Fame (1)
After arriving at a café in Gangnam, I looked around.
It was a neighborhood a bit too fancy for my beat-up old car, so I'd felt embarrassed handing it over to the valet — but I wasn't particularly attached to the car anyway. Even if I made a lot of money, I'd probably just buy something reasonable and be done with it. Truth be told, I didn't even have the spare cash to spend on a car right now. A broke nobody who'd come to scrape together business funds had no business worrying about a car.
“Over here, over here.”
After scanning the room for a while, I spotted Zephyros waving with a smile. There was a woman sitting next to him, too.
“Hello. And the person beside you is...”
“My junior.”
“Hi there! I'm Bae Su-jin! I was there that day too, but you didn't see me, did you?”
“Ah, the assessment day. I think I might have glimpsed you, actually.”
So that was the woman Zephyros had been talking to.
“Well, I figure the awkwardness has settled down a bit by now, right?”
“Yes. Oh, and please feel free to speak casually with me. You're quite a bit older than I am, after all...”
“Hmm, shall I, then?”
“Yes, that would be more comfortable.”
“Haha, I really shouldn't, though.”
Sure enough, Su-jin, seated beside him, was glaring daggers at Zephyros.
“Our company's scouts have a policy — regardless of personal connections, hierarchy, or skill level, everyone uses formal speech. No exceptions.”
“Ah, I see. My apologies for putting you in an awkward...”
“No, no. Rules were never meant to apply equally to everyone, you see. Heh heh. Got that, Su-jin? It doesn't work for you, but it works for me. If it bothers you, go become a founding member yourself.”
“Tch.”
“Haha... Honestly, I did hesitate a bit before agreeing to meet. I know RHS is a very good company, but it was because of things Zephyros said about it in a negative light.”
At those words, a fire lit in Su-jin's eyes.
“What on earth are you talking about, sunbae? We should be begging him to join us, and you said what?”
“No, no. Did I... did I say that?”
“The nuance was a little...”
“Hah, sharp one, aren't you.”
Zephyros half-admitted it. Suddenly, I was curious.
“Why, though?”
“Obviously I'm not saying our company is bad. Why would I hate a company I hold shares in? It's just that the current market climate saddens me.”
“Saddens you... how?”
“Back in my dungeon-clearing days, dungeons were all state-run. Anyone who wanted to could enter, level up, and claim their loot. Of course, tax evasion was difficult — the officials at the entrance would open your inventory and check everything.”
Zephyros grinned and mentioned tax evasion with complete nonchalance. Somehow, though, he didn't look like a bad person doing it.
“Hunters would climb the stages solo depending on their abilities, or gather people to clear dungeons together. Eventually people banded together and guilds formed, guilds became profit-seeking associations, and those associations evolved into companies chasing even bigger profits. Management agencies count as companies in the broad sense, so let's let that slide.”
Old hunter-industry stories from a first-generation hunter. This was the kind of tale I wanted to hear over a bowl of makgeolli back at my place — almost a shame we were in an upscale Gangnam café.
“These days, that romance is gone. Even if a rookie has the talent for it, the worthwhile dungeons are all held by state development companies, private development companies, and guilds. It's an era where you can't make your mark without belonging to someone, even if you're capable of it.”
He had a point. These days, joining an organization was simply taken for granted if you wanted to work as a hunter, so I'd never even considered it from that angle.
“Still, companies and guilds aren't bad, are they?”
At my words, Su-jin — who had been listening with the expression of someone chewing on dung — brightened and cried out.
“Th-that's right! Sunbae, what kind of thrill are you trying to—”
Su-jin gritted her teeth, her hand squirming below the table. At the same time, Zephyros clamped his mouth shut, as if enduring pain. Was she pinching him down there?
“H-haha... right... companies aren't bad.”
“Of course, of course. They support you and everything. Lovely.”
Just as Su-jin, wearing a bright smile, started rummaging through her bag for documents, Zephyros wiped the smile off his face and spoke with sudden gravity.
“That's the problem — they're too good.”
“...Too good is a problem?”
Good was good. How could it be a problem?
“Hunting in a designated dungeon, following a designated strategy, with full support backing you up. That's what hunting with a company or guild looks like. I hate dividing people by generation, but... kids these days are basically parts. Cogs that perform their one designated role inside a gate.”
Hunters of the past had autonomously broken through all kinds of dungeons on nothing but their own instincts. As the vanguard of that first generation, it was only natural the current situation didn't sit well with Zephyros. But what came out of his mouth next went a little beyond my expectations.
“What do you think would happen if those hunters were thrown into a wild dungeon?”
“It wouldn't be easy.”
“Most of them would die.”
“Well, then they just shouldn't go into wild dungeons.”
At my words, Zephyros smiled faintly and glanced out the window.
“How much do you trust this awakening system and the dungeons that popped up out of nowhere?”
“How much do I trust them? Uh... I've never really thought about it in those terms...”
“I don't.”
Back when no one was a hunter. Back when dungeons didn't exist. A person who woke up one morning and was suddenly a hunter. That man had fought desperately for his life in an environment dumped on him without warning — and survived.
