Fate's Prank (10)
People packed into the elevator, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Inside were Na Sang-min, the judge and S-class hunter, along with the twelve first-round survivors.
Go Pil-hun had an appointment in the afternoon, so he wasn't taking part in the second test.
Before he left, he came up to me and offered his hand.
“Choi Yongki. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do from here on out. Just make sure you survive to the end and stay with Dio Guild.”
He kept smiling, as if he genuinely liked me, while Lee Yu-seol, standing nearby, did her best to avoid my eyes.
To think the one who wanted me and the one who didn't were both in the same guild.
Interesting. I really did make the right choice picking Dio Guild.
The elevator air was thick with the smell of blood. Everyone had taken their share of bruises and cuts after the chair-snatching chaos, and even now blood was trickling from my ear.
Should I use it?
Regeneration would heal this kind of wound in an instant.
But then I felt a burning stare.
Na Sang-min was looking at me like he meant to bore straight through my skull.
It was an openly hostile glare.
I couldn't just use a skill in front of him.
I can't show any more of my hand.
I'd already revealed Judgment of the Superhuman, so I had to be even more careful now.
“Do you have something you want to say?”
“Huh?”
He let out a derisive laugh. He probably found it strange that an F-class hunter was acting so boldly in front of an S-class.
“The more I look at you, the more I can't make sense of you. Are you brave, or just stupid?”
Because of the scuffle we'd had earlier, he seemed to still be holding a grudge.
“Choi Yongki. Let me ask you one thing. What were you going to do if I really hit you?”
“Who knows? Maybe you wouldn't have. What's the point of laying hands on some low-grade hunter like me?”
I brushed it off with a convenient lie.
Twisting the truth without so much as changing expression was one of my specialties.
“Huh?”
Na Sang-min gave another scoffing laugh, then leaned in until his face was practically against mine.
His fierce eyes stabbed right into me.
“You knew, didn't you? You knew Representative Go was coming, so you were acting cocky. Right? Because you figured someone would stop me anyway. Because you had something to rely on, huh?”
He didn't bother hiding his fighting spirit, and the cramped elevator filled with killing intent so dense the first-round survivors could barely breathe.
This was a space so tight you could hardly turn around in it. Not only was it impossible to properly use Speeder's ability, but if Na Sang-min decided to, he could slaughter all of us in an instant.
Of course, that wasn't likely.
...But if he did, Dio Guild wouldn't sit still either.
It was ironic. Go Pil-hun had far less talent than his older brother as a hunter, and if you judged purely on raw combat power, the strongest person in this building was obviously Na Sang-min.
And yet he still had to watch Go Pil-hun's mood.
The power of money in a capitalist world was terrifyingly simple.
I bowed my head to Na Sang-min.
“If I offended you, I'm sorry.”
Honestly, people like him were easier to handle.
Instead of losing my temper right back, I just had to take it and let it slide.
“I'll apologize properly. For the second round, please judge us fairly.”
In other words, the first test hadn't exactly been fair.
He had let his personal feelings affect his evaluation.
Na Sang-min's face turned bright red.
“You little...!”
The elevator gave a chime and stopped before he could explode, and the doors slid open.
The rookie hunters on board fled as if they were escaping a fire.
“I-I'm getting off first!”
“I—I need the bathroom!”
“L-let's get out of here. See you later, Judge!”
An awkward silence settled between Na Sang-min and me.
“Tch.”
He clicked his tongue and issued one final warning.
“Fine. I'll be watching to see how long you keep acting up.”
He got off the elevator, shooting me a last glare all the while.
Bang Su-hwan, who had stayed beside me, clutched his chest with one huge hand and let out a relieved breath.
“...Wow. Boss, my legs are shaking. Facing down a monster like that is incredible. If it were me, I'd have gone flat on my belly and crawled.”
I shrugged.
“I was scared too.”
“Puhaha! Boss, you're honest, aren't you?”
We were still trading jokes when I felt someone behind us.
I turned around and saw someone standing in a corner, staring our way.
“Are you two gay? You really get along.”
He was a slender man with pure white hair.
At a glance, he was such a handsome, refined face that you could almost mistake him for a woman.
Strangely enough, there wasn't a single scratch on his face.
After all that chaos, he was the only one standing there untouched.
Does he have a healer-type skill?
No, that wasn't it.
His clothes were stained red with blood from top to bottom.
He didn't get hit even once.
Now I remembered him.
He was the one who had calmly slipped through the melee, dodging hunters one after another, and in the end taken the chair for himself.
Lee Ji-jun
Expected Rank: B(Demoted)
“What? You—damn bastard! You wanna die?”
Bang Su-hwan snapped, just like always. The awkward way he forced out the profanity with a voice that was shaking made the whole thing feel strangely unlike him.
Lee Ji-jun smiled thinly.
“You don't have to get that mad if it's not true. So what, are we friends?”
“...We are friends, aren't we? Right, Boss?”
Bang Su-hwan scratched the back of his head and backed down.
He approached me and held out his hand.
“I'm Lee Ji-jun. Nice to meet you.”
He seemed casual enough, but his sharp eyes were already measuring me from head to toe.
He's not looking down on me. If anything, he's wary.
I took his hand.
“Choi Yongki.”
“Yongki, huh. That's a cool name.”
Bang Su-hwan quietly cut in and introduced himself.
“I'm Bang Su-hwan—Sun in 'shine' and joy in 'joy,' Bang Su-hwan...”
Lee Ji-jun smiled and caught the elevator door just as it was about to close.
“See you around.”
And with that, he disappeared as smoothly as he'd arrived.
Should I call him mysterious?
Lee Ji-jun felt like someone who was carrying a secret of his own, which made me curious.
