Hunters Seeking Discipleship Under the Civil Affairs Clerk

Ever since that day, the world had grown noisy.

More precisely, not merely a little noisy—extremely so.

Those few seconds of live broadcast were the problem.

A monster the system itself could not catch, and the unidentified old man who turned it into a marble with a single gesture.

Those two things had thrown the entire world into chaos.

I sat in the civil affairs office as usual, stirring my Mocha Gold and watching the uproar unfold.

Inside the Association, the atmosphere differed somewhat from the outside.

The public was happily debating whether that old man was Baekjeong or not, but the Association itself kept quiet on the subject—actively so.

Thinking about it, that was only natural.

If the rumor solidified into fact, it would mean the Association had stuffed the legendary Baekjeong into a civil affairs desk and forced him to handle abusive complaints. Nothing could be more humiliating.

The Association President had always been the sort who avoided me. He was one of the few who knew my identity, so my mere presence made him uncomfortable.

Lately, though, that avoidance had taken on a desperate edge. He wanted to stay clear, but the situation had reached a point where he no longer could.

I stirred my coffee regardless. It wasn't as if I needed to step forward and explain anything anyway.

The first thing to explode was the fear of mutants.

Until now, mutants had been urban legends. Isolated accidents that only unlucky hunters ran into, or bait for gallery threads.

Now they had been branded as public fact for all the world to see. Everyone had watched something the system could not catch emerge from a place the system itself had stamped as safe.

People were terrified, and terrified people began grasping at straws.

Within days, every conceivable method of detecting mutants poured out.

Shops selling talismans appeared. Someone claimed that sprinkling salt in front of a gate would keep mutants from coming out. An emerging cult insisted you could sense ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them by burning incense and bowing.

One famous hunter went on broadcast and sold a mutant-detection breathing technique he had supposedly developed, packaged as a million-won lecture. Breathe like this before entering a gate and your body would know first, or something to that effect.

The funny part was that the lecture sold out in an instant. Everyone was that desperate.

I opened the gallery on the civil affairs computer.

Every last one of them was pure nonsense. Something even the system couldn't catch was never going to be caught by an app.

Still, I understood the feeling that made people cling to anything at all. In a world where the answer key had vanished, they just wanted something to hold onto.

And that final comment would come back to plant its foot on mine a few days later.

It wasn't only the mutants that had become fact.

Until then, Baekjeong had been an urban legend—the old hero who held the final defensive line at the Grand Hall, who stood alone for three full days. Everyone had written it off as exaggerated bluster or pure fabrication.

Then that legend had been proven by turning a system-immune monster into a marble with a single gesture, right in front of the cameras. The legend was real, confirmed on video.

From that day on, the gallery was wallpapered with Baekjeong talk.

The fact that the reporters had started moving was the most irritating part of all.

It had been a sealed name. The nation had buried it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for twenty years. Now it was half-risen to the surface.

Seo Jingyeong wanting a private talk had almost certainly been about this.

That awkward problem, however, was shoved aside by the problem that arrived today.

The second explosion was that hunters had stopped entering gates.

This one was serious.

No matter how much the system proclaimed itself safe, no one believed those words at one hundred percent anymore. What if a mutant was hiding inside that gate? That single thought was enough to make everyone pull their feet back.

The news ran the story every day. Gate clearances this week had been cut in half. Hunter broadcast ratings had plummeted. Merch sales had crashed. One major guild indefinitely postponed a scheduled large-scale live raid; rumor said their marquee hunter had flat-out refused to go.

No one wanted to film themselves dying on camera anymore. The entire hunter industry, which had been running on entertainment, was reeling.

The guilds in particular were in chaos. They were the ones who had made money off the system meta; once that meta started to shake, the fire landed squarely on their feet. If the system that guaranteed safety was no longer safe, the product they sold was itself unstable.

These were the same people who had dismissed Kang Taehyun's methodology as a bug and a scam. Now that "bug" had become the only way to survive in front of a mutant.

Honestly, it was someone else's problem. I was a salaried civil affairs clerk, not a guild shareholder.

It stopped being entirely someone else's problem, though, because the third wave of fallout rolled straight up to my door.

That morning, the moment I opened the civil affairs office door, I stopped dead. More precisely, my wheels stopped.

People were lined up in the hallway. In front of the civil affairs office. In front of the counter where you take a number ticket.

At least twenty of them were standing there, waiting to see me.

Most wore hunter jumpers. Some even sported the marks of fairly well-known guilds.

The one at the front of the line spotted me and shot to his feet.

"M-Mr. Kang Taehyun! Please accept me as your disciple!"

That was the signal flare. The people behind him surged forward in a rush.

"Me too! Please teach me how to detect mutants!"

"I'll pay any tuition you want!"

