The World Is Not Equal
Yes, Han Jeong-do was by no means stupid.
If a truly stupid man had managed to collect that many trophies and earn the title of Ten Thousand King, then the sincerity Lee Shin poured into this league and the greatness of the Mountain King would have been sold at a bargain price. That was something that could never be allowed—not for the sake of the Ten Thousand King, but for Lee Shin himself and the comrades who stood with him.
Let’s be honest. With the SSS-class miracle trait Super Intuition, even if Han Jeong-do wanted to be stupid, he physically couldn’t be.
But here’s the thing.
“Foolishness is, after all, relative.”
I’ll admit you’re smart.
However, I’m an old monster who has reset this world hundreds, thousands of times. In all those repeated playthroughs of Lee Shin’s timeline, did you really think Han Jeong-do was absent?
He was a semi-villain who stuck his nose into every corner of the story. I saw his narrative so many times I got sick of it. I know not only his shoe size, but his weight, and even his secret little hobbies.
“You’re just a commoner who got a bit big-headed in the era without me. No matter how hard you jump, you’re still inside the Buddha’s palm.”
Namu Amitabha. Om Mani Padme Hum. Infinite life… Wait, that’s not quite right.
Anyway, Lee Shin clasped his hands together and closed his eyes.
As solemnly as if he were the Buddha statue sitting in front of him.
Naturally, Chae Dong-ha let out a deep sigh at the sight. He’s back. Lee Shin is back.
“…What exactly are you doing?”
“I’m communing with Buddhist enlightenment. Having a little heart-to-heart with Shakyamuni, you could say?”
“Shakyamuni?”
“The Buddha, obviously?”
“…I wouldn’t know.”
“Then it must be Shakyamuni.”
“…So what did Shakyamuni say?”
“Hold on a second. I sent him a message but he hasn’t replied. This guy’s really into push-and-pull. I’m already getting worked up.”
Push-and-pull? Message?
Chae Dong-ha was utterly speechless.
Could you really do something like that with a 12,000-won Buddha statue he’d bought on the way here? Was Lee Shin acting this strange because they hadn’t seen each other in a while? Or had living in America made him even weirder?
“…He looked like an absolute genius when he was giving out tactical instructions. Why does he only act like this when he’s with me?”
“Hm? What was that? I didn’t catch it.”
“Nothing. Please continue what you were saying.”
“Let’s talk while we watch the match.”
When he turned his head, the large screen connected to the waiting room showed Han Jeong-do and Baek Yeon-woo already clashing violently.
“They’re clashing brutally in the mid lane! Slicing! Stabbing! Blood spraying from their shoulders, a blood-soaked brawl across their entire bodies!!”
“Both players are displaying the true essence of the sword. The Ten Thousand King’s surging longsword that crashes like waves! Baek Yeon-woo’s greatsword exploding with wild ferocity! It’s breathtaking! This is simply fantastic!”
“This is a true slugfest. Neither of them is giving an inch.”
The commentators were beside themselves with excitement, and for good reason. The head-to-head between Baek Yeon-woo and the Ten Thousand King was fierce and brutal. There was something about it that made the blood boil.
“Where was I again?”
“You said that although the probability was high, in reality the only place Kirin Guild could target was Subin.”
Originally, Kirin Guild’s style was to crush the opponent’s proudest weapon head-on.
Using the overwhelming weight class provided by the Ten Thousand King and their four rankers, they would demonstrate a catastrophic gap in power. The intention was to shatter the opponent’s will to fight so thoroughly that the next time they met, the enemy would already be mentally defeated.
It was an arrogant style that only the absolute number one could afford to take.
Therefore, Mir Guild’s current first option was, without question, the Hwarang and Mountain King duo. The old Kirin Guild would have charged in to dismantle that pairing at all costs.
Yet when they actually looked, Kirin’s choice had been mid-laner Park Su-bin.
Exactly as Lee Shin had predicted. He grinned mischievously at Chae Dong-ha.
“Hmm, so you see Kirin as taking that arrogant style only the number one can afford… Is that how you view them, Dong-ha?”
“Not just me. The fans, the media, the experts—everyone thinks the same.”
“Then—ding! Wrong answer.”
“…?!”
Not different, but wrong?
When Chae Dong-ha looked at him in shock, Lee Shin was still grinning like a naughty child.
“The greatest, the strongest, the most powerful guild of all time with the largest trophy collection. Strip away all that halo and look again.”
