Fanning the Flames
Dawn was breaking.
Today, as always, Guild Leader Jeong Sun-dong had arrived at work from the crack of dawn. He still wasn’t accustomed to the office’s transformed atmosphere, lingering by the door and peering inside.
“Where is it? That equipment contract we signed last month!”
“Are you going to keep organizing documents like this? I told you to mark everything clearly with Post-its.”
“Haha, Reporter Park. Could you wait just a little longer? We haven’t finished sorting things on our end yet, so I’ll organize everything by morning and send it exclusively to you…”
The official start time was eight o’clock.
Jeong Sun-dong glanced at his watch.
Seven.
He looked inside again. Not a single desk was empty.
Just days ago, the office had been pitch dark at this hour. Jeong Sun-dong had always been the first to arrive, the one who turned on the lights and adjusted the temperature and humidity.
But look at it now.
The rhythmic clatter of keyboards formed a subtle backdrop, the hurried footsteps of employees kept the beat, and the voices on phone calls supplied the lyrics.
If they named it anything, ‘Passion’ would probably fit.
“Heh…”
A hollow laugh slipped from Jeong Sun-dong’s lips.
Passion. If anyone were asked to name the word that least suited the Mir Guild, this would be it without question.
Originally, this office held neither passion nor even the slightest trace of motivation.
Everyone had been exhausted, dark circles sagging beneath half-closed eyes. Walking corpses would not have been an exaggeration.
Yet now…
One man shows up and everything changes like this.
Lee Shin.
On his very first day as the new representative, the young man had transferred Yang Pan-seok and the entire raid team, forcefully engraving his presence on everyone.
The individual interviews that followed left most employees tense but not yet sensing real danger.
It was only the next day, when more than half the desks had vanished, that the truth hit them. Ah, so that handsome man was the one once called the national team’s troublemaker.
What’s even more chilling is how cleanly he handled the aftermath.
In a sense, it had been a mass layoff. There should have been an uproar, yet strangely, suspiciously, there was almost none.
Jeong Sun-dong didn’t know the exact words exchanged. He could only guess.
“I’ll say this once. Listen carefully. Spit out everything you’ve been holding down and quietly disappear. Oh, and the man who backed you all, Yang Pan-seok, has also chosen to disappear quietly. Well? Did that help you make your choice?”
It had been inevitable.
The moment Lee Shin arrived as representative, a complete reorganization was destined.
Honestly, Jeong Sun-dong had been preparing himself inwardly as well.
He prided himself on being the most diligent since taking the post and on his deep love for the guild, yet in the end he was an indecisive leader who had always been dragged along by the raid team and failed to produce meaningful results.
Even if he himself had been the representative, he wouldn’t have kept such a guild master.
So he had slipped his resignation letter into his inner pocket before facing Lee Shin, but the man he met was… strange.
“Wow, I thought I’d seen wrong, but you really were the guild leader here. This is an unexpected bonus. Guild Leader, you’ve got quite the network, don’t you?”
Lee Shin had grinned like a man who had just been handed an easy win, reacting as warmly as if greeting a friend of ten years. How had he even known about the network?
Of course, Lee Shin had simply recalled ‘Awakener Association Vice President Jeong Sun-dong’ upon seeing his face, but the guild leader had no way of knowing that. To him, the baseless friendliness was merely bewildering.
The atmosphere had made pulling out a resignation letter impossible.
Only after the drastic move of transferring the entire raid team, including Yang Pan-seok—who had been treated as the guild’s sacred ground—and trimming more than half of the bloated front office did Jeong Sun-dong finally feel it.
At last, it feels like I’ve found my path.
The Mir Guild had finally stepped up to the starting line.
The butterfly effect.
It begins with the faint flapping of a butterfly’s wings.
Five hundred billion, one trillion—calling those sums faint wingbeats was almost comical, yet to the Yongbungs, that was exactly how it felt.
