Dungeon Tour

What was that supposed to mean?

Ma Chul-woong was Seo Hae-in's team leader?

No — before that, first things first!

That Ma Chul-woong was joining the brand-new guild the professor had founded?

"Uh…"

"Huuuh."

The sound of the wind going out of the cadets' sails slipped from their mouths.

It was the sound of every last drop of alcohol evaporating on the spot.

And it meant, just as clearly, that this fledgling guild could vault into the ranks of the nation's three major guilds overnight.

Yoon Tae-sung's Big Star.

Han Baek-san's Halla.

Cha Ha-rang's Cheonrang.

Until now, the presence of an S-rank hunter had been the dividing line that separated the Big Three from everyone else.

Wait. Then that means—

Yoon Hyun-jong, always the quickest on the uptake, went wide-eyed.

He said teams train in the same martial art. Seo Hae-in is set to learn Ohodanmundo. And Ma Chul-woong is her team leader? Don't tell me Hunter Ma Chul-woong is learning Ohodanmundo from the professor too?

The scrape of a chair.

That was the moment Kang Hyun rose from his seat.

"Introductions are done. I'll be taking my leave."

Lingering too long at a kids' drinking party was just undignified.

"A superior who knows when to bow out is a superior with manners, right?"

Kang Hyun didn't bother with a long introduction of Ma Chul-woong. One look at the man's face was enough. That alone would be plenty of stimulation.

That should take care of the left-out feeling.

Looking after them went exactly this far. If they kept whining after this, he might just snatch back the opportunity he'd handed them.

"Drink as much as you want tonight. Put it on this — and return it at dawn training tomorrow."

He flicked a pitch-black card onto the table and turned without a second glance.

Ma Chul-woong followed in silence, mouth sealed shut.

Their footsteps faded. Exactly ten seconds of dead quiet passed.

"…Insane."

Kwak Do-jin clawed at his own scalp.

"Professor, what the hell are you? You all saw that, right? Ma Chul-woong sweating bullets in front of him."

"…!"

No one took the hit harder than Cha Yu-sik.

He had seen Ma Chul-woong a few times from a distance. That ramrod-straight man who never once bent his back even in front of Cha Yu-sik's own father, Cha Ha-rang — and he was bowing his head to Professor Kang Hyun with perfect deference?

"For now, it seems safe to treat it as confirmed that Hunter Ma Chul-woong is learning Ohodanmundo from the professor," Yoon Hyun-jong reasoned. Cha Yu-sik nodded.

"Has to be. Counterfeit or not, he burned three hundred billion on it. That was real."

The thought landed, and with it a fresh, skin-deep understanding of just how far outside every standard Kang Hyun truly sat.

Jewang Geomhyeong. Ohodanmundo. And the Plum Blossom Sword Art on top of that.

Cha Yu-sik was certain.

The martial arts he's thrown us so far are only the tip of the iceberg.

The truly good techniques, after all, were the ones a master kept locked away until the right disciple came along.

"Haa."

His already tangled thoughts knotted tighter.

Cheonrang…

Did he even need to inherit it?

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Wouldn't it be better to just hand everything to his older brother and live as decent siblings for once?

Something about scrambling to become the head of a snake, only to kick away the chance to climb onto a dragon's back as it ascended to heaven, felt exactly right.

"We should call it a night," Cha Yu-sik said, gathering his coat as he stood. "Let's head back and think about team names. Something that sounds decent."

"Sounds good."

"Ah… aah… I'm on the same team as… Hunter Ma Chul-woong…?"

Seo Hae-in was still staring into space as if she hadn't woken from a dream. Dopamine was already boiling harder than any alcohol in her system; further drinking would have been pointless.

"Those are them, Hyung?"

Outside, Ma Chul-woong asked.

"The lucky brats getting taught by you directly?"

"Yeah."

"I saw the second son of Cheonrang Guild mixed in there."

"What, does that make you nervous?"

"Not a chance."

The corner of Ma Chul-woong's mouth curled with interest.

"I'm just curious what that kid will choose. Take Hyung's help and claim Cheonrang for himself — or build a team under Hyung and raise a force that Cheonrang won't even be able to compare with someday."

Ma Chul-woong was already treating Cha Yu-sik's succession of Cheonrang as a settled fact. That was faith in his Hyung. The idea that someone learning martial arts from Black could lose a mere succession fight was absurd on its face.

This is going to be fun.

Ma Chul-woong had always been a lone wolf who hated group living. After awakening as an S-rank hunter, countless major guilds had waved astronomical offers at him, and he had never accepted a single one.

Why?

Because it was a hassle.

Taking orders from anyone made his skin crawl.

So why had a man like that accepted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Kang Hyun's proposal?

The team system.

As long as he was the strongest among those who practiced Ohodanmundo, he could build his team however he liked — or leave them completely alone. That was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ma Chul-woong's business.

I'm going to turn my group into a den of maniacs obsessed with the saber.

Every day, he would train to make Ohodanmundo stronger by any means necessary.

Kang Hyun had summoned five tigers.

Ma Chul-woong would forge tigers stronger and sturdier than those.

Kang Hyun knew that heart of his, and he encouraged it.

In truth, Kang Hyun had only ever taken every martial art except Cheonsingyeong as far as Great Completion.

Great Completion.

The realm of perfectly understanding and embodying a technique's formulas and forms, drawing out one hundred percent of the power written in the manual. For ordinary martial artists, reaching that alone was enough to swagger through a lifetime as a celebrated master of the age.

But in a peak-level world crawling with genuine monsters?

Great Completion is where it actually starts.

From there, you had to break free of the manual's frame. Even among those who had reached Great Completion in the same art, the difference in destructive power between someone who then carved and refined it with their own nature and philosophy and someone who didn't was the difference between heaven and earth.

