The Top Instructor's Price
By the time all the luggage was unloaded from the helicopter, the bulky sacks stood gathered in a neat cluster.
The trunk of the vehicle they'd brought couldn't have come close to holding it all, but there was no need to worry about that.
After all, the whole lot had been brought here to be eaten.
Thump.
Baek Ji-soo alighted lightly onto the ground.
Jang Seo-jun flinched.
Seen up close on solid earth, her presence pressed down on him all the more.
What on earth is happening right now?
Catching sight of Kang Seok out of nowhere had already felt like a once-in-a-lifetime event — and now, of all days, he was face to face with Baek Ji-soo too.
These were titans he had only ever seen through a screen, people he'd never dreamed of meeting in his entire life.
And unlike Kang Seok, this was someone he had no desire to ever cross paths with.
They're not about to drag me off somewhere, are they?
Jang Seo-jun was terrified out of his wits.
Baek Ji-soo's fearsome reputation was famous even overseas, but within the military it loomed twice as large.
The National Security Bureau and the Special Operations Command — everyone knew the two arms of the government were old rivals, perpetually squared off against each other.
The Disaster Management Bureau and the National Security Bureau regarded each other as competitors too, but they were forced to cooperate in the field at home, so their exchanges were relatively frequent.
Those two organizations, however, treated each other as outright potential enemies.
They say she's so good at tearing people apart alive that...
When she was in a foul mood, her hobby was supposedly stuffing whoever happened to meet her eyes into a steel drum and tossing it into the sea. A psychopath, they said.
A genius of torture who could inflict the very worst suffering without ever granting the mercy of death.
He'd heard it said often enough that being caught by her was worse than simply dying.
Of course, most of it was wild exaggeration — the kind of nonsense that would have made Oh Hyeon-seong laugh out loud whenever he heard it.
For her part, Baek Ji-soo showed no interest in correcting any of the rumors, whether they spread or not.
Quite the opposite — she'd even intimated that the inflated gossip came in handy for her work.
Given the covert nature of the National Security Bureau's operations, it seemed those rumors would never be properly put to rest.
"I wonder if I should really be putting errand work on someone as busy as you."
"Well, it's for my senior, so."
Baek Ji-soo replied with a faint smirk.
Ferrying potatoes by helicopter was a first even for her, but she had no objections.
"Honestly, I didn't expect you to come this fast."
"I happened to have some free time, so I could swing by right away."
"Thanks to you, everything's on schedule. I appreciate it."
Barely any time had passed since Oh Hyeon-seong made the call, yet Baek Ji-soo had already stopped by Changyeong-ri and flown all the way up here to the northern front.
He had his reasons for calling on her personally for this errand.
First, the potatoes and other crops had to be brought in — which meant the one summoned had to be someone who knew about the hidden fields inside his barrier.
Second, he could hardly ask civilians like the Yoo siblings to come to such a dangerous place.
And third, whoever it was had to be able to cross the sealed border as if it were nothing.
Take all of that together with her schedule, and Baek Ji-soo was the perfect fit.
"Did you know what's been happening here?"
"You mean that Root over there?"
Baek Ji-soo turned her gaze as she spoke.
The trees partially obscured it, but even from here the towering silhouette of the Root was faintly visible.
"There's the matter of the monster legion the Special Species brought with it, too."
"As if we wouldn't know. If we didn't, it'd be dereliction of duty. Everyone worth knowing at the Blue House is already aware."
"Then why has nothing been said about it back home?"
"Well... because we've controlled the information?"
"Why would you do that?"
Oh Hyeon-seong agreed with the need for information control to a certain extent.
Special Species in particular defied all conventional understanding — they possessed intelligence surpassing humans and could even speak their languages, which meant they could slip in among people unnoticed.
It was obvious the revelation would sow tremendous fear and confusion throughout society.
It was equally certain that the White Robe Sect — the cult of fanatics who believed the miasma-devoured China was a paradise — would gain power beyond anything it had now.
But clamping down on every scrap of information was no panacea either.
Sometimes controlled information was precisely what blocked an appropriate response or needed support.
"The President ordered it personally."
"The President?"
"The election is right around the corner, next year. Her eyes are spinning wild for the sake of a second term."
"But why? A monster offensive against the northern zone should be a good issue for the current administration, shouldn't it?"
Rally public support behind the sitting government by brandishing an external threat.
It was a time-honored tradition that powerful men and women the world over had exploited profitably since long before Gates and monsters ever existed.
"But dig into the details and the picture falls apart. While you were gone, senior, there was an incident — through the sitting President's misjudgment, the hunter forces stationed overseas took a devastating blow. It's one of the Disaster Management Bureau's most painful chapters."
For Oh Hyeon-seong, it was an event that had unfolded while he still lay unconscious in a hospital bed.
He knew the rough outlines of that incident, but he'd never felt the social climate surrounding it — just how enormous its ripple effects had been across the political landscape of both parties.
"I stopped watching political news — felt like it was giving me a headache, dredging up old memories..."
"If talk of crisis picks up steam, the next election swings in the Republican Party's favor instead. That's why the current government is doing everything it can to wall the issue off."
Baek Ji-soo said with a shrug.
"Well... you've always clashed with the politicians over this sort of thing, senior, so I suppose it's no surprise it doesn't sit well with you."
"No, forget it. You all will handle it well enough on your own."
Oh Hyeon-seong shook his head.
It felt like all his old, aggravating memories were flooding back at once.
He was retired now anyway — there was no need to pile commentary on top of it all.
"Then I'll be off."
"You're just dropping off the goods and leaving?"
"I'd rather not run into that Kang Seok fellow again if I can help it. I only came to see your face, senior."