“People live their lives far too certain that dungeons will stay this favorable forever.”
So Zephyros was a dungeon pessimist, too. Humanity was developing at a breakneck pace thanks to new materials from dungeons and new techniques from awakeners. While some praised the dungeons endlessly, others — like Zephyros — viewed them with deep skepticism.
“Wind, too. A gentle breeze is a precious thing that cools your sweat. But...”
Zephyros touched a finger to his teacup and flowed mana into it. A small whirlpool formed inside the cup, growing larger and larger until — crack! — it shattered, sending shards flying in every direction. Of course, the flying fragments and water droplets hit some invisible barrier in midair, stopped short, and clattered harmlessly to the table.
“A typhoon like this one always leaves devastation in its wake.”
That was an incredible display of mana control. That person... was a retired hunter?
As I sat there stunned, I snapped back to my senses at the sharp crack of Su-jin smacking Zephyros on the back.
“Why would you break a perfectly good cup at a café!”
“Th-that was... for educational purposes? I can pay for it...”
“Ugh, honestly.”
“Anyway... my thinking is that dungeons are part of nature, too. Nature is fickle, and for the most part, unstoppable. If things change even slightly from how they are now, the past is one thing, but today's hunter industry would take a devastating blow.”
“So, what's Zephyros's recommendation?”
Glancing briefly at Su-jin, Zephyros smiled and opened his mouth.
“I'd like you not to belong to any organization.”
“If I don't belong to one...”
“Freelance.”
“Are you insane?!”
Before I could even answer, Su-jin shot back first.
“That's ridiculous — not even worth listening to. I mean, what could Kim Se-gyun the hunter possibly be lacking that he'd need to go freelance?”
She had a point. In this day and age, "freelance" was just a pretty word for day labor. A low-priority position, filling headcount on the cheap.
“Not that kind of freelance. A real freelance. The lubricant for dungeons that can't run on parts alone.”
“W-wait, don't tell me...”
I had a feeling where Zephyros was going with this. And Su-jin's horror was only natural — from a certain point of view, these people were the enemies of the dungeon development companies.
“You mean Single-Contract Hunters.”
Hunters who cleared the dungeons that development companies couldn't handle on their own. Literally — hunters who signed contracts one deal at a time and cleared dungeons for a fee. It required the instincts and skill to conquer dungeons they'd never seen before, and their price tags went without saying: astronomical. The most famous example was the French necromancer Ahmad Triaine. On the single fact that he was the only person capable of clearing a Tier-57 dungeon, he extracted massive incentives from the French government every single time in exchange for clearing state dungeons.
“I-I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.”
“Su-jin, he's not someone we can keep in our stable anyway. Think about it. Even if we win him over with a two- or three-year contract now, do you really think he'd renew with our company? Better to approach from a different angle.”
“......”
“Plan B. Take it out.”
Reluctantly, Su-jin pulled the documents from her bag and slid them across to me.
“A contract... is it? May I read it for a moment?”
“Of course. You weren't planning to sign without reading it, were you?”
Still, could a contract really be this short? Hunter contracts were supposed to be thick as bricks. Even the employment contract at that waste-collection company I used to work for — a nothing job — ran over ten pages. But this...
“This isn't an employment contract... it's a sponsorship agreement?”
“Sharp as ever. I'm going to claim the billboard. The best spot there is.”
As he said it, he pointed a finger at my chest.
“The signing bonus is... t-ten... billion won?”
“That's the five-year total. Nothing to be surprised about.”
Zephyros shrugged as if it were nothing.
“So I just slap a big logo on my chest and go about my business? And that's worth two billion a year?”
Some companies had offered employment contracts at a hundred million a year, even.
“In five years, that chest of yours might be worth ten billion. Maybe a hundred billion.”
No matter how you sliced it — even accounting for my ignorance of the hunter industry — this didn't seem like the kind of money you'd offer a rookie.
“This is a gamble for the company, too. I'm pushing it through on my own authority.”
“So in the end, I have to grow big enough to live up to the expectations, or it's a loss.”
“Raising people is my specialty.”
“Funny, that's not in the contract.”
“Sign first. You'll find out.”
I deliberated for a moment, then picked up the pen and signed without a flicker of hesitation. The contract was so straightforward it didn't even need a lawyer's review. No organizational affiliation, complete autonomy, and my initial funding problem solved — fundamentally, it was the best possible deal for me.
As for money — once I secured the initial capital, the Elixir business would hit its stride and start generating more than I'd know what to do with anyway. If anything, the part that pleased me more than the money was Zephyros saying he'd raise me himself. Zephyros confirmed my signature and said cheerfully:
“Su-jin, deposit ten billion won into Kim Se-gyun's account.”
A moment later, a text arrived notifying me that ten billion won had been deposited. Even though my always-empty coffers were now full, I found I didn't much care.
“So, how exactly are you going to raise me?”
Instead of answering, Zephyros smiled broadly and rose from his seat. As I scrambled up after him, he said:
“Punch it into your GPS and follow me. Chungju, North Chungcheong Province...”
