White Burn (5)

Team Leader Jeong Sun-il of Z-Team was in a foul mood from the crack of dawn.

“Fucking bitch. How dare she turn me into a goddamn joke?”

A notice had just gone up on the intranet.

It stated that an anonymous report concerning Manager Mo had been received and that the HR department would begin verification procedures. Although the exact target wasn’t named, anyone with half a brain in the company knew it was aimed at him.

His phone had been vibrating nonstop since a moment ago.

It was his father, currently serving as executive director at White Burn.

Even if he answered, he’d only get an earful of shouting. Jeong Sun-il sent the call to missed notifications.

“Please calm down, Team Leader. You’ll ruin all the fun you had last night.”

“That’s right. We know the truth. No matter how much that bitch Kim Min-jung schemes with Lim Won-young, they won’t be able to do a thing.”

At that moment, two men approached from behind Jeong Sun-il, massaging his shoulders while pouring on the flattery. They were the ones who had recently latched onto him in hopes of escaping Z-Team.

“Exactly. There’s no evidence at all. No matter how much those two bitches throw a fit, they can’t accomplish anything.”

Maybe it was thanks to his subordinates’ brown-nosing.

Jeong Sun-il felt his head clearing up little by little.

Z-Team was firmly in his grasp anyway. Therefore, not a single team member would step forward to testify on Kim Min-jung’s behalf.

Of course, there were still a few outsiders he hadn’t managed to recruit yet, and he couldn’t predict if they might do something unexpected.

‘Those bastards weren’t even at the scene anyway. And even if they were, I can just bury their statements by calling them unreliable.’

No matter how he turned the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠situation over in his mind, there was nothing that could become a problem.

In fact, if he played his cards right, he could even use this as an excellent political tool.

What if he framed the whole thing as a false accusation?

‘Lim Won-young is definitely involved in this. Maybe I can drag her into it somehow.’

Jeong Sun-il was convinced that Lim Won-young was the mastermind behind this incident.

It made sense—she was the one who had blown a trivial matter out of proportion and gotten him demoted to Z-Team in the first place.

Everyone in the company knew about the political feud between his father, Executive Director Jeong, and Lim Won-young.

His father, who sought the next chairmanship through pure ability and outstanding leadership, versus Lim Won-young, who had nothing but bloodline to rely on.

Anyone without rocks for eyes could see how their conflict would end.

‘The current chairman is a cold man who would even abandon his own children. But our father, who has served him loyally for over thirty years, is White Burn’s greatest contributor. The company shares he holds are enormous! No matter how lovely the granddaughter is, if she lacks ability, she’ll inevitably be cast aside.’

Knowing this, Lim Won-young spared no petty tricks and had first tried to devour him, the son.

The problem was that her tactics were working too well—his position had grown extremely precarious.

His father had somehow managed to suppress various scandals until now, but even that had reached its limit.

Any more mistakes and he would plummet straight into the abyss.

He had to prevent that at all costs….

‘Goddammit. After everything I’ve endured to hold on here. Just a little longer and I won’t be stuck in tiny Korea anymore—I’ll be famous across the entire world. I can’t let something like this trip me up!’

Jeong Sun-il recalled the Chinese figures his father had been meeting frequently lately.

They were the “real” hunters in his mind.

True hunters who held overwhelming ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠influence not only over the vast continent of China but the entire world.

Armed with countless legends and myths, they were so formidable that merely looking at them made one’s legs tremble.

White Burn?

It might command some respect in Korea, but compared to them it was nothing more than a tiny neighborhood corner store.

Seo Chang-woo—no, Xu Changyou—must have recognized the spirit of that great continent and bowed his head to join them.

His father was working with those people to orchestrate an even larger scheme than what Xu Changyou had managed.

If the plan succeeded, White Burn would become a world-class guild.

And he would become its second-in-command—or rather, its successor.

‘Yes. Get a grip. No—let’s turn this into an opportunity. We’ll drag Lim Won-young down and make Father the next chairman!’

Having made up his mind, Jeong Sun-il turned his phone off completely.

He planned to ignore calls from his father and everyone else for the time being.