Hoo.
Baek Ji-soo drew in a breath and let it out.
Her hyper-acute sense of smell was flooded with the scent of blood and thick gunpowder smoke.
The smell of the battlefield, one she'd inhaled until she was sick of it.
The sensation had long since dulled, but she had never liked this particular stench.
"Besides, this place is hardly a pleasant little town. Let's meet in Changyeong-ri when you have the time."
"Hold on."
At that moment, Oh Hyeon-seong stopped her.
"There's a favor I'd like to ask."
"...A favor?"
Baek Ji-soo's eyes widened slightly in surprise.
But the moment she heard what followed, her expression twisted right back into a scowl.
"No."
"...Why not?"
"You want me to teach a soldier? A subordinate of Kang Seok's, no less?"
She fixed Jang Seo-jun with a contemptuous stare.
From Jang Seo-jun's position, it was suffocating.
Simply meeting Baek Ji-soo's icy presence had sweat trickling down his back in rivulets.
"Come on. If anyone's suited to look after him, it's you — he's exactly your kind of case."
"Absolutely not."
She'd noticed the man standing nearby earlier and had assumed at first he was a lackey — one of his pawns, the way he treated Lee Gil-sang like a hand and foot.
But he was actually receiving one-on-one instruction as a hunter?
Oh Hyeon-seong might insist the boy wasn't formally his disciple, but that alone was already enough to rub her the wrong way.
"...Really? Then there's nothing to be done. Off you go, then."
Oh Hyeon-seong gave up more easily than expected.
And with that, Baek Ji-soo turned her back on him without a shred of regret.
Had it been anyone else's request, she'd have looked on it favorably — it was Oh Hyeon-seong's, after all. But this one matter was beyond negotiation.
"Haah... well, I guess I'm only boiling two packs of ramyeon, then."
Oh Hyeon-seong muttered to himself, like a man grumbling to the empty air.
Baek Ji-soo's steps toward the helicopter froze dead in their tracks.
"...Ramyeon?"
"Right, let's begin."
At the sound of his voice, Jang Seo-jun snapped to attention.
Then he stole sidelong glances at the two hunters standing before him, shifting his gaze from one to the other.
Oh Hyeon-seong and Baek Ji-soo, arms crossed, their eyes locked squarely on him.
How on earth... did it come to this?
With Baek Ji-soo in particular standing before him, he was wound tight as a bowstring.
Deny it as one might, she was an object of fear.
But to Jang Seo-jun at least, she was also an object of awe shot through with genuine respect.
She was a living legend of the past, like Kang Seok — and even now, one of the strongest hunters in the nation.
A national-level hunter of Grade 13, one no hunter alive could fail to revere.
Pull yourself together. Are you planning to throw away an opportunity like this like an idiot?
Jang Seo-jun slapped his own cheeks twice, sharp.
This was the kind of stroke of fortune others would never obtain in a lifetime.
No — even dying and coming back to life a thousand times over wouldn't buy a chance like this.
If he wanted to reach his deathbed without a single regret, he had to seize the opportunity before him now.
"Whew..."
Closing his eyes, Jang Seo-jun focused and spread his senses wide.
A forest empty except for the three hunters — no matter how far he stretched his perception, no meaningful presence registered.
But he sharpened his mind further still, reading even the faintest shifts in the smallest flows, leaving nothing unfelt.
Then his eyes flashed open, and he pointed out, one by one, the exact positions of the presences he could feel beneath the earth.
Kyuing!
He had pinpointed every last earth spirit hiding underground.
Apparently well aware they'd been caught, the grumbling spirits came scrambling up to squirm about on his shoulders.
Jang Seo-jun, meanwhile, had concentrated his senses to the extreme and burned through every drop of his mana — he collapsed on the spot, utterly spent.
"He really is... the real deal."
Baek Ji-soo gave a nod.
With ordinary summons, anyone with keen mana sensation could generally manage to notice them, at least.
But Oh Hyeon-seong's spirits operated on an entirely different mechanism from common summons in the first place — deciphering them with standard detection abilities was simply impossible.
"The talent's there. Now I understand why you took an interest in him."
"Right?"
"Discerning Yoon Seol-ha's ability is probably beyond him, but if he's lucky, he might even punch through Absolute Stealth. And with enough mana, long-range detection would be nothing for him."
Korea was one of the world's foremost hunter powers.
It harbored a frankly abnormal concentration of top-tier hunters relative to the nation's actual size.
Detection-class hunters, however, were sorely lacking by comparison.
For those with elite detection abilities, the job didn't end at simply locating traces or identifying nearby monsters.
The very scope of what they could do changed completely, which was why the state poured enormous effort into strategically cultivating the field.
"His special constitution is Mana Extension, I believe?"
"That's right."
"The constitution itself is about as common as dirt, though."
It wasn't an official classification, but by the standards of the data agencies typically used when evaluating hunters, Mana Extension was categorized as C-class.
Which was effectively the lowest rating a detection-type constitution could receive.
That was why Jang Seo-jun had attracted so little attention all this time.
"So his sensory domain alone developed abnormally."
"Exactly — and that's why I asked you to help. Handling the senses is your specialty, isn't it?"
Oh Hyeon-seong said, giving her a nudge with his elbow.
A brief silence passed before Baek Ji-soo finally spoke.
"That promise you made earlier... it's a sure thing, right?"
"Of course. We'll crack in an egg, with cold rice and kimchi on the side."
"..."
Baek Ji-soo's expression twitched, ever so subtly.
It stung her pride a little, but there was nothing to be done.
Even at this very moment, she was barely restraining herself from swallowing audibly.
"...Deal."