A Documentary on the Legend
The documentary opens from its very first frame with images of the guild in its shabby days back in the League 4 era.
Abandoned ports and empty warehouses. Factories stripped of purpose. Districts so desolate not a single person could be found. It was in that gloomy Yeongdo that the Mir Guild first revealed itself.
The Mir Guild stood on the brink of collapse.
Yeongdo in Busan, a district known for its population cliff.
A dying guild and a dying city.
Even after achieving the historic feat of winning the very first league championship, the guild and the city—now reduced to Busan’s biggest headache—waited helplessly for death.
That was when he appeared like a comet.
Lee Shin. The man who took office as the new representative.
Obviously the atmosphere became… good? Like hell it did. It was horrific.
These days he is Lee God, but back then it was difficult to express the evaluation of Lee Shin with anything as mild as “not good.”
National team degenerate. Troublemaker.
The fact that the firefighter who arrived in their most desperate hour was this very degenerate left the fans in despair, and that despair was sometimes expressed in rather extreme ways.
(Footage of red flames roaring from a drum barrel placed in front of the guild)
*Footage provided by: Mir Guild Representative Lee Shin.
But.
Despite all that distrust.
Lee Shin silently proved himself.
He recruited the legendary Kim Jong-phil, the Mountain King, as a soulmate partner.
They dominated League 4 and won the championship with an overwhelming record.
In the same year he took office, Lee Shin promoted the guild to League 3, putting the fans’ fears to rest.
And at the promotion celebration party held right in the middle of Nampo-dong, he boldly shouted to the fans.
Crude language. Concentrated aggro.
But that too was the qualification of a superstar.
A superstar is only truly completed when he overcomes widespread ridicule and criticism—and then uses even that as a spotlight to shine upon himself.
Lee Shin’s legend began exactly like that.
An opening video that used CG to resurrect the members of the very first championship team from sixty years ago. It began with the all-time number one opening track “I’ve Been Waiting,” still talked about to this day, and ended with the perfect scene of handing the championship trophy to the daughter of one of those original winners.
That moving drama touched not only league fans but also officials and even the hearts of the Bureau’s mages.
And so Lee Shin continued his legend. He defeated Japan’s Shinsengumi Guild—the bitter rival since the very beginning of the Asia League—and then crushed even China’s mighty Namgoong Sega, finally conquering all of Asia.
Unfortunately, the final period on that legend had to be postponed a little longer.
The league is made by the fans. Hunters once called monsters became stars through the love of those fans, and the league became a magnificent sport that completed itself as part of people’s lives.
That is why hunters and guilds must accomplish even more in order to repay the love they have received.
And…
Symbiosis.
Living together by helping one another.
This was the healthy league that the Mir Guild and Lee Shin desired. Therefore he turned Yeongdo into an empire…
……
…
.
“District Head, it’s almost time for your appointment.”
“It’s already that late?”
Click.
The man reflected on the darkened screen after the documentary ended.
Yeongdo District Office Head Noh Hyeong-sim stroked his thick double chin in satisfaction as he rose from his seat.
“Symbiosis is good. Very good indeed.”
This is the story of one man.
Noh Hyeong-sim’s desperate rice-bowl struggle—he who cherished his hometown and loved power more than anything else in the world!
The beginning of that struggle went quite far back.
The Choi Family Pharmacy Association, the largest forge in the country, the Breath Blast Furnace.
On top of that, the academy being built around the second stadium.
The disgrace of a population cliff had vanished long ago. Yeongdo had now become the mecca of Korea’s hunter world.
What kind of country is Korea? A country that will pour everything into its children’s education even if it means going hungry itself.
Just like the mothers who once flocked to Gangnam’s school districts in the past, mothers with children who dreamed of becoming hunters all rushed to Yeongdo.
A city that had once been filled only with the elderly was now overflowing with students who dreamed of becoming hunters.
Buildings for them went up. Academies for them went up.
Naturally, food, entertainment, clothing, and all kinds of shops followed. The city grew at an exponential rate.
Daily renewal.
Every day was different.
For District Head Noh Hyeong-sim and for Yeongdo, every day spent with Lee Shin’s Mir Guild was new and thrilling.
However, let it be said again.
This is Noh Hyeong-sim’s desperate struggle for wealth and power!
“Rothschild?? You mean the European Rothschild family?”
“Yes. Our Rothschild family has decided to board the same ship as Representative Lee Shin.”
Yeongdo had already achieved heaven-shaking, earth-shattering growth. People believed it could not possibly grow any further…
But it could?!
Dollars! Euros!! Pounds!!
The Rothschilds scattered bundles of cash.
Towers that had never existed before rose up. The port grew even larger. Massive factories were built immediately with the equipment flowing into that port.
The world’s largest cutting-edge future machine research institute, ‘A-Z,’ created through the collaboration of the magic device company ‘Symphonia,’ Ido Electronics, and the Mir Guild, was constructed.
For reference, the greatest result of ‘A-Z’ and Cheonbong joining forces to modify equipment was none other than Kang Mal-suk’s Diablo MK.
Anyway, the real problem started now.
When Yeongdo’s economy and status grew so excessively—frankly, to the point where people wondered if this was even allowed—talk began to spread among Busan’s other districts.
“Ugh, District Head Noh Hyeong-sim. I knew he was greedy, but I didn’t realize his greed was this big. Ugh…”
“This won’t do. Even I have to say something. Senior Noh. Honestly, this is too much. No matter how much the Mir Guild is based in Yeongdo, they’re swallowing this entire huge project by themselves?!”
“That’s right. We’re all part of Busan. Let’s share a little. Are we strangers? Shouldn’t we help each other at times like this?”
“Hey, cut us some slack. We can do this too!”
