Hwang Jiwoo (2)

The main gate of YooBaek City overwhelmed its surroundings with old-world grandeur, its classical design towering over everything in sight.

Eight women in all had gathered there.

Every one of them was a friend of Baek Ajin's, assembled for a tour after receiving invitations from Yoo Jia.

Their occupations ran the whole gamut! There was a university student, an aspiring player, and one preparing to take over the family business.

"Huh? Jiwoo! You came too?"

One of the eight — Hwang Jiwoo.

"Yeah." A nod.

"A chance like this doesn't come around every day. I had to."

For the others, hers was a face they hadn't seen in ages. Hwang Jiwoo was the kind of friend who lived in the group chat but rarely showed up to meetups.

Always sick with something, apparently.

"No fever today?"

One friend pressed the back of her hand to Jiwoo's forehead — then snatched it away with a jolt.

"Ack! You scared me!"

"What the— why are you so hot?"

"...I have a fever."

"You know, now that I think about it, she's always running one."

Hwang Jiwoo was wearing a mask. Her face was hidden, but birds of a feather, as they say — Baek Ajin's friends all boasted beauty in full bloom.

And before those beauties—

"Hey, girls! You made it!"

The main gate swung open, and Baek Ajin, immaculately turned out, greeted them with a radiant smile.

"Whoa."

"Ajin, you look amazing."

"Is that what you wear to work?"

Baek Ajin just kept climbing. These days she was famous enough that her name was a regular fixture in the media, and naturally her friends gazed at her with admiration edged in envy.

Once the round of greetings was done, she ushered them in graciously.

"You've got the whole day, so go anywhere you want. Wander around freely, take all the pictures you like. Oh, and I've got an apartment key here — unit 1402. I've already told them to open it up for you."

YooBaek's cutting-edge apartments were the hottest ticket around these days. With the government openly throwing its weight behind Baek Jinwoo, anyone could come to own a piece of "YooBaek"... though to buy or sell one of these apartments, you first had to earn YooBaek residency rights. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it a nation within a nation.

And they got to tour the place!

"Oooh."

"I want to live in an apartment like this... It connects to the bunker if you go underground, right?"

"Ajin, can we see your place too? I heard it's a penthouse."

The chatter rose to a happy din. The friends were giddy with excitement.

All but one. Only Hwang Jiwoo's gaze was fixed not on the apartments, but on the training grounds.

Hwang Jiwoo.

She had been sickly since she was little. Some quirk of her constitution left her average body temperature far higher than an ordinary person's, and it had made her life miserable.

Then, three years ago, the world changed — and as all of humanity went through the tutorial, she gained a summon.

An Ice Butterfly (E-rank).

It felt like a miracle. The pain that had tormented her all her life would wash away as though rinsed clean, so long as the Ice Butterfly stayed beside her.

Not with other summons. Only the Ice Butterfly.

Hope kindled, Hwang Jiwoo began digging into everything she could find — and the conclusion she reached was this:

'I need ice-attribute summons.'

Her body lived and died by attributes. In practice, the summons she commanded felt far stronger than any others she could check out in videos.

So she made up her mind. She would become a player.

But as ever, the world didn't bend easily. To gain summons, you had to run dungeons, grinding the daily rotation dungeons over and over. Three years of that, and forget becoming a ranker — she couldn't even get into a major guild.

Those were places only the top 0.1 percent of the top 0.1 percent ever entered. Unless one of the Five Emperors or a heavyweight ranker deliberately took you under their wing, the best you could hope for — like Baek Ajin in the old days — was hustling runes on the side. All the more so in South Korea, a backwater when it came to summoning.

And so Hwang Jiwoo had become a player of one sort or another, but unable to make proper money, she still lived with her parents, fretting and struggling to this very day.

Then word of Baek Ajin reached her — and she came running at once.

'I might even get to meet Baek Jinwoo.'

In the industry, Baek Jinwoo was a living legend. She'd heard that the entire national team ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— top tier among top tiers — was training under him, and they popped up in the media time and again singing his praises. Apparently their skills were measured as before-and-after meeting him.

It might be pure scheming. Scheming to leverage her connection with Baek Ajin and somehow arrange a meeting.

Hwang Jiwoo was desperate enough to admit it to herself and still show up.

But.

"Just one thing." Baek Ajin finished with a smile.

"Don't go anywhere near the training grounds. My brother's training in there... The CEO herself asked me to make sure everyone keeps that one rule. And so do I."

...Damn it all. Hwang Jiwoo's face crumpled.

"Haaah."

Baek Jinwoo, freshly rinsed off in the showers after his workout, heaved a sigh.

His head was packed full of a single word.

'Predation. Predation. Predation. Predation...'

If it was going to be mastered, it had to be mastered as fast as possible. Only then would every boss-grade monster kill stack the power higher, making her that much stronger.

But then again—

'And that's the fake authority?'

According to the lore, an ancient fire dragon slept sealed within the Fire Dragon Mage's heart. Pokryongpa was the art that had stirred even a fraction of that dragon's power awake. And the fire dragon's authority was Predation.

'If that Predation is fake... just how broken is the real one?'

