The Unexpected VIP at the Lost Association
It was the voice of President Kim Han-cheol.
Damn it. The earphones had slipped out of his phone.
The voice from the documentary he had just started was leaking into the open air.
He felt the taxi driver’s eyes flick toward the back seat in the side mirror. Kim Hwang-je shoved the earphones back in properly and focused on the screen.
It was a day Kim Hwang-je remembered clearly.
The gate outbreak that began in southern Africa had finally reached Korea.
Decades of resistance, yet the destruction came in an instant.
That day, Seoul was half-destroyed and Kim Hwang-je lost his family.
Like mirages, towers had risen across the world.
They could be seen but never reached.
Cracks opened and monsters rampaged everywhere.
Still, people clung to hope.
The smaller ones could be killed with guns.
But when creatures the size of cities appeared, people did not hesitate to choose the final option.
High-altitude footage of the coastline appeared.
A snake so enormous it refused to fit in the frame was slithering onto land.
Moments later, two nuclear warheads detonated.
The brilliant flash and the mushroom cloud soaring into the sky had been captured in crisp 4K. Then the screen went dead as the shockwave swept across it.
The footage returned shortly after.
The sea serpent’s corpse lay ruptured, swollen like a mountain range.
Countless parasites that had lived inside its body spilled out in a writhing flood.
The East Sea fleet, already on standby, fired missiles without pause.
The sky filled with white contrails and the flames never stopped burning.
Before long the ground had been completely churned by bombs, and the president declared victory.
The incident triggered a global nuclear arms race. The NPT effectively ceased to exist.
The Korean government not only imported American tactical nukes but also developed its own arsenal.
People believed they could win this war even without Awakeners.
They were wrong.
Three days after the nuclear strike, an American satellite detected strange radiation over southern Kentucky.
A CIA reconnaissance satellite sent the White House a photograph of a horrific monster crawling on four arms like a man whose waist had been severed.
The problem was that the creature was too small to be a worthwhile nuclear target, and it was moving inside a city.
The U.S. government fell into panic.
Fort Knox lay in that direction. With the world in crisis, gold prices had skyrocketed; the value of the reserves stored there had already surpassed 1,100 trillion won.
If they used nukes the country would collapse. If the monster devoured the gold the country would collapse.
A few ruined cities could be endured. Countless deaths could be endured. Even if the White House or the Capitol were destroyed, the nation would survive.
But without money, without the flow of currency, if the state could no longer guarantee the value of money in this dangerous era, the world itself would perish.
And the key currency ultimately rested on gold.
That was when heroes appeared. Or rather, beings called Awakeners.
After a fierce battle they crushed the head of the monster that had been heading for Fort Knox.
In the following interviews the Awakeners shouted that a knighthood must be formed.
A clean statement.
From then on, governments around the world recognized knighthoods as legal entities, authorized hunters’ PMCs, and revised every law to allow them to fight effectively.
That had been roughly ten years ago.
Ever since, Kim Hwang-je had dreamed of a world without monsters.
Even though he lived as a manual laborer, he had never once abandoned his dream of avenging his family.
If I have this ability, maybe I can solve everything somehow?
Kim Hwang-je thought this while watching the royal castle bustling with post-battle cleanup through World Observation.
He had also packed the bag of gold coins so they wouldn’t jingle too loudly.
The more he thought about how to use the gold to sweep every monster from the face of the earth and how to strengthen his ability to its limit, the more his head spun.
Kim Hwang-je’s ability was completely different from anything he had ever seen.
It didn’t involve weapons, it didn’t use magic, and it wasn’t a production class. A whole castle had simply appeared inside his body.
Hmm. No one else seems to have a skill like mine.
But he wasn’t watching the footage to confirm common sense. He was digging through old records to see if anyone possessed a similar power.
Yet even after searching through a mountain of material since last night, he had found no one with a comparable skill. The same was true after scouring the internet.
Neither the mysterious mercenaries of Lotus nor the infamous criminal syndicate Howling had anything like it.
Nor did the powerful mage towers or knight orders.
Most information remained classified so he couldn’t check everything, but several combat videos were public and none of them showed anything similar. The closest thing might have been summoner-type hunters.
But a castle inside his body? Did that even make sense? And if the castle collapsed he would die—what was that supposed to mean?
