The Proposal (2)
The Enchanter of Uijeongbu.
At the identity that came through the smartphone, Hanseong quietly shut his mouth. He had expected as much, more or less. When Seoyeon, who had asked for this meeting, said she had two matters to raise, he had already half-assumed that one of them would concern the Enchanter.
He just hadn't thought the contact would come like this.
The power was gone. The networks were gone. So how was this smartphone working at all? Curiosity had only just begun to color his eyes when the voice came again.
"Of course, I'm only called the Enchanter. It isn't as though my actual class is Enchanter."
That was the first he had heard of it. Hanseong asked what the class was, and Minjae's answer came at once.
"My class is Magic Engineer."
"...Magic Engineer?"
"Yes. Think of it as a class that grants special effects to objects, or crafts objects that possess special abilities."
He had expected as much. From the moment he learned the man had made the Enchant Ring, he had assumed a production class, and in the end only the name of the job had changed. Hanseong nodded without a word, then tapped the smartphone.
"Then did you make this, too?"
"I did. I built a converter that turns ether into electricity, charged it with that, and enchanted a long-range communication skill onto it at the same time."
A smartphone that could call across a distance. Not that it meant placing and answering calls as freely as before the Cataclysm. Only phones enchanted with the long-range communication skill could reach one another—like the paper-cup telephones children used to string together in elementary school.
"Before we get to the point, allow me to thank you. I am truly grateful that you saved my sister."
He was done with thanks. He had already heard them from Seoyeon until he was sick of them. When he pressed the man to come to the point, Minjae broke into a short laugh, said he understood, and went straight into the words he had prepared.
"I have a proposal for the Suwon Provisional Government."
Not for Hanseong. For Jihye. She had been sitting there in a blank daze, and now she started and stared at the smartphone.
"What? Us? You're talking to us?"
"That's right. It feels a little strange to say this myself, but I believe the things I've made so far are of considerable value."
Confidence filled the voice. It might have sounded arrogant, but Minjae was telling the truth. There was the Enchant Ring, which could imprint another class's skill and make it permanently usable, and the wristwatch they had just received, which reset a skill's cooldown—rare equipment that could not be found even at the Auction House.
"What I make from here on will be worth just as much. So, in exchange, I would like to propose cooperation with the provisional government."
"Cooperation...?"
"Lend us your strength."
His tone had turned grave. He paused, then let out a sigh and gave the real reason he was asking.
"At present we are cut off, trapped inside a siege laid by a champion monster and its minions."
Then the details began. After the Cataclysm, Minjae and Seoyeon had lived with a large survivor group in Uijeongbu, a community of about five hundred. Most of them had known one another long before the world broke, and even afterward they had helped one another and gone on surviving.
"At first everything went smoothly. We hunted zombies and raised our levels, and we even managed to subjugate elite monsters."
Comrades with a talent for fighting, and Minjae behind them, supplying special equipment—between the two, the Uijeongbu survivors had grown at a dazzling pace. At last, having cleared every elite in the city, they pushed their range outward.
"We hunted the zombies and elite monsters in Namyangju, and in Guri."
Their raids never failed. Perhaps that was why the group slipped into arrogance, widening not a safe zone but only the ground they covered in pursuit of elites.
And in Yangju—
"We met the cause of everything that followed."
An elite monster: the machine golem. The thing that had seized Yangju was stronger than any elite they had faced.
"No physical attack worked on it. Blades, axes, even gunfire—none of it so much as scratched the thing. Skills were no different."
Before an enemy that stopped every blow, the raid party's morale collapsed at once. They decided to retreat and make straight for Uijeongbu.
They meant to.
In that instant the machine golem's minions, concealed beneath the ground and waiting for the moment to strike, fell on them.
"Physical attacks didn't work on the minions either. And there were so many of them that there wasn't even a gap to slip through."
The result: of a raid party more than twenty strong, not a single person made it back to Uijeongbu. The pillar that had held the group up vanished in a moment. Nor did the misfortune end there. Climbing over those deaths, the machine golem advanced into a champion monster, then left Yangju and stretched its domain all the way to Uijeongbu.
"It multiplied its minions in an instant and had Uijeongbu surrounded before we knew it."
By the time they realized, a siege of no small scale was already in place—so complete that escape itself seemed impossible. That left Hanseong with a doubt.
No matter how tight the net...
Uijeongbu was a broad city, two or three times the size of Songpa, where he had stayed in the early days of the Cataclysm. There must have been gaps. Why hadn't they run? On that thought he opened the map, and a moment later, looking down at the city, he understood why Minjae had been unable to flee.
...There's a disgusting number of them.
Red dots ringed Uijeongbu. Even at a glance there were several thousand. What was this thing, that it could spawn so many minions? The sort that raised a legion, like the Vampire Tree once had? He was still turning the guess over when Minjae's explanation resumed.
"Even so, not every hope was gone. We still had comrades operating outside the city."
The fighter Lee Seoyeon, and the gladiator Hwang Cheolho. When the machine golem surrounded Uijeongbu, the two of them had been out in Seoul and Hanam, respectively. Both already carried smartphones issued in advance, and Minjae had contacted them and asked that they reach outside powers and request support.