Or was that not it at all? Was he approaching this from completely the wrong angle? Come to think of it, maybe this was how it went: back in Battle of Summoners, Pokryongi had manifested the fake authority, and because it wasn't designed content but a mutation-grade broken ability, it had been patched out!

'In that case...'

Maybe the fake authority was actually better than the real one.

"Whew."

If so, then the answer was to master the fake authority. After all, reality didn't seem to give a damn about balance.

'Which means I need to engineer a situation with a survival rate under ten percent...'

Let's see... just take Pokryongi alone and throw her at the Tower of Ordeal's fortieth-floor boss?

No — that would send the survival rate converging on zero.

And honestly, that part was murky too. He had no idea who was supposed to be judging survival rates, and this reality wasn't a game. Lose in a dungeon, and you died on the spot. That was part of why players these days weren't growing as fast as they used to.

"Aigoo, I have no idea."

Besides, planning was pointless. The moment Pokryongi declared a strike, it would all be over anyway.

'Right. Let it go.'

She was plenty strong already, and there was still plenty of room left to grow. He had to get graduation runes ready for Pokryongi and Doldori, start eyeing the other EX-grade summons, clear the Tower of Ordeal... and he'd need to begin slowly preparing for the year-five raid — the Demonic Dragon of Chaos.

Scrub, scrub, scrub. Having toweled off the last of the water, Baek Jinwoo stepped out of the training grounds.

His four disciples' summons and his own were all mixed together, being put through Hungyo's training. And over in that corner—

Fwoooosh!

Pokryongi was deep in meditation, flames blazing up around her on every side.

That was when it happened.

"Jeez, that scared me."

A message had just materialized out of nowhere! No warning whatsoever — what the hell?

A quest for Pokryongi?

'There was a system like this?'

He'd played Battle of Summoners for ten whole years, and he had never once seen a message of this type. Maybe it only appeared for summons of S-rank or above. Some kind of hidden piece?

"Mmm...?"

Pokryongi must have sensed the oddity too, because she stopped mid-training and rose to her feet.

'Obviously I press it.'

A quest arrives, and you press N? For Baek Jinwoo — and for the vast majority of players — such a thing was unthinkable.

"Yes."

Here we go! So what was this quest?

"...The Flame Body?"

What was that? And who was it?

"What kind of bullshit is this now?"

All training came to a halt.

"Why all of a sudden?"

"Is something the matter, Boss?"

His disciples tilted their heads and asked, but Baek Jinwoo offered no explanation. He simply said, "Something urgent came up. Let's put training off for about three days."

These days his disciples trained from morning until three o'clock every day. Only after that did they tend to their own guilds or catch up on backlogged work.

"You all haven't even been able to look after your guilds lately, right?"

Flame Body this, fire dragon authority that. It was too complicated to explain to them — and above all, Baek Jinwoo himself didn't really understand it yet.

"Understood, Master."

"Then we'll see you next Monday, Boss!"

His disciples withdrew with reluctant looks on their faces. Truth be told, for them, this training was looking after their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠guilds. The more they trained with Baek Jinwoo, the stronger they became — and every bit of it circled back as their guilds' gain.

But what could they do when Baek Jinwoo told them to go? Reluctant or not, go they must.

"My Lord."

Hungyo approached with a questioning look, and Pokryongi walked over as well. Baek Jinwoo shared the quest he'd received.

"The Flame Body... I do hold knowledge of it, My Lord."

"Oh, yeah?"

Ha. Hungyo really was broken. Ever since becoming EX-grade, he had practically turned into an encyclopedia of every summon in existence.

"It resembles the Nine Yin Severed Meridians we examined before, yet it is different. The Nine Yin Severed Meridians is a congenital illness born of tremendous yin energy damming up the meridians, whereas the Flame Body is a constitution. Its bearer may suffer from the boiling yang energy, but it is a fine special constitution — one that turns the ice attribute from mortal opposition into harmonious exchange. It, too, is a rarity that appears perhaps once in a thousand years."

"...Is that so?"

He didn't follow half of it, but the gist was that someone with that constitution was somewhere nearby, right?

"Keeping the Flame ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Body at Pokryongi's side for one hundred days... if anything, this is far better than before, My Lord."

"Better?"

"Is it not ten million times safer than hurling herself into dungeons with her life on the line?"

True enough.

"Then how do we find the Flame Body?"

"One moment, please."

Hungyo pressed his thumb, index finger, and middle finger to his brow and bowed his head.

Ha. Encyclopedia Hungyo! How could anyone be so dependable! That was why he seemed every inch the brilliant heartthrob, master of both pen and sword.

But—

"There is no method to locate them."

"Huh?"

None?

"However, My Lord."

"Yeah?"

"Did you not say a clock appeared in the quest window?"

"I did...?"

It was floating in his vision even now.

Huh? Oh!

Clap! Baek Jinwoo smacked his hands together.

"We just verify it physically!"

Carry Pokryongi around while they searched for people. And if the clock started running the moment someone got close—

That person would be the Flame Body!

"Since it said nearby... the odds are high that they are within YooBaek City. And since it appeared so abruptly, they may not be someone who regularly comes and goes here. That would be the first thing to investigate, I believe."

"Okay."

Baek Jinwoo sprang to his feet.

First, find them. He'd think about the rest once he had.