Opportunities Exist to Be Seized (1)
The day of the gate raid had arrived.
Since dawn, people had begun flooding into Bogwang-ri, Seongsan-myeon—a village whose entire population could barely fill a city block.
Click—
Click— click—
"Hey, come on, don't shove!"
Grind, grind—
Click—
"You there, in front! Crouch down a little, would you?"
"What, is the camera yours alone? Get out of the shot!"
Apparently every broadcaster, magazine, and newspaper in South Korea had sent reporters. On top of that came guild officials and a scattering of freelance hunters. Even personal streamers had shown up to the circus.
"...What a mess."
Lee Jun, who had claimed his spot well before the crowd began to swell, watched the Taesan staff struggling in the distance to keep the mob under control. Because he'd arrived nearly three hours ahead of the raid, he'd been spared that particular torment. Not that those who'd been camped out since the previous day hadn't roped him into things anyway—but hey, that was the just reward for their diligence.
"So that's why you insisted on leaving so early. I never imagined it would be like this."
"It's an exclusive. People always flock to exclusives."
Lee Jun gazed past the raid headquarters tent and slowly rose from his seat.
"Get used to it. After today, it's only going to get worse."
"...I see."
What he'd just said was confidence, plain and simple. Saying the exclusive wouldn't slip through their fingers meant declaring, in so many words, that this raid would succeed.
Not that failure was on the table with Seolwon involved. But Lee Jun's words reached beyond even that.
Whew...
Not that he wasn't steadying his nerves on the inside.
Who wouldn't be tense, in a situation like this? Ordinarily, Lee Jun wasn't. He couldn't care less about other people's eyes on him—except when he was putting them to use. But he had no way of knowing whether Liberation lurked among those watching gazes. Anyone circulating through that headquarters tent right now might be a Liberator. How was he supposed to stay calm under that kind of scrutiny?
Especially when he couldn't rule out that one of the Twelve might have come in person.
"...I'll step out for a bit."
He had no desire to plant anxiety in Seo Yoon unnecessarily. So far he'd maintained a flawless mask of composure, but there was no telling how long that would hold. For now, leaving was the only option.
Seo Yoon watched him in silence over her cup of coffee. A faint thread of worry showed through her. Had she seen through him? No... surely not. Then what was—
"By the way... haven't you been sleeping poorly, sir? Are you feeling all right?"
Ah. That kind of worry.
"I'm fine. I'm at full capacity."
Lee Jun's body had long since adapted to the grind of his first year back. Unless he was genuinely exhausted, his edge dulled only slightly. His combat power was what it was regardless, so pouring everything into judgment was the smarter trade.
"Then please rest."
"Understood."
With a soft flutter of her ponytail, she saw him off and took another sip of her coffee. Once again, the coffee was Seo Yoon's own handiwork.
Hm. Though... I watched her dump half the sugar bowl in earlier.
"...Whew."
Lee Jun shot a sidelong glance at his own cup while Seo Yoon wasn't looking, then downed it in one go and stepped out of the tent.
Urgh...
...Sweet.
After that, Lee Jun circled the perimeter of the camp alone, careful to stay out of the cameras' reach as much as possible. Getting photographed didn't bother him—but he had no hobby of deliberately posing for shots, either.
And then someone approached him.
A frame that rivaled Go Seok-gu's, and a booming, gravelly voice to match, called out with easy familiarity.
"What're you doing here already, you rascal?"
"Ah, if it isn't the Guildmaster."
"That's right. You sly snake."
Kang Tae-san, Guildmaster of Taesan. The middle-aged mountain of a man, standing well over two meters, clapped Lee Jun on the shoulder.
THUD!
"......"
That wasn't a clap. That was an impact.
"...I nearly lost a shoulder there."
"Tch, tch. This weak? And you're planning to raid a gate?"
Every time Kang Tae-san spoke, the infinitely stretched scrap of fabric covering him tested its elasticity a little further. Lee Jun felt genuine pity for the suit barely clinging to that bulk.
"Speaking of which—what's with the suit?"
"Ahem. With all those reporters crawling around, a man can't stand there looking shabby, can he?"
"Nobody came to see you, Guildmaster."
"You little brat."
But even as he grumbled, Kang Tae-san was grinning. Among the guildmasters, he was the leading figure of the pro-Association faction. His personality meshed with Lee Jun's well enough that closeness was practically inevitable.