"Please! At this rate I'm too scared to even enter a gate!"

Among them were hunters with decent name recognition—faces I'd seen on broadcast a few times, kids who ranked high under the system meta. Even those types had swallowed every scrap of pride and joined the line.

In front of a mutant, those fancy stats and rankings meant nothing. Everyone had finally learned that.

I stared blankly at the scene for a moment. Looking back, it was the natural progression.

People knew the talismans, the salt, and the apps were all garbage. So what was the surest way to tell a mutant? Learn from the person who had actually sensed one and taken it down. And the person who had demonstrated that live had, unfortunately, been me.

Everyone had realized that learning senses outside the system was the only insurance policy in the age of mutants. That wheelchair old man had suddenly looked far more realistic than any fake talisman.

Three disciples already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had my shoulders killing me. If it became twenty, how many bags of gravel was I going to have to throw? Just imagining it made both arms tingle.

I quietly tried to close the door again.

"Sir! Don't close the door!"

Someone jammed a foot into the gap.

"I'm seriously desperate. Last week a teammate got taken by a mutant. I don't want to die like that."

It was the kid at the front. His eyes were bloodshot. I had seen those eyes somewhere before—the eyes of someone with nowhere left to go. Exactly the same eyes Yejin had worn the first time she came looking for me.

The problem was that the line held twenty pairs of those eyes.

One ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠person, I might have accepted reluctantly the way I had with Yejin. Twenty was impossible. I had one body and two arms, and one of those arms had to stir coffee.

"Pull your foot out. I can't teach that many."

"Then even just a few of us…!"

"That won't work either. Three is already more than I can handle."

This was beyond what I could manage. It wasn't a matter of throwing gravel one by one; I would have needed to open an entire military academy.

My peaceful mix-coffee life was clearly about to be completely wrecked by that line.

I let out a long sigh and pulled out my phone. Moments like this required somewhere to dump the annoying work. Fortunately, there was exactly one person suited for it—someone who understood 1st Generation methodology and had the organizational power to run it as a structure.

Vice Guild Leader of Baekho Guild, and an old comrade who had once stood behind my wall at the Grand Hall.

I called Docheol.

He picked up before the second ring, as if he had been waiting for this call.

"Baekjeong. What's this? You calling me first for once."

"You. Take some people off my hands."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's a line of twenty outside my civil affairs office right now. All of them want to be taken as disciples. I can't handle this. You take them."

Silence hung on the other end for a moment. Then I heard a low laugh.

"Baekjeong. You understand what you're saying right now, don't you?"

That laugh somehow felt ominous.

"I'm just saying share the people. No other meaning. I want to drink my coffee in peace, and you handle that line however you want."

"Even if there's no other intent, this turns into something else entirely."

Docheol's voice sounded oddly excited.

"Think about it. Baekjeong has personally started raising successors. Teaching how to hunt mutants, no less. How far do you think this rumor is going to travel?"

"What rumor? I'm just dumping them on you because they're annoying."

"Your intent might be that. The world won't take it that way."

He paused for a beat.

"Those twenty you pass over won't stay twenty for long. Prepare yourself properly."

After hanging up, I scrubbed my face dry with both hands, looking thoroughly put-upon. I didn't like Docheol's scheming one bit, but clearing the swarm of flies outside the door came first.

That evening, staff from Baekho Guild arrived in a swarm and collected every last person from in front of the civil affairs office. The marketplace-like hallway finally returned to its usual quiet.

Well past quitting time, the Association building stood empty of people. Only then did I take a mouthful of my completely cold Mocha Gold.

I finally felt like I could breathe again. I believed without the slightest doubt that tomorrow I would be able to return to my peaceful daily routine.

That was when it happened.

From the far end of the hallway came a presence that was thoroughly strange. Footsteps so tightly suppressed that every joint in the body seemed to scream with each step.

I stopped my wheels with the coffee cup still in hand.

Beneath the half-dimmed corridor lights, a silhouette in plain clothes came staggering forward. Eyes tightly shut, binding every last sense with mana alone, a human who had forced their way down into the middle of the city.

It was Dohagyeong.

"You always said that if truly unmanageable ones showed up, you'd send a signal on the quietest night of all," I muttered under my breath.

The closed eyelids trembled faintly. Through the gaps in the suppressed mana, Dohagyeong forced out a cracked, strained voice.

"Couldn't send it."

"Why?"

"Lately… there are no quiet nights to be found."

At those few words, the air inside the civil affairs office froze cold in an instant.

"That sticky writhing that started at the northern Gyeonggi gate… I can feel it across the entire country now. In the blind spots the system can't detect at all."

Compared to the empty rumors Docheol was cultivating, a genuine, massive disaster had already arrived on the doorstep.