For the Alliance. (4)
I got up at dawn, finished my training, and returned to the hotel.
I headed straight into the spacious bathroom and took a shower. Under the heavy rush of hot water, the fatigue seemed to wash right out of my bones.
When I was done, I sat by the hotel window and ate the buffet breakfast. I loaded up on fresh salad and salmon, then slowly chewed through slices of just-baked bread dipped in pumpkin soup.
Warm sunlight poured in through the glass.
So this is what it feels like to live like some immortal hermit.
It was peaceful beyond belief.
If only it could stay this way forever.
But the decisive battle with the Dirty Kraken was only a few days away. One wrong move, and Busan would turn into a wasteland. Hell, even my own life couldn’t be guaranteed.
Using the memories from my past life, I’d prepared as thoroughly as I could.
And yet.
Even if I knew the future.
I still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of what was coming.
I’d exposed the Dirty Kraken’s true nature. I’d trained the Busan team. I’d trained too, without a moment’s rest.
Was that enough?
There was still the problem of being short-handed, but I planned to fix that today.
Even so, something in my chest felt wrong.
Because…
I stared at the words floating in the air.
Kill count: 0/100
3 days remaining.
If I let the time limit run out, the mission would fail. I’d lose Poseidon’s Control of Water.
It’s not like I haven’t already accepted that fact.
Of course, learning a new skill would give me an even stronger weapon.
So why does it bother me?
Was I angry at myself for not abandoning my beliefs?
I shook my head.
No. It’s not that.
The reason I felt uneasy was something else entirely.
Up until now, the system had guided me toward one purpose: becoming stronger. It handed out rewards according to the mission, step by step teaching me how to become a hero in the real world instead of some fantasy.
But this time, it was different.
No purpose.
No justification.
It wanted me to kill a hundred people, just as ordered, and only then would it grant me the power of a hero.
If I end up turning into a puppet that murders people on command…
How would that be any different from the twelve apostles, who obeyed the cult leader without question?
It was the first time I’d ever doubted the system.
I set down my spoon.
The system isn’t guilty.
Good and evil.
Justice and injustice.
Those were all human-made concepts.
In nature, one human killing many others was nothing more than one more property of the world.
Like a programmed game, the system only presented me with a choice.
The unknown existence seemed to be asking the same question over and over from the fork in the road:
Are you ready to be responsible for a hundred lives?
When this was over, what answer would I be able to give?
...
One thing was certain.
Whether it had been Seo Gwang-pal, Go Ju-hun of the Dio Guild, or Jeong Myeong-su the cult leader, I had been growing steadily as a hero.
Maybe after I bring down the Dirty Kraken, I’ll find a new meaning too.
My phone vibrated on the table. I answered it.
“Mr. Choi, good morning! I’ve got a car waiting on the first floor.”
Heo Da-yeong’s flustered voice rang through the receiver.
“So, where would you like me to take you?”
Heo Da-yeong gripped the steering wheel and started the car.
“To the Dongbaek Guild.”
The car slammed to a sudden halt, my body pitching forward with the force. Horns blared wildly behind us as the vehicles that had been forced to stop in the middle of the road protested in a chorus of angry beeps.
“Y-you’re joking, right?”
Heo Da-yeong turned to me with a face gone white.
Busan didn’t have Jincheon or Superior, two of the three great guilds of Korea. Those two concentrated all their facilities in Seoul and never bothered opening branch offices elsewhere. Only the Dio Guild had spread itself across the country like an octopus, desperate to squeeze out every last won it could.
Dongbaek was Busan’s local guild. It had a longer history than Dio, and it only operated here.
“Mr. Choi. You do know that Dongbaek and Dio…”
“I know.”
Living here had made that clear enough.
Five years ago, a number of ruin-level monsters had appeared in Busan, and Dio and Dongbaek had carried out a joint operation. They’d succeeded in clearing the monsters inside the gate, but when it came time to claim the spoils, an argument broke out between the two guilds.
They were hunters, young and hot-blooded. Once the insults started flying, the confrontation had quickly turned physical, and the fight had been so brutal that Dongbaek’s team leader lost one of his arms.