Bang Su-hwan awkwardly pulled back the hand he'd been holding out.
“Boss. Let's go.”
“Yeah.”
The elevator delivered us to basement level 7 of the Dio Guild building.
Unlike the spacious banquet hall where the first test had been held, this place had a low ceiling and felt dim and airless.
Thick concrete sealed every side, and state-of-the-art ventilation vents had been installed throughout the room.
“Let's see...”
Na Sang-min flipped through the papers.
“This place is a special fallout shelter designed for monster surprise attacks. It's where the Dio Guild executives and staff evacuate to. And let's see here...”
Maybe because he hadn't been with the guild long, even Na Sang-min, who was serving as a judge, didn't seem to know much about headquarters.
“A nuclear-war-proof design, radiation shielding... Aw, screw it. I ain't doing this.”
He tossed the papers aside, and one of the Dio Guild agents hurriedly picked them up.
“Anyway, this place is safe and stupidly tough. For example.”
Na Sang-min extended one foot and stomped the floor.
Sand and dust rained down from the ceiling.
The floor only cracked; it didn't break or collapse.
“See that? I was planning to punch through all the way to basement level 8, but I failed. Though if I really put my mind to it, I probably could.”
The twelve hunters swallowed hard and murmured among themselves.
“...That's an insane stomp.”
“No wonder he's S-class.”
“He's the scariest one here.”
Whatever his casual attitude, Na Sang-min's skill was beyond question.
He held out a hand to the agent.
“Hey. Give me that.”
“Yes, sir. Here you are.”
Taking the new file, Na Sang-min began reading the contents.
“All right then. Dio Guild rookie selection—second test begins now. Bang Su-hwan Hunter, Lee Gil-yong Hunter. Step forward.”
Bang Su-hwan looked at me in panic. He clearly hadn't expected to be called first.
I nodded at him, and apparently that was enough to steady him.
“Let's do this!”
Bang Su-hwan and Lee Gil-yong stood facing one another.
Bang Su-hwan
Expected Rank: B+
Lee Gil-yong
Expected Rank: C-
Lee Gil-yong was short but powerfully built, with a hard, compact body. The heart tattoo under his eye gave him a mean, sleazy look.
Between the two of them, sparks seemed to crackle in the air as Na Sang-min continued.
“The rules are simple. First, rock-paper-scissors.”
Bang Su-hwan threw rock, Lee Gil-yong threw paper, and the initiative went to his opponent.
“The winner gets to choose the game. The loser goes along with it. Isn't this the very definition of a fate-bound showdown!”
Na Sang-min's voice, already full of superstitious obsession, rose even higher.
Lee Gil-yong studied Bang Su-hwan for a moment, then smiled with a greasy curl of his lips.
“Let's do jiu-jitsu. The one who taps or loses consciousness loses.”
“Good. Back to your places, warm up for a minute, then come back.”
Lee Gil-yong tried to provoke Bang Su-hwan.
“Hey, parachute. If it weren't for that guy, you'd have been eliminated in the first round. I saw you earlier—you were shaking like a coward. Your lucky break ends here, so be ready.”
The person he pointed at was none other than me.
“...”
Bang Su-hwan came up to me with a dark expression.
“...Boss.”
With his huge frame drooping like that, he looked like a bear that had just missed its prey.
“He isn't wrong. I'm just a cowardly parachute with no talent for fighting. I guess this is as far as I go.”
I had no intention of babysitting Bang Su-hwan forever.
But Lee Gil-yong was wrong about one thing.
The one who had willingly sacrificed himself to protect me during the chair snatching was Bang Su-hwan.
Because of him, I'd been able to read the situation and deal with it calmly enough to pass.
In other words, I owed him one.
“Listen carefully.”
I leaned in and whispered a few words in his ear.
Bang Su-hwan's face brightened after hearing my advice.
“Understood, Boss!”
Bang Su-hwan and Lee Gil-yong returned to their marks.
Once they were facing each other again, Na Sang-min raised the blade of his hand like a referee.
“Ready. Fight!”
Lee Gil-yong lowered his stance and crooked a finger.
“For the record, I'm a blue belt in jiu-jitsu. A brute like you who only relies on strength...”
In the blink of an eye, Bang Su-hwan grabbed his waist and hoisted him up.
Suspended in midair, Lee Gil-yong flailed helplessly.
“...W-what, let go! You cheap bastard! We're supposed to settle this with technique!”
What I'd told Bang Su-hwan was simple.
“This isn't a sport. It's a fight. So go there and crush him.”
Bang Su-hwan's ability was simple: strong against the weak, weak against the strong.
But against someone weaker than him, he was limitless.
“Fuck you! You skinny bastard!”
Bang Su-hwan brought Lee Gil-yong down hard against the floor.
With gravity and raw force both added to the blow, Lee Gil-yong slammed straight into the concrete.
Taking the full impact through his whole body, Lee Gil-yong froth bubbled at his mouth as he gagged and convulsed.
Na Sang-min seized Bang Su-hwan by the wrist and lifted his arm.
“Okay. Bang Su-hwan wins!”
Bang Su-hwan's shout rebounded off the concrete walls and scattered in every direction.
He scooped me up and started dancing around with me in the air.
“Boss! I won!”
“Yeah, I get it, so could you put me down now?”
“Yep!”
Na Sang-min flipped through the documents and moved on to the next round.
“We'll keep going. Choi Yongki Hunter, step forward. And...”
What was fate, really?
“Lee Ji-jun. C'mon!”
The inevitable plank bridge appeared before me.
“Oh. Didn't expect we'd be matched this early.”
The white-haired hunter grinned and walked toward me.