The Brotherhood of Gear and Masks
Wherever you went, wearing a mask was bound to draw attention.
The magic pouch sitting on the table probably helped draw every eye in the room, too.
The 21st-floor conference room, large enough to hold a hundred people, was packed.
Every gaze in the room turned toward me.
Not openly. They kept talking among themselves, only flicking their eyes over now and then to look my way.
They were clearly curious about who I was, why I was here, and what that magic pouch was supposed to be.
Would I have drawn less attention if I hadn’t been wearing a mask?
"Are you all right?"
Kim Min-ju whispered in a small voice.
I tapped the mask lightly and answered in kind. "Ironically, yes."
The mask was what drew attention, but thanks to it my face was hidden, so it wasn’t embarrassing.
Still, if I’d been sitting there all by myself, I would have felt awkward as hell.
I should be grateful to her and her coworkers for making sure I wasn’t left alone.
Kim Min-ju glanced down at the smartphone in my right hand, the one I kept tapping with my index finger, and smiled faintly. "That’s a relief."
"So you were part of the expedition team?"
The reason I was here was to be introduced to the expedition party.
That, and to hear the explanation about the Hongyureung Gate expedition.
And yet the front desk staff I’d seen in the lobby were here with her.
There was only one thing to conclude.
As I’d suspected, they were all Hunters.
No wonder their eyes had felt familiar. It was that look.
"We’re not combat team members, though. My older sisters and I are with the supply team."
"The supply team?"
I looked from Kim Min-ju to her coworkers.
In an expedition party, the supply team usually handled simple manual labor.
They didn’t look like the sort of people who would be assigned that kind of work.
"Oh? Have you never joined an expedition before?"
"Pardon?"
I hadn’t, of course.
How could some office worker possibly join an expedition party?
My only experience with anything like it had been seeing Do-hee and Tae-cheon off at the gate, cheering them on from the front.
"Then let me give you a brief explanation."
Huh?
It seemed she’d misunderstood something.
I had never joined an expedition party, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how they worked.
I’d been the team leader of an A-rank guild team. There was no way I wouldn’t know.
"I was about to-"
"The supply team is what we call the team that carries mobile mana generators."
Kim Min-ju beat me to the punch.
Without giving me a chance to clear up the misunderstanding, she started explaining the supply team.
Wait, that wasn’t the kind of supply team I knew.
They carried what?
"This time, the dismantlers were left out. The purpose of this expedition is to harvest Udamhwa, after all."
"Hold on."
"Yes?"
"What did you just say? Mobile mana generators?"
"Ah, yes. Hongyureung Gate is a place where the miasma and cold are especially vicious. We need mobile mana generators for the supply team to endure it."
……
Ildae Group...
What a ridiculous place.
As she said, mana generators were devices that let ordinary people move around gates without incident.
Useful, yes, but not something just anyone could have.
The mana stones required to generate mana were absurdly expensive, so only major guilds that handled dismantlers could afford to use them.
And they’d modified those things for mobile use and taken them on expeditions?
"So that’s how it was..."
"Pardon?"
I thought I understood why the Ildae Group’s guild had grown so quickly in such a short time.
The mention that the dismantlers were being left out made it pretty obvious.
Which meant they’d originally been included.
In other words, while other guilds had to hunt monsters down to the gate, then haul the carcasses all the way back one by one, these people were hunting and dismantling at the same time.
"...Never mind. So the rest is the combat team, then?"
"Yes. The combat team consists of six A-rank Hunters, including Brother Yeon-hoo."
"Then-"
Clack!
The door opened just as I was about to ask who was on the team.
It was Woo Yeon-hoo.
He strode in with a man I’d never seen before.
The masked man, his covering hooked over the bridge of his nose, looked straight at me the moment he came in.
Not in a guarded way.
More like his face was saying, He really is wearing a mask?
"He’s the Ildae Guild’s vice guild master. His name is Oh Ju-han."
After Kim Min-ju gave the quick explanation, she stood up.
The coworkