Home Ground
The term home ground in sports refers to the region where a team’s home stadium is located—the very foundation of a club’s existence.
Since the GM league positions itself as a sport for superhumans, the concept is much the same.
It is the location of a guild’s arena and the region the guild calls its base. Moving that base is called a home ground relocation.
“Relocating a home ground is an extremely sensitive issue, whether the scale is large or small.”
“That’s true, but honestly, calling this a relocation feels ridiculous. In the end, we’re still officially registered with Busan as our home ground.”
“That’s why I added the qualifier—large or small.”
“……Does that part really matter?”
“It matters a lot. Especially to us.”
Lee Shin kindly explained to Chae Dong-ha, who still looked confused.
“Hyung, remember the day we came down to Busan because of my grandfather’s little scheme? What did I say was our guild’s greatest strength?”
“Of course I remember. You said it was the fans.”
“Good. Your brain is still working, so this should be easy to understand.”
“……?”
“From the very beginning, relocating a home ground is not something you should think about rationally.”
Let’s throw out the dictionary definition and set aside the Bureau’s official rules for a moment.
Just look at one thing.
The fans.
“Put yourself in their shoes. Right now, you and I are Yongbung. For a full sixty years, even when the team was in the absolute gutter, we cursed them but never left their side.”
“It’s a love-hate relationship.”
“Love-hate isn’t bad. Honestly, if someone has supported a hopeless guild for over ten years, they either truly love it, are crazy in love with it, or loved it so much they started hating it. Either way, there has to be affection.”
It could be love-hate. It could be longing. It could be loyalty, or it could simply be familiarity.
Whatever it is, they pay steep ticket prices every year and come to the arena.
They don’t stop at watching live—they buy season tickets to catch the reruns at home and purchase the guild’s tacky merchandise.
Of course they curse too. You son of a bitch. You fucking bastard. But even if they curse the team themselves, the moment someone else insults their guild, they turn into gangsters.
“The important thing is this.”
Lee Shin raised a finger.
“They’ve been through it all together.”
“……!”
“When you dress that up nicely, people call it ‘memories.’ And memories tend to be romanticized. The funny thing is, the dirtier and more painful it was, the more people look back on those times for comfort and laughter.”
Now Lee Shin flipped the question.
Would you want the rival you’ve built all those memories with to suddenly pack up and leave?
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“Looks like you’re starting to get it.”
There’s no need to overthink it. Fans hate home ground relocation one hundred times out of one hundred.
They want things to change and get better, but above all, they want their team to stay right where it is.
What they want from the guild isn’t the selfless love of a giving tree. That kind of devoted love is something we will give. All they ask is that the guild stand firm like a pine tree and never move from that spot.
Because to them, the guild isn’t just a team—it’s a collection of memories.
“That’s why, like I said earlier, we can never relocate.”
“……Because we haven’t shared those memories with them.”
“Exactly. As expected of the future genius general manager. This is why I like you, hyung.”
Lee Shin, who had somehow acquired two cups of coffee, handed one to Chae Dong-ha and continued.
“Hyung, I believe the trust between a guild’s leadership and its fandom is born from those memories.”
“Don’t most people say the answer is performance?”
“That’s the standard answer. If the results are good, everything improves, so it’s not wrong. We’re literally proving that right now, aren’t we?”
However.
“Performance is too extreme. In this industry, you get praised one day and cursed the next. The fluctuation is too big to call it trust. It’s just mood-dependent. The moment a representative starts reacting to that, their career is over.”
“It’s strangely convincing when the representative who utilizes showmanship better than anyone says that……”
“When have I ever gotten depressed from criticism or happy from praise… actually, I guess I have. Anyway.”
You must never let fandom criticism sway you.
One of the roles of guild leadership is to be the lightning rod for hate.
For example, if Park Su-bin or Yu Ri-ra makes a lot of mistakes due to poor condition that day? One hundred percent of the comments will curse Lee Shin. Conversely, if Park Su-bin or Yu Ri-ra perform well, Lee Shin gets praised.
“Reacting to that and managing passively to avoid criticism makes you unqualified. Getting drunk on praise and claiming the hunters’ achievements as your own also makes you unqualified. Remember this. It’s a five-star tip.”
“……Yes.”
“Anyway, in my view, performance is more like proof than trust. It says, ‘We’re not just playing around. We’re working hard too, so please watch over us.’ But memories are different. They don’t change. In fact, they become even more beautiful over time.”
That is the terrifying thing about memories.
No matter how painful the hardship, once time passes it becomes a memory. Looking back, you can either laugh, or if you can’t laugh, at least use it as drinking snacks. That’s what memories are.
And the more people share them, the more powerful they become—by a thousand times, ten thousand times.
“Almost every Mir Guild fan, every Yongbung, has those kinds of memories. You and I don’t have them, and they’re the kind we can never share.”
“But here’s the thing. We have no choice but to change. If we want to promote and develop, we must.”
Ironically, the better the performance the fans want, the more the guild is forced to change.
They have to replace players to match the league level and expand facilities.
Just look at how Mir Guild started new businesses the moment they promoted to League 3. The new arena they need to build in preparation for promotion is another example.
“Even though it’s a positive change called ‘development,’ some people will still feel disappointed. They’ll say it was better back then, that the bond was stronger. Even when we change by delivering the results they wanted, it’s still like this. Here’s the problem.”
“What happens if, in this situation, we so much as mention the word ‘relocation’?”
Lee Shin’s lips curled into a smirk.
“Then we become the sons of bitches who sold out our roots.”
In truth, while the Mir Guild’s name remains, almost everything inside has been completely replaced.
