The Undefeated Loses Every Game

At the mouth of the Gate, Cheon Se-ah stood apart from the formation, draped in her protective coat and properly armed for the first time in ages, one ear bent toward her smartwatch.

But the longer the call dragged on, the more her brows began to twist out of shape.

"Hey, Cheon Se-ah! How much longer are you going to be at it? You said it'd be over in a minute."

"Oh, shut it! I'm still on a call here!"

It wasn't as if they were short on time, but she snapped anyway at the friend needlessly crowding her, one corner of her mouth curling into a scowl. She had gone to the trouble of raising a sound barrier, and he was deliberately pitching his voice inside it. Her irritation was already at a rolling boil.

Se-ah gripped her smartwatch again and fired off her words in a razor-edged tone.

"So what you're telling me is that even with a request like this, you absolutely cannot provide any information related to 'that dungeon.' Is that right?"

"...A temporary monopoly?"

Never before had the brisk, businesslike voice of a middle-aged man through a smartwatch grated on her quite this badly. He was clearly delivering a strictly professional response, so was it simply her fraying temper that made every word sound like a sneer?

Se-ah stopped the foot she had been drumming against the ground and took a long, slow breath. Years of experience had drilled into her that a veteran hunter could never afford to look rattled. But this was about her family, and no one else. Even Se-ah herself couldn't say how far her patience would hold.

"So your conclusion is that I should simply wait until the temporary monopoly runs out?"

"No, think about it for a moment. My family was found in that dungeon, and there were... a lot of marks on him that were not exactly good. I am genuinely grateful for the protection you gave him. And now you're telling me you can't disclose a single thing about the dungeon until your exclusivity period ends? Do you honestly expect me to accept that? My family is involved here. My family!"

Having crammed every ounce of the fury she had been strangling down for the entire call into that long salvo, Se-ah barely managed to steady her breathing.

Her older brother. Cheon Yujin. The most dependable brother a person could ask for, and now family she wanted to look after. At first the whole thing had felt utterly unreal, but she had come to believe that her brother had become a Returnee. The problem was that whenever his past ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came up, he dissolved into stammering nonsense and spun out stories that defied all reason—

Se-ah chalked it up to the trauma, the escapism, and the other symptoms the doctors had described. Her brother had returned as a Returnee with no power at all; worse, his body had become so frail that she couldn't begin to guess what might have been done to him. He hadn't merely been left weak, either. He had come back as a girl years younger than his true age, of all things.

Most Returnees who gained power in another world used that very power to force their own way home. But what of those who never gained it? And since some of them returned for reasons too horrific to be believed, all she wanted, at the very least, was to verify the dungeon where her brother had been found. Her original plan had been to coax it out of him slowly, little by little.

"H-how did I... get back...? That's... th-the sky... no, the, the foun... fountain..."

His voice shrank with every word until it disappeared altogether. His crimson eyes wavered with unease. And as her brother's face went steadily white, Se-ah understood: she had driven a finger straight into the trauma he was holding at bay with escapism and warped memories.

"...Nothing!!! Happened...!!!!!"

When she saw him cross his arms and strain to laugh the whole thing off as a joke, Se-ah could hold back no longer. She had made up her mind: she would find out, one way or another, whether the dungeon where her brother had been discovered was really just a dungeon.

And at last, from the Aegis Guild side, where something had smelled faintly of hesitation, an answer finally trickled out.

"And I suppose that Guild Master is refusing to meet anyone as well?"

"Haaah..."

The moment they invoked the Guild Master's orders, nothing she said would matter. Se-ah exhaled a long, dark sigh and cut ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the call. Not that she was giving up. If anything, her resolve had only hardened. Exclusivity rights or not, a refusal this absolute was strange by any customary standard. There was something about this dungeon. Something, without a doubt.

"Hey, Cheon Se-ah. What could possibly take that long on one call? Something wrong? You've been in a suspiciously good mood lately."

Sauntering up with a rolling gait was a young man in his mid-twenties. An easygoing face, hair tied back in a short ponytail. The crest on his protective coat was a sword dripping blood, and befitting that crest, a longsword gleamed with a keen edge between the flaps of his coat as it fluttered in the summer wind.

"Shove it, Kim Jin-dweeb. Go babysit your own guild members and quit poking at me."

"Man, the second you're annoyed, out comes the old nickname. Do you really have to dig up the one from back when I was everybody's errand boy?"

The man grumbled on, roughly blowing a bubble with the gum in his mouth. Kim Jinhu: a top-tier hunter ranked within the top three of all first-generation Martial Arts Awakeners, and the Guild Master of Iron Blood. And to Se-ah, a high school classmate and a friend of many years. The only classmate she had left in this world. Everyone else had died in the very first Gate incident.

