The Association's Rotten Core
The definition that pops up when you search for the word association: an organization formed by people in a specific industry, or by institutions and alliances, that functions as an interest group.
That was exactly what the Hunter Association had originally been created to do—represent the interests of hunters.
They provided hunters with various forms of education and training to make raids safer. They organized and shared the information they gathered, building a system that allowed hunters to grow.
Beyond that, the Association had also spearheaded loan programs to cover the high cost of initial equipment, negotiated fair compensation for pro hunters from guilds, and led discussions with the Bureau on everything from the number of matches to league rules.
Thanks to those achievements, hunters came to rely on the Association, and naturally, its authority grew day by day.
Increasing support. Rising shoulders. Wallets that had suddenly grown thick.
The transformation from authority to power happened in the blink of an eye.
What came after hardly needs explaining. Internal conflicts broke out over that power, factions formed, fairness was lost, and trust crumbled.
Just like the Hunter Association today.
……
…
.
A man was striding quickly down the hallway.
“No way. It can’t be. No matter how incompetent that sunbae is, there’s no way he’d actually… mess with Mir like that.”
Please don’t let it be true. Please!!
Clench—!
The man’s grip tightened with denial.
In his clenched fist was a newspaper, crumpled beyond recognition. The faces of the Mountain King and Lee Shin printed on it were as twisted as the man’s own expression.
Ignoring the people who greeted him, he practically flew up the stairs. When he reached his destination, he threw the door open.
Bang—!
He spun the chair that was lazily turning and found another man passed out cold in it.
“Director Hong! Director Hooong!!”
“Zzz… Zzz…”
“Aaaargh!”
The man pounded his own chest in frustration.
There was no sign of him waking up. It was obvious—he’d clearly been treated to another “entertainment session.”
With rage boiling over, the man channeled all his fury into a slap across the bastard’s chest.
Smack!!
“Guh!!”
“Wake up, Director Hong!!”
“Ugh… huh? What’s going on?”
“This is not the time for a nap, Director. Hong. Byung. Ji.”
That’s right.
This was the Association.
More precisely, it was the Bureau of Raid Safety Management and Supervision.
It was the department in charge of overseeing and supervising league raid matches. The gaunt man blinking blearily with bloodshot eyes was none other than Hong Byung-ji, the director who led all the supervisors.
And the man who had been unable to hide his anxious expression from the start was Hwang I-im—Hong Byung-ji’s old friend from their active hunter days and the right-hand man of the current Association chairman.
Hong Byung-ji scratched his chest stupidly and stretched.
“Haaam… What is it? Oh, it’s you, I-im. Why’d you wake me up so suddenly? Is it lunchtime already? Should we go eat? Galbi-tang sounds good. I drank too much yesterday, so…”
“Galbi-tang? Galbi-taaaang?!”
“Or maybe some sundae-gukbap…?”
“Aaaargh!!”
Only Hwang I-im felt like his insides were exploding at the idiot’s replies.
“Director. No—sunbae. Do you even know what’s happening right now?”
“Ah, stop shaking me. I’m dizzy. Put that down and talk slowly.”
“This! This is your handiwork, isn’t it, sunbae?”
Hwang I-im shoved the crumpled newspaper right into Hong Byung-ji’s face.
The front page was dominated by a massive headline with photos of Lee Shin and the Mountain King side by side.
[Mir Guild’s Invincible Raid Streak Finally Broken]
It was an article analyzing Mir Guild’s recent raid match, which had become the talk of the town.
Hwang I-im pointed at a specific section with his finger—the part that emphasized how the boss’s final pattern, a wide-area mental debuff, had been the decisive factor.
“This ‘scroll.’ You tampered with it, didn’t you, sunbae?”
“What are you talking about? Scroll? There’s no mention of any scroll here.”
“That’s exactly what I mean!! We were both active hunters! Why are you playing dumb when you know exactly what I’m saying!”
The Dancing Quincy was famous among bosses for being particularly tricky.
Its final pattern, which had a high chance of rendering anyone it hit completely combat-ineffective, was notorious. Using an ‘Anti-Mental Scroll’ to block it was common knowledge among hunters.
“Ahem…”
“It’s common sense even for washed-up veterans like us! That gate has been around forever! And you’re telling me Mir Guild made a mistake?!”
“Mistakes can happen. Even monkeys fall from trees…”
“When that old monster is the one commanding them? Come on, sunbae. At least make it sound believable.”
“Ahem.”
Hwang I-im had been a major-league hunter before joining the Association. He was skilled enough to have even made the national team for one season.
Naturally, he had crossed paths with the Mountain King, Kim Jong-pil, before.
People said he changed the paradigm of the rivalry matches, and because Kim Jong-pil had shown impressive effects in those matches, the spotlight had fallen on that side. But the place where he truly displayed his invincible aura was actually in raid matches.