"So. Think you'll clear it?"
"We have to."
"Right. You have to. This isn't a question of can or can't."
He nodded with a resolute expression—and beneath it, something that looked faintly like regret.
"An S-Class gate... That's a serious customer, I'll tell you."
"If you're going to mourn it that much, why didn't you ever touch it yourself?"
This was something Lee Jun had genuinely wondered about. In the previous cycle, Taesan had at least committed a strike team to this gate. A team that got wiped out, granted. But in this cycle, they hadn't attempted the raid at all. As far as anyone knew, the gate was completely virgin territory—only surveyors had poked around the entrance.
And now, at last, the full story was coming out.
"Tch. If some absolute moron hadn't aggroed ogres onto our recruits, I swear—"
"Aggroed what?"
"Ogres. At the Seoul Dungeon, of all places!"
"...Good grief. Did they catch whoever did it?"
"Not a clue, they say. Vanished without a trace on the spot. Some thief specializing in stealth, I'd guess."
"Hmm..."
By now, even Lee Jun could piece it together.
That... was me.
When he'd taken Seo Yoon to the Seoul Dungeon for training, he had once unloaded a whole parade of ogres onto Park Heon-woo's party. Apparently the aftereffects had left them in rough shape.
Wait—but that happened before this gate even formed, didn't it?
"So they overexerted themselves because of that incident, and the whole lot of them are laid up in bed now. That's why the assignments got downgraded a step at a time, and the schedule slipped."
"Ah, so that's why the raid calendar shifted across the board. But couldn't you just heal them and send them out?"
"Tch, tch. What are you, frail? Muscle soreness earned through training must heal naturally—that's how you grow stronger, faster! In my guild, unless you're about to die, no healing."
"......"
Right. Now everything clicks.
Taesan's first strike team that failed in the previous cycle—it had been the guild's rookies, led by Park Heon-woo. This cycle's gate had wiped the first team and left only one survivor of the second... so a team that never even got to draw blood was arguably the lucky outcome.
So in a roundabout way... I actually did Taesan a favor.
Not that he could ever prove it.
"Just my personal opinion, but I'd say you ought to thank whoever aggroed those ogres."
"Huh? Why?"
"The ocean theme's a brutal one to throw rookies at, no?"
"Hahaha, worry is a disease. If my picks couldn't handle it, I wouldn't have recruited them in the first place!"
Then you'd better start firing them.
"Anyway. We'll be heading off now. Enjoy the show."
"Tch. What a waste. Do you have any idea how much an S-Class haul is worth?"
"Then stand there and watch me strip-mine that S-Class for everything it's got~"
"You shameless brat!"
Lee Jun waved to Kang Tae-san and headed for the gate.
One hour remained until seven o'clock. The raid was about to begin.
"......"
Before every gate raid, Lee Jun had a ritual—a habit, if you liked. As Vice-Chairman he'd almost never joined raids in person, so no one else knew about it.
Rustle—
From his Pocket, Lee Jun drew out a single silver coin.
"Stay safe this time, too."
The Jester.
A coin engraved with the image of a clown juggling atop a ball, teetering on the edge of disaster. The very one he'd shown Yoon Seol during their meeting at Seolwon.
Lee Jun clutched the coin tightly in his fist for a few seconds, then buried it in the earth directly beneath the gate.
"...Not many of these left."
Since that time, all those years ago, Lee Jun had never minted another. There was simply a stock of them, made long before, that remained.
He kept burying them, one by one, to sever his ties with the past. Call it clearing out obsolete inventory, if you wanted a name for it. Once the coins ran out, no doubt the ritual would end with them.
"......"
Lee Jun lifted the knee he'd knelt on and trudged away from the gate. He didn't brush the dirt off his trousers.
He simply didn't feel like it.
That was the whole reason.
"Ah, sir. You're back."
"Of course. Did you rest well, Seo Yoon?"
"Yes. The coffee here was quite good."
Hm... about that...
Anyway.
"The raid starts in an hour. Let's get ready."
"Understood."
At his words, Seo Yoon immediately gathered her equipment: a plain black briefcase, unremarkable in design, containing everything she needed.
Hm... I should get her a Pocket of her own soon.
Lee Jun's Pocket was still a prototype—one the Director of the Technology Bureau had handed over solely to Lee Jun for testing. Typical of that craftsman's work, it had never malfunctioned once. At this point it might as well go to market.
