0-7. Maybe You Shouldn't Pursue Recruitment in a Dungeon (1)
The ogre hunt was going smoothly, largely thanks to the creatures being in even worse shape than expected. It made no sense—the boss monster hadn't even been touched—so he had no idea why, but for the hunters involved, it was hardly a bad turn of events.
"Hm."
Lee Jun, however, felt deeply uneasy. The feeling probably stemmed from two things: one was that suspicious rogue, and the other was the whereabouts of an ogre that was suspiciously strong. It was the ogre side that gnawed at him, especially—because the former was something he could control, while the latter was not.
Something's off.
To monsters, numbers were power. Flipping a difference in numbers like that took something on the level of a boss monster.
"Something troubling you?"
At that moment, the rogue woman addressed him. Honestly, both options were equally troubling, but the degree differed—if he had to pick, the ogre was obviously the bigger irritant.
"Definitely... the ogre."
"I see. Then why not go check for yourself?"
This woman clearly knew who he was. Apparently he'd been made by a plant the guild had put in place. So much for luck. No—maybe it was only to be expected. If he'd drawn that much aggro, he should have rested for a good two weeks.
"Well, I doubt my going would change anything. I'm just a C-Class gunner with a short career, after all."
But even if it seemed he'd been made, letting on first was amateur hour. Playing dumb to the very end—that was the best possible response. It also preserved even the one percent chance the other side might not know for sure. And besides, there was little to worry about. The direction the ogres had headed was the boss monster's spawn point, and Taesan's Vice Guildmaster would be there anyway.
KWAAANG—
Oh. A thunderous boom echoed from far off. The boss raid must have begun. Han Jeong-hwan, Taesan's Vice Guildmaster, was a martial pugilist—one of the very best in his discipline for raw explosive power. The way a single casual punch could detonate like a bomb never stopped being a marvel to watch, though right now he was only listening.
"You seem to know exactly what's going on."
Sorry, but reading the battlefield is one of my few genuine talents. Still, he made a show of knowing as little as possible. When a person acted brazenly enough, the other side would waver, if only for a moment—wondering, wait, am I wrong? Of course, it didn't seem to work especially well on the expressionless woman in front of him.
"...I won't ask you to remove that mask. But I'll deliver one warning—"
Clack—
Clack—
Clack—
"...Huh."
From behind her came the sharp sound of heels striking the ground. As far as Lee Jun knew, there was exactly one person with the particular perversity to deliberately make that sound on bare dirt.
"Is that warning about her?"
"...I don't know why she's already here, but this wasn't part of the plan."
The woman, whose expression hadn't shifted once until now, visibly flinched at this unexpected arrival. At the very least, it told him which organization the suspicious rogue belonged to.
"...Seolwon."
Lee Hyeon-ah, Vice Guildmaster of Seolwon. With every step she took, sheets of ice formed beneath her heels with a sound—clack, clack, clack—a clear, crystalline chime at perfect odds with the venom in its owner's heart.
"Th-the... Vice Guildmaster of Seolwon?!"
He could hear the stunned cries from Choi Jeong-hyeon and her party. Fair enough. A vice guildmaster of a major guild was something ordinary hunters only ever saw on screens at official events. Getting this close was a privilege reserved for the lucky fans who'd managed to snag a good spot at the airport arrivals gate.
"Vice Guildmaster of Seolwon, is it? They say you never set foot in the Seoul Dungeon. What brings you to a shabby place like this?"
"Well, you'd know better than anyone, wouldn't you?"
That rotten mouth of hers was as sharp as ever. Realizing she hadn't changed a bit actually put him at ease.
"I have no idea what you mean."
"Really?"
Swish—
The tip of Lee Hyeon-ah's spear had snagged Lee Jun's mask. A clean spear technique had severed precisely the mask's cord and nothing more. Then she matched his gaze with a deliberately insufferable smile.
"Just as I thought—the rumor that you're all smoke and no fire didn't stick around for no reason. Right?"
...This absolute piece of work, honestly.
