The Vice-Captain's Duel
The raid team found Lee Shin to be an incredibly complicated figure.
He was the grateful benefactor who had discovered them when they were still promising talents in the independent scene, yet from their very first meeting he had looked them dead in the eye and declared, “You people are nothing but tools.”
Despite that, he provided them with top-tier treatment—sky-high salaries, the best items, every possible support. At the same time, outside of the single monthly consultation, he barely spoke to them at all. He could act like an immature twenty-something one moment, yet the playful glint in his eyes somehow felt terrifying.
In short, he was a complex, uncomfortable existence that defied simple definition.
So when he suddenly appeared in the training hall, every member of the raid team could only gape.
“Good to see you all. Starting today, I’ll be helping manage your condition and training.”
The man who had never once set foot in the training hall before, whose only interaction had been those monthly check-ins, had shown up out of nowhere and announced he was taking over.
Glances flew back and forth in silence.
What’s going on? What happened?
Why would the guildmaster come here? Do you know?
Me? No idea. Hyung?
Don’t look at me.
While doubt and unease thickened the air, Lee Shin continued without the slightest concern for the mood.
“No need to fetch the raid captain. Do you really think I’d come all the way here just because someone asked? The captain told me you all seem to have fallen into a rut lately.”
“I’ve been watching as well. A dip in the numbers on the record sheet is understandable—everyone’s human, and it happens toward the end of the season. I get it.”
“Ta-da! That’s why I’m here. Mir Guild’s happy virus, super vitamin—consider me your personal vitamin from now on.”
Even that was a talent in its own right. The ability to keep smiling in such a frosty atmosphere, and for that empty smile to actually lighten the mood, was something uniquely Lee Shin.
But the raid team members’ faces had visibly hardened. They had finally grasped the true meaning hidden behind that bright smile.
This is exactly what we thought, right?
Anyone can see he’s here to chew us out.
His tone remained cheerful, yet the message boiled down to one thing: “You guys have been slacking, haven’t you?”
Then Lee Shin’s next words made everything crystal clear.
“Don’t feel pressured.”
: Feel pressured.
“I’ll barely interfere at all. Just keep training the way you always have.”
: Yeah, I’ll be interfering. You are training properly, right?
“Anyone free after training? I realized I haven’t really hung out with you all lately. How about we grab dinner once you’re done? I know a good place these days.”
: Be honest. What do you guys do after training? Clubbing? Drinking? I’m just curious.
By the time he finished, the raid team had arrived at the terrifying truth: Lee Shin had come all this way to warn them about their recent drop in form.
Their expressions stiffened rapidly.
From their perspective, this was unacceptable. Training was strictly an individual domain. The training hall was the raid team’s private space.
That was why many guilds barred anyone except the hunters themselves from entering—out of respect for the hunters and courtesy toward the raid team.
Yet here was Lee Shin, barging in without a word and declaring he would meddle with their training while telling them their performance was subpar.
What hunter would find that pleasant?
Even if their results had been poor, they might have understood. If relegation were looming, they could have accepted it as a desperate measure.
But Mir Guild was sitting comfortably in first place—overwhelmingly so, treating the other four league teams like mere decorations. So honestly, what was this treatment?
No matter how they tried to spin it, the situation was hard to view positively.
Still, no one dared voice their complaints.
“……Honestly, this is a bit uncomfortable.”
The support and training staff flinched.
The raid team flinched.
Even Lee Shin himself looked surprised. Why was he surprised?
Complaints were not to be voiced. Even if they existed, they were not to be spoken.
Yet there was always someone whose emotions ran hotter than their reason. Especially when they were young, hot-blooded, and riding high on their first taste of success—someone who couldn’t see past their own puffed-up shoulders. Just like now.
The training hall turned deathly silent.
Every pale face turned toward the member who had spoken. Lee Shin wore the same refreshing smile as always.
“Aah, I see. It must feel uncomfortable. I really am thoughtless sometimes.”
“Team leader, why don’t you step out for a coffee?”
Lee Shin smiled brightly as he pulled out a card. The team leader rushed over and accepted it with both hands. Sweat had already soaked the collar of his shirt in that brief moment.
Once everyone else had left, only Lee Shin and the raid team remained in the vast hall.
Lee Shin walked over to a nearby chair, dragged it over, and sat on it backward, resting his chin on the backrest as he gazed quietly at the raid team members.
He simply watched.
Wordlessly. With that charming smile still on his face.
The uncomfortable silence stretched until the smile itself began to feel grotesque, and something buried deep in the raid team members’ hearts stirred.
Fear.
It was fear.
To them, Lee Shin had always been a lighthearted man who granted their requests and showered them with gifts. If it came to a physical fight, he wouldn’t even be worth one punch.
Yet the feeling they now experienced from him was unmistakably fear.
The raid team had always been fundamentally overpowered by Lee Shin’s very existence.
“Everyone.”
“……”
“Answer.”
““Yes!!””
Lee Shin nodded in satisfaction.
It wasn’t because their nodding pleased him. It was because the Dominance stat he had painstakingly raised with precious points was finally doing its job.
Lee Shin tapped the air to close the status window and looked at them again.
Cold sweat ran down their blank faces. A few had gone pale.
They probably wouldn’t believe it, but Lee Shin wasn’t particularly angry with them.
He continued in an unusually gentle voice.
