A Classical and Traditional Method (1)
"……?"
For a moment, Lee Jun was dumbfounded.
Even in that brief news segment, there were at least three or four things he couldn't make sense of.
First of all, the most obvious one.
"What… time is it right now?"
He turned his head toward the clock.
7 p.m.
"…Goddammit."
A curse slipped out on its own. This wasn't a good night's sleep — this was a full-blown blackout. And that Tech Bureau kid, did she not watch the news at all? Why didn't she mention any of this?
…Come to think of it, that girl really did live with her eyes closed. Unbelievable.
Second.
Lee Jun had never touched the CCTV.
Security at the Seoul Dungeon was handled by the Association, and they were naturally friendly toward him, so the odds of them blocking it were low. However clumsy Go Seok-gu might look, when it came to this kind of thing he was practically a snake or a fox. Which left three possibilities: a natural malfunction, tampering by someone inside the Association, or a media blackout imposed by outside pressure.
The most likely, for now, was the last one.
And then the third and final question: why was the number listed as nonexistent?
Lee Jun had definitely left a number on the back of those cards. Not his well-known "Public Line No. 1," but "Public Line No. 2" — a brand-new number he'd created just days before his regression, one that nobody in the world knew about.
The moment the doubt crossed his mind, he pulled out both of his phones and called No. 2 from No. 1.
But phone number two didn't so much as twitch.
"The number you have dialed does not exist. Please check the number and try again."
No matter how many times he dialed, that same recording played on a loop.
"…No way."
His phone carrier flashed through his mind. KS — a company that ran guild businesses on the side.
"Ha. Fine, great. So this is the petty little game you want to play?"
Apparently these lunatics had simply suspended the number. He wanted to applaud them for tossing the terms of service straight into the trash. And it looked like the guilds had covered up the CCTV business too. With a few eccentric exceptions, most of the major guilds were linked together — a "let's collude so we can keep devouring each other's prey" kind of alliance.
There was one strange thing, though.
The media, sure — money buys their silence, he could let that slide. But there were a few, if not many, press outlets friendly to the Association, and the near-total absence of coverage was definitely suspicious. This looked like it had been controlled from the inside out, specifically to keep it from ever spreading beyond the walls.
"…This just got more annoying."
So it was a press blackout from outside pressure — and, at the same time, apparently internal tampering as well. Rotten to the core. Even though he'd filtered as best he could, it seemed he'd failed to pull out every last one of the guilds' moles.
"Whew… fine. I always knew perfect exclusion was impossible from the start…"
Still, this incident had confirmed there was rot inside the Association too. He'd have to tell Go Seok-gu to go shake that tree and see what fell out.
But that problem could wait. The real issue right now was that the contact information he'd so carefully scattered had turned to dust. Of course, he'd written the company name on the cards, so anyone who bothered to look would at least figure out what the business did. But the plan — to make a big, decisive splash and then gather people in — had hit a snag. Hopefully he hadn't just picked a pointless fight with Seolwon for nothing…
And right on cue, the TV was airing an interview with the Guildmaster of Seolwon.
Oh no. That woman was angry.
Apparently she'd been pouring a lot of effort into the rookie she was raising. Broadly speaking, missing the Seoul Dungeon boss for a day wasn't a catastrophe. The problem was the guilds' rookie-development systems these days.
Most of the large guilds maintained their own dedicated research teams that had analyzed and quantified — down to the decimal point — exactly how much experience was needed for each level bracket. And naturally, they had hunting plans drawn up to match, leveling their rookies at a flawless pace. That was what Lee Jun had just shattered.
"That person… she knows it was me, doesn't she?"
High-rank hunters, as a rule, knew one another's combat styles well. Guild or Association, everyone had a duty to protect the country. Whenever a sizable gate appeared, the Association could invoke its summons authority to mobilize hunters of A-Class and above into strike teams. And since Lee Jun was currently the only S-Class hunter of Korean nationality, it was only natural they'd all know each other, one way or another.
"…This got complicated."
That woman, with that expressionless face that seemed utterly detached from all worldly affairs, actually expressed quite a lot of emotion through it. Lee Jun, whose instincts for this sort of thing were positively supernatural, could read that expression at least in broad strokes.
Not anger, so much as… interest. She'd probably try every trick in the book to find him. In which case, having his phone number deleted might not be such a bad thing after all.
Lee Jun immediately texted the Tech Bureau chief, ordering her to purge every scrap of CCTV-related data. A reply came back asking what lunacy was this now, which he casually swatted aside. Watch the news sometime, will you.
Ah — wait, come to think of it, she doesn't know about that number either. It was a piping-hot new line, barely days old. Last time around, he'd used it to open trade with the overseas Hunter Market; this time, by pure coincidence, it had gotten used like this. Of course, it vanished before it ever saw proper use.
"Ha… So now I have to carve out a new number. What a pain."
One thing was certain: next time, he'd go with a carrier that had never touched the hunter business. He hadn't expected them to stoop to suspending a number the moment the cards hit the street. Clever, in a way. In any case, one thing was true: Lee Jun had just eaten a loss.
Still — this industry was half politics, when you got down to it. When the goal stopped being protecting the country and became protecting your own interests, this kind of ugly mess was inevitable.
And if they wanted to play it this way, he had options too.
"If they block the digital route, then I'll just do it the old-fashioned way — on foot."