‘Once Lim Won-young falls, that bitch Kim Min-jung won’t be able to keep acting so stiff. I’ll make her crawl to me on her knees and beg for forgiveness.’

Just thinking about it lifted his mood as if he owned the whole world.

“Hey, you two. You know that once you grab a line, there’s no switching sides, right? Get branded as traitors and it’s only a matter of time before you’re buried in this industry.”

The two employees who had been flattering him unconsciously swallowed dry spit.

What was he trying to say?

Team Leader Jeong’s eyes were gleaming like a jackal’s.

“From now on, engrave what I’m about to say into your—!”

Just as he was about to continue, another team member came sprinting over in a panic. Naturally, this one had also aligned himself with Jeong.

“What’s going on?”

“A strategy plan was just submitted to headquarters under our team’s name!”

“What the hell are you talking about? We haven’t planned anything recently, let alone drafted a proposal.”

Because dungeon raids carried considerable risk, the required procedure was to submit a plan to headquarters first, have it reviewed, and only receive final approval after confirming there were no issues.

“Just open the bulletin board and see for yourself!”

“……?”

Feeling an inexplicable sense of unease, Jeong Sun-il hurriedly logged into the intranet.

On the bulletin board accessible only to Dungeon Strategy Headquarters staff, a plan had indeed been registered under the Z-Team name.

And it was set to public, not private!

Jeong Sun-il’s face flushed bright red.

“These bastards… just wait and see…!”

Naturally, a strategy plan had to receive the team leader’s approval.

Skipping that step and submitting it directly was an open slap to his face.

Moreover, listing only two personnel was also a problem.

Whether they truly intended to clear the dungeon with just two people or not, what would other teams think when they saw this report?

They would only conclude that Z-Team had been dragging its feet on something that could be cleared by two people.

It was essentially tarnishing his reputation.

But the biggest issue was that headquarters approval had come in just five minutes later.

The malice radiating from those three letters at the end was far too blatant.

“Kim Min-jung! Jang Lee-hyun! Where are those bastards!!”

BANG!

In the end, Jeong Sun-il kicked his chair aside and shot to his feet in a rage.

Kim Min-jung let out an involuntary chuckle at Lim Won-young’s troubled voice coming through the phone.

She thought she heard someone else laughing in the background as well, but she had no time to worry about that right now.

“Section Chief Jang said with confidence that it’s possible.”

…She was really approving it this easily?

Even after hanging up, Kim Min-jung remained somewhat dazed.

The Lim Won-young she knew was someone with extremely quick and cool-headed judgment.

She would usually pick apart even simple reports, searching for any gaps.

Just how much faith did she have in Lee-hyun that she would approve such an insane plan without question?

‘Even though she knows that if the raid fails and causes casualties, the entire responsibility falls on her…’

Thanks to that, the plan to drive out Team Leader Jeong could begin, yet Kim Min-jung still felt uneasy about whether this was truly the right choice.

‘It’ll be fine… right?’

The dungeon report read as follows.

Even a quick glance showed it was no easy dungeon.

The accumulated death count of forty-one people especially kept weighing on her mind.

“But is this really going to be okay, sunbae? I know your skills, but no matter how I look at it, this seems reckless.”

Jang Lee-hyun laughed lightly.

“Of course it’s reckless.”

“……Pardon?”

“It’s a long-unsolved dungeon that no one has cleared in over ten years. How could two people possibly solve it?”

“……”

The tone suggested he was simply stating the obvious.

For a moment, Kim Min-jung felt a strong urge to grab Jang Lee-hyun by the collar.

Lee-hyun burst out laughing as he watched her eyebrows twitch.

“I’m joking, I’m joking. Still, I only said the two of us would clear it. I never said we’d enter the dungeon with just the two of us.”

“What are you—!”

“Given Team Leader Jeong’s personality, do you really think he’ll stay quiet after being hit like this? I bet he’ll come running right away.”

A cold smile formed at the corner of Jang Lee-hyun’s mouth.

“Jang Lee-hyuuuuuuun!”

“See? He couldn’t stay noble after all.”

The voice echoed loudly down the corridor.

Apparently unaware that every employee’s eyes were now on him, Jeong Sun-il came running with furious steps.