After all, it wasn’t their money, and saving the local economy honestly had nothing to do with them.
Their entire attention had been glued for days to the guild homepage that had gone unresponsive. They couldn’t have cared less about current-affairs articles.
Then the wind began to blow.
Who could have known that Ido’s wingbeats would reach them?
The wind, empowered by the wishes and prayers of ten million Yongbungs, grew in scale.
And now it had become a typhoon.
It could not be stopped.
Once a typhoon began to rage, there was no way to halt it.
But did you know?
A typhoon is, by definition, a natural disaster.
And disasters are, by nature, dangerous.
Lee Shin’s typhoon is now making landfall on the Mir Guild.
It was burning.
“…Let’s go burn the guild down. Where does Lee Shin live? You son of a bitch, I’ll tear you to pieces…”
It was blazing…!!
“…Watch your back. A hole in the gut… Heh, as expected of someone from Busan. Tough bastard.”
The shocking and terrifying transfer announcement.
Fans rose like wildfire, flooding communities with curses too vile to repeat.
And the arsonist responsible, Lee Shin, was currently savoring those very curses with a smug grin.
“Man, they keep asking if my parents are doing well. Our vice-guild leader has become a celebrity.”
“…Are you enjoying this?”
“Yeah, it’s the best. Thrilling. Always fresh. Attention really is the greatest.”
Interest turned out to be more enjoyable than expected. Dopamine showered from the tips of his toes to the frontal lobe of his brain!
Watching Lee Shin give a cheerful thumbs-up, Chae Dong-ha realized once again.
Though the man had brilliantly rebuilt the Mir Guild over the past few days, he was undeniably a troublemaker.
His way of thinking was on another level. Otherwise, savoring insults directed at himself would make no sense.
“Hmm, is this the end? Tsk, the reactions themselves were decent, but the volume… Is it because we’re still in League 4? The staying power is lacking.”
“All ten pages are filled with curses aimed at you, Representative. And that’s still not enough?”
“Exactly. You can’t ignore the power that comes from sheer numbers.”
“??”
“??”
The conversation seemed to be spinning in circles.
Lee Shin looked at Chae Dong-ha with a crooked expression.
“Look at you, Vice-Leader. Still not getting the feel for it?”
“What exactly are you referring to?”
“This. Right here. The situation where we’re so busy we only sleep seven hours a week, yet the community is going ‘ehehehe’ while cursing us out.”
“Well… that’s because they like you, Representative…”
“Hah, you really don’t get it.”
Even the future genius guild leader was still a rookie.
The moment Lee Shin’s eyes turned icy, Chae Dong-ha flared up and opened his mouth—only for Lee Shin to press a finger to his lips.
“Shh. Watch carefully.”
He picked up the receiver.
“Guild Leader, bring the PR team to the conference room.”
A short while later, Jeong Sun-dong and the entire PR team entered the conference room.
“……”
The entire team amounted to roughly eight people.
However, as the department hit hardest by Lee Shin’s storm, the rather young-looking woman in the team-leader seat kept swallowing nervously.
“Now, now, everyone relax. I assume you’ve all seen the communities?”
“Yes!!”
“We are constantly monitoring ‘Guild Korea.’”
“Then you’re aware that our guild is currently on fire, correct?”
“That is…”
“Just so we’re clear, I’m not blaming anyone. I simply want to hear an objective assessment of the situation. So speak freely. What is the loudest issue right now?”
The PR team members exchanged glances.
You say it? No, you say it! Then let’s all say it together fairly. Okay, call.
After a lightning-fast silent negotiation, every mouth opened at once.
“The majority of fans are unable to accept this transfer.”
“The most critical point, no matter what anyone says, is the sudden transfer of Yang Pan-seok, the former raid leader.”
“Former Raid Leader Yang Pan-seok is not only a guild legend but also possesses enormous influence in this region.”
“He was born here, grew up here, achieved fame here, and even after gaining national recognition, he chose to remain in the hometown that raised him—a true local boy.”
