Stepping Up a Level
After the second set ended, the Mir Guild waiting room was filled with high spirits.
Yu Ri-ra bounced around the room, twisting her body this way and that while beaming brightly.
“Wow! I played the whole second set and I’m not tired at all. Is this real?! My feet feel like they’re flying! The stone bed is the best! Don’t you feel it too, Hye-jung unnie?”
Lee Hye-jung, who had been swinging her shoulders to loosen up, nodded.
“Yeah, now that I’ve actually played, I can really feel it. They said consistent use would be effective, and my body feels so much lighter than it did during the last competition.”
Even though he didn’t say anything, Park Jeong-seok, who was meditating in the corner, felt the same way.
‘My combat focus is especially sharp today. I need to hold on to this feeling.’
Park Su-bin was also personally experiencing the bed’s benefits.
“It even helps with magic power control.”
The threads of magic power moved with refined precision, twisting and folding repeatedly. Even though they had trained all day yesterday, instead of feeling fatigued, their condition seemed even better than before.
That was when it happened.
“Everyone, gather round.”
The moment Kim Jong-pil checked the faces of the assembled raid team, he let out a small chuckle.
“You all look great. Seems your condition is excellent, eh?”
““Yes!!””
Normally he would have prepared some nagging—things like reduce your mistakes, don’t miss a single movement from the opponent just like you watch your own—but seeing those shiny, glowing faces, Kim Jong-pil swallowed the words he had been about to say.
It didn’t seem necessary anymore.
“Then there’s no problem. Let’s take it easy.”
— “The Blue Lily Guild is backed into a corner and unleashing their final team fight! Initiation straight at Yu Ri-ra!”
— “Aaaaaah……!! No! Not Yu Ri-ra!!”
— “Yu Ri-ra turns into a ray of light, dodging the incoming attack and sucking it right in! She completely avoided that!”
— “She sucked it up perfectly!”
— “The Mountain King’s incredible support follows up. Lee Hye-jung’s poison mist spreads! Park Jeong-seok marks the enemy carry, and in that gap Park Su-bin is……?!?!”
— “Oh my god…… when did he get over there?!”
— “He didn’t even come from anywhere! Backdoor! The monster is moving! The monster is slipping into the wide-open bottom lane!!”
— “Recall! They need to use their recall spell……! Aaaaaah!!”
— “Yu Ri-ra and Lee Hye-jung are stubbornly cutting off their recalls!!”
— “Nexus~ destroy it!!”
— “Nexus~ they’re smashing it~!!”
“The Mir Guild shows miraculous activity even in difficult matches and continues their legend with a 3:0 victory!”
If our power is perfect, the opponent’s power doesn’t matter.
That was the current Mir Guild.
Mir Guild (3) : Blue Lily Guild (0)
Mir Guild Victory (+3 points)
Total Match Time: 2 hours 3 minutes 57 seconds
League 2 Standings: 1st Place
MVP: Yu Ri-ra (Rating: 9.5)
Humans are truly sly creatures.
Park Seong-cheol, the man who had become the perfect fan of this era…
“Thank you for your hard work today. Have a good weekend.”
Having just finished work, the named Yongbung who went by the username Toegail-jwa walked with light steps toward the elevator.
The thought of watching the match once he got home already had him excited. He hummed nonstop as if his nose agreed, and the moment the elevator doors opened he dashed out like an excited puppy.
If someone asked who had turned the perpetually low-spirited Park Seong-cheol into this happy person in just a few days, the answer was obvious.
The Mir Guild.
This insane guild had driven him crazy.
They had written a legend in all 72 rounds and earned promotion to League 2. The fact that they would play their opening match in the promotion year at their own brand-new stadium, Yongwanggung, had already sent the hearts of every Yongbung soaring into outer space.
But the joy was short-lived.
Soon every League 2 guild started screaming “win now” and rushing into the transfer market. The Yongbungs’ anxiety circuits began emitting unpleasant low frequencies.
Every time a good player was snatched away their mouths went dry. Meanwhile the fact that their own guild was staying completely quiet made their insides burn… but they still believed.
He’ll do something. He’ll definitely do something for us.
