Chapter 19
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 19
Chapter Title: Gangwon-do Incident (1)
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To get Chae Seol-ah to grow, I first needed a gate to shove her into.
Obviously, buying a gate required money. And thanks to the laws, I had to set up a guild first.
'Money's the issue.'
The moment that thought crossed my mind, a text popped up on my smartwatch.
The sender was Vice President Hwang Yu-kyung.
[The settlement for the A-rank gate you cleared earlier has been finalized. The payment has been deposited into your account, Kim Hyun. Please check it.]
"Oh, perfect timing."
Looked like the gate payout had finally come through.
'How much was it again? Two or three hundred billion?
Lee Min-hyuk, the team leader, had said it'd be roughly that much.
I immediately opened my banking app and checked my account.
Sure enough, just as he'd said, the exact amount had been deposited. I nodded as I stared at the number on my screen.
'This should be more than enough to buy the gate I need.'
No, it'd leave plenty leftover.
I wasn't looking to buy some expensive high-rank gate, after all.
Even I knew that tossing Chae Seol-ah into a high-rank one would just turn her into a meatball.
'Come to think of it, I never asked what rank she is.'
I turned to Chae Seol-ah.
"Agent Chae, what rank hunter are you?"
"Huh? Well, I..."
She hesitated for a moment, then made an embarrassed face.
"A-rank..."
A-rank. A-rank.
"Even more pathetic than I thought."
"That's too harsh..."
Chae Seol-ah pouted, but that didn't change the fact that she was pathetic. If she didn't like it, she should've been stronger.
Still, something felt off.
Was my standard skewed? A-rank was just one step below S-rank. That should be plenty strong, right?
Yet Chae Seol-ah's abilities didn't seem to match up, even giving her the benefit of the doubt.
How the hell did she even get A-rank?
I straight-up asked her.
"How did you even become A-rank?"
"W-well..."
Chae Seol-ah stammered and hung her head.
No way she'd spill it herself. Without thinking, I searched her name on the internet.
And surprisingly, a ton of related info came up.
Lots of it.
[Hunter Prodigy, 12-Year-Old Chae Seol-ah.]
[A Prophet in Korea? What is Chae Seol-ah's Akashic Manual?]
[S-Rank Hunter Park Jin-young: It Reminds Me of My Debut Days...]
What the hell? There were actual articles.
"Were you some kind of celebrity?"
"..."
"Whoa, there are news articles and everything."
Chae Seol-ah's head sank lower and lower toward the ground.
I checked the dates on the articles.
Most were from about ten years ago.
There were a few scattered ones after that, but they were mostly trashy tabloid stuff—like rating her figure or her looks.
The kind of crap that sticks to washed-up celebrities.
"Aha."
I got the picture now.
No sane outlet would write garbage like that about a promising high-rank hunter prospect.
She'd probably ended up as a perennial "prospect" who never panned out.
Not my problem, though.
I started explaining to Chae Seol-ah, who was still hanging her head.
"Anyway, like I said before, I'm gonna have you practice solo-clearing gates."
Run her through the wringer a bit, and she'd toughen up eventually.
"Why do I have to..."
Chae Seol-ah looked wronged.
"You said you'd do anything."
"Not this kind of thing!"
"You trying to lie to me?"
"N-no, that's not it..."
"Then do it."
I stared at her intently as I said it, and she nodded with a pout.
"Fine..."
"Good girl."
With her buy-in secured, all that was left was to get started.
"Why am I stuck doing this..."
Chae Seol-ah grumbled behind me like it was unfair, but I was feeling generous, so I let it slide.
First things first, we needed to establish the guild.
You couldn't buy gates without one, so no choice there. Otherwise, we'd have to steal someone else's and raid it, which screamed "trouble" from a mile away.
Better to just play it straight and make our own guild.
Setting up a guild required a few things.
"There are a bunch of miscellaneous requirements, but the big ones are a hunter license, startup capital, and hunters."
Chae Seol-ah held up three fingers for me.
"I get the license and capital, but what's this about hunters?"
"Well... You need at least three registered hunters as guild members for approval."
"What?"
Such an annoying rule?
"That means we're one short."
"Huh? Not two?"
This just got complicated. Where was I gonna find another person?
As I was thinking that, Chae Seol-ah's eyes widened in shock.
"Y-you're not counting me as a guild member, are you?"
"Duh."
"B-but I'm a government agent!"
"Just moonlight. I thought civil servants could take side gigs."
Had the law changed or something in the meantime?
"How's a civil servant supposed to moonlight as a hunter?!"
She yelled in protest.
"Then we'll make it happen."
"W-what are you even..."
"Hold on."