As expected, the problem was Yang Pan-seok, just as Lee Shin had thought.
A deeply rooted local boy and legendary franchise star.
His popularity was abnormally high compared to his actual achievements, but it was understandable. The Mir Guild’s situation had been so desperate that fans had clung to Yang Pan-seok even though he had proven nothing.
“Good. Thank you for the excellent opinions. Then shall we discuss the actions we must take moving forward?”
The Mir Guild currently stood at a critical crossroads.
The emergence of Ido Group as the parent company, the bomb called Lee Shin, the shocking transfer market, the departure of Yang Pan-seok—the guild’s icon—and the fandom that refused to accept it…
How they handled this would determine the guild’s survival.
Every member of the PR team shared the same thought on the matter.
“We must cover it up as much as possible!”
“If, by some chance, words begin leaking from the transferred players, the situation will explode like wildfire.”
“Taking a friendly stance with the media while exercising maximum restraint is the best option at present.”
Hide it for now.
Even Chae Dong-ha, newly appointed vice-leader, nodded inwardly in agreement.
“N-no matter what, with the, the new representative’s arrival, this is a fresh start. It would be b-bad if controversy follows us from the very first step.”
“They say a good beginning is half the battle. That’s fifty percent. I agree.”
It was the early stage of a new representative’s tenure, a time when impressions were easily cemented.
Lee Shin was already infamous as the former national team troublemaker. If he got caught up in more scandals now, the troublemaker image might stick from the start.
Even if there were a hundred understandable reasons behind the forced removal of Yang Pan-seok, they could not ask the fans to understand.
It would look terrible, and if the hidden circumstances were ever exposed, the situation would spiral out of control.
So for now, they would hide it and…
“P-promotion is the top priority.”
Promotion first.
Even if the team’s legend left, even if there had been some noise during the acquisition process.
If they achieved promotion, everything would be forgiven.
The perfectly logical statement made Lee Shin nod repeatedly. He thought everyone agreed, but…
The next sentence froze everyone’s train of thought.
“Good. Let’s turn the heat up even more!”
“…?!”
What’s good? None of us understood a single thing!
Yet Lee Shin’s opinion was firm.
Cover it up? Why on earth? Why hide such a golden opportunity!
“Everyone, this is a chance! This is the last chance for Mir to leap back into the major leagues!”
Lee Shin argued passionately. The core of his argument was simple.
They had to face reality.
The Mir Guild had gone far too long without producing results to be called a prestigious organization.
“To the current generation, Mir is nothing more than a League 4 guild in the provinces. Nothing more, nothing less. The lowest of the low. It barely holds on in Busan thanks to name value, but nationally it’s a complete non-factor.”
Yet now that very Mir Guild had climbed back to the center of attention.
The reasons might not be positive, but there was a saying that bad comments were better than no comments.
Besides, the Mir Guild was in no position to be picky.
“Whether it’s hate comments, curses, the uncles trying to set us on fire, or the people asking about my parents’ well-being—we must use every single one of them to seize their attention.”
Whether they put on a fire show or literally set themselves ablaze, they had to capture every eye and become the topic of conversation.
Therefore—
Keep throwing firewood onto the burning public opinion.
“It doesn’t matter how much it costs. It doesn’t matter what methods we use. Meet with reporters. Internet articles, communities, N-Tube—anything goes. Use every available resource to amplify the controversy.”
But in the end it was still only League 4.
Sooner or later the limits would show. And if that moment came—
Lee Shin pointed at himself with a mischievous grin.
“Sell me.”
A character unrivaled in the field of notoriety—Reputation 0.
Yet a character who always stood at the center of attention—Charm 101.
“Inciting, fabricating, criticizing—none of it matters. Use me however you want. The reaction will exceed anything you can imagine.”
A topic-generating cheat key.
It was the character called Lee Shin that he himself had created.
“Go. Make the entire world curse my name.”