National Team Selection (6)
The Selection Tournament Concludes!
At this year's end, the players who would compete on the world stage had been decided. Here was the roster, arranged by match points.
Upsets were a tradition of every selection tournament, but this year the scale of them had gotten somewhat out of hand.
For one, Oh Seon-young — 'O-rang' of the Five Wolves, who had held Rank 5 — was eliminated in the group battles, along with the Headquarters' own Oh Jimyeong and Park Hoseop, ranked ninth and tenth. In their place, three players from outside the top ten slid into the lineup: Baek Jinwoo, Ki Jaehyeok, and Kang Jiho. Unranked, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth, respectively.
Ki Jaehyeok and Kang Jiho belonged to the same guild — Carpe Diem. Jaehyeok was the Guild Master; Jiho, his second-in-command.
They were young, too — high schoolers, no less. Jaehyeok was nineteen; Jiho, eighteen. Carpe Diem itself had originally been founded by the standout talents of a nearby high school alliance, and while minors were never even allowed to establish guilds, the Headquarters had granted them an exception. Honestly, when ranker-caliber talent decided to build a guild of their own, no nation on earth was in any position to stop them — least of all South Korea, the weakest of the player nations.
And then there was the single greatest sensation of the year — none other than Baek Jinwoo. South Korea's brightest superstar had dominated the tournament to a crushing victory from an unranked start. Building signage, all three major broadcasters, community forums, Nutube — every screen in the country was drowning in footage of his matches. Undefeated, and with highlight reels that absolutely sizzled, he had become a national hero overnight.
And naturally, the ranks of those who suspected the truth about Jinugod swelled accordingly. The names were similar, and he had demonstrated something so overwhelmingly dominant that the conclusion practically drew itself.
The whole nation was burning with curiosity. Was Baek Jinwoo truly Jinugod?
Meanwhile, at that very moment — Britain.
Ding! From the pocket of a young blonde woman fresh out of a dungeon came the chime of an incoming message. She drew the phone out slowly and checked the screen: a video had arrived from someone.
A video? Rachel tilted her head and pressed play.
Up came Baek Jinwoo's highlight reel.
Hm? A flicker of intrigue passed through her eyes.
Rachel had begun making inquiries the moment the world turned upside down — starting with the One Sky Five Emperors. She had then used social media to put together a group chat, though regrettably, news of the One Sky himself remained nowhere to be found. The Five Emperors, at least, were all accounted for.
Rachel said nothing, her eyes fixed on the screen.
Then she saw it. That. One scene in particular — the moment a black scythe had abruptly appeared and swept everything aside. Her memory of it was hazy, but it bore an uncanny resemblance to what she herself had suffered long ago.
...Is it really Jinugod? It might be. It might not be. The fighting style certainly resembled his — the crushing dominance, the unhurried ease of his summons' movements. But why now, of all times? Had he lain low all this while, only to surface now? And if it truly was him... why wouldn't he reach out? Although— then again, maybe he wouldn't. This wasn't a game anymore; it was reality. Blindly trusting people would have been strange.
If he really was Jinugod, there was no way he wouldn't remember the Five Emperors. It had only ever been chat, but five years together built a bond all the same — a few exchanges and the truth would come out. In fact, plenty of players had shown up over the years claiming to be Jinugod. Every last one had been seen through within a few lines.
Jinugod was great. An asset to humanity itself. He alone had conquered the one hundredth floor of the Tower of Ordeal, and when humanity set out to conquer the Tower in the future, his help would be indispensable.
Not every one of the Five Emperors saw it that way, however.
MoscowMan of Russia took a somewhat different view. He always had. Jinugod, he insisted, terrified him.
Rachel had warned him. She always did. As the linchpin of the One Sky Five Emperors, she had a gift for smoothing over and steering the prickly old guard. What if MoscowMan pulled something reckless, and the man turned out to be the genuine Jinugod? The Five Emperors as a whole would earn his hatred for nothing.
To Rachel, Jinugod was the sky. One sky above all others — the One Sky.
Tower of Ordeal rewards were random by nature; no drop would have been strange. Perhaps he had simply gotten lucky, and a summon nerfed out of the game had come back with a Unique tag slapped on it.
Training Instructor, Wind Fairy, Fire Dragon Mage. Having all three was a little odd, though.
Hm. Fair enough. And yet — why? Rachel couldn't shake the feeling that Jinugod had used those very summons.
Click! Rachel played the video again and began analyzing Baek Jinwoo's play down to the finest detail. This was a player she would be meeting in six months regardless. There was no need to scramble into action over mere rumor.
Player Headquarters. The council chamber. The Director and ten council members had assembled to review the results of the selection tournament. Park Chang-seok was there, naturally — and so was Im Heesoo.