"By outside powers, do you mean..."
"The Sejong Provisional Government, and the Suwon one."
Hwang Cheolho was the one who went to Sejong. He hunted zombies mostly from a motorcycle, so he arrived ahead of Seoyeon, who was bound for Suwon. He explained Uijeongbu's plight and asked for help. The answer that came back was not the one they had expected.
"They said they could send a rescue team, but that I was the only one they would actually be able to extract."
The Uijeongbu survivors were a group whose core fighters had been wiped out in the machine golem's counterattack. Of them, the only one who might still be of use was Minjae, the man who made special equipment. Sejong had evidently judged as much, and laid the excuse in advance: the rest could not be saved.
"Then they changed their story. They said it would be too difficult to push into the city, and told me to come out on my own."
A rescue on those terms was no rescue at all. And in the midst of it, the Sejong Provisional Government announced its Special Summons List. Furious, Minjae had poured his anger into the comments.
Ah. So that's why.
That was why the post had been so savage. Hanseong nodded, recalling the Enchanter's comment he had glimpsed before.
"So the plan to get Sejong's support fell through, and the only hope left to us was my sister. But..."
Even that vanished almost at once. On the road to Suwon, Seoyeon breathed in the sleep fog and was shut inside the Dream World. Days of despair dragged on. Then, without warning, word came from her again. She told Minjae everything she had been through, and in time she spoke of Hanseong as well.
"That's why I've come with a proposal for cooperation."
A power who had brought down a champion monster alone. Ending on the name of the Fire-Lightning Mage, Minjae closed the long account, then spoke again.
"Please subjugate the champion monster that has laid siege to Uijeongbu. In return, I will supply the Suwon Provisional Government with the things I make."
Closer to a plea than a proposal. There was, however, a point in the offer that needed correcting. Hanseong was just parting his lips when—
"Um, sorry to cut in."
Jihye beat him to it. She put the question to Minjae, on the far side of the phone, in a tone that only wanted to be sure.
"There's something I'd like to confirm. Why are you proposing this cooperation to the provisional government?"
"Pardon? What do you mean..."
"I don't know how strong the champion in Uijeongbu is, but with our strength alone, subjugating a Champion Monster would be difficult."
Jihye's reply was calm. Minjae, plainly puzzled, asked again.
"Difficult to subjugate? Doesn't the Suwon Provisional Government have the Fire-Lightning Mage?"
Ah. So that was it. The moment he heard the retort, Hanseong realized the man was under a misconception. Jihye seemed to have pieced the whole of it together as well; she sighed.
"The mage isn't one of ours."
"...What?"
"The operation in Hwaseong three days ago only happened because the provisional government asked the mage to cooperate."
The truth, from her own mouth. Had the answer he never expected left him speechless? Minjae said nothing at all. Seoyeon, who had been listening, turned toward the Phantom with her eyes gone wide.
"B-but! When I first met you, you definitely said you'd come from the Suwon Provisional Government...!"
"I said I was running an operation with the provisional government. I never said I belonged to it."
Hanseong corrected her. Seoyeon looked as though she had a great deal left to say, but she never got it out. Minjae's voice was already continuing from the other side of the phone.
"I see. I understand. From the start, I had the wrong party in mind."
Calm had returned to the voice. He had been murmuring; now he went on.
"Nothing else changes, though. Only the one who receives the payment—from the Suwon Provisional Government to the Fire-Lightning Mage."
"..."
"So I'll ask again. Please subjugate the champion monster in Uijeongbu. In return, I'll make whatever you want."
The moment the request ended, Seoyeon looked at the Phantom with desperate eyes. From here, the fate of Uijeongbu might as well have hung on his answer. Hanseong, for his part, turned the proposal over.
Subjugating a champion monster.
The subjugation itself was no longer especially difficult. He was growing used to fighting Champion Monsters, and if he meant to face the tower's Trial, he would have to bring one more of them down regardless. From the glance he had taken earlier, its level hadn't even seemed particularly high. If anything, the terms were welcome.
I'd be clearing an enemy I have to erase anyway, and picking up a reward on the side.
There was no reason to refuse. Minjae would surely go on making plenty of useful things, and if only to keep the relationship a friendly one, Hanseong decided to accept.
"All right. I'll cooperate on the subjugation."
"Y-you mean it?!"
He asked it again, his voice bright with relief. Hanseong's answer was a short yes, and color rushed back into Seoyeon's face. The moment the arrangement was settled, Minjae—afraid the man might change his mind—began to lay out the specifics of the champion monster in Uijeongbu.
"First I'll explain its level, its name, and its traits. To start..."
"Level 33. The Steel Machine Golem."
Hanseong cut in before the explanation could finish. Through the smartphone came the sound of a sharp, indrawn breath. Nor was that all. Seoyeon, seated across from him, turned toward the Phantom with a startled face, and a moment later a voice thick with confusion came back through the phone.
"H-how did you..."
Because he had been watching it the whole time. From Suwon to Uijeongbu was about fifty kilometers—comfortably within what he could observe, and within the effective range of more than one skill.
"It's one of my detection skills."
Having settled the startled question, Hanseong looked over the details Detection had brought up on the Steel Machine Golem.