The Price of Dissatisfaction (3)
Time had flowed on, and the cityscape of YooBaek City was utterly peaceful.
Clang! Clang!
The Rune Dwarf happily swung his hammer, crafting runes for the Big 3!
"Move! There is no such thing as chance in progress! A thousand days of practice is called 'forging,' and ten thousand days of practice is called 'refinement'! Never stop moving, and victory will be seized!"
And the Training Instructor commanded the front lines, dispensing grave words of wisdom at the summons!
Although, that famous quote sounded awfully familiar. Wasn't that something Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary Japanese swordsman, had once said?
"That's right! That's the one! Hehe!"
Judging by the way Ramba nodded along with a thoroughly satisfied look on her face, the mystery was solved. She had clearly picked it up somewhere and passed it along. Truly impressive, the two of them.
Baek Jinwoo snorted a quiet laugh and went back to loosening up. That was when it happened.
"Jinwoo."
Yoo Jia had come looking for him.
"You have visitors."
"Visitors?"
"Yes. Executives from Baekho."
Park Ho.
And Kang Geonho.
Executives sharing the character for tiger.
They had come with a single demand.
Let the rankers of Baekho train at YooBaek's training hall as well!
To Baek Jinwoo, the demand felt utterly absurd.
"Me?"
Why him? Anyone watching would think they had prepaid their tutoring fees.
"Isn't this unfair? We're all national team members, so why do you play favorites and teach only one side?"
What was that even. Those disciples of his had earned their lessons by fighting a gang to protect their families.
And besides. Honestly, whether he played favorites or not, what business was it of theirs?
"This is too much. The amount received for training me, the national team captain, was a full 2 trillion won. That's certainly no small sum, so shouldn't you at least take proper care of us for six months?"
At Park Ho's words, Kang Geonho silently nodded along as well. Then he fixed Baek Jinwoo with a look that seemed earnest to the point of desperation.
"We didn't want to go as far as saying this unless we had to. But we're national team members too. For South Korea to get results at this World League, shouldn't we all be pooling our strength?"
Hmm. Fair point. But there was one thing they had wrong: Baek Jinwoo had been looking after them properly this whole time.
"As promised, I'm giving that consulting my all, ten hours a week. Everyone is keeping up nicely. Keep this pace, and you'll soon reach the ranks of the heavyweights people call world rankers. And naturally, South Korea will rise as a great power before long."
Every word of that was sincere. Baek Jinwoo was no crook, after all, so he had worked to make sure he delivered his 1 trillion's worth. Hadn't that money been exactly how he'd gotten his hands on the Versatile Rune!
Baek Jinwoo gave a light laugh.
"I'm only bringing this up because you mentioned the money. I believe I've clearly been worth what I was paid."
"That's not the point."
Park Ho shot back with a disgruntled face.
"Value? Fine, I'll grant you that. It's also true that we're improving. The problem is Hong Ari, Ki Jaehyeok, and Kang Jiho. Those three are improving at a pace from another dimension entirely, so what's the point of ours?"
Ah. Now he understood exactly what they meant.
Baekho didn't want their places taken by the likes of Arirang, Ilwol, or Carpe Diem.
Can't even blame them, really.
They weren't the nation's top players for nothing. They held those seats because they had exactly that much killer instinct and nerve.
He understood that much.
"Fine. Let me be honest with you."
So he gave a brief account of the circumstances under which he had taken his disciples.
"They became my disciples. In exchange, they signed a contract of unconditional obedience to my commands, and we even established an alliance in which neither side can betray the other."
"..."
What the...!
Park Ho wore an expression of sheer disbelief.
What is this.
Put simply: hadn't they just handed their guild over to YooBaek, lock, stock, and barrel!
"Is that true?"
"Do I have any reason to lie?"
"Of course there's a reason. You could be buttering us up to bind Baekho in a contract and keep us in your grasp..."
"Hahaha. Me?"
Look at these bastards?
Baek Jinwoo finally burst out laughing.
The contract was nothing more than a safeguard against betrayal. South Korea's Big 3, from where Baek Jinwoo stood? Nothing but a passable bunch of rookies.
"Sorry, but Baekho? I wouldn't take it even if you gave it to me."
Normally, he would have kept a line like that inside his head. But Baek Jinwoo was getting irritated. They weren't exactly hiding their true intentions, either.
For starters, people coming to learn don't carry themselves like this.
Their attitude was nothing like his disciples'. They lacked basic courtesy, for one.
And more than anything.
Ding!
His irritation exploded at the text from Yoo Jia that had arrived moments ago.
Ha. Look at these guys. So they'd already been whining behind his back before they even showed up?
"...What is that supposed to mean."
"Exactly what it sounds like. Guild master or vice guild master, neither of you is a match for me, and the rankers below you are no different. What does Baekho even mean to me?"
"..."
It wasn't a wrong statement. But because it was such an open dismissal, Park Ho's mood soured too.
"We only came to point out what we find unreasonable. That's going a bit far."
It was the very instant Park Ho said those words.
Ding!
Baek Jinwoo's phone rang again.
What? A lie?
Ah!
The Mind-Reading Bird!
The mind-reading bird Baek Jinwoo had gifted her. An A-rank Rare, a downright broken bird usable exactly once per day.
