First, Build a Guild

"I've never once in my life seen anyone make the news for playing a video game! And on the front page of a national daily, no less!"

Using my father's furious voice as background music, I read the article from top to bottom.

Ah, right. So that's when it was.

The so-called Baekmyeong Group Third Son's Real-Life PvP Incident.

I'd been playing Underwatch, an FPS, when I got into it with a teammate. Our team's tank and me, the DPS, started going at each other over voice chat.

"Yeah? Then drop your address, you trash-talking bastard."

And of course, it ended in a real-life PvP showdown.

Embarrassing as it is to admit, the tank's voice over voice chat had clearly been a woman's. So I figured she'd be easy pickings, and I was the one who proudly threw down the gauntlet first.

Except when she actually did drop her address, and the time came for me to actually show up, I chickened out and dragged my bodyguards along.

Anyway — she was really there, waiting at the meeting spot. Short cropped hair, casual training clothes, a woman ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my own age who looked barely into her twenties.

Ooh, not bad. Maybe I should shoot my shot? I was thinking exactly that when one of my bodyguards whispered urgently.

"Executive Director! That woman — she's a B-Rank hunter...!"

"What?"

I only found out later: my opponent was Yoon Sol, a B-Rank hunter. Her rank wasn't anything special, but thanks to her looks, she was already a rising celebrity among rookie hunters.

Well, I'm screwed. To be precise, the instant I'd gotten as far as thinking screwed, there was a flash of light, and every bodyguard around me went sailing through the air.

"Hey."

"Eek—hyiii..."

"Ah. You pathetic little... You come out to throw hands with a girl, and you bring a whole crowd with you? And judging by the look of you, you hired them from some security outfit, huh?"

"U-uhh..."

"I was planning to settle this nicely with words at first, but looking at that sorry state of yours, I think you could use a little education."

Thud. Thud.

"How about you take one hit too?"

"AAAAAAAAAH!!!"

I don't remember anything after fleeing in abject terror. I got home, buried myself under my blankets, and shivered through the night — and by the time I checked social media and saw someone had filmed the whole thing and it was going viral, I realized this had gotten far bigger than I'd thought. Then it came out that the people in the video were Yoon Sol and me — Baek Do-hyun — and once she publicly laid out the whole story, the situation spiraled completely out of control.

It was no longer just my personal problem. It threatened to bleed into the image of the entire group.

Which is how I ended up here, summoned before my father for a formal dressing-down.

"This is just marvelous. Marvelous work! I banned you from drinking because all you ever did was get drunk and cause trouble, and now you're stirring up scandals with video games!"

Man... this brings back memories.

Yes, I remembered all of it — even getting chewed out by my father like this.

Though for the life of me, I had no idea how I'd ended up back in that moment.

"Why don't you go bully someone instead! Hit somebody! What's that? You picked a fight playing a game? And then you got your teeth kicked in by a twenty-year-old rookie hunter and ran away? Congratulations, you've just opened a whole new chapter in Owner Risk!"

I looked up at my father's livid face.

"...Run, Do-hyun. Now. At least you... live on..."

And in that instant, my father's final moments overlapped atop his raging face.

Fleeing from Those Things as they invaded Seoul — throwing himself over me, drenched in blood, to shield me.

Even while dying, he'd been worrying about whether I was safe.

"...This has grown too big to bury now! Bribing a handful of journalists won't even scratch the surface! So what are you going to do? How do you plan to take responsibility?"

If this moment wasn't a hallucination — if it was real — then my father, who had died, had come back to life.

Looking at his face, an involuntary ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠smile crept across my lips, and my eyes began to sting. It's truly good to see you again, Father—

"Are you smiling?"

"Sorry?"

"You find this funny right now?"

"Ah."

Damn.

"Fine. Today, we settle this once and for all."

"W-wait, just calm down for a second—"

"DOES IT LOOK LIKE I CAN CALM DOWN?!"

In the end, I had no choice but to bolt from the chairman's office, dodging the golf club my father was swinging like a madman.

"Whew..."

I flung myself onto the bed. The obscenely spacious luxury penthouse, the cutting-edge furniture, the designer wardrobe stuffed to bursting.

It was exactly as I remembered it — my home from ten years ago.

"So it really happened. I really came back."

I had definitely died at the hands of Those Things. In that final instant, the ring on my hand had glowed — and when I came to, I was ten years in the past.

"And the ring... is gone."

My left hand was empty. Not that the twenty-four-year-old me wore a ring to begin with.

"What on earth happened to me?"

Turning back time had been impossible even ten years in the future — not through science, not through hunter skills, not through any equipment recovered from the Towers and Gates.

Among the otherworldly artifacts, those that interfered with time itself were vanishingly rare, and I had never once heard of an artifact that could rewind a full decade.

"..."

I turned it over in my head, even pulled out my phone to search for answers, but nothing came of it.

"Then I'll just have to shelve it."

Puzzling over it alone with no clues to go on wasn't going to produce an answer. I'd solve that mystery later.

"The more important question is... what I do from here on out."

I took out my smartphone and checked the date. 2030.

I had regressed ten years into the past. From the last survivor of a fallen Korea, an S-Rank hunter — to the third son of the chairman of Baekmyeong Group, the nation's third-largest chaebol.

"..."

I opened the browser and tapped into the news tab on the portal site.

