The Wandering Merchant Alliance (3)

He posted the announcement.

He also made it clear that product supply would be suspended for the time being.

The result was inevitable.

The Free Board erupted into absolute chaos.

The Wandering Merchant had only been back for a single day, and already a temporary suspension—all because of those shameless resellers!

Less than a minute after the notice went up, hundreds of comments began flooding in.

……

Even without Hyun Si-woon needing to name names, the resellers had already become public enemy number one.

They had been branded as the very culprits who had cut off the sole supply line of hope—the Wandering Merchant himself.

Stories like these started surfacing as well.

Hah.

Hyun Si-woon let out a dry laugh.

He had merely suspended the supply, and the market was already beginning to purify itself.

No—not purify. Purge, more like……?

— Heh heh heh. What a terrifying brat. As expected, you never fail to live up to this lady's expectations.

Ha-wol's satisfied laugh echoed inside his head.

— This lady was merely thinking of luring out a few resellers and taking their heads. Yet you overturned the entire board itself. Without lifting a single finger—with nothing more than a few lines of text—you socially buried those parasites. More fearsome than any blade is a righteous cause like that. My, with this level of cunning…… even as a Ranker, this lady need not worry about you!

"What are you even talking about."

Hyun Si-woon was baffled.

"Cunning? What's cunning about it. I just fixed a broken system because it was messed up…… I didn't even expect it to go this far myself."

— Enough, you shameless rascal. Do you think this lady cannot see through you?

Ha-wol grinned.

She did not dislike that shamelessness of his.

No—she rather found it thoroughly to her taste.

A true hegemon had to be like that.

The art of pretending mercy, of wearing an innocent face, while behind the scenes seizing everything in one's grasp and shaking the world at will—that was a king's true quality.

Of course……

Hyun Si-woon had been completely sincere the entire time, and Ha-wol was simply misunderstanding him.

Ugh. There she goes again.

Hyun Si-woon stopped answering and instead scrolled through the comments under the announcement post.

Beyond the curses, guilds were slowly beginning to declare their interest as well.

……

They were beginning to appear all over.

Hmm.

This was a problem in itself.

He had said he would select five partner guilds……

But whom should he pick?

Given the situation, a great many guilds would likely apply. Anyone could see this was a guaranteed success—nearly everyone would probably throw their name in.

That could mean hundreds. Maybe even thousands.

Separating the wheat from the chaff among that many……

— Why overcomplicate it so.

Huh?

— You are selecting five guilds, and you have five companions as well, do you not. Simply have each of them take one.

"……?"

Hyun Si-woon's eyes widened.

It was a casually thrown remark, yet surprisingly solid advice.

No need for me to shoulder everything alone.

This wasn't game knowledge or regression experience.

There was no reason for him to agonize alone over something that wasn't even his specialty.

They were a team, after all.

Hyun Si-woon summoned the members once more.

Below the research director's office.

The operations conference room.

Following Ha-wol's advice, Hyun Si-woon assigned the task to his members.

"For the next week, each of you finds exactly one partner guild you'd recommend. Just one."

"Oh? Us?"

"Yeah. I'm not getting involved in this at all. Instead—"

With a soft scrape, Hyun Si-woon slid a document he had prepared earlier into the center of the table.

It was a set of guidelines.

"Just keep roughly to these standards. Of course, the information available will be limited, so judge by your own lights. That's all."

When Hyun Si-woon's explanation ended, a brief, quiet stillness settled over the room.

The members looked at one another.

Something subtle and excited was sparkling in their eyes.

"Understood, Hyeong-nim! Leave it to me! I'll bring back a truly solid guild!"

Hwang Dae-un was the first to clench his fist and roar out his resolve.

"This should be fun. Analyzing community sentiment is my specialty."

Jang Cha-yul nodded with a thoroughly satisfied expression as well.

The others each offered soft smiles of agreement.

Sharing authority and responsibility with the team.

That made them happy.

"Good. Then dismissed. Ah—and while you're hunting, don't forget to get your stamina up to 19 soon."

The moment Hyun Si-woon's final words fell, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠members scattered.

A period of fierce deliberation and analysis had begun.

"Haa."

Hyun Si-woon exhaled as if a weight had lifted from his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠chest.

"Should've done this from the start."

Not having to overthink left his mind feeling clean and clear.

He closed the community window completely.

Forget about it.

If you entrusted something, you had to trust it through to the end.

Whatever the result, accepting it was also a leader's duty.

He headed straight for the training grounds.