If Ma Chul-woong spent a lifetime obsessively drilling nothing but Ohodanmundo?

In that single art, at least, he might one day surpass even Kang Hyun's achievement.

Of course, reaching that realm would take bone-grinding obsession and genuine madness.

"So."

Kang Hyun turned his head.

"Where are you stuck?"

Ma Chul-woong was building him a whole building. The least Kang Hyun could do was teach him properly in return.

A few days after clearing Ma Chul-woong's blocked meridians and sending him on his way, Kang Hyun sank deep into the lab sofa and swirled a rocks glass.

Asura.

The Demon God of destruction who had turned Murim into hell.

That bastard had told him to wait.

That soon enough, he would lead his armies across into Kang Hyun's world.

A prickle ran through him. The poison coiling inside his body was proof that the creature's arrival was no empty threat.

Which left him curious, all of a sudden.

What was the relationship between Murim and this world?

Why did I end up in Murim — and why do Murim's byproducts keep turning up in the dungeons here?

Come to think of it, he had never once set foot in a dungeon since arriving in this world.

"Chick."

"Yes, sir!"

"You said the government had a long list of favors to ask. Is dungeon raiding on it?"

"It is! Why?"

Expectation lit Lee Se-ah's face.

"Pull me a full list. I'm going to take a look."

"R-really? Just a moment!"

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Color flooded her cheeks as she bolted out. Excited conversation with Director Kim Hyung-seok echoed from the hallway; not long after, she came rushing back with a thick sheaf of documents.

"I've got the full list!"

Ordinarily, high-grade dungeons of A-rank and above were hot commodities that major guilds fought over for raiding rights. Lately, though, the frequent overseas schedules of the S-rank hunters had left domestic forces thin — and more importantly, the list the Director had handed over was stacked with notorious, high-disappearance-rate dungeons that everyone preferred to avoid.

"An A-rank in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province. An S-rank in Gangwon. Even an undersea dungeon off the southern coast… Just counting the big ones, there are more than ten."

"Why so many?"

"Ahaha — even if you only take a few of these, it would be an enormous help to the country. Which route should we plan?"

"Never mind."

Kang Hyun set down his whiskey glass.

"Just take me to all of them."

"…Excuse me? All of them?"

Lee Se-ah's face went blank for a second.

"What, you don't want to?"

"N-no, of course not! I'll map the travel route right away!"

From that afternoon on, Kang Hyun's tour began.

Ziiing—

"Done."

"Al-already?"

Lee Se-ah's mouth fell open.

How long had it been since they'd used the Bureau's authority to clear the Association staff from the dungeon entrance and send Kang Hyun in? An A-rank dungeon normally took a full day even with dozens of elite hunters in a party.

Thud-thud-thud!

And the sheer volume of loot he had brought out—

"I think we need to call a truck."

"Contact Taejung Mulsan. Tell them to come haul it."

"Ah — yes, sir!"

"This one was a bit roomy. Next."

Every time a gate's color died and a dungeon collapsed, a staggering volume of byproducts poured out.

"Hmm."

Kang Hyun stroked his chin.

The magical beasts inside the dungeons were creatures he had never seen in his life. And yet, strangely, when he killed them and cut open their bellies or tore through their nests, items that belonged squarely in Murim kept turning up with casual regularity.

Shards of Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Mother Stone. Ice Snow Plum, an elixir ingredient of the Mount Hua Sect. Things like that.

The beasts have no connection to Murim — but the byproducts do…

Had the dimensions only half-overlapped somehow?

There was still nothing solid to go on, so he would have to dig into it slowly, over time.

Either way, this is easy.

The difficulty stayed about the same after that. Even with most of his internal energy sealed by Asura's poison, clearing dungeons was no real strain.

Taejung Mulsan, on the other hand, was run ragged.

"Professor, what on earth is all this?"

Just the sound of Yoon Tae-jung's voice over the phone — half-strangled with joy — was enough to tell how happy the man was.

"I ran a few dungeons. I'll be doing it regularly from now on, so sort it properly and stockpile it. We'll dump it all once Taejung Market opens."

"Of course we will! Ah — Professor, about that land you asked me to look into last time."

"Yes."

"There's a remote island in the southern Philippines — specifically, the southwestern waters off Mindanao."

"Oh? Is that so?"

"It was slated for resort development years ago, then the project fell through. The foundation work is only partially done, and it's been sitting abandoned for years. Turns out the access is so terrible that every developer walked away. The harbor's tiny, and there's no decent shipping route."

The corner of Kang Hyun's mouth ticked up.

Perfect.

"The island's about a million pyeong, give or take… The problem is the climate. It's the Philippines, so it's hot and humid. Typhoon risk in summer, too."

"That doesn't matter."

Nice weather would have been convenient, but Kang Hyun had formation arrays that could regulate climate. It would be brutally difficult — but once he found a disciple to inherit the Formation Ghost elder's arts, they could install them together, step by step.

"Do you have photos?"

"I'll send them over."

A moment later, a green island set in the middle of a blue sea bloomed across the tablet screen.

The thought that hit him on sight:

This is it.

Build Taejung Market here?

A symbolic resort destination for the world's wealthy and the great guilds — and a black market, all in one?

Whatever you did, you had to dream big.

"Even with local legal processing and taxes included, a long-term lease should come in under thirty-two billion. Maximum term of ninety-nine years."

Yoon Tae-jung wasn't sweating the cost either. That was less than a single building in Gangnam.

Not being able to hold full ownership was a drawback, but Philippine law was Philippine law. They could hardly sell land outright to foreigners.

Kang Hyun nodded.

"Proceed."