential offers was itself thanks to Minho’s declaration of independence.
“Will Hunter Park Minho be all right?”
“It won’t be easy for a while.”
He had rejected every love call from the domestic Top Five and declared he would stand on his own. Direct and indirect pressure was guaranteed to follow.
“I hear the one who orchestrated this whole picture is former Chilseong director Baek Seonghyeon.”
“Ah! That’s right! I was shocked when he suddenly appeared as the representative of Seungcheon Agency.”
Director Baek Seonghyeon of Chilseong Guild. Even though he was now former, the fact that a non-awakened man had climbed so high inside a guild had made him reasonably well-known in the industry.
“He’s the one supporting Hunter Park.”
“Ahh. So he deliberately set the board this way.”
A posture that almost dared the Top Five to try checking them. Under ordinary circumstances the pressure and obstruction would break a person.
“Representative Baek Seonghyeon—he wouldn’t have done this without having already calculated that.”
“You’re giving him quite a high evaluation.”
“Whom?”
“Both of them.”
Jeon Hyeyeon answered with a distinctly jealous tone.
“Ahem. Chief Jeon, you are more than impressive yourself.”
“Saying it now is a little late, you know?”
She snorted and walked out. Director Jeong Seungil watched her leave, then solidified a decision.
I need to accelerate the founding of the Rangers.