He was mulling this over when Seo Yoon spoke up.
"Forgive me for saying this, sir, but... do you truly believe this method will work?"
Apparently the raid strategy Lee Jun had explained didn't inspire much confidence. Not that he hadn't anticipated exactly this reaction. Honestly, her restraint was what surprised him—she must respect her boss quite a bit.
The strategy Lee Jun had laid out was simple: Run and Gun. Drop Seolwon's strike team off at the entrance and sprint straight for the depths, ignoring everything in between.
Frankly, this was a tactic reserved for gates whose brakes were nearly gone—a strategy that abandoned most of the byproducts and drops, so no one would ever use it under normal circumstances. And if the wager was decided by the total value of the rewards gained? It was an even worse idea.
But there was always a reason behind Lee Jun's strategies. In this case, two of them.
First, the hidden piece's acquisition conditions. Second, the psychological game.
The hidden piece this time was bound by a time limit: reach a specific point deep within the gate within one hour of entry. That was the requirement for access—according, at least, to the testimony of whoever had claimed it in the previous cycle. Verified through everything from an oath on mana to the Technology Bureau's special lie detector, it was more than credible.
And then there was the psychological warfare woven in—aimed squarely at Seolwon.
Seolwon's raids ran on a distinctive structure. Lee Jun intended to exploit that structure to throw them off their stride. Those were the reasons he'd chosen Run and Gun.
But he couldn't explain any of this to Seo Yoon. All of it came from his regression—certain in his mind, impossible to prove. So he resolved to appeal not to evidence, but to something else entirely.
In rhetorical terms: ethos. In other words, he would persuade her on the strength of everything he'd shown her so far, and the trust she'd placed in him.
"Seo Yoon."
He looked at her and spoke seriously.
"I called myself an opportunist once before, didn't I?"
"...You did."
"An opportunist never lets a chance in front of him slip away. But when several chances arrive at once, opportunists split into two types."
The type who pursued safety, even at the cost of smaller gains. And the type who rolled the dice for a bigger prize. Both were opportunists, but the former got branded a bat—flying between camps—while the latter got celebrated as a gambler. She would know both archetypes as well as he did.
So he asked.
"Which one are you, Seo Yoon?"
She had thrown away the solid backing of Seolwon to join his management company. From her own perspective, perhaps this beat sitting in an uncertain seat like Information Bureau Chief. But a gamble was a gamble—it might well turn out worse than that uncertain seat ever would have.
"I am..."
She considered it. Which type was she? Naturally, the deliberation didn't take long.
"I am the type who throws the dice gladly—even if my choice is called a gamble."
Yes. That was exactly who she was.
If I had stayed there, I would have spent my whole life holding my breath, living on my knees. I am an opportunist—and I wanted to seize the chance that came to me.
That was what she had said. She had wanted to take the chance that came to her.
Lee Jun wanted to return, as fully as he could, the wager she had staked on her life.
"Do you trust me?"
"I trust you. You've shown me things I could never have imagined."
"Then trust me this time, too."
Repaying trust that was given. That was Lee Jun's idea of duty.
"......"
At his words, Seo Yoon seemed to deliberate once more. No—on reflection, he could tell she wasn't deliberating at all. She'd already made up her mind. This wasn't hesitation. It was a dramatic pause.
"Naturally, sir."
Just a touch more theatrical.
Even that, she had probably learned from watching him.
"...Hahaha."
Lee Jun laughed, a little sheepishly.
This feels... even better than I expected.
Just then, the outside grew noisy. Seolwon's strike team had arrived.
Lee Jun checked his watch. Thirty minutes to the raid.
Now it was truly beginning.
"Shall we head out, then?"
Seo Yoon nodded at his words. But a few more words followed.
"Yes. Although... before that, please wait just a moment."
Having stopped him, she slowly lowered herself.
"Seo Yoon?"
Lee Jun was flustered by the unexpected gesture. But Seo Yoon paid his confusion no mind and did what she had set out to do.
"There's dirt on your trousers."
Swipe—
She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the soil from his knee—even though his combat uniform was about to get far filthier in short order.
"You said we must always look composed in front of the cameras, didn't you?"
Ten seconds.
It lasted no longer than that. And yet, to Lee Jun... it felt just a little longer than it should have.