The F-Grade Old Geezer in the Civil Affairs Office (2)
"Chief Kang Taehyun."
When Yu Seoa bowed her head toward me, the civil affairs office fell silent as a tomb.
I could feel everyone’s attention snapping onto us.
It was almost as if I could hear the cogs in their heads turning furiously.
Why on earth is S-rank Yu Seoa bowing to some wheelchair-bound civil servant?
What’s the relationship between those two? Is he some backdoor appointment? Or are they honoring him as a retired first-generation hunter?
The looks on their faces were a mix of confusion, curiosity, and a thin sheen of jealousy.
Especially Im Taejun, who was still on his knees, gasping for breath. His face had gone so pale it looked like his eyeballs might pop right out of his skull as he kept darting his gaze between Yu Seoa and me.
"Yu, Yu Seoa Hunter...? Why are you bowing to some wheelchair-riding old geezer like that...?"
Im Taejun still hadn’t caught up.
To him, I was probably just a relic from the so-called "water-rocket generation" who’d gotten lucky and somehow survived long enough to coast through life on the easy money.
The information registered in the network database said only that I was an F-rank mana-disabled individual.
Even the mana meter had failed to detect the mana flowing through my body, deciding it was some kind of machine error.
"Hunter Im Taejun."
Yu Seoa slowly turned her head.
The moment her gray-blue eyes settled on Im Taejun, the temperature in the office plummeted.
It wasn’t just in my head, either; a thin chill rolled off her shoulders, and the moisture in the air began to freeze white.
"This is an official public space belonging to the Association. For someone who claims to be the ace of the Gaon Guild, opening your mana pressure in a place like this and threatening a civilian employee is hardly admirable."
"T-That’s not it! This bastard started it first—!"
Im Taejun jabbed a finger at me, looking wronged.
But I was already leaning back against the wheelchair, wearing the world’s most harmless, utterly drained expression.
Crushing the empty paper cup in my hand, I performed the full, committed act of a frail victim for anyone who cared to look.
"I only explained the regulations to him. I was merely acting according to the Association manual, and yet I’m the one being threatened. It’s truly frightening."
At my flat reply, the corners of Im Taejun’s mouth twitched violently.
He knew exactly what I had just done to him.
He remembered that horrible sensation all too clearly—the moment his mana had been forcibly reversed, nearly blowing his heart apart.
But there was no proof.
I hadn’t moved a finger, and no one in the office had noticed that I’d used mana at all.
"You, you fraudulent old bastard...!"
Just as Im Taejun exploded and tried to rise to his feet, Yu Seoa stepped forward.
White frost spiderwebbed across the floor tiles beneath her footsteps.
That was the killing intent of an S-rank hunter in its fully unleashed form.
"If you continue being rude, I’ll file an official complaint to the Gaon Guild in the name of the Baekho Guild. Unless you’d like to be brought before the Association’s disciplinary committee for conduct unbecoming and obstruction of official duties, I suggest you leave now."
An official complaint from the Baekho Guild.
For a mid-tier guild like Gaon, that was the sort of disaster that could get the front gate shut down for good.
On top of that, his personal streaming drone had been broadcasting this entire humiliating spectacle live.
Im Taejun bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and recalled the drone.
"Just you wait. You think I’m gonna let this slide after being treated like this?"
Trying desperately to preserve what little pride he had left, he kicked open the office door and stormed out.
The sound of his panicked footsteps retreating said enough; underneath it all was a deep, grinding sense of defeat.
Once he was gone, the office staff let out a collective breath of relief.
The new female employee standing behind the counter actually sagged to the floor, wiping away tears as her knees gave out.
"Thank you, Hunter Yu Seoa... That was incredibly close."
"Not at all. I only did what was necessary."
After a polite bow, Yu Seoa naturally walked behind my wheelchair.
Then, as if she had no intention of hearing my refusal, she took hold of the handles.
"Ah, Hunter Yu... I can push myself—"
"I’ll push you. It’s been a while since I saw you, and I also have something I’d like to say quietly."
With practiced ease, she started pushing the wheelchair.
The soft touch from behind, the faint scent of lily of the valley lingering in the air.
What an absurdly generous treatment.
Leaving the office staff’s burning stares behind us, we entered a quiet lounge tucked away in a corner of the Association headquarters.
Click.
Once the door shut and we were alone, I turned my head to look at her.
"I thought I was going to get burned alive by all those stares. With an S-rank hunter personally pushing my wheelchair, I don’t know where to put myself."
"Please don’t joke around, senior."
Yu Seoa gave a small snort and let go of the handles.
She sat across from me and crossed her legs with dignified ease.
Watching her quietly, I noticed the tips of her hair were faintly shining silver-white.
It was a temporary physical change that happened when she used her mana.
Her white skin, gray-blue eyes, and cold mana.
She really was striking.
But to me, it wasn’t her looks I noticed first; it was the taut flow of mana wrapping around her body.
"You haven’t changed much. They say the aftereffects of first-generation mana saturation stop cellular aging, and it really does look like time has frozen around you. I should be jealous, I suppose."
"There’s nothing to be jealous of. This body creaks every morning. When it rains, it aches like my whole nervous system is on fire. For the price of looking young, it’s way too expensive."