"First."
Park Chang-seok rose from his seat with an easy smile. "A man ought to keep the promises he makes, wouldn't you say? We have the contract right here — and you witnessed the whole thing yourself, Director." He fluttered the document in the air.
It was the contract stipulating that whichever council member lost the bet would publicly proclaim the other the better man and resign his seat of his own accord.
"Break it and the penalty is one billion won. Then again, you're a wealthy man... Perhaps you'd simply rather pay the billion?"
Who could have imagined the day would come when he could say this to Im Heesoo's face! Park Chang-seok felt a coolness beyond catharsis — downright refreshing. All of it, thanks to Jinwoo. Honestly, he was so delighted right now that if Baek Jinwoo told him to bark, he'd have barked.
Woof!
"By the way." One of the council members turned to Im Heesoo with an odd look on his face. "Councilor Im, what on earth happened to your face?"
"......"
Grrk. Im Heesoo, head sunk low in dejection, ground his teeth. At the moment he was too mortified to even lift his eyes. Worse, someone had clearly struck him — his left eye was blackened and swollen shut, ugly to behold.
Fuck. Im Heesoo's mind drifted back to yesterday. Quite some time after the matches had wrapped up, Oh Jimyeong and Park Hoseop — men who had once been his own underlings — had come calling. In the dead of night, no less.
"Wh-what's going on?!"
A startled Im Heesoo had gone straight onto guard.
"Why so jumpy, Councilor?"
"Exactly. It's not as if we're tigers out of the Joseon era."
They had been more brazen than he'd expected. To summarize what they said: Your eyes were broken when you ordered us to go after Baek Jinwoo, so you take responsibility! And pay damages — for the hatred we've earned and for every perk we'll never get to enjoy again! And if you refuse? Use your imagination!
And then they had beaten him. An elected councilor, no less!
"Go ahead, report us. When that happens, I'll cross over to an actual gang myself, and we'll come back and do you and your whole family in."
"Let's all stay civilized, Councilor. You've had plenty of fun off our backs all these years, haven't you?"
Faced with that horrifying spectacle — men snickering as they laid into him — there was nothing Im Heesoo could do. "P-pleeease!" All he could manage was to clutch their trouser legs and beg for his life. The pride he had spent a career stacking up, and everything else besides — it had all come crashing down yesterday.
Report them? The present-day police and military had no means whatsoever of laying hands on a ranker. Provoke them, and things would only get more dangerous. And sure enough — what if they really did join a gang and had him kidnapped?
Ugh. His body shuddered at the thought.
Park Chang-seok studied him with a detached gaze. How does a man rot away to that point? He could roughly imagine the kind of treatment Im Heesoo had received. Not a shred of sympathy stirred in him. He considered it nothing more than the man's just deserts.
"I-I will accept it."
At last, Im Heesoo opened his mouth. "I concede everything... and I will resign my seat."
Truthfully, he wanted out. To leave South Korea far behind, vanish to some distant shore, and live in hiding where nobody knew his face.
In any case — the council members were collectively stunned by Im Heesoo's shocking declaration. Even knowing roughly what sort of affair it was, shocked was shocked. For those who had joined Im Heesoo's faction in mocking Park Chang-seok, it was pure agony.
"Then we'll consider that matter settled as proposed." Park Chang-seok smiled, perfectly at ease. "Director?"
"Uh, yes? Go ahead."
"Don't you think it's time the headquarters began operating in a Baek Jinwoo–friendly manner?" Park Chang-seok called out the earlier blunder without a shred of mercy.
"O-of course."
"No objections?"
"Huh? Objections? What objections! How can you wound me with such words! Don't you know me? Afterwards I regretted it like crazy and worked my tail off trying to get a meeting with Baek Jinwoo!"
The Director had no choice now but to read Park Chang-seok's face. A council member's term was four years. With one year remaining, Baek Jinwoo would only soar higher — and if he did, the odds of Park Chang-seok sitting in the Director's chair outright would climb steeply.
"Hahaha, Councilor Park. No hard feelings from before, right?"
"Hard feelings? Honestly? Quite a few."
The moment Park Chang-seok said it flat out, the Director panicked. "What?! What could possibly have upset you so much!"
"Must I really spell it out for you?"
"Hahahaha, no, no! A wise man understands what goes unsaid. Yes, yes — so tell me, how might we ease those wounded feelings of yours?"
"I told you already, Director."
"Hm?"
"Run the headquarters in a Baek Jinwoo–friendly manner for the remainder of your term."
That was truly all he asked. And it was the only path by which the current Director could survive.
"First."
Before anyone realized it, the meeting had begun to flow under Park Chang-seok's direction. "Shall we start with the training plan for the national team going forward?"