“……”
“Can’t see it? Ha, frames really are scary. Fine. I’ll give you three points. Listen carefully and think it over.”
First. Strategy.
Chae Dong-ha had said Kirin Guild preferred direct confrontations. Using the overwhelming weight class of the Ten Thousand King and four rankers, they would break the opponent’s strongest weapon and completely destroy their fighting spirit.
“Up to that point, okay. It’s actually a pretty smart method. Their weight class is so high that simply matching the opponent’s weapon already guarantees a high win rate. If there are no variables, they win most of the time, and if it drags into the late game, their hunters’ potential is on another level.”
Rank 6. The strongest damage jungler, ‘Spear Ghost.’
Rank 8. The Flame Empress who ignores single-target or area distinction, ‘Flame Queen.’
Rank 11. The textbook five-tool hunter excelling in offense, defense, initiation, and more, ‘Nine-Tailed Fox.’
Rank 18. The human battery and driving force behind Kirin’s late-game bottom carry, ‘Tinkerbell.’
It wasn’t called a dream team for nothing.
Even right now, the broadcast proved it.
“It’s not wrong to say that the only guild capable of stopping Mir Guild’s dominance is Kirin.”
“Mir Guild’s laning phase was completely crushed after underestimating them for being young. This guild’s weight class is absolutely not weak. In fact, it’s top-tier.”
“The experts all agreed that to even stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a Mir Guild like this, there must be no holes in any lane. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Top, mid, bottom, both sides are engaged in incredibly tight laning battles.”
They had gathered only the highest-tier players in every lane.
It would have been stranger if they weren’t aiming for the late game.
“Take this squad to the late game and lose? Forget right and wrong—you’d have to start by investigating their bank accounts. That’s how strong Kirin Guild’s current roster is.”
But here was the fundamental question.
“Can we really call this a strategy?”
Lee Shin had told him to remove the frame and look again. Strip away all the name value and observe with a clear eye.
Crushing the opponent’s strategy through direct confrontation? It sounded good on paper, but it was no different from checking the opponent’s plan first and then responding accordingly.
“It’s a classic case of reverse-engineering the process to fit a good result. In reality, they’re playing in an extremely passive form of ‘operation.’”
Not strategy or tactics—operation.
Lee Shin had declared that Kirin Guild had no strategy.
And that naturally led to the second reason.
“Second. The Ten Thousand King.”
“The Ten Thousand King? You mean Han Jeong-do?”
“Yeah. Our very own tool, Mr. Han Jeong-do, who’s visible right there on screen.”
On the screen, Han Jeong-do was charging at Baek Yeon-woo—who had transformed into the Fighting King—with genuine desperation.
His physical abilities, which were top-class but still 2% short of perfection, were constantly maintained at their peak through endless buffs. At the same time, he never forgot to harass Baek Yeon-woo with curses, sorcery, and various debuffs.
“The harmony of magic and swordsmanship. The Ten Thousand King’s signature is on full display.”
“No matter how many times I see it, it’s perfect. Usually people have negative opinions about magic swordsmen, but when you watch the Ten Thousand King, those words completely disappear.”
“The ideal form of a magic swordsman! The Ten Thousand King’s versatility is pressuring Baek Yeon-woo from every angle.”
Han Jeong-do, the Ten Thousand King—the very root of Kirin who had opened its golden age and led it to glory.
Setting personal likes and dislikes aside, his ability itself went beyond excellent and reached the realm of magnificent.
“Through desperate self-management he suppresses his aging curve, and every year he shows new ways to utilize magic and items to maximize his greatest strength—versatility. The vibe that comes from forty years of experience really can’t be ignored.”
However.
“All this wisdom is focused solely on his own play, not on the team. What do I mean? Han Jeong-do still thinks he’s the main character. Yeah. It’s a contradiction.”
He had desperately succeeded in hiding his own aging condition, yet at the same time he was dying to reveal himself to the world.
He couldn’t stand not standing out.
Yes, the problem wasn’t Han Jeong-do’s ability or condition. It was his ego. His greedy nature.
“If it were me, I would have sent Han Jeong-do to the support role. From the beginning, the position that can utilize his know-how and versatility at 200% is support.”
As a side note, in his later years Han Jeong-do actually changed his position to support, just as Lee Shin said.
He claimed it was because ‘he had done enough and wanted to prepare for the future,’ but the truth was his body could no longer keep up, and the ‘crazy bastard’ who had gone into closed-door training due to injury had returned.
