S-Class Hunter Management (1)

Riiing— Riiing—

"Nngh…."

Lee Jun dragged himself upright at the sound of the alarm. It had only been a single day since he started running his management agency. Not even twenty-four hours had passed, strictly speaking.

He'd found his first hunter far faster than expected. And not a D-Class or a C-Class, but a B-Class, with years of hands-on field experience. At first, he'd assumed she was applying for a staff position.

So why does she want to come here, of all places?

Climbing to department head in Seolwon meant she could walk into any guild and receive top-tier treatment. Granted, an information bureau wasn't the kind of department that advertised itself, but there were plenty of ways to prove you'd worked in one. And yet she'd chosen to join a brand-new outfit like this.

"Even my most devoted fans wouldn't go this far…."

It was possible to make someone a paragon, to follow in their footsteps. But being a hunter was a matter of reality. It wasn't the sort of thing you did while worrying about how to put food on the table.

Hunting was a profession where you wagered your life. Where you could actually die.

"I'm not a devoted fan."

He flinched.

"…You startled me."

Lee Jun turned his head toward the voice. There she was, standing right in front of his bedroom door.

Seo Yoon. The monumentally first hunter of his management agency.

She was wearing glasses today, unlike yesterday. The impression was different enough that he almost didn't recognize her for a second.

"Whoa, that gave me a heart attack. Why are you in my room?"

"Your scheduled wake-up time had passed by a considerable margin, and you showed no signs of stirring, so I had no choice."

"…What do you mean? Why is it already ten?"

Lee Jun rubbed his eyes and checked the clock again. The numbers didn't change. It was unmistakably ten o'clock.

Ten at night.

He'd meant to set an alarm for the morning — apparently he'd set it for 10 p.m. instead.

"Haah… I'm losing my mind."

Today was supposed to be the day he got a full briefing on Seo Yoon's exact class and skills, then built her training curriculum together.

"You needn't worry so much, sir. The manual you gave me was so long that I only just managed to finish memorizing it."

"Ah, you read the whole thing? That wasn't meant to be finished in a day."

"…Regardless, I've committed all of it to memory."

He'd only skimmed it in passing, hadn't he?

No — seriously, who hands someone 370 pages and expects them memorized in a day?

But actually pulling it off was impressive in its own right.

"Hold on, did you actually rest, though? I'm worried you spent the whole time reading the manual instead of sleeping."

"I rested comfortably. The bedding is high quality and everything is well maintained, so that much was natural. Though I don't understand why a man living alone needs quite so many rooms."

"Ah, that's a holdover from my vice-chairman days. Guests came through constantly, and I'm the only one with any acquaintance among the Initial Awakeners, so hosting them fell to me."

He'd always kept the place fully prepped, since you never ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knew when some VIP would show up. Not that he needed it anymore.

He'd already stepped down from public office. Why on earth would he be receiving dignitaries now?

Ask someone else for that favor. The answer's always going to be no.

"Anyway, since you've read the whole thing, we can move faster. Anything you're curious about?"

"If I had to pick one thing… from what the manual says, I can't quite tell how this 'management' business differs from a guild."

"Exactly right."

"…Sir?"

"I said you're exactly right. Management is, in truth, no different from a guild. Except for one single thing."

This whole venture was, quite literally, a guild with the name filed off. Everything Lee Jun intended to do here could just as easily be done under a guild's banner. No guild ran this lean, true — but plenty of operations got by with fewer than a hundred members.

"Then… why do it this way? Is it because operating as a guild would run you into the relevant statutes and regulations?"

"That's part of it, but the real point is symbolism."

A business barely distinguishable from a guild — and yet the fact that its name was not 'guild' mattered enormously.

As Lee Jun had already made plain in his press conference, he'd started this venture to check the guilds. So the name could be anything at all. As long as it wasn't 'guild,' it worked.

And besides — after spending his career wringing the guilds by the throat, founding one himself now would have been nothing short of farcical.

"That said… brokering contracts on all sides is a distinctive feature, if you want to call it one. Whether guild or Association, organizations guard their hunters jealously and never let them out."

"That's true. Certainly… if you involve yourself in every contract negotiation, there would be far less room for third parties to intrude."

Yes — that was the single biggest point.

Exclusive stewardship of every hunter's contract. Whether the Association or a guild, the arrangement guaranteed that a hunter could sign with whoever they actually wanted, with every other interested party ruthlessly shut out of the process.

That was the one feature that made this management agency unique.

"But don't worry. If you ever want to join a guild, I'll broker that too. Now that I've started this business, my hunters come first, always."

"When I watched your press conference, it seemed you intend to contract directly with hunters as well. How will that proceed?"

"Ah, that… honestly, it's not feasible right now. Probably once we've built a track record and the roster grows a bit."

Lee Jun's ultimate goal was to turn every hunter under his management into a true freelancer. As the saying goes, a man who's chewed meat knows how to chew it — gates had emerged, he'd spent roughly a year working freelance himself, and he was confident in his ability to run the operation.

But that was a problem for later.

For now, focus on raising the one hunter on the roster.

"We're running a little behind, but… work is work. Did you write up what I asked for?"

"Here it is."

What Seo Yoon handed over was a stack of roughly ten pages.

It was the document Lee Jun had told her to prepare yesterday. A résumé, to put it simply — with one peculiar difference.

"You said to write anything at all about myself… I wasn't sure what to include, so I wrote as much as I could."