The Dio guild member who had crippled him ran out of the gate, fled the scene, and disappeared.
He’d later gone underground and become a wanted fugitive, but he still hadn’t been caught.
It had been just as disastrous as the appearance of the monsters themselves.
With no one left to take responsibility, Mun Dal-su of the Dio Guild stepped in.
He paid the Dongbaek team leader a modest compensation fee, but of course it wasn’t nearly enough. Dongbaek flew into a rage, accusing Dio of trying to bury the whole thing with pocket change.
After that, the two guilds never worked together again.
Heo Da-yeong shrank her shoulders.
“Geumwi Daejang isn’t going to just sit there and take it…”
Dongbaek Guild used official Joseon-era titles as call signs. Geumwi Daejang, Park Yu-tae, was the very team leader whose arm had been cut off by a Dio guild member.
Dongbaek and Dio were mortal enemies.
In other words, I was about to walk straight into a tiger’s den.
“Mr. Choi. You might die.”
“Come on. They’re not going to kill me.”
“No, they really might! Do you have any idea how heartless Geumwi Daejang is?”
“Hmm. Is that so? Then maybe we shouldn’t go?”
“Yes!”
Heo Da-yeong’s face brightened instantly.
“Ah, but we still have to go. It’s important.”
“Ugh… I don’t know anymore.”
The Klutzy Rabbit’s ears drooped.
“Let’s go, Driver Heo!”
I pointed forward and shouted with all the energy I had.
Heo Da-yeong forced herself to turn the wheel, looking like she’d swallowed a funeral wreath.
“...Let’s go.”
The car drove on for quite a while.
A metal sign planted beside the road swayed in the wind.
Nampo-dong.
By the time she pulled into the parking lot, Heo Da-yeong had warned me several times over.
“Mr. Choi. You understand, right? We absolutely cannot provoke the Dongbaek Guild. Especially Geumwi Daejang. You understand, right?”
Dio and Dongbaek were in a truce.
That didn’t mean the war was over; it only meant they’d paused it. The moment someone lit the fuse, the bomb would go off.
“Should we call the rest of the team now? This is exactly when the whole family should stick together!”
Heo Da-yeong said it like she was the boss of some gang.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine for me. Ugh, my heart’s pounding.”
“If you’re that scared, wait in the car. I’ll go in alone.”
“I can’t do that.”
In the end, she followed me anyway.
“If something happens to you, Mr. Choi, I have to protect you!”
Then she clenched both fists with fierce determination.
Heo Da-yeong was a noncombatant. If trouble started, she was supposed to be the first person running the other way.
“This is the place.”
She pointed at a large building.
I’d worked in a factory before, so I recognized it at a glance. This wasn’t a standard building. It was a prefabricated structure converted from an old factory, not all that different from the Dio Guild’s Busan branch.
Even here, things are rough.
Looking up at the building, I said, “Ms. Heo.”
“Yes?”
“If I happen to die, scatter my ashes at Haeundae Beach.”
“Eek! Don’t joke like that.”
“I’m serious.”
A city where you could see the sea whenever you wanted. A place overflowing with warmth wherever you went, with food that was actually delicious. I hadn’t been in Busan for long, but I’d already fallen hard for it.
That doesn’t mean I can afford to die here.
Leaving the shuddering Heo Da-yeong behind, I walked to the entrance and knocked on the iron sliding door.
A moment later, a voice came from the other side.
“Who is it?”
“Is Geumwi Daejang here?”
“And who are you?”
The sharp voice was thick with irritation.
Sure, it made sense for them to be angry at an uninvited guest who’d shown up out of nowhere without so much as an appointment. I understood that much.
But I hadn’t come all this way to provoke them for no reason.
I knocked again.
“Why don’t you open the door and see for yourself?”
At last, the iron door was yanked open roughly.
On the other side stood a man with short hair and an eyepatch over one eye. His T-shirt was soaked through, as if he’d been training hard right up until the moment I arrived.
The eyepatch man looked me up and down.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Choi Yongki, a D-rank hunter.”