Where were the monsters even coming from? Was his body a gate to another world? What if soldiers or hunters tried to dissect him?
All sorts of thoughts swirled through his mind. Being captured and experimented on before escaping was the last thing he wanted. He had a pocket full of gold coins now—why should he suffer such a fate?
Just then the taxi driver stopped the car. Only then did Kim Hwang-je realize they had arrived in Jongro.
“Jewelers’ Town,” the driver announced.
“Thanks!”
Kim Hwang-je stepped out clutching the heavy pocket of gold coins and stood before the precious metals center with a bright heart.
Look at all these people swarming about. They were hunters, knights, porters, and every kind of odd-job worker imaginable. The place overflowed with energy that seemed ready to explode like fireworks.
Merchants pushing small carts loaded with metal shouted back and forth, while others haggled noisily over wagonloads of ore.
A quick hand signal and a coded sound decided the price on the spot.
The fact that they used the same rapid-trading tricks as fresh fish markets showed just how urgently the blacksmiths needed that ore.
Kim Hwang-je walked past them and headed deeper into the gold district.
Once inside, he finally saw people trading in actual gold. Gold matched strangely well with magic, so mage towers were always desperate for it; most of the traders here were mages.
“Anyone here?”
Ding-dong—
The alarm rang and the door opened. A man who had been polishing his monocle stood up.
He wore an expensive-looking robe and magical protective gear. Even his security devices were top-of-the-line.
“Selling? Or buying?”
He saw through Kim Hwang-je’s financial situation at a glance and immediately dropped all politeness.
Dropped the honorifics…?
Kim Hwang-je’s mind went blank. Where else would he be treated like this?
Well, it was his first time at a precious metals shop. Still, this was unacceptable.
It was true that Kim Hwang-je’s clothes were shabby.
His face was tanned from manual labor, and his curly hair stuck out in every direction from lack of care.
No matter how good his features were, he hardly looked like a rich man.
The merchant seemed to think the same and spoke curtly.
“We don’t handle stolen goods. This is a guild-only exchange. Take your junk to a neighborhood gold shop.”
“Well, damn.”
How was he supposed to answer such rudeness with polite speech?
Did being older automatically give him the right? Irritated, Kim Hwang-je walked into the shop next door.
The attitude there was exactly the same. After visiting four shops in a row, every single one treated him identically.
“Do I need to show up in armor just to sell something?”
There was nothing he could do. What Kim Hwang-je didn’t know was that the gold dealers here only accepted large-scale transactions. This was Jongro, after all—the holy land of hunter trading.
Occasionally fools came trying to sell stolen goods. Most of those were actually entrapment operations by the guild association, so the merchants were extremely wary.
“Sigh.”
Then he spotted one tiny, crumbling gold shop. Peering inside, it didn’t look promising.
It had far less gold on display than the others, and the woman with short brown hair examining something through her monocle looked very young—early twenties at most.
She was neat and pretty enough that customers should have come in, yet the place was empty. Strange.
“Might as well try here.”
He couldn’t let his mood stop him from selling the gold. Kim Hwang-je opened the door and stepped inside.
The moment he did, the shabby exterior transformed. The interior was a luxurious gold exchange that looked more like a palace. The black-and-white design was far more upscale than any hotel.
Crash!
Something shattered. His face stiffened.
“Welcome. This is the Lost Association, where we offer promises and trust.”
Yet the woman was already staring at him with a shocked expression. Not only her—several mages who had been chatting over coffee at an elegant table all fell silent and turned to look at him.
Why are they staring like that?
He wasn’t that ugly. But today everyone seemed determined to look down on him.
Kim Hwang-je pressed his trembling jaw with his right hand. The mages saw this and hurriedly got up, disappearing into the back.
Just as he thought he would receive the same treatment again and his forehead began to crease, the woman smiled softly.
“A distinguished guest has arrived. That barrier is not something that can be passed lightly… May I ask where you come from?”
A single bead of sweat had formed on the woman’s forehead. It was from tension.
Appearing out of nowhere?
This was something she had never predicted.
The atmosphere had grown serious. Kim Hwang-je suddenly had to figure out how to take the gold coins wrapped in black plastic out of his bag.