I tapped out a text to Team Leader Lee Min-hyuk on my smartwatch. A reply came back almost immediately.
"It's good."
"Huh?"
"Team Leader Lee says it's fine. Even got the director's okay."
Chae Seol-ah's eyes went wide.
"F-for real?"
"Problem solved, right?"
"..."
She clamped her mouth shut and rolled her eyes for a second.
"W-well then."
She fidgeted with her fingers, doing some mental math, then flashed an awkward smile and asked carefully,
"What's the pay like...?"
"Dunno. Double your current salary?"
Not like it'd be much anyway.
At that, Chae Seol-ah's eyes lit up like she'd been waiting for it, and she boldly thrust out three fingers.
"Th-three times!"
"..."
She'd claimed she didn't want to, but money was the issue after all?
Clinging to cash this hard. What did money even mean to her?
As I pondered that, she glanced at me and half-folded one finger.
"T-two and a half...?"
"..."
"...Two and a half... halved?"
"..."
"Th-then two times...?"
"..."
Soon she was pouting again.
"1.9 times...?"
I wondered how low she'd go if I stayed quiet.
"Fine, ten times."
She jumped, eyes bulging.
"Wha-whaaat?!"
"Gonna work you like a dog for it."
"Wh-whaaat..."
I clapped lightly to lighten the mood.
"Alright, let's go register the guild."
"Huh? But we're still one short?"
"Team Leader Lee took care of that too. Not sure how, but he's sending someone over."
"O-oh, really? Who's coming?"
"No idea."
"Eek."
"It's just a guild member in name anyway—to fill the quota for setup. Doesn't matter who."
"True. Hehe."
With that, we headed to the nearby guild office.
A man was waiting to greet us when we arrived.
"H-hello. Kim Hyun."
"You the hunter Team Leader Lee sent?"
"Yes. Name's Lee Hyun-sik."
I nodded, and he handed me a folder of documents.
"Team Leader—no, Team Leader Lee said to pass these along."
"What's this?"
"All the paperwork for guild registration. He prepped everything ahead of time, so you just need to bring this and you're good..."
Oh, no tedious paperwork then.
I gave him a thumbs-up.
"Team Leader Lee's on the ball."
"Haha."
We went straight in and registered the guild.
Easier than I'd expected.
Handed over the prepped docs and licenses, and boom—in under ten minutes, we had a guild.
"Feels kinda shady."
"What does?"
"Civil servants don't process stuff this fast."
The bureaucrats I remembered were the ultimate "sit and wait" types. This speedy service felt like someone upstairs had ordered them to hustle.
I voiced my suspicion, and Chae Seol-ah waved it off with a laugh.
"Nah, no way. Civil servants work hard too. We just came with all the paperwork ready, that's why."
"Doubt it."
Whatever, not a big deal.
"Next up's the gate auction? Where's that at?"
"There's a dedicated auction house. Low-rank gates are just sold outright, but high-rank ones go to auction."
"Oh, gotcha."
So D- or E-rank gates could be bought straight-up? Even better.
"Where do they sell the low-rank ones?"
"There's a site for it. App too."
I searched the site she'd mentioned.
"Tons of gates."
It was sorted by region, packed with listings. As I tilted my head, Lee Hyun-sik—who hadn't left yet—chimed in cautiously.
"Usually, guilds buy gates near their HQ. But since your guild's new and Bundang's guild-saturated, nearby gates are all basically claimed."
"Their turf, huh? Territorial much."
No reason to play by their rules. I clicked my tongue, and he smiled.
"To avoid disputes, go for somewhere remote or guild-sparse. Places like Gangwon-do are practically begging people to take gates off their hands for cash."
"L-let's do a gate in Gangwon-do!"
Chae Seol-ah caught on quick and shot her hand up.
"The Gangwon-do gates look promising...!"
"Hmm."
"G-Gangwon-do! Close the gate and grab some dakgalbi!"
"Dakgalbi out of nowhere?"
"Yes! Ch-Chuncheon! Chuncheon dakgalbi!"
She pleaded with desperate eyes, begging me to agree.
"Eh, sure."
Why not.
I shrugged.
And so we headed to Gangwon-do.
In the car on the way to Gangwon-do.
"Gangwon-do's a famous monster hazard zone."
Chae Seol-ah in the passenger seat started explaining.
"Too few guilds for the number of gates spawning. Local guilds can't handle it."
"That's why gate breaks happen all the time."
"Gate breaks?"
I turned to look out the window.
"Monsters spilling out of the gate."
"Like that one?"
"Huh?"
Chae Seol-ah turned to where I was pointing.
Her scream soon filled the car.
"Hiiiieeeek?!"