Then that problematic article appeared.
What came next?
An absolute explosion.
There were two main reactions afterward.
One side agreed. Lee Shin hadn’t said anything wrong. When they thought about it, they really had recruited too many people. It was time to focus on teamwork!
The other side disagreed. Are you out of your mind? We’re on the verge of writing a myth that goes beyond legend. We should only be looking at victory!
Completely opposite stances. Conflicting opinions.
In the wild community world, a clash of opinions was a fight to the death. And the Yongbungs, the apex predators at the top of that food chain, never showed mercy even to their own kind…
Come on, fight each other!
As if that wasn’t enough, around the same time their seemingly impregnable raid records started being threatened. The Yongbungs’ hysteria grew more intense by the day.
Looking back, Park Seong-cheol remembered being on edge all day during that period too. He had typed things like ‘Who cares if a record gets broken, no need to make a fuss lol’, but the moment a raid ended he would check the records whether it was day or night before he could sleep. Then the next morning he would see the second-place guild’s numbers and feel his stomach turn again.
“Ugh, even thinking about it again makes my blood run cold.”
Just when the Yongbungs’ civil war was reaching its peak, the 15th round match against the Blue Lily Guild ended in victory.
And not just any victory—an overwhelming one.
It blew away every complaint they had built up until then.
In truth, the change had come after the introduction of Lee Shin’s five-star stone beds, but the divided Yongbung public opinion—unaware of this fact—simply laughed and reconciled as if by magic.
After that, when they beat second place by thirty minutes in the 16th round raid, they danced the can-can. When they set the season’s fastest match time in the 17th round competition, they bowed toward the neighborhood where the Mir Guild headquarters stood.
They continued showing insane form through the 18th and 19th rounds, and now…
“Lulululu~”
Park Seong-cheol was literally dancing with his shoulders.
“The Mountain King~ is a god~ and Lee Shin~ is invincible~!”
An invincible pace.
Once again, the Mir Guild was destroying the league.
* * *
……Which was exactly why a decision had to be made.
The people trying to stop the Mir Guild’s advance.
In Gwangju.
A car carrying Ryu Hyeong-seok, the representative of the Mujang Guild, pulled up. Ryu Hyeong-seok immediately headed for the representative office and violently threw the door open.
“Hey, am I your errand boy? Why the hell are you ordering me around like this!”
A direct, harsh insult without even a greeting.
However, the man sitting at the desk—Ryu Jae-seok—maintained a gentle expression despite his younger brother’s verbal abuse.
“Welcome, Hyeong-seok. You must have had a tiring trip.”
Chairman Lee Sang-byuk had three sons and one daughter.
The eldest, Lee Young-bin, who inherited his business sense.
The second son, Lee Chan-bin, who inherited his drive.
The youngest son, Lee Tae-bin, who didn’t resemble him at all.
And the third child and only daughter, Lee Se-jeong—the one currently at the center of the problem.
In some ways, she was considered the one who most closely resembled Chairman Lee Sang-byuk. She had inherited his wisdom, or to put it bluntly, his cunning.
The story of how she had torn apart an 11th-ranked conglomerate group and brought the pieces as a dowry was famous even among chaebol families.
And Ryu Jae-seok was the one who had properly inherited that same cunning from both Lee Sang-byuk and Lee Se-jeong.
“I read the analysis document you sent. Thanks to it, I gained a lot of information.”
“Are you mocking me? What information? It was all useless garbage.”
“I’m serious. Especially the hunters’ comments about ‘feeling the wall’—that gave me a lot of help for my future moves.”
“That’s just bullshit. Paying extra to buy a guy who says he felt the wall against a girl fifteen years younger than him, and the so-called elite analyst we scouted for big money is making us look like fools. Why can’t any of them do their damn jobs? Bunch of idiots.”
Ryu Hyeong-seok pulled out a cigarette without another word and lit it.
The secretary standing behind Ryu Jae-seok tried to stop him, but Ryu Jae-seok smiled kindly and waved the man off. He even lit the cigarette for his brother himself.
“So why did you call me? You didn’t drag me all the way to this countryside just to chat, right?”
“You’ve been in Seoul too long—your words are getting harsh. Countryside? This is Gwangju.”