Now only a single goal remained in his mind.

Stamina 19.

The final gate before he could consume the Moon Spirit Ginseng.

This, they had decided, would be filled through individual training.

Whoosh, whooosh!

In the training grounds, Hyun Si-woon slowly swung his sword.

To raise his stamina by one more point…… he would have to drive himself to the absolute limit once again.

A week passed.

Hyun Si-woon had spent that time relentlessly whipping himself through training.

Even so, his stamina refused to budge.

His strength, agility, and endurance had each risen by one to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reach 18……

But his stamina remained stuck at 18.

Damn it……

Hyun Si-woon sheathed his sword and drew a ragged breath.

It wasn't unexpected.

A climber's stats slowed dramatically once they reached a certain threshold.

And from 20 onward?

Even clearing floors often failed to raise them at all.

Just keep at it steadily.

If he kept going, it would hit eventually.

Still, he had made solid progress in the Moon Spirit Divine Art.

The first stage, Sensing Qi, he had already reached long ago—the foundational phase of first recognizing the faint energy scattered through the body and gathering it into the dantian through breath.

And this time, he had entered the second stage.

Flowing Water.

It was the stage of consciously moving the qi gathered in the dantian so that it flowed along the body's major meridians.

Where before he had clumsily forced the channels open……

Now he could ride the current himself and swim with it.

The Moon Spirit Divine Art really is broken as hell……

At some point, Hyun Si-woon had stopped trying to force the circulation of his qi.

He simply entrusted himself to his body and focused only on feeling the energy that flowed with his breath.

When he did, blocked blood vessels opened of their own accord, and turbid energy was purified—a wondrous experience.

Anyway.

It was time to go.

As promised, the members were waiting in the conference room with their partner selections ready.

The operations conference room.

All six teammates sat around the round table.

The atmosphere was serious yet faintly electric with excitement.

Hyun Si-woon spoke first.

"So. Everyone made their picks?"

At his words, Hwang Dae-un shrugged his shoulders.

"Hyeong-nim, I thought I was going to die of stress. This one looked good, that one looked good…… Everyone kept insisting they were the best and pushing so hard I nearly got selection paralysis and my head exploded. Honestly, this was harder than training."

Laughter burst out around the room at Hwang Dae-un's grumbling.

It may have sounded like exaggeration, but everyone could feel the genuine weight of deliberation behind his words.

"Alright. So what were the results?"

Hyun Si-woon cut to the heart of the matter.

"I'm curious what each of you decided. Let's hear them. Who wants to go first?"

"I'll go first."

The first to raise her hand was Jang Cha-yul.

"The guild I'm recommending is called Owl."

"Owl?"

"Yeah. Only about ten members, so the scale isn't huge…… but six of them are climbers of the third floor or higher, and four are fourth-floor climbers like us."

"……!"

Hyun Si-woon's eyes opened wider.

That level……

A proper elite few, wasn't it?

"But this guild's real value isn't combat power."

"Then what?"

"Every single member is a community shut-in who posts constantly."

"……Weren't you the resident shut-in, noona?"

"Hey. I'm a shut-in, which is exactly why I know. I even contacted them separately by mail. The guild master is pretty easygoing, and from the start they said they're aiming to be an information guild."

"An information guild?"

"Yeah. They plan to collect Tower information and sell it for TC as a business. The guild master is a former profiler. Among the members there's an ex-journalist, a former hacker…… and I heard one of them even used to work at a private investigation firm?"

"……!"

Everyone's eyes went wide.

Baek Yeon-ho spoke in admiration.

"Insane. In a ruined world they're sitting around playing CIA among themselves?"

Jang Cha-yul continued.

"Exactly. But strategically, it's not a bad value. Through this contract we could sponsor them—or conversely, provide them with information we know and split the TC they earn from it."

Hyun Si-woon nodded silently.

As he had said before, he had intended to accept whoever Jang Cha-yul picked without question.

But unexpectedly, a remarkably attractive team had appeared right from the start.

— Ho. Not bad at all.

Ha-wol's eyes gleamed with praise as well.

— Those who cunningly hold and manipulate information last longer and climb higher than those who merely possess overwhelming force. So there are clever ones in this world after all.

"Okay."

Hyun Si-woon smiled and adjusted his posture.

"Good work, noona. I'll take them. Next?"

The members' thinking had turned out deeper than expected, so he too was engaging with genuine seriousness.

"Next is me, Hyeong-nim!"

With a sudden scrape of his chair, Hwang Dae-un shot to his feet.