A completely open format. He hadn't specified a single field, which made it unusual, if unusual was the word.

The reasoning was simple. How a person perceived and understood themselves told you more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about them than any structured form ever could. Whatever was missing, Lee Jun could simply ask about — so accepting it this way cost him nothing.

"Shall we take it downstairs, then?"

Lee Jun was not the type to put off work. The two of them headed straight for the first-floor living room.

Clack—

Lee Jun set two teacups on the table and took his seat. Across from him, Seo Yoon sat on the sofa, meeting his eyes with a face carved from stone. There was something squared-away about her.

Her appearance said the same. He'd told her to make herself comfortable, yet there she was in a crisply pressed dress shirt, every crease ironed to perfection — clearly no ordinary woman. She'd even put on socks and indoor slippers. Not house slippers — those white, proper guest slippers.

Lee Jun, by contrast…

Hoodie and sweatpants. And, naturally, bare feet.

"Ahem."

It stung a little, but he'd simply have to ignore it.

Lee Jun looked at the first page of Seo Yoon's document. At the very top, of course, her name. The world was full of every conceivable kind of person, but faced with a blank sheet like this, most people would write their name first.

Next, any hunter would surely list their level and class. Seo Yoon was no exception.

"Class is Assassin, level 78, I see…."

Lee Jun was currently level 110, and most guildmasters of the major guilds sat in the early nineties. By that yardstick, 78 was a thoroughly respectable number. Lee Jun himself had no skills, no status window, and thus no stat allocations to make — he hadn't merely been caught, he'd been overtaken outright.

Weighing all of that… she was probably just a shade below him in raw terms.

And her class was Assassin.

Assassin was the advanced tier of the Rogue line. Rogue was a genuinely mediocre class, but an advanced evolution was another matter entirely. Class category — and above all, whether it was advanced or common — wasn't something effort could change.

"Hmm… next is work history. One year and three months at Seolwon. That means she joined almost immediately after its founding."

"I was fortunate. As you know, advanced classes were genuinely rare back then, sir."

"Fair enough. Though… they're not exactly common now, either."

For the record, Lee Jun had no idea what his own class was. He couldn't see his status window, so it went without saying. He wasn't even certain he qualified as a martial-type at all — enough said.

"Hmm… and… the skills we can go over later, nice and slow. Primary equipment — I'll be getting you fitted with new gear, so we'll skip that too."

He flipped through page after page, until one thing caught his eye: her stats. Anyone who didn't know her level would have taken this for a level-90 character's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sheet.

Stat points accrued at a rate of two per level. Luck and Charisma capped at 100 and were fixed values that couldn't be raised through point investment — which meant the remaining seven stats were all fair game.

"You have 156 accumulated stat points against a current total of 291. If your starting total was 135, that puts you beyond promising — that's prodigy territory, isn't it?"

The average starting stat total was 100.

What is wrong with Seolwon's people?

They let talent like this rot?

Lee Jun couldn't wrap his head around Seolwon's personnel policy. Weren't they practically one of the top two or three mega-guilds in the entire country? He was sure there had to be other reasons, but he could hardly imagine any justification worth passing over talent like hers.

Seo Yoon, for her part, said only:

"…Please turn to the next page."

He obeyed, flipping to the following sheet — and then he understood why.

"……."

Her condition was seriously bad.

Mana rampage brought on by uncontrolled resonance — to put it plainly, her body absorbed far more mana than it could ever regulate. The one mercy was that she wasn't a Mage-type class. A mage with uncontrolled resonance would be indistinguishable from an ordinary civilian — useless as anything but a hunter.

And the stroke of luck was this: Lee Jun knew the cure for uncontrolled resonance. Once that was handled, the mana rampage would resolve on its own.

The problem was that the treatment was tricky. He'd discovered the method in his previous life, and even then, across four whole years there had been exactly three recorded successes.

Still, she seems like a genuinely talented one… it should be possible.

Right — it wasn't as though the method didn't exist, so the situation was manageable. But he'd decided not to tell her yet. That method wouldn't surface in the world for at least another six months, and there was no sense in mentioning it beforehand and sowing suspicion. He'd tell her, at the earliest, once it appeared publicly.

So Lee Jun simply gave a small nod and turned to the next page of the résumé. Seo Yoon watched him in silence the whole while.

"Hmm…."

The very last section was… her motivation.

In an ordinary résumé, the "reason for applying" field was nothing more than an invitation to demonstrate how hard you could flatter the organization you were begging to join — and anyone eager to curry favor stacked their praise as close to the front as possible.

Seo Yoon had saved it for the very last page.

Her stated motivation was spare and unsentimental:

"……."

An opportunist, was it?

What she'd said in the Seoul Dungeon had amounted to the same thing.

The truth was, most people were opportunists. Only the values by which they weighed an opportunity differed; the underlying drive was much the same. Yet so many people concealed that fact about themselves, or shied ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠away from it.

It wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Not at all.

"…She's good."

The words slipped out of Lee Jun unbidden. She really did seem like a decent person.

"Well, I like it. I have a soft spot for honest people. All that flattery gets exhausting anyway, you know?"

"…I see."

She gave a small bow of her head. The broad picture was settled, then.

All that remained was to build the perfect curriculum — and execute it.

"Get some real rest tonight. Starting tomorrow, things get difficult."

It was going to be training that could only be described, without exaggeration, as hell.