The representative is Lee Shin. The de facto next general manager is Chae Dong-ha. The raid captain is the Mountain King that Lee Shin personally appointed. Even the next-generation stars representing the guild are all new faces handpicked by Lee Shin.
And in that state, if they bring up home ground relocation?
No matter the reason, they’re finished. The fragile identity of the Mir Guild that they had barely maintained would explode that very day.
“Home ground relocation creates controversy and wounds for the fans. Our guild’s only real advantage is its fans. Without them, Mir Guild is just another ordinary League 3 guild. Yet we’d bring up relocation for immediate gain? That’s suicide.”
“Ah……”
“Don’t be too disappointed. It’s a common mistake a lot of people make. You see it all the time—people running wildly because things are going well, only to look back later and realize no one is by their side anymore.”
“I see.”
“To be blunt, this isn’t a decision for us to make. Unless this city goes crazy and breaks its promises, refuses to build the arena they said they would, or makes some unreasonable demand for us to leave, the option of ‘relocation’ should not even exist for us.”
“Understood.”
That was why Lee Shin had judged that they must not act recklessly.
“This has to be handled with extreme delicacy. If we clumsily pit people against each other to raise our value, we’ll just look like money-grubbing parasites blinded by profit. If we stay silent, we’ll look like cowards who only watch the situation. And if we act too submissive, we’ll look like pushovers.”
“My thinking was too shallow.”
“No, you’re doing well. That’s how you learn. Put your heart into it. Just put sincerity into management.”
Sincerity.
It seemed somewhat out of place for the usually laid-back Lee Shin, but Chae Dong-ha knew. He knew that when it came to the guild, no one was more sincere than Lee Shin.
His insight that could predict the future. His plans with no gaps. Sometimes it all defied common sense and caused shock, but in the end, this man had always proven himself.
One hundred percent.
When it came to the guild, Lee Shin had been the right answer—at least until now.
That was why, at times like this, he looked cool. The way he chased profit more ruthlessly than anyone, yet showed such sincerity toward the fandom and his own people.
Chae Dong-ha had thought the man was just money-obsessed and ready to fight anyone, but now he felt sorry for that assumption.
That’s right. We have to approach this with sincerity.
Sincerity.
Once again, Chae Dong-ha learned a valuable lesson from Lee Shin.
“Hyung, call Shin Sung right now and tell him to keep his mouth shut.”
“……Of course it comes back to that.”
The fact that even scheming had to be done with sincerity…….
Meanwhile, at that same moment.
At the Yeongdo District Office, the topic of the Mir Guild had come up once again.
“This graph was created based on performance evaluations.”
“Compared to last year, the number of tourists visiting Yeongdo has increased fivefold. More than twenty percent of them are staying one night and two days, producing tangible economic results.”
“The first point to note is that this surge in visitors began in the middle of last year’s league season, which coincides exactly with the period when the Mir Guild started receiving major attention from the media and press.”
In truth, while other regions were making a huge fuss about how great things were and how much they were benefiting, nothing could compare to the original source.
Despite public opinion that League 3 would be too much for them, Mir Guild had maintained the same crushing performance that had devoured League 4, now in their 53rd round. Their spectacular dominance—breaking records in 53 straight games—had completely transformed the local economy of the city called Yeongdo.
Every weekend, the coastal trail was packed with people, and local merchants were screaming with joy.
“Travel agencies are showing signs that they want to create field trip and experience programs centered around the ‘Mir Guild.’”
“The Yeongdo Small Business Association has expressed their strong desire to push forward more projects connected to the Mir Guild. They also asked me to relay that they would like to open a café on the site where the ‘Rare’ is located.”
“MBS has requested that training footage and interviews with Mir Guild members be included in this special program.”
Honestly, who among those present could have predicted that the Mir Guild would do this well? Not a single person.
Logically, a guild that had been debating whether to disband or not had become the main driver of league popularity in just over a year? Even a drama would get criticized for writing something like that.
Given the nature of this industry, a guild’s performance and marketability were inevitably proportional. From the district office’s perspective, which placed the development of the local area as its top priority, a Mir Guild that couldn’t produce results had no choice but to be ‘outside their interest.’
That was why, when they heard that the maniac Lee Shin was coming to the Mir Guild, they had placed more expectations on the Ido Group behind him than on his actual performance.
But who would have thought?
They brought in the Mountain King—a legend once called the pride and even a hero of Yeongdo—and sat him down, and suddenly the guild was charging through the league like a broken eight-ton truck?
They shattered every record in League 4 and charged straight into League 3. They were destroying raid records, shutting down opponents in team competitions, and currently dominating the league.
They had heard the saying that one well-raised guild could feed an entire city, but when the staff first saw the numbers, they rubbed their eyes several times, wondering if this was really their district.
Even for Yeongdo, this is insane……?
Now I understand why the other district offices are having seizures.
If it’s already like this, what will happen when they promote to League 2 and start expanding in earnest…….
Gulp.
Jackpot. Absolute jackpot.
In today’s terms, something huge had arrived.
And the man sitting at the head of the conference room was not soft enough to miss an opportunity when it came knocking.
“After all that complicated talk, the conclusion is simple, isn’t it? We must not lose the Mir Guild. We have to do whatever it takes to keep their asses planted here in Yeongdo.”
A brilliant mind who completed an MBA and became the youngest executive at a major corporation, now serving his second term as district mayor after inheriting the position from his father. A prominent figure of Yeongdo.
Noh Hyeong-sim, the district mayor.
He stroked his thick double chin, his eyes gleaming.
“Don’t worry, everyone. I have no intention of letting them get taken away.”
His eyes glittered like a hyena’s. That was greed.