Hyeon-ah lowered her spear. The mask dropped to the ground with a soft thump, and murmurs rippled through the crowd. Lee Jun picked up the mask that had been stripped from him against his will, taking stock of the situation around them.
"F-Former Vice-Chairman...!"
"Why is the Former Vice-Chairman here?"
"You know, that business card fountain incident last time? Turns out that was the Former Vice-Chairman..."
The crowd's reaction burned hotter than before. The interest the other hunters had shown since Hyeon-ah's arrival now erupted completely.
"Hmph, I'm hardly such a big deal. And I'm not even the Vice-Chairman anymore—do you all really still call me that?"
Hyeon-ah grumbled with her arms crossed. The attention she was drawing now exceeded even her own entrance, and her mood had visibly soured. She'd hung all the aggro on him herself, and now that the crowd's interest had shifted his way, she was annoyed about it. What a truly spectacular personality.
"What a spectacular personality you have."
"Wh-what did you say?!"
"Ah, sorry. Haven't seen you in a while—my mouth isn't cooperating."
Then again, thinking about it, grudges really didn't come much more natural than this one. Seolwon was the only guild whose leader Lee Jun got along with while feuding with the vice guildmaster. That said plenty about how unhinged Lee Hyeon-ah was. But that was beside the point—what on earth was the busy madam doing, seeking Lee Jun out and personally making the trip? Hyeon-ah was someone who kept business and personal matters quite separate. Sure, they had bad blood, but no way would she abandon her own duties just to come corner him over it.
"Coming all this way, I take it something very important must be going on?"
"There is. My capable intelligence director hauled in a whale the moment the operation started."
"And here I was wondering how high a rank you'd reached—a director-level appointment, was it?"
Lee Jun turned his head toward the rogue woman beside him. Her mineral-cold eyes met his, and only after he stared steadily into them did she look away.
"Unbelievable. What were you thinking, deploying someone of this caliber? Does Seolwon have talent to spare?"
"Ahem, we do, actually. Unlike an Association struggling just to staff itself."
"Congratulations on your superiority. But if your guild's so wonderful, why aren't you taking care of it instead of coming here?"
"Simple. I thought I'd file a damages claim."
"...Ha."
That damages claim, of course, referred to yesterday's boss-steal affair. But the point here wasn't the damages itself—something like that could be handled by delegating to a subordinate, or sending an official request at the guild level. No, she was using it as leverage for a different negotiation entirely. The kind where you spelled it "negotiation" and read it "extortion."
"Taking a number for the boss is just common practice. There's no legal issue there."
"Oh my, you don't care about ethics at all, do you? Should someone whose backing just got weaker really be acting like this?"
"Just say what you want outright. Don't dog-paddle around it like a coward."
"Still as vulgar as ever with that mouth of yours. I was going to get to it anyway."
I'd love to know whose fault it is my mouth got this way in the first place.
Lee Jun swallowed his simmering irritation and waited for Hyeon-ah's next words. And when he heard her offer... honestly, he froze. It was the last thing he'd ever imagined coming out of her mouth.
"Join Seolwon."
"What?"
"Your position is guaranteed. The Guildmaster thinks well of you. Frankly, seeing your face makes my teeth grind, but looking at the bigger picture, it's the right move."
A recruitment offer. She seemed to be operating on a land-the-big-fish-first mentality. In fairness, Lee Jun at this point was worth plenty just as a totem parked inside a guild—his actual ability fell short of the name, but being Korea's only S-Class was worth that much on its own. And for Lee Jun, it was obviously an attractive offer too. For a hunter with enemies on every side, a scout from a super-guild like Seolwon couldn't help but be sweet. With the Guildmaster personally taking interest, a smooth climb after joining was all but assured.
But.
"Sorry, but I've already built a company. There's no reason to crawl under anyone's banner at this point. I never intended to in the first place."
"Ha. Are you serious?"
"Yep."
Right now, Hyeon-ah was making one fundamentally enormous mistake: she believed this whole string of stunts Lee Jun had pulled was just aggro to inflate his market value. That was a colossal misunderstanding. If that had been the goal, there were far better methods—nobody would bother with something this tedious. And besides, if he'd wanted to build a guild, he'd have built one. He wasn't joining anyone else's.