I lifted the backscratcher hanging beside my wheelchair and tapped my shoulder with it.
It looked like some cheap plastic backscratcher you could buy anywhere, but in truth it was made from a mythic-grade magical tree—one of the World Tree’s twigs.
Nothing beat it when it came to easing the pain in my mana circuits.
"Anyway, what brings you all the way out to this backwater office? The ace of the Baekho Guild didn’t come to see some old man like me for no reason."
At my question, Yu Seoa’s expression darkened in an instant.
She bit her lip for a moment, hesitated, then took a thick leather document envelope from inside her bag and placed it on the table.
"I’d like you to look at this."
"I’m a civil affairs clerk. I don’t have approval authority."
"I’m not asking for official approval. I came because I needed senior’s sense."
I didn’t touch the envelope.
Getting tangled up in bothersome affairs was the greatest threat to my peaceful life of drinking instant coffee.
Yu Seoa knew my temperament very well.
She pulled another heavy brass can from her bag and set it on top of the papers.
"This is Maxing Mocha Gold Special Edition. It’s a non-sale mix coffee made with beans cultivated in small quantities from an imperial-certified magical farm."
"...You really don’t know how serious bribery charges can be."
"It’s just a humble gift for senior."
I put on a solemn expression and drew the envelope toward me. The cold metal of the coffee can touched my fingertips.
It was a splendid gift.
When I opened the envelope, several field photos and mana-wave analysis graphs spilled out.
The background in the photos was a perfectly ordinary C-rank Gate interior.
But the condition of the fallen beasts was grotesque.
Their skin had swollen irregularly and split open, and where their teeth should have been, bone-hard spikes had burst up through the flesh.
The mana waves, too, were nothing like a normal monster’s regular pattern; they jerked and writhed in jagged, erratic curves like a mad dog thrashing at the end of a leash.
"A mutant."
At my low murmur, Yu Seoa nodded heavily.
"Yes. Lately, monsters that don’t match the System’s database have been surging in number. This dungeon was also classified by the System as a goblin warrior nest. Recommended attribute: fire. Suggested level: 40."
Something like deep despair and a sense of debt flickered through her eyes.
"But the allied raid team that entered the site nearly got wiped out. Those things completely ignored the patterns the System had warned about. They had fire resistance, and they used wide-area skills without any cooldown at all. The kids who trusted the System’s guide and kept calculating skill cooldowns... couldn’t even think to dodge before they were trampled."
Yu Seoa’s voice trembled faintly.
"Three people died. All of them were geniuses who graduated top of their class from the academy this year. The moment the answer sheet the System had been showing them disappeared, they turned into idiots who couldn’t do a thing."
I quietly stuffed the papers back into the envelope.
So, it had finally happened.
Ever since status windows had descended upon the world and the convenient System had become the foundation of hunters, humanity had turned combat into entertainment.
Calculate cooldowns. Match elemental affinities. Fight only within safe little gimmicks. That was common sense for modern hunters.
But we first-generation hunters were different.
We had no status windows. No levels. No remaining mana values displayed neatly in numbers.
When a monster in front of you tried to tear out your throat, you had to squeeze out every drop of mana and slam into it with your whole body, even while the pain made it feel as if your heart would burst.
Elemental affinities and convenient little gimmicks were luxuries for people who still had the leisure to think about them before death.
In exchange for surviving that hell, my bones and nerves had been ruined, but I’d gained power that reached beyond the limits of the System.
"So what do you want from me? I’m a retired man in a wheelchair. An F-rank cripple with no status window."
"Senior is someone who crossed hell without the System."
Yu Seoa rose from her chair and came to stand in front of me.
She laid her pale hand on my knee and looked up at me with pleading eyes.
"Please teach the members of my guild. Teach them how to move when the System doesn’t tell them the answer. Teach them how to survive in that hell."
A faint warmth seeped from her hand.
It was a touching offer, truly it was, but my answer was already decided.
"No. Too much trouble."
"Senior."
"I keep telling you, I’m done taking responsibility for other people’s lives. I don’t even have enough time to drink my instant coffee. Whether the kids these days live or die, that’s the price of trusting the System blindly. Tell them to survive on their own."
Just as I turned my head and was about to refuse coldly—
Wii-! Wii-! Wii-!
Red warning lights began spinning wildly across the lounge walls, and a shrieking siren tore through the room like it wanted to rip our eardrums apart.
At the same time, dust started falling from the ceiling in little showers, drifting straight into my precious mix coffee.
I frowned.
"...You got dust in my coffee."
From inside Yu Seoa’s arms, the radio crackled harshly.
- R-Requesting backup! Gate overflow at Intersection Park near Association headquarters! Evacuation control is impossible! Suspected mutants are attacking civilians! All nearby hunters, immediately... Agh! Gkgh!
With a panicked scream, the transmission cut off.
Looking out the window, I saw a massive black rift tearing open the sky in the distance. From within that gap, ominous red mist was beginning to pour out.
Yu Seoa rose at once. Her eyes blazed with fierce determination.
"We have to go."
I sighed and gripped the wheelchair wheels.
"Forty minutes left until my shift ends. Honestly, this world really doesn’t know how to help me out."