He had experimented with it a few times before. Not only did it call out truth from lie, it saw through the true intent behind whatever the other person had said and explained it like a parrot, for exactly ten seconds.
Sons of bitches. Yeah, that was about right.
Even if he was only a ten-hour-a-week instructor, these were players he had helped in real earnest, and they were planning to stab him in the back over a grievance?
Baek Jinwoo decided he was done treating them with any consideration.
"I must look like quite the joke to the Baekho guild master?"
"Excuse me?"
"You said I was being unfair. Okay. I'll accept that. I'm unfair. And yet?"
Some people labored under a delusion: the vague belief that this world, this society, was somehow clean.
Sorry, but every society in human history had rotted with corruption and misconduct. The present was no different. Where in this society was anything truly fair?
"...Th-that's..."
"Since you feel that strongly, I'll simply have to become even more unfair. From now on, Baekho Guild need not bother attending the consulting sessions. Even if you do, I won't be teaching you a thing."
He flashed a grin.
As Baek Jinwoo smiled, Park Ho's brow knitted.
He felt the man's behavior was excessive beyond all reason.
"Can you take responsibility for those words?"
"Not worth answering. If anything, let me say this: Park Ho, Kang Geonho, the two of you will be answering for what you came here and said today."
"..."
"That'll be all."
Whoosh!
Baek Jinwoo turned his back and vanished moments later.
An unmistakable order to leave, and a firm will to exchange not another word.
"Hyung, what do we do?"
Kang Geonho looked ready to cry. He had played along with his hyung's words, but he had never wanted things to harden into this kind of standoff.
Park Ho's face, though, was contorted with vicious malice.
"What do we do? We see it through to the end. That's what."
Grrrk!
His teeth ground together.
"They're genuinely hilarious."
Yoo Jia growled.
"How dare they threaten YooBaek!"
He knew full well how solid Baekho's backing was.
MK Group? Mirae Group?
All of them beneath Daesung anyway.
South Korea's number one conglomerate was, whatever anyone said, Daesung. And the granddaughter of the man who had built that group was standing right here.
And they still thought of touching it? That was war, plain and simple.
"For starters, they're bound to kick up a fuss over the additional 1 trillion they received. They'll cry consulting scam, this and that, and wage a public opinion war."
"Just leave them be."
"...Pardon?"
"Leave them alone, and it will all sort itself out."
"...What do you mean."
"I doubt the government is stupid enough for that."
Everyone dismissed them, but the South Korean government had pulled off unbelievable things over the decades. From the First Republic through the Sixth. There had been plenty of noise and scandal along the way, but they had grown the country into an economic power within the world's top ten.
And yet, when it came to summoning, the nation had been a backwater, and now every citizen knew who their hope was, right down to the kids playing in the streets.
Could South Korea really bring itself to abandon Jinugod? He might even take citizenship abroad, for all they knew?
"If anything, Park Ho is the stupid one."
If he had half of Baek Jinwoo's cunning, he would have prostrated himself. No rushing it. He would have closed the distance slowly, endlessly advertising himself as a man you could rely on, a man with loyalty.
Do that, and who knew. He might even have been accepted as a disciple.
But it was already too late.
Baekho had already proven what it was: far from repaying kindness, they were the type who would plunge a knife into their benefactor's back at any moment, so long as their own seat stayed safe.
"Jinwoo."
"Yes?"
"Park Ho is a fool, but South Korea isn't endlessly clever either."
"..."
"Do you know how my grandfather built Daesung over all those long years? He crushed, without mercy, anyone who dared draw a blade in front of me. Just like you speared the gang that threatened your family."
It was the first time he had seen Yoo Jia's eyes burn with that much fury.
"You just keep training as you have been. I'll handle everything after that."
Heh. Heh heh heh.
Well, well. The Baekho Guild... It seemed they had well and truly yanked the whiskers of a sleeping tiger.
"If you say so."
Fine by him. She did say she'd handle it all.
The next day.
The summons arrived.
"Kyiiiiirurururu...!"
The A-rank summon Ice Bird, elegantly spreading its wings of ice as it breathed chill in every direction.
"Kaaaah!"
The B-rank Lich, spewing an eerie mist from its jaws!
"Meow!"
A single C-rank Frost Cat, and then...
"Kiaaah...!"
"Kiaaaah!"
Two B-rank Ice Ghosts of the ghost type to boot!
For the record, Ice Ghosts were the finest close-range damage dealers of the ice attribute.
It's been a while.
With this set, there was a time he had conquered everything from the middle floors of the Tower of Ordeal to the highest-tier standard dungeons.
And how much had it cost to acquire these summons?
A full 13 billion won!
The Frost Cat in particular had gotten even pricier since the YooBaek footage went public. Supply simply couldn't keep up with demand.
Summons of A-rank or higher normally had no fixed price; you paid whatever the seller asked. But the Ice Bird was a summon with clearly defined limits, so listings did still come up for sale.
"Hungyo."
"Yes, My Lord."
"Where's Hwang Jiwoo?"
"She has been running the training grounds for one hour and twenty minutes now. She has become quite a decent runner, in fact."
"Is that so?"
Impressive. The order had been for one hour. She was running past it of her own accord, because she wanted to improve.
The corners of Baek Jinwoo's mouth curled up in a pleased smile.
"Tell her to come over here."
Now, then. Let's just see the look on her face when he hands these over, shall we?