Funnily enough, it was only after being pushed to support that Han Jeong-do enjoyed his final prime. An extremely lucky case.
“In short, Han Jeong-do is wasting this incredible squad just to make his own play stand out. That’s why he keeps pushing this weight-class tactic and star corps nonsense and insists on calling it strategy.”
“And the decisive reason it turned out this way comes from the third point.”
The final third reason: the Mountain King, Kim Jong-pil.
It was this man’s presence.
“Again! Again! The Mountain King predicts Kirin’s ambush play once more. How many times has this been? Not only did he cut off their side operations earlier, but the way he’s eating their vision, reading the jungle pathing, the gank timing—the Mountain King knows everything about Kirin.”
“Whoa, they’re getting completely read. Has Kirin Guild ever looked this helpless before?”
“The moment I say it, they get caught again! Kirin Guild’s jungle position has been figured out!”
“If Mir Guild wins this match, I have a feeling the ‘Mountain King is the real body’ theory is going to be all anyone talks about for a while.”
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t that Kirin had no strategy.
Tight laning battles based on powerful weight class. Avoiding chaotic early fights with side operations, then using their proud weight-class advantage for decisive objective teamfights in the mid-to-late game.
It was a simple but brutally effective win plan.
The only unfortunate part was…
“The person who created that plan is currently their opponent. That’s right. Every part of that strategy, from A to Z, originated from the old man.”
Exactly.
Kirin Guild’s strategy had remained stuck in the Mountain King era.
Once a giant like the Mountain King disappeared, Kirin’s roots began to shake, and Han Jeong-do’s rampage began.
“Paradoxically, the person who understands the old man’s greatness the best is Han Jeong-do himself. During his prime, the old man was truly insane. There was no one who could compete with him except the Fighting King. At the time, Han Jeong-do was just a rookie who had freshly debuted in the majors.”
Of course, debuting in the majors at barely twenty years old was proof of genius in itself, but compared to the Mountain King and Fighting King—who were smashing veterans and rankers alike back then—he was still far behind.
That Han Jeong-do had walked only the path of glory after founding Kirin Guild together with the Mountain King.
Would someone as profit-driven as Han Jeong-do not know the Mountain King’s ability?
“Let’s reach a conclusion. Although it’s hidden behind results and name value, Kirin’s current strategy is an outdated sandcastle. The problem is that even that outdated strategy is being used by Han Jeong-do to make himself stand out. And that Han Jeong-do…”
“Is afraid of the Mountain King.”
“Good. If we exclude him, among the remaining targets, where would he stand out the most?”
“Only in the mid lane.”
“Bingo!”
Snap!
Lee Shin flicked his fingers and grinned mischievously.
On the other hand, Chae Dong-ha felt a chill run down his spine.
He’s insane…
This was it. It wasn’t just play data. It was the ability to synthesize every piece of information—each hunter’s personal history, the guild’s history, past, present, and future—and produce insight.
This was Lee Shin. This was the true face of the man everyone called the genius representative.
“Of course, even I didn’t expect him to bring out the Baekhwageom. I’ll admit I took one on the chin there.”
“It shouldn’t matter. You were planning to put Yeon-woo against the Ten Thousand King from the beginning anyway. That’s why you taught Yeon-woo the Fighting King style.”
“Seventy percent? That’s more than enough to piss that old man off.”
Han Jeong-do’s style of slowly accumulating small advantages was completely helpless against the Fighting King style that instinctively struck at the core of the battlefield.
“He could at least put up a fight against the old man, but against the Fighting King he’s basically a free buffet. A perfect rage button. Heh heh heh.”
On the screen, Baek Yeon-woo was laughing boldly as he charged across the battlefield.
“What terrifying breakthrough power. This is the figure we all know!”
“Fighting King Ma Jang-dong. Baek Yeon-woo, now wielding his beloved weapon, has truly become the Fighting King. And he’s about to end the game!!!”
“He’s going! He’s going! He’s goooooooing!!”
With an all-out offensive style that didn’t even bother raising his guard, he dodged every single attack pouring toward him.
Then, like a wild beast, he pierced straight through the enemy’s heart.
A moment later.
“The nexus is breaking!!”
“The match is over!! Mir Guild takes the first set of the Divine Beast Derby!”
This is my answer.
So what are you going to do now, Mr. Han Do-gu?