Surprisingly, the people who said this openly to Noh Hyeong-sim’s face were the polite ones.
The real snakes were the ones who bypassed him and stabbed directly at the Busan mayor above.
“Mr. Mayor. Honestly, this isn’t right. We can let the stadium slide. The guild headquarters is in Yeongdo after all. But monopolizing the other projects is crossing the line!”
“Mr. Mayor, Yeongdo is already saturated. Just look at everything crammed in there. The stadium is the largest in the country. The entertainment district attached to it is already huge, right? Then there’s the second stadium, the private school built by Ido Group, the largest complex shopping mall in the country. It’s going to explode at this rate!!”
“The Choi Family Pharmacy Association and that blast furnace were already enough. Even that was a bit much for one district to monopolize, but since Yeongdo was at rock bottom, we understood it was necessary to revive the city. But to take a perfectly good stadium and turn it into an academy? Their ulterior motives are way too obvious!”
The grievances of the autonomous districts.
There were many reasons given, but the conclusion was always the same: they were jealous.
Even when a cousin buys land, it makes your stomach twist. But here was a complete stranger—someone who had been so poor he couldn’t even sit at the same table—suddenly meeting a noble patron and rising in the world.
This was something you could roll around on the floor for three days and still have to acknowledge.
Even though he knew all of this was nothing more than a childish fight over rice bowls, the Busan mayor nodded in sympathy for a similar reason.
Honestly, his own stomach was twisting too.
‘These people keep subtly ignoring me, don’t they?’
Wasn’t this Busan?
When doing business in Busan, why was there no greeting?
He wasn’t asking for anything outrageous.
He wasn’t even hoping for an apple box stuffed with 50,000-won bills. Just a simple greeting, basic courtesy, the kind of customary gesture everyone else performed would have been enough.
Yet strangely, whenever the Mir Guild was involved, there was nothing. They acted as if saying, “It’s my land, so I do what I want,” never asking for permission or even sending a courtesy notice.
‘Well, technically it’s true. Yeongdo is entirely the land of Lee Shin, the Mir Guild, and the Ido Group. Still, there’s a limit. Does Busan belong to them completely?’
It was probably around this time.
The Busan mayor, who had been lying flat on his face, began to slowly play hard-to-get with the Mir Guild.
Of course, whether they accepted that was entirely up to the other side.
“Vice Leader Chae Dong-ha, the mayor wants to change the schedule again.”
“That guy’s always like that. Just leave him be. He’ll call on his own eventually.”
While this one-sided tension lingered, a major incident finally brought that tension to the surface.
The training camp elevated Yeongdo’s status to another level.
It earned membership in the American popularity index “Do You Know Club,” and the number of Chinese tourists who visited during the training camp rewrote Busan’s tourism history.
This was absolutely not on the level of simply becoming famous.
The world’s largest market, America, had taken notice, and investment had poured in from the Namgoong Sega—one of the top three among the Chinese sects famous for having money to burn.
Yeongdo had now risen, together with the Mir Guild, to a true global level.
And as Yeongdo’s status rose, so did the irritation of the other autonomous districts.
“This is way too much!”
“Are you really going to hog everything for yourself?!”
The alienated districts exploded and rose up. The Busan mayor, caught up in the frenzy, became genuinely furious as well.
“Hey now, District Head Noh Hyeong-sim. This is a completely different story. You said it was a training camp. You never said it would be this. In the first place, who would look at this and call it a guild event? Even a local festival would be smaller than this!”
Yet District Head Noh Hyeong-sim answered with a benevolent smile as thick as his double chin.
“Hahaha, I’m sorry. We only tried it as a test, but it turned out to be a huge hit. From now on we’ll register it properly as a local festival.”
“No! That’s not what I’m saying—”
“Hahahaha. I understand everything. I’ll work even harder. Have you eaten? Yeongdo’s pufferfish soup is to die for these days.”
He was truly a man who knew when to bow low and when to seize victory—Noh Hyeong-sim.
Did this monster of politics not know? How much exclusive profit he and Yeongdo had monopolized simply because they had embraced the Mir Guild and boarded Lee Shin’s ship.
‘The scale has grown far too large to gloss over anymore.’
It had leaped in one bound from a personal business to the scale of a city project.
Stuffing all of that onto the island of Yeongdo meant complaints were inevitable. Even Noh Hyeong-sim could see it was reaching a dangerous level.
The moment of choice would soon arrive.
Would he clench his teeth and digest it all himself?
Or would he share with the other districts?
And at that moment, Noh Hyeong-sim’s political senses shone.
There was no need to struggle alone beyond his station. He knew his place and could smell the scent of power better than anyone.
Who was the captain of this ship? Lee Shin. So he simply needed to ask Lee Shin.
And when Noh Hyeong-sim asked, Lee Shin had answered with that signature refreshing, mischievous smile of his.
“It would be nice to have one large airport. A really big one that can handle both domestic and international flights.”
It was an unexpected answer, but Noh Hyeong-sim did not ask twice.
That night.
District Head Noh Hyeong-sim contacted the heads of Jung-gu, Seo-gu, Dong-gu, Nam-gu, Busanjin-gu, and the other districts adjacent to Yeongdo.
Symbiosis is good? Very good indeed.
‘But only after we fill our own stomachs first!’
There was no rule saying the “together” in symbiosis had to include everyone, was there?
Noh Hyeong-sim, pulled from his reminiscence, looked at the scene before him.
A banner hanging where water, docks, and islands intersected.
And beyond it, the man walking toward him at the head of a crowd.
He was the emperor of this empire. Today once again, Noh Hyeong-sim had become the vassal greeting his emperor.
“District Head—!”
“Oh my, I’m coming.”