Society, economy, politics... but amid all the headlines, one category leapt out above the rest: hunters.

In 2020, countless unidentified structures — Towers and Gates — had appeared across the globe.

They led to other dimensions teeming with monsters, creatures that had never existed on Earth. The status window that suddenly materialized before humanity's eyes issued a warning: unless the Towers and Gates were cleared, catastrophe would descend.

But against the monsters, almost every modern firearm proved useless.

As if to solve this crisis on humanity's behalf, not long after the Towers and Gates appeared, people began awakening to extraordinary abilities.

They were given the name hunters — those who hunt the monsters.

Hunters, monsters, Towers, Gates... concepts that arrived without warning upended the existing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠social order completely. But ten years on, even these had become familiar facts of life — a world where terms like Hunter Association and gate raids slipped into the daily news as naturally as weather reports.

"Well. Except it all ended with humanity failing to manage the Towers, and everything going extinct."

"..."

Extinction.

The truth is, my path was already decided.

"I have to stop it. The apocalypse."

It sounded like something out of a Saturday-morning cartoon hero's script, and honestly, it made me cringe a little — but I couldn't think of a single other goal worth pursuing.

This wasn't some overflowing sense of justice. Family, company, comrades... the collapse of everyday life. The world I knew vanished overnight.

Heir to a chaebol dynasty? What good is any of that once everyone's dead?

So whether by chance or by fate, now that I'd been given a second chance ten years back, I wasn't going to waste it.

The world. If not that, Korea. If not that, then at the very least, the people around me. I had to protect something.

"...Goal's set, then."

I rose from the bed and paced back and forth across the room. The moment I'd settled on what needed doing, my mind felt strangely clear.

"So the question is — how, specifically?"

Those Things had appeared when the United States failed to clear its Tower. America had merely been the first — Korea and every other nation were struggling just as badly against their own Towers. To put it bluntly, the hunters of that era simply weren't strong enough to keep pace with the Towers' rising difficulty.

"Then the answer's simple."

If the hunters' level was too low to clear the Towers, then all we had to do was raise it.

That way, Those Things would never appear in the first place — and even if they did, we'd be able to fight back.

They were absurdly powerful, yes, but not invincible. Hadn't I, before dying, landed a genuine, effective blow on one of them myself?

Of course, I'd need to grow far stronger than I was then, too.

Good. The fundamental premise was set.

All I had was five short years. So how, within that window, could I make hunters stronger?

Better training methods, better equipment, systematic support. But—

"Providing all of that to every hunter on Earth is... impossible for now."

Then narrow the scope. For starters, I had to make Korea's hunters stronger.

"If I could take over the Hunter Association, this would all be tidy and simple."

I'd run the Association exactly as I saw fit, and use the hard-won knowledge from ten years in the future to reform the entire hunter industry.

"...But I need a foothold first."

The gap between my current position and getting my hands on the Hunter Association was simply too wide. I needed an intermediate step.

To exert influence over the Association, I first needed a voice of my own within the hunter world — and a power bloc behind me to back that voice up.

"..."

The deliberation didn't take long. Because the answer was simple.

"First, I build a guild."

A hunter guild — an organization that manages and develops the hunters under its banner.

Was there any faster way to secure influence in the hunter industry than to personally lead a major guild?

And I already possessed every qualification needed to run one.

Guild management? Training methods tailored to each ability type? Monster intel? Matching gear? I knew it all inside and out — the ultra-condensed, cutting-edge, field-tested version, acquired over five years of actually running a collective of the world's top hunters and being ground through battlefield after battlefield.

And one more thing.

I already knew which hunters would rise to prominence in the future.

Five years from now, when Korea was plunged into crisis, there were heroes who appeared like comets in the war against Those Things and saved us all. Conversely, among the hunters who already flaunted their S-Rank prestige, there were plenty who folded helplessly — or flat-out abandoned the fight and ran to save their own skins.

The ability to tell future stars from rotten apples who needed to be cut loose. As the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leader of an organization, what skill could possibly matter more?

Recruit the hunters destined for the top, build the guild around them. Run it well, develop them properly, and detonate their full potential. In doing so, I'd gain strong, trustworthy hunters I could rely on even as the apocalypse closed in — and as the head of the guild they belonged to, my own standing in the hunter world would climb right alongside them. Raising promising talent, securing the driving force for reforming the hunter industry itself — two birds with one stone.

"Perfect."

Step one was decided, which meant it was time to move without delay.

I immediately opened my phone's contact list.

The call connected after only a couple of rings.

"Yes, Executive Director."

She was my secretary.

More precisely, the woman my father had personally assigned to me to keep me out of trouble.

"Ah, Seo-hyun. Is now a good time to talk?"

"..."

"? Is something the matter?"

"...How rare. In all the time I've worked for you, you've never once called to ask whether I was available to talk."

"Ah..."

Right. The current me was at the height of my infamy as a hopeless screwup.

Knowing me, I'd probably barked orders the instant she picked up — Do this, do that — without so much as a hello.

"Ahem. Well, people change. Anyway — I called because there's something I'd like to ask you."

"Of course. Go ahead."

"By any chance, does the Hunter Association side have anyone with connections to Baekmyeong Group?"

"I'm sorry...?"

"...May I ask why?"

"Oh, nothing major. I'm planning to start a hunter guild."