“Besides, even while he’s that angry, his head must be spinning with thoughts. ‘If I really let just those two go in, won’t they die in the dungeon? That would be convenient, but what if they don’t?’ ‘What if it turns out to be an easy dungeon I somehow missed?’ ‘If I overlooked something, I’d look like an idiot.’”

“……”

“If we succeed, it becomes proof of the Z-Team leader’s negligence, which would fall on his own head. He’s probably getting a massive headache from all the calculations running through his mind right now.”

“……”

“Therefore, there’s only one conclusion his brain can reach. ‘Let’s send the entire Z-Team in. Then I’ll step back immediately, leave Jang Lee-hyun and Kim Min-jung to handle the actual raid, steal the credit if they succeed, and pin all the blame on them if they fail.’”

“……!”

Watching Jang Lee-hyun’s icy smile, Kim Min-jung shivered.

From the very moment they first devised this operation, Team Leader Jeong had already been dancing in the palm of Lee-hyun’s hand.

He would continue being manipulated like a puppet without realizing it, only to be discarded in the end.

‘The dungeon was a trap meant to lure Team Leader Jeong and his lackeys from the beginning. A trap they can never escape…’

Lee-hyun looked at Kim Min-jung and asked.

“When there are too many enemies, what did I say you should do?”

“……You said never to step onto the board the enemy prepared. You must always draw the opponent onto the board you created.”

“Bingo. Exactly.”

“Then you’ve already thought of how to set the trap, right?”

Jang Lee-hyun simply smiled without answering.

To Kim Min-jung, that smile looked even more terrifying.

Sun Wukong, on the other hand, seemed to find Lee-hyun’s attitude extremely entertaining.

‘This is what they call being inside the Buddha’s palm.’

He didn’t particularly like the joke that followed.

‘But are you certain this dungeon truly contains the Great Sage’s myth?’

“Why? Don’t you trust the Fiery Golden Eyes?”

‘It’s not that… I just don’t understand how the Great Sage’s myth could be connected to a fairy tale with a completely different origin.’

When Jang Lee-hyun first received the message from the Hwaan Geumjeong stating the dungeon was related to Sun Wukong, he had been quite shocked.

The Pied Piper was originally famous as a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Its origin was German, so it should have had no connection to Journey to the West.

But Sun Wukong had declared otherwise.

“The scattered fragments of my myth are a kind of… well, smaller than that. These incomplete pieces have difficulty standing alone. Therefore they latch onto other tales to ensure their survival.”

‘In short, they’re parasitic?’

“……The way you phrase things. Anyway, when they merge like that, they cause mutations. So the content inevitably ends up quite different from the story you already know.”

In other words, it was the result of two different stories colliding and creating a new work.

‘So that’s why it remained an unsolved long-term dungeon. If you entered armed only with knowledge of the original tale, you’d be setting yourself up for failure.’

Jang Lee-hyun suspected that quite a few long-unsolved dungeons were similar cases.

But turning that fact around,

‘It means I, who knows the secret, am in an overwhelmingly advantageous position to clear it.’

This was exactly why Jang Lee-hyun had chosen this dungeon as his trap.

‘Right here, we’ll separate the wheat from the chaff within Z-Team.’

While Jang Lee-hyun’s eyes sank deeply, Jeong Sun-il arrived and immediately began jabbing his finger at them.

“Are you two out of your minds!? How dare you sneak a plan through without my approval and think you’ll get away with it?!”

Jang Lee-hyun simply smiled quietly without offering any reply.

That only fueled Jeong Sun-il’s anger even more.

“Fine. So that’s how you want to play? Go ahead then. Let’s see if things go your way.”

Jeong Sun-il glared at both of them once, then turned and left.

Jang Lee-hyun smiled at Kim Min-jung.

“See? I was right. It looks like the whole team will show up on the raid date. Let’s prepare a nice welcoming greeting.”

“……Seriously.”

Kim Min-jung could no longer even force a laugh.

She simply shook her head.

Three days later, on the day of the raid.

Hoengseong, Gangwon Province.

Just as Jang Lee-hyun had predicted, all fifteen members of Z-Team had arrived first in front of the dungeon gate.