"......"
Hyeon-ah's expression began to harden bit by bit. He had no idea why she'd been so certain she'd land the recruit, but the fact that she'd assumed so meant she understood nothing about Lee Jun at all. If anything, it baffled him. Ever since he'd started operating in Korea, Lee Jun had staked his life on fending off the guilds' checks—how could she possibly believe he could be recruited?
"So go back and tell your Guildmaster. My recruitment—"
But Lee Jun's words never reached their end. Something had fallen from the sky.
KWANG!
Dirt and dust billowed outward amid a deafening roar. No—the order was the other way around. A blast beyond imagining came first, and only then did the dust rise to swallow their view.
"Ugh...!"
"Kyaaah! What the—!"
He couldn't parse it exactly, but something had clearly been flung their way. It didn't seem to be an attempt to hurt the two of them, though. If they hadn't dodged, they'd have been flattened—but it wasn't coming in fast enough that they couldn't. As the dust slowly settled, the flying object revealed itself.
"...Is there some kind of Vice Guildmasters' convention going on today?"
"Hahahaha! It's been a while!"
Han Jeong-hwan, Vice Guildmaster of Taesan, slowly rose to his feet—a giant standing two meters ten centimeters tall.
"Wh-what are you?! What do you think you're doing!"
"Haha, well, I was fighting the boss when some strangely strong ogres showed up, so I was just dealing with them."
"What? That makes no sense at all!"
But despite Hyeon-ah's torrent of abuse, Jeong-hwan simply smiled and held up what was in his hand: the nape of an ogre, quite dead. He'd gripped the body of an ogre twice his own size so hard the tough hide had stretched to its limit.
"...So that's where the ogres went, I see."
"......"
Lee Jun murmured quietly to the rogue woman beside him. Her face was still nearly expressionless, but her eyes had definitely widened compared to before.
For the moment, Lee Jun wanted out of this situation. Neither of these two was a good fit for him—Hyeon-ah went without saying, and Jeong-hwan was, in a slightly different sense, much the same.
"Well then! Since fate has brought us together like this—what were you two doing here?"
"......"
"......"
Han Jeong-hwan was, to put it kindly, pure-hearted—and to put it unkindly, utterly oblivious. A man who knew nothing but combat and training. In short: muscle-brained. Lee Jun and Lee Hyeon-ah locked eyes for a moment. She looked thoroughly exasperated. Given Hyeon-ah's temperament, she probably hated Jeong-hwan even more than she hated Lee Jun. After all, the man had a habit of turning into a duel-begging parrot around anyone in his own weight class. Practically every martial-type hunter had suffered through at least one sparring session with Han Jeong-hwan at some point.
Lee Jun looked back and forth between the two vice guildmasters, and a fine idea struck him: pit them against each other, and he could slip out of here with ease. Judging by past experience, getting the two of them fighting would be remarkably easy. Truthfully, they were about to start brawling even without his help.
"Come to think of it, didn't the Seolwon Guild get its boss stolen yesterday? From you, Former Vice-Chairman. How careless."
"...What?"
See that? The man has no sense whatsoever. ...Or wait—had he baited her on purpose this time? Either way, thanks to Jeong-hwan, Hyeon-ah's attention had shifted away from Lee Jun. Good. Now I just bide my time a little, slip away, and—
...it should have worked.
"Ah."
There was one thing Lee Jun had overlooked: when two vice guildmasters of major guilds and a former Vice-Chairman of the Association gathered in one place... of course a crowd of onlookers would swarm. He hadn't noticed while they'd been trickling in, but they were now... completely surrounded.
"...Those two are genuinely useless."
Lee Jun swallowed a sigh as he regarded the two vice guildmasters who made him want to curse out loud. Was there really no clean way out of here?
"......"
"......"
Then his thoughts turned to the rogue woman at his side. She was watching her superior's disgrace with an utterly indifferent gaze. Lee Jun stared at her intently.
Play my cards right with this one... and I could make a smooth escape.