"So? What is it? Unlike you, still running solo, I happen to be the illustrious Guild Master of Iron Blood. One word from me and any outfit in the country would be groveling with a full ceremonial bow before I finished the sentence."

"Then go say exactly that to the Aegis Guild."

"...Huh? Aegis? Tch, of all places, the one run by that Returnee bastard? I'd sooner stop being your friend than go begging those people for anything."

"Great. Get lost."

Kim Jinhu returned her raised middle finger with one of his own and wandered off. Se-ah sighed inwardly, careful that her friend of ten years didn't catch it. The man's instincts were as sharp as you'd expect from a Martial Arts Awakener.

If she threw her weight around as a first-generation hunter, leaning on her connections and influence, she could apply real pressure. But the moment she did, her brother's existence would inevitably reach the ears of everyone around her. That was the dilemma gnawing at Se-ah these days. Infuriating as it was, all of it traced back to the delicate, poisoned relationship between the first-generation hunters and the Returnees.

The Returnees had come home from other worlds carrying immense power, power greater than most first-generation hunters could claim. If they had returned in the early days, or rather, in the era when humanity could barely resist the invasions, let alone clear a dungeon, they would have been welcomed with open arms, hunter and civilian alike.

But those early days had been pure carnage. It was the sacrifice and struggle of the first-generation hunters that had barely plugged the breach against the calamity, and just as humanity finally entered its years of rebuilding, just as the long war was at last due its rightful reward, the Returnees began to arrive. And they were seated in positions above the very hunters who had bled for years to hold the line, while those hunters were made to bow their heads.

She knew too well what had happened along the way, which incidents had stained that process, and so her worry only deepened. Whether her brother Cheon Yujin had power or not was beside the point. The title of Returnee itself was the problem. Worse still, his powerlessness might be exactly what made him an object of suspicion, because they had already been knifed in the back once before, by a Returnee who had quietly been hiding his strength all along.

"I'm going to lose my mind."

Even Kim Jinhu, a friend who belonged to the moderate wing of the first generation, reacted to Returnees like that. He kept it well hidden these days, but if it ever came to light that a Returnee was family to first-generation hunter Cheon Se-ah...

"Haaah. As if our poor brother wasn't pitiful enough already..."

"...What do I do...!"

This was a crisis. A crisis beyond all measure. Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. Ever since the epithet "Blood Demon" had been carved into the world, I had been the finest under heaven, not one defeat in my entire life! And yet Bonjwa, Bonjwa of all people...!

"I... cannot see... my next move...?!"

A battlefield of black and white, spread across nineteen lines each way and three hundred sixty-one intersections. A cruel battlefield where the weak cannot shield their parents, cannot even shield their own daughters. The name of that battlefield: online Go...!!!

Trembling at a reality I could not bring myself to accept, I pulled my hand from the mouse. "Bonjwa was supposed to be the finest under heaven at Go as well...!"

Did you know? In the Murim, that ancient civilization, there was nothing to do. Truly, nothing at all! So little to do that a man could devote himself entirely to martial training out of sheer boredom! Why else do you think the scholars of old whiled away their lives composing poetry and reading books?

As the most powerful man in the Murim world, I had sampled the refined pleasures in my own way, throwing lavish banquets and setting dancers to perform, but to me, spoiled by ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the beats and rhythms and spectacle of the modern age, such evenings were no different from a traditional stage performance guaranteed to put me to sleep. And so, by pure chance, I took up Go. At first it was for appearances, a fitting pastime for the head of a Murim sect, but with so little else to play with, it became my one and only hobby.

The finest under heaven. An undefeated record at Go as well. And my opponent in those great games had been Blood Heaven Castle's foremost strategist: Ma-noe. To be precise, my only opponent! Ma-noe, versed in all four classical arts, the zither, Go, calligraphy, and painting, who had supposedly never once lost a debate to the Confucian scholars the imperial court doted on. True to that reputation, every game between us was a fierce, neck-and-neck war, and because I scraped out a win each and every time, those victories were all the sweeter! For some reason, whenever I tried to arrange a game with any of my other subordinates, Ma-noe would intervene with desperate urgency and see to it that it never happened. But in any case, I had felled the finest under heaven of the Go world, so did that not make Bonjwa the finest under heaven at Go too?

And I, the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin!

"...I lost. Every single game?"

I could not win. Not once. Not even once...!

And so I reasoned: Go had advanced with the ages, and the game records of the Murim era, a mere ancient civilization, had simply failed to keep pace with that progress...! In other words:

"There is no way... Bonjwa is a scrub!"

And that, more or less, was my official position.