“Hey!”
“You hate Lee Shin, don’t you?”
“……?? What kind of obvious question is that?”
“Then do you like Lee Myeong-hwan?”
“Why would I like that alcoholic bastard? Are you crazy?”
“And finally, I’m better than both of them, right?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Hahaha, alright, alright.”
Ryu Jae-seok gave his cute little brother a soft smile.
“Hyung thinks it’s about time you sorted out your position. That’s why I’m saying this.”
“Sorted out my position?”
“Heh, I knew you’d ask. Secretary, could you hand me that?”
The secretary passed over two documents. Of course Ryu Hyeong-seok didn’t read them. Ryu Jae-seok hadn’t expected him to.
“What is this?”
“Predicted win rates between Mir Guild and the others.”
“……!!”
“I commissioned over thirty private analysis firms and even overseas ones. Well… to give you the results, without any dramatic variables, a pure power-versus-power match gives them an eighty percent chance. Just so you know, that’s the lowest figure—and it’s against our Mujang Guild. Against you it was ninety-five percent.”
“Fucking hell.”
“And the document on the right contains reports and evidence that Lee Chan-bin’s slush funds have been moved back into the country. We always heard rumors about how much cash he had, but seeing the actual numbers… the rumors didn’t do it justice.”
“Wait… how did you even get……”
Ryu Hyeong-seok couldn’t finish his sentence.
When he thought about it calmly, he realized that if it was this bastard, whether through planted spies or blackmail, he was the kind of person who would get what he wanted no matter what.
“It won’t be easy to bring down Lee Shin and the Mir Guild with our current power. That leaves recruitment, but you know better than anyone how inflated the market is right now. And as I mentioned earlier, Myeong-hwan’s side is acting strange. If we’re not careful we’ll end up in a cash-throwing war with those lunatics too.”
No matter which way they turned, it was a loss.
Both sides would have to bleed.
And if that happened, the result would be exactly what had been said before. They would have to see it through to the bitter end.
But.
“You hate losing money, right, hyung? Getting involved in this fight means taking a loss.”
He never chose an option that led to defeat.
He never gambled if there was any chance of losing money.
Instead of clearly understanding the limits of what he could possess, he was the kind of person who would take everything he could get without leaving even a blade of grass behind.
That was the man called Ryu Jae-seok.
“Wait a minute… hey, this is a fight grandfather started. It’s not something we can just pull out of on a whim.”
“I thought the same thing until recently. But after thinking it over carefully these past few days, I realized I might have been wrong. Do you remember what grandfather emphasized when we all gathered a year ago?”
“If you intended to enforce your will, you should have shown corresponding ‘results.’”
“A process that fails to produce ‘results’ is trash. Therefore, your past year has been trash to me.”
“I do not demand sincerity from you. I do not care about your sweat or effort. Produce results. Only results.”
“Of course I remember! That’s why both you and I are doing this crazy shit that doesn’t even suit us!”
“Right, right… But why do I feel like the ‘result’ grandfather wanted wasn’t promotion?”
“What kind of nonsense is that? Of course it was promotion.”
“With grandfather’s personality, if it was promotion he would have specifically said the word ‘promotion.’”
“……??”
“I just think grandfather wants to see a ‘result’ that pleases him. Don’t you?”
It was a thought Ryu Hyeong-seok had never considered before. His brain said it was nonsense, yet for some strange reason it sounded strangely convincing.
“Even if it’s a misunderstanding, it doesn’t matter. Grandfather clearly spoke those words to us himself. If we bring him results, he won’t complain.”
Suddenly, a document was tossed in front of him.
“I have a method. Well, even if it doesn’t work, we have no choice but to shake things up.”
“Hmm……”
What was written on it was information related to the MCN company that his older brother had inherited. In a way it made sense… but would it actually work? Having lived a rough life, he honestly couldn’t tell.
“Is this really okay? Can we actually turn it around?”
“Well, this alone won’t completely flip the board. However……”
Facing his brother’s question, Ryu Jae-seok smiled softly and answered.
“Little brother, do you know? In the gambling den, you don’t have to come in first place to make money.”