Proving My Skill (3)
"This is the boss room."
With every ordinary monster cleared, we pushed deeper in. No one spoke. We walked over the gargoyles' remains, and every one of them had seen it—Brooks breaking formation, and me sprinting after him.
Doesn't matter.
What mattered now was the thing waiting inside.
"Undead Gargoyle. Mana reading is exactly what we expected."
"Any surprises?"
"None."
For the first time, Brooks was the one who asked me. I kept the answer short.
"Hahaha. Good. We're going in."
Stone ground on stone, and we stepped into the boss room.
The Undead Gargoyle. Five times the bulk of an ordinary monster, and more than half that body wore the hideous look of a corpse.
Of course.
"KRAAAAAH!"
It roared and threw its wings wide. That was the last thing it did.
There are raids where the boss turns out to be the easy part. This was one of them. Brooks's fist detonated through the left wing and shattered it outright. The massive body lost its balance and listed, and I slipped in underneath the tilt. One clean stroke opened its throat.
The dust hadn't finished settling. It hadn't even taken a minute.
"That's it?"
"Bit of a letdown."
The hunters behind us lowered their weapons. The outcome had never been in doubt. The Gate's mana reading had been S-Rank mid-tier from the start, and the ten of us standing here ranked among the finest hunters in the United States. If anything, the strange part was that our formation had wavered at all while we were clearing the fodder outside.
"Collect the magic stones. We're moving out."
We did what we had come to do and got out.
"All right, then!"
The moment we stepped clear of the Gate, Brooks threw both arms wide and bellowed.
"Raid's over. Time for a drink!"
"...Right now?"
The question slipped out of me before I could stop it. We had just come out of a Gate. It hadn't been a difficult raid, but we were going straight out to celebrate?
"Hahaha!"
Brooks laughed.
"Booze tastes best right after a raid. You want the feel of tearing monsters apart still in your hands, and the smell of blood still on you."
"..."
"Sleep on it and drink the next day, and it's nothing but water."
This man really did sit somewhere between human and beast. For better or for worse.
"Let's go."
"Mr. Royce."
"Since it's come to this, we might as well eat and be on our way. Sit a gathering like this out, and they'll take it personally next time."
Paul Royce smiled with easy charm and clapped me on the shoulder. When it came to reading a room and getting along with people, he was easily twenty times better at it than I was.
Well. Here we go.
Even so, I had a feeling this was going to be an exhausting seat to sit through.
A steakhouse in downtown Detroit. They had rented out the entire place, and it didn't feel empty in the slightest.
"Khahahaha! Drink! Drink!"
With Russell Brooks at the center of it, the hunters of the 2nd Raid Team attacked the steak and the liquor like they were clearing another room.
They said we were going out to drink. I couldn't figure out why that meant stuffing ourselves with steak, of all things.
From what I gathered, steak and booze after a raid was simply how they liked it. True to S-Rank hunters, they never spared a thought for the bill, putting away top-grade beefsteak as if it were paper. Hunters eat more than ordinary people to begin with, but American hunters still managed to surprise me every time I watched them.
"Hmm..."
I was hungry too, so I worked through the meat a little at a time. Expensive beef back in Korea could turn cloying; here it sat at just the right richness, and I didn't mind it. The table roared with talk, and before I knew it the members of my own 3rd Raid Team were mixing with them as if they had always belonged. I don't much care for loud rooms, and I didn't know half of what they were going on about, so I settled for looking like I was listening.
"Hey, Dow-hen."
Russell Brooks called for me in a pronunciation that refused to land.
"Yes. Yes."
For a brief moment I wondered whether I ought to correct him—Dohyeon, not whatever that was—and then I decided to let it go. After all the posturing where he had simply called me the Asian, having him use a name at all was an improvement. The raid had gone well, and he wasn't someone I expected to be seeing often from here on.
"Take a look at this."
"..."
For more than twenty minutes Russell Brooks had been talking at me about things I had no interest in. Then, out of nowhere, he held up his phone and showed me a photo.
"Well?"
"Who are they?"
In the picture, a fair-skinned white woman with blond hair, and beside her a white woman with black hair and skin warmed to a light bronze. Both looked about twenty, and both were in swimsuits.
"This one's my daughter."
"Ah..."
He pointed at the blond beauty. He was her father? The raw strength made it easy to forget, but he was middle-aged, sure enough.
"So? What do you think?"
"Think about what?"
"My girl said she wants to date an Asian at least once."
"..."
So that was what he'd been working up to. Not long ago the two of us had been growling at each other, and now the way he was treating me had taken something like a quantum leap.
"Not interested."
"Chris isn't good enough for you?"
"The woman next to her is better, if anything. Who's she?"
"Bianca. Friend of my daughter's."
"Ah. Right."
I had only said it. I wasn't particularly interested. I was already seeing a beautiful, sexy blonde; there was no reason to go anywhere near the daughter. It wasn't that a different type actually appealed to me. I had simply said, deadpan, that the woman beside her was the better of the two.
"Hands off that one. She's my partner."
"What?"
"She may not be my wife, but as a man, I don't share my woman."
"..."
I turned my head away just like that. I had the distinct feeling I had just been told something I had no business hearing.
"You've settled in quite well, in the time I haven't seen you."
"Well. More or less."
Just before I headed back from Washington, D.C. to LA, I sat down for a private meeting with James Jordan, chief of the Hunter Management Division—the first we'd had in a while. I answered with an easy shrug. Since coming here, I had learned that being too modest didn't pay.