For that old monster to make a mistake while leading a champion squad that had conquered not just Korea but all of Asia? And not just one mistake—three of them?
Hwang I-im couldn’t imagine it.
In fact, the other explanation made far more sense.
“…It’s way more believable that their scrolls were defective and that’s why they got hit by the final pattern!”
“Ahem. Then they must have been defective.”
“Are you really going to keep playing dumb? Do you even know who we’re talking about?! It’s Mir Guild! The Mir Guild led by that ‘madman’!”
Well said.
Above all, behind that old monster stood the madman called Lee Shin.
Potions, consumables, even the damn nails—hell, even the lunchboxes they ate during raids!
That lunatic was the one who coined the phrase “supremacy doctrine,” spending absurd amounts of money to give his guild nothing but the absolute best of everything.
Rumors even said he had inherited the obsession for first place from the Iron Man, Lee Sang-byuk.
And with that kind of person, defective goods appeared?
“And of all things, a scroll! A scroll, of all things! The very item you and your supervisor underlings feast on the most!”
“……”
“Let me lay out my scenario. You inspected the scrolls and tampered with them. A defective scroll caused problems, and that’s why they got hit by the final pattern.”
“…Ugh.”
“Sunbae, this is serious. You need to tell me the truth.”
“No, it’s just… I didn’t mean for it to get this big.”
“It’s true?! You actually dared to touch Mir Guild!!”
“H-hey, let me talk.”
For the most part, it was exactly as Hwang I-im described.
Before entering a gate for a raid, guilds would lay out all their items. They would empty even their spatial pouches, count every single piece, and perform a final inspection.
That was also when the supervisors got busy.
They used orbs and various devices to check whether the equipment and consumables were in proper condition.
It was also the time when the supervisors collected their “tribute.”
They would accept bribes to overlook unregistered items, or swap in their own goods.
When you included all the minor tricks, the methods were endless.
And what they had done to Mir Guild—secretly swapping out the cheap defective goods they had prepared with normal ones—technically fell under the category of “minor tricks.”
Among those, scrolls were especially easy to tamper with.
‘It’s just a few scrolls.’
Scrolls produced by factories or companies, rather than the Magic Tower where mages gathered, were legally required to be standardized.
What did that mean? It meant a scroll made in a factory in Busan was identical to one made in a factory in Seoul!
They were small, identical in shape, and inspection was a hassle.
Didn’t that make your mouth water? On top of that, the “anti-type” scrolls they had swapped this time were expensive!
Hwang I-im’s lips trembled as he spoke.
“…Y-you really did it?”
“Yeah, I did a little! I did, but… I didn’t think it would blow up like this.”
Even so, Hong Byung-ji felt wronged.
Did he really want the scrolls he tampered with to hit so critically? If anyone in the world was rooting hardest for Mir Guild to take first place, it was probably Hong Byung-ji himself.
“I thought that old monster would cruise to first place! But of all things, they got hit with the worst possible one—‘Charm.’ Hey, wasn’t the chance only two percent? It’s fuzzy now.”
“You… you… you’re insane…!!”
“And Taeyang Guild too! Why are they so serious about a single raid match? They just need to finish in the top four!”
“How many? How many did you swap?!”
“Well… one.”
“A thousand?”
“……”
“A hundred million??”
“I had to give some to the guys below me too.”
“You idiot! Exactly how many did you switch?!”
Taking bribes and pocketing pocket money was everyday life in the Association.
Hwang I-im wasn’t about to deny it. He had his own holes to fill from time to time.
But even so, you had to at least read the room.
You didn’t touch the big players or the top guilds. That was the rule of this world. In the past it had been Kirin Guild, and now it was the Four Major Guilds.
Yet this man had fearlessly touched the one guild among the Four Major Guilds that should never be touched.
The crazy dragon cub.
Hwang I-im took a step back from Hong Byung-ji.
His survival instinct had kicked in. Seeing that, Hong Byung-ji let out a chuckle.
“Don’t worry. I already took measures after seeing that.”
“What measures?”
“I called the scroll company. Told them to take the fall for it.”
“And in return, they handle the defective product fallout?”
“If something comes, something must go.”
“Ha…”
At the brazen answer, Hwang I-im clutched his head.
Was this really something that should come out of the mouth of one of the Association’s pillars? It was so shameless it almost felt malicious.
And Hwang I-im roughly understood where that malice was coming from.
“Sunbae… do you really hate Lee Shin that much?”
“Don’t even get me started. That son of a bitch. Look at how he acts. He thinks this whole industry belongs to him.”
In truth, the sentiment toward Lee Shin inside the Association was worse than “the worst.”