The two cars pulled up side by side at an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of Chungju. Su-jin must have headed back to the office — Zephyros was the only one who got out.
“This is... a gate?”
“That's right.”
“It doesn't look like it gets much use.”
Not every gate was meticulously managed. For one reason or another, unpopular gates were sometimes left to rot like this one. Even granting that, though, this place was in especially rough shape. What on earth was going on here?
“You're Level 3 by now, aren't you?”
“Yes.”
Clearing the Tier-1 gate perfectly had raised my level by two as well. This man knew my level without me even telling him. Impressive. He had the dungeon rewards and the experience requirements for leveling completely memorized.
“Then skipping the Tier-2 gate and entering the Tier-3 one shouldn't be a problem.”
Level indicated the minimum threshold for entering a given tier. To enter a Tier-3 gate, you needed to be at least Level 3.
“As long as you explain things before I go in.”
Even for Zephyros, I wasn't about to just walk into a suspicious-looking gate like this.
“This is a Tier-3 gate — the Abandoned Temple of Stone Golems. In truth, it's a dungeon with zero danger.”
“Aren't stone golems incredibly strong monsters?”
“They are. But if they were, this wouldn't be Tier 3, would it?”
“Ah.”
Stone golems were monsters that only appeared at Tier 20 or higher. A stone golem appearing at Tier 3 meant it was a watered-down version that couldn't perform to its original specs.
“The stone golems inside have completely ceased functioning. They don't attack. They just stand there.”
“Then isn't this a jackpot dungeon?”
Kill monsters that don't even fight back and farm the experience. Where else in the world could you find a deal like that? At my words, Zephyros smiled bitterly.
“To register a destruction verdict on a stone golem, you have to destroy a tiny life stone hidden somewhere inside the rock. So how would you go about that?”
“Don't tell me... the golems just standing there...”
“Yep. Pickaxing, or whatever else it takes — you have to find the life stone and smash it.”
“Ah...”
Only then did the full vista of the place register in my eyes. Good grief — no wonder this gate had formed in an abandoned quarry...
“They're monsters that normally appear at Tier 20 or above, so their durability goes without saying.”
No wonder it was unpopular. Instead of stylishly slaying monsters, you got a dungeon that was safe but demanded a full day of nothing but pickaxing. And as a Tier-3 dungeon, the rewards were pitiful on top of it all.
“Then why did you bring me here...”
“If you can decompose chunks of metal in an instant, you think stone will give you trouble?”
Right. For me, this was the perfect environment. That alone would have been enough — but then came Zephyros's next words.
“Besides, this dungeon has never been cleared.”
“D-don't tell me...”
Clear credit was only granted to hunters within five levels of the dungeon's tier. Since this was a Tier-3 dungeon, only hunters at Level 8 or below could earn the clear. But even a Level 8 hunter, pickaxing all day, couldn't keep pace with the regeneration rate. The dungeon was designed from the ground up to be nearly impossible to clear with a typical Level 8's capabilities.
I knew at least that much, and as I stared at Zephyros in astonishment, he smiled and said:
“That's right. Let's make the name Kim Se-gyun ring out across all of East Asia.”
First-clear rewards. There were other rewards too — items, proficiency, experience — but that didn't seem to be what Zephyros was after.
Few people thought of it as a reward, but when a gate was cleared for the first time, a message went out to every hunter in that region. And Korea's Zone was attached to East Asia.
Which meant...
Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, all the way to Mongolia. A message would reach every hunter in the world's largest economic bloc, home to nearly 1.7 billion people.
Fame.
Uncleared gates were all but extinct these days. The so-called "impossible" dungeons. And the staggering fame that a single short message — this dungeon has been cleared — would bring. That, and that alone, was Zephyros's true objective.
After Kim Se-gyun entered the gate, Ryu Hyun-soo, left alone for a moment, took out his e-cigarette and took a drag. Vmmm. His phone rang. It was a call from Bae Su-jin.
“Hello.”
“Sunbae, about the ten billion won we disbursed to Kim Se-gyun earlier...”
“Yeah, what about it.”
“CEO Shin rejected it. What do we do? The money's already in the account.”
“What?”
Ryu Hyun-soo's brow furrowed hard.
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. He said it's just a Tier-1 gate... that with a lucky compatibility between ability and dungeon, anyone could manage it. That we should verify him more thoroughly before signing, and it wouldn't be too late then...”
“Ha...”
Ryu Hyun-soo held his head in his hands, deliberated for a moment, then spoke.
“Convert it to my personal sponsorship contract.”
“...I'm sorry?”
“Were you not listening? Change it to a contract where I sponsor him personally. Deduct the ten billion from my incentives. Restructure the sponsorship agreement so I acquire it as a debt instrument — that works, doesn't it?”
“You'd really go that far?”
“Yeah. I really would.”
His personal creed: never hold back your all-in when you're holding the winning hand. And ten billion won didn't even register as an all-in for a man like him. As he gazed at the gate's entrance, Ryu Hyun-soo's eyes were filled with certainty.