“There’s a term called ‘rookie.’ New person. The Bureau only recognizes someone as a rookie after they’ve completed a full season, not from their debut. Therefore—”
“Hunters who have only just awakened—”
Park Su-bin flinched.
“Hunters who used to bounce between the fifth division and the free agency pool—”
Park Jeong-seok closed his eyes.
“Hunters who spent five years as nothing but substitutes—”
Lee Hye-jung bit her lower lip.
“All of you, who have never played a single full season, are rookies. That’s why I think issues like neglecting condition management are perfectly understandable. Because you’re rookies.”
That was why Lee Shin wasn’t angry.
To him, rookie risks like condition problems were only natural. As someone who had once been a GM, he saw this as a simple matter of input and output within a fixed system, not a failure of personal will.
So he held no grudges.
Therefore, neither should they.
“But before you are rookies, you are professionals.”
Professionals stood in a place where they had to prove themselves—solely with their own abilities.
They were professionals. And Lee Shin was the guildmaster.
“I don’t care what you do in your private time. Even if you ignore the training coach’s orders to rest and go clubbing instead, or drink with fans while your shoulders are puffed up with pride, I wouldn’t have cared at all.”
“As long as you showed proper form befitting professionals.”
Moreover, he was the only person in this world who could see the status window—the sole bearer of truth.
If he couldn’t see it, he might have let it slide. But he could see it. He could see with absolute certainty that they weren’t using their abilities to their fullest.
“I’ve said this before, but to me, you are tools.”
“I don’t care if you’re first place. I bought you expecting to aim for League 3 or higher, not League 4. If you can’t even chew up League 4, then you’re defective.”
“I’m not the kind of person who would bother using defective goods.”
Owners didn’t blame their tools.
They simply returned or exchanged them.
Lee Shin drove the point home to the trembling members.
“Do your best until the league ends. I know better than anyone what your best looks like. If you truly give it your all, I promise—your market value will be higher than anyone else at your level.”
“But if you don’t give your best—if, for example, the record-breaking streak ends—”
In that instant, the smile Lee Shin had worn the entire time vanished.
“I think I’ll be truly angry.”
His eyes, filled with madness, swept over them.
Everyone shuddered.
It was the look of someone staring straight through them.
The warning was over. Lee Shin clapped his hands and smiled brightly once more.
“Well, conversation’s over. Let’s get into training with cheerful hearts.”
A moment later, the training coach and support staff returned, and training began under Lee Shin’s guidance.
“We’re scrapping this course. We’ll be using the new one I prepared.”
Come to think of it, that made sense.
Lee Shin had been the one who trained Park Su-bin as well.
And that wasn’t all he had prepared.
* * *
Many things could motivate a person.
On the mental side, there were lofty-sounding reasons like realizing dreams, self-satisfaction, self-actualization, or personal beliefs.
On the other hand, there were also those moved by more primal, even vulgar desires—good food, luxurious travel, beautiful women or handsome men.
Lee Hye-jung belonged to the latter group.
Her motivation was money.
Money. Cash. The bills bearing Shin Saimdang and King Sejong.
She didn’t know when it started. From the moment she became aware of the world, Lee Hye-jung had loved money.
If asked why, she couldn’t really say.
It wasn’t born from deprivation—her family had been comfortable enough, if not wealthy. It wasn’t from conflict—her many sisters only bickered over the bathroom every morning, nothing serious.
Even as a child, the promise of a higher salary had resonated more with her than the idea of a spouse’s face changing based on memorized vocabulary. Ranking salaries had been more fun than stanning idols.
Her parents had even scolded her: they gave her plenty of allowance, so why was she so obsessed with money?
It was simply instinct. A desire etched deep into her DNA.
Lee Hye-jung wanted money.
She wanted to earn it with her own abilities, to pile it up like a mountain.
That was why, despite her excellent grades, she had quit studying the moment she awakened and declared she would become a hunter. In a way, it was only natural.
After all, hunters were the final form of capitalism.
Last year alone, the minimum salary for a League 1 hunter had been a staggering 950 million won. That was the minimum for someone who didn’t even start.
If you had the talent, your value could skyrocket to one billion, two billion, ten billion—there was no ceiling.
Even if you studied your way into Korea University or the elite tracks at groups like Lee Do, you could never reach that realm.
Of course, behind those glittering figures were countless hunters barely scraping by on minimum wage, but the young Lee Hye-jung, already captivated by the fantasy, had been blind to that reality.
So at eighteen, she dropped out of the high school she had been attending and dove headfirst into the hunter world, where milk and honey were said to flow.
And then—
She failed.
Miserably.
Five years in the second-string squad. It was called the second string, but in reality it was no different from being a trainee.
What tormented Lee Hye-jung the most was that trainees received no pay beyond meal and travel allowances. For someone obsessed with money, those days had been pure hell.
That was why she felt deeply grateful to Lee Shin, who had rescued her from that unpaid hell.
Not only that—he had shown her a new path called poison without making a fuss, and had readily supported her with that expensive poison. At this point, she wondered if Lee Shin might be the greatest benefactor in her life.
But then—
“What did you say? The vice-captain position……?”
With neither a proper director nor coach, the vice-captain was effectively the second-in-command of the raid team.
“You want me to fight her for it?”
Lee Hye-jung pointed with a dumbfounded expression at Park Jeong-seok, who wore an equally dumbfounded look.
“Yes. The vice-captain seat.”
Lee Shin nodded with a bright smile.
Gratitude was gratitude. But strange was still strange.
Lee Shin was not normal.