After all, for months after the gates first opened, phones and internet alike had all been down. Restoring it all within a few months was genuinely impressive, but those months had felt very, very long to the people of the modern age.
Replaying that era in his mind, Lee Jun stepped out of his house.
Bring it on, you guild bastards. Let's see who wins.
The next day, Lee Jun visited the Seoul Dungeon for the first time in a while. It had been about twenty-nine hours, but that was long enough to count. For hunters living in the capital region, the Seoul Dungeon was practically a second home.
"Whew…"
The truth was, Lee Jun couldn't come to places like this easily. That held true for every other guildmaster-level, high-rank hunter, himself included. And right now, the situation was even more unusual.
At this moment, every hunter's eyes were on Lee Jun. The only S-Class hunter in Korea had, for all practical purposes, just entered the free-agent market. His declared retirement from active duty meant nothing to anyone. Was he seriously going into the management business? Or was he feeling out the landscape before returning to the Association — or maybe latching onto some guild and joining it? That was the single biggest topic in the hunter world right now.
And then the business card incident had exploded on top of it all, dousing the kindling in gasoline. A few users on hunter community forums had dug up the fact that S-Class Hunter Management was a business name registered under Lee Jun himself. Or was "blame" the right word? Either way, public reaction split down the middle.
He hoped the former camp was the majority — but unfortunately, public opinion leaned heavily toward the latter. So for now, he needed to keep a low profile. Wanting attention desperately at first, and then wondering why he'd want it now? Simple: he now knew for certain there was a traitor inside the Association. And one more thing — Seolwon was going to be watching him closely.
Frankly, the first problem could be handled by telling the Tech Bureau chief and the Chairman to deal with it. Both were sharp operators; they'd manage something. The department heads, too, were all people Lee Jun had hand-picked, so maybe not a hundred percent, but they'd be fine.
Seolwon, however, was a different story.
The Guildmaster of Seolwon, Yoon Seol. Well — no problems there. He had nothing against her. The problem was… the Vice Guildmaster, Lee Hyeon-ah. That woman. He had no quarrel with Seolwon as a guild, but with her personally? He'd thrown down a few gauntlets.
Like, seriously, if you're going to pocket government subsidies meant for the Association and funnel them into your guild, at least do it well enough not to get caught. You committed the fraud yourself, so why am I the one getting screamed at? What made it worse was how deep her devotion ran — she hadn't pocketed a single won for herself. Every cent had gone straight into the guild's vault. Even without the Guildmaster knowing.
"Heh."
Even now, the sheer audacity wrung a bitter laugh out of him. His only regret was not running one more audit of Seolwon's books before retiring. Well… anyway.
For all these reasons, Lee Jun now stood in front of the Seoul Dungeon with his identity concealed — wearing a custom-made mask from the Tech Bureau. It looked suspicious as hell at a glance, but it warped his voice and was coated with a presence-blocking enchantment, so it was useful. It covered his entire face, which made breathing a bit stuffy, but that was the only real issue. Hunters came in all stripes of weird, so a mask counted as ordinary self-expression — plenty of people worked in them full-time.
From behind that mask, Lee Jun surveyed the entrance to the Seoul Dungeon. As expected, it was packed as always with partyless hunters and byproduct dealers. From here on, he would approach the most promising among them and form a party. Who knew how many days it would take — but thinking it over, the situation had actually turned out in his favor. Thanks to the guilds' sabotage, a third option had been added to a menu that had offered only worst and second-worst. The best case, of course, would be a prodigy rookie falling out of the sky.
A management agency that had stirred up enormous buzz but whose true nature nobody knew, and its sole employee — who was also its CEO — personally pounding the pavement to recruit rookies.
…That's the second-best option?
"…The guilds really are too strong."
If he didn't have to worry about hacking, he'd have at least thrown together a website. Even just taking applications by email would spare him all this legwork. His phone was one the Tech Bureau chief had built, so hacking wasn't a concern — which was exactly why he'd done it this way. Thinking about it again, it just made his blood boil. These bastards erased his number?
"Haah… so where do I go to find a good party?"
Honestly, if you wanted to raise a capable hunter, the single most important thing was that person's raw potential. Look at Lee Jun himself — no mana, nothing, making him the bottom of the barrel even among the Initial Awakeners. It was like that: no matter how good the teacher, if the student's ceiling was low, there was only so far they could climb. If the goal was building hunters for the future, then obviously snatching up proven, talented rookies would be the ideal play.
But… wouldn't that be exactly what the guilds are already doing?
What Lee Jun wanted was a rough stone only he could see.
A diamond in the rough is a diamond no matter who cuts it. The quality of the work might change its value, but it remains a diamond regardless. What Lee Jun was searching for was an unremarkable rock that gave no hint of what ore it held. Whether inside was a diamond, a jewel rarer still, or nothing at all — just a plain stone. No one could tell in advance. But Lee Jun believed he could. Because the experience he'd accumulated was different. That was why he trusted himself. He trusted the results he'd delivered so far.
He wanted to trust them. He had to.
And then—
Just as he was scanning the hunters with that thought in mind, someone spoke to him.
"Um… excuse me — are you looking for a party?"
A woman with a cropped bob of red hair, toting a cheap greatsword. A rookie D-Class hunter, five months into the job, who had no choice but to reach out a hand even to someone this suspicious.