It had started with the supply crisis that began at the Busan Gate and spread across Korea, the Level 8 Gate suspected of having revived the Mountain King, the recent South American incident, the noisy off-season, and so on.
There had been so many incidents that ten fingers weren’t enough to count them.
And that wasn’t all. The innovations he had rolled out to boost the league’s popularity were too many to list.
Yet in all that time, Lee Shin had never once reached out to the Association first. He had completely excluded them and spoken directly with the Bureau.
Yes. Lee Shin had been ignoring the Association.
What had finally made it explode was this incident with the Four Major Guilds.
“Super Team? Ha, who the hell does he think he is, moving four major corporations to create a Super Team? In plain terms, isn’t that tampering? He crossed the line, didn’t he?”
“…Like I’ve been saying, watch your mouth. That’s just a rumor.”
“What rumor? Look at the picture. Even our house dog could tell.”
“……”
“Ha! Does he think he’s the only one working for this league? We’ve done way more. In the end, if that bastard fails, he can just live as a chaebol. But this is our territory. This is all we have.”
Lead the world in popularity with the Four Major Guilds? Raise the level of the league?
Fine. That’s good. But then you should have talked to the Association first.
Who created this league? Who stood at the forefront for the benefit of hunters?
It was us. It was our Association.
“I’m not asking for respect. I’m just asking for basic courtesy. That damn brat is way too arrogant.”
“So that’s why you did it? Because you couldn’t stand the sight of him?”
“You keep saying that. I told you, it was a mistake. A mistake.”
“Can you handle the consequences? The opponent is Ido Group.”
“Why are you like this today, Director Hwang? Did you see us leave any evidence?”
He might look sloppy, but Hong Byung-ji had once been a pro hunter and was now an Association director.
He had left his mark on a “time-honored tradition” that had continued for forty years. There was no way he would leave evidence like an amateur.
“Ido Group, Lee Shin, whatever. In this world, the one who gets hit has to prove it.”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“That’s because you’re so hungry your brain isn’t working.”
Stop worrying about nothing and let’s go eat.
Hong Byung-ji cackled as he walked past Hwang I-im.
Hwang I-im stared at his sunbae’s retreating back for a long time, then squeezed his eyes shut.
“Hoo… So it’s come to this after all.”
In the pitch-black darkness, the letter that had been left at his doorstep yesterday appeared in his mind.
— Hwang I-im, I know what you did last summer.
[The letter listed every corrupt act he had committed, from incidents so old he had nearly forgotten them to things only an insider could possibly know.]
— The Sender
Even though it said “last summer,” he had no idea why it dug up events from twenty years ago. But the content was so terrifyingly accurate that Hwang I-im had been completely overpowered by the letter’s unknown author.
That was why he had no choice but to make this decision.
— Still, there is hope for your redemption. I will give you a chance. Go find your sunbae, Hong Byung-ji.
Find out the full story behind Round 10 and offer him as a sacrifice. Then nothing will happen to you.
— The Sender
At that moment, he guessed who the letter’s owner was, and that guess hardened his resolve.
‘Yeah. Switching over to Ido Group isn’t such a bad choice.’
When the hesitation in Hwang I-im’s eyes finally settled, his hand slipped into his inner pocket.
Click——
23:13.
Recording ended.
* * *
And the next day.
Hwang I-im came face to face with the consequences.
SHOCKING REPORT! Supervisors’ Corruption Exposed!
Anonymous Tip Leads to Recording Revealing Rotten Corruption
Bureau Representative’s Conscience Confession: “Swapping Consumables Is an Extremely Old Evil Practice. That’s Still the Mild Version! You Can’t Even Talk About What Happens in the Lower Leagues.”
Director Hong Byung-ji: “It’s All Fabricated! AI-Generated!!”
Hong Byung-ji to Following Cameras: “It Was Made Through Malicious Editing! I Will Sue the Media for Defamation!”
AI or Editing? Hong Byung-ji Keeps Changing His Story.
Anonymous Letter: “I Accuse Director Hwang I-im!”
Evidence of Match-Fixing Charges from 20 Years Ago During His Hunter Days Surfaces!
The Mysterious Ledger Entry “HII.” Connections Between Information Guilds and Underground Organizations!!
“Lee Shin, you son of a bitch!!!”
* * *
Lee Shin stood in front of the whiteboard, digging at his ear with a finger.
“If someone does something wrong, they have to be punished.”
Hong Byung-ji.
Hwang I-im.
“I already cut off both their hands.”
Now, shall we cut off their feet?
Lee Shin smiled faintly and picked up his phone. The call connected almost before the ringtone even finished.
In a deeply subdued voice, Lee Shin said,
“Chairman Lee Sang-byuk. Your guild has been attacked.”
Nuclear Lunch Detected!!