“Oh, is that so?”
His expression eased.
As with any profession, hunters had their own boundaries, and respecting one another’s territory was simply polite.
Still.
“And your affiliation?”
“The Dio Guild.”
The eyepatch man’s lips twisted.
“What? Say that again?”
“Excuse me for a moment.”
I ignored him and stepped inside.
Heo Da-yeong, peeking nervously over her shoulder, trotted after me.
“H-haha! Hello. You were training, I see?”
The inside had a high ceiling and mats spread across the floor. Judging by the scene, they’d been sparring in pairs.
So they’d been training even on an ordinary day when no monsters were around. Dongbaek Guild was living up to its reputation and keeping a disciplined schedule.
The eyepatch man moved in beside me and glared.
“Hey. You said you were with Dio?”
When he shouted at the top of his lungs, everyone’s attention snapped toward us at once.
Looking more closely, I could see that several of them had physical disabilities.
The eyepatch man was one of them. Another was limping on a bad leg, and another had a burn scar covering half his face.
When Dio found a hunter had suffered a serious injury, it forced them into retirement. If they were sent into the field, they’d only get in the team’s way and fail to perform at full capacity.
Dongbaek, on the other hand, hired hunters with disabilities as well. That was Geumwi Daejang’s policy.
Among the people standing in the training hall, I noticed someone leaning back in a chair.
He had a newspaper draped over his face.
I couldn’t tell whether he was sleeping or doing something else, but one sleeve had slipped from his arm and was hanging loose over the side of the chair.
With no arm visible, that had to be the man I was after.
Park Yu-tae.
As I started toward him, several people stepped in to block my way.
“I asked you, didn’t I? You think you can just walk in here?”
“Dio, huh? You’ve got a death wish, you bastard?”
Heo Da-yeong rushed in to mediate.
“N-no! We came here to talk! Please, just hear what Mr. Choi has to say!”
But it didn’t help.
“You think we’ve got time to sit around chatting?”
“Turn around. Unless you want to see something ugly.”
The atmosphere turned ugly in an instant.
I’d expected hostility, but this was worse than I’d imagined.
The resentment between the two guilds really was deep.
I said calmly, “I’m not here to fight. I came to ask for your cooperation.”
The eyepatch man grabbed my collar.
His single visible eye burned with rage, as if he were one second away from punching my face in.
“Cooperation, my ass. Quit talking bullshit and—ugh!”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
I’d twisted his wrist and turned it around.
“Let’s keep this verbal.”
Heo Da-yeong’s mouth fell open as she muttered, “...We’re screwed.”
The eyepatch man sprang to his feet.
Then he ground his teeth and shouted, “Formation!”
At that, the people around us all moved at once, as if they’d rehearsed it.
They went to retrieve weapons from somewhere: spears, swords, axes, clubs, and more. The murderous intent pouring off them surrounded me from every side.
It was one breath away from becoming a full-scale brawl.
An instant of violence, suspended by nothing more than willpower.
I’d stormed in boldly, straight into enemy territory.
But I had no intention of wiping out the Dongbaek Guild.
I spread my hands to show I meant no hostility.
“I don’t want to fight among hunters. We can become friends any time we want—”
“Shut up! Friends, my ass!”
“I’m already sick of the Dio Guild.”
The tension showed no sign of cooling.
Calming Dongbaek down here would be easy if I used my hero abilities. I was confident I could knock every single one of them flat in the blink of an eye.
But that would be the worst possible move.
If I did that, the resentment they’d been holding back would explode.
I didn’t want to be their enemy.
I wanted to stand beside them.
If possible, I wanted us to move with the kind of teamwork where every gear clicked into place.
So how was I supposed to do that?
“Team Leader Park Yu-tae.”
I spoke to the Geumwi Daejang, who’d remained seated without moving an inch all this time.
“An enemy’s enemy is a friend.”
Far away, the newspaper covering his face gave a tiny twitch.
“The bastard who cut off your arm. Don’t you want him?”
The newspaper slid down to the floor.
The empty eyes sitting in the chair fixed on me.
“Say that again.”