"Miss Hannah hasn't been showing any rough edges, has she?"
"Not in the least. If anything, I've been relying on her a great deal."
One of the things I was most grateful to this man for was that he had assigned Hannah to me. I had come to America meaning to live like I was still in a fight, and I still intended to. Hannah was where I stepped away from that, if only for a while, and she gave me a happiness that was simply clean.
"That said, Hunter Lee Dohyeon."
James Jordan took a sip of his coffee.
"At this morning's meeting, the consensus was that it would be best to promote you to the 2nd Raid Team."
"...Is that so?"
"Raid Leader Brooks gave you a very generous evaluation, and headquarters has been rating your work on the West Coast extremely highly."
"All right. That works."
I simply nodded. The response had come earlier than I expected.
But.
"Do I have the right to refuse?"
"Of course."
"I'd like to stay with the 3rd Raid Team for the time being. I've seen the 2nd with my own eyes. They're strong enough that I don't see any particular need to reshuffle anyone."
"Hmm. They are all representative raid teams of the United States, of course. Even so, the difference in standing the 2nd enjoys is not something one can ignore."
"Mm..."
I let my eyes close for a moment, then opened them.
"If I am going to move, I would rather get there quickly. Somewhere higher."
"Higher. Meaning?"
There was no need to talk around it. That was exactly what I wanted. More precisely, that was the seat from which I might actually obtain what I wanted.
"Hahaha, excellent! A hunter of your caliber would of course have the ability for it. Your colleagues' evaluations of you have always been favorable, besides."
"It didn't seem that way in Korea."
"Even a precious gem shines only once it finds the right setting."
James Jordan, quietly lifting America as he spoke. I could feel the pride in it, and I liked that.
"You won't need experience on the 2nd Raid Team to reach the 1st. At the next meeting, I myself will argue that Hunter Lee Dohyeon be assigned to the 1st Raid Team."
"I'll be counting on you."
I bowed my head.
My luck is holding.
I had come to America because of this man in the first place, but having people around me willing to help was still a solid thing. I knew perfectly well that proving your ability was never, by itself, enough—not in any country.
"Ah, yes. There is a piece of news you may be curious about."
"News?"
"A special East Asian team has been formed for the Shanghai raid in China. They're gathering in Shanghai to prepare."
"..."
Something I had forgotten, for a moment.
The Shanghai Gate.
The very raid that had split my fate in two. So they had built a special team, in the end, to finish it.
"And from Korea—naturally—the new raid leader will be taking part as well."
"..."
"Hunter Lee Dohyeon?"
"No. It's nothing."
Damn it. I didn't even mean to.
I knew who led Korea's representative S-Rank raid team now. And still, without meaning to, I had gone and felt it—worry, concern—for a country that no longer had anything to do with me.
Lee Mingi. That man was no raid leader. He wasn't even of a level to take part in a raid on the order of the Shanghai Gate.
Let it go.
It had nothing to do with me anymore. Right. The Gate had opened in China. China would be the one pouring everything into it.
"Thank you all so much for the congratulations!"
Applause cracked through the room.
A celebration at a hotel, held for the S-Rank hunters selected from Korea. Lee Mingi, raid leader of the national team, raised his champagne as he spoke, and politicians, celebrities, and business leaders had all gathered to send off the hunters departing for Shanghai the next day.
"Ho ho ho. What a shame. A gathering for one's colleagues, and yet there are people who didn't attend."
"It's a pleasant day. Let's not speak of that."
"Ah—! My apologies."
A National Assembly member in his fifties bent his head in stiff deference toward Lee Mingi, a man well over ten years his junior. Of course, the one whose mood had soured most over the absence of certain S-Rank and A-Rank hunters was Lee Mingi himself.
Han Yewon. So she didn't come after all.
From the moment S-Rank Han Yewon became a hunter, there had not been a single male hunter who failed to set his sights on her. Lee Mingi, married though he was, had been no exception. However much the last few years of pressure from women's organizations had half-fastened a chastity belt around the upper ranks, he had never stopped aiming at her.
The eyesore is gone.
That arrogant brat of a raid leader, Lee Dohyeon, was no more. The one who had clung to Han Yewon's side and carried himself like an older brother—no, like a father.
His fingers tightened. For an instant Lee Mingi's temper flared, and he nearly crushed the glass in his hand.
A woman no man could help desiring, and Dohyeon had had her all to himself for years, enjoying her to the fullest. No doubt about it. Unless that bastard was a eunuch, there was no way he had kept his hands off her.
Just you wait until I get back from Shanghai.
Even after Dohyeon left, he had tried to maneuver her into a drinking engagement, and Han Yewon had refused. But once the Shanghai raid was over, the Association and the press would make a hero of him. Then he could force a meeting into being, one way or another.
There was a vacant, doll-like quality to Han Yewon's gaze, to the look in her eyes. It lent her a strangely sexual pull, and at the same time she looked easy to handle. Do it first, then lean on her. You came on to me, didn't you? I'm a married man—what are you going to do about it? She wouldn't be able to do a thing. And if his luck ran even better than that...
Heh heh heh.
Not that pig of a wife who had put on more than sixty pounds since the wedding, but a stunning beauty—young, with a figure to match.
Lee Mingi was waiting for nothing but the moment the Shanghai raid came to an end.
A raid alongside China, Japan, Taiwan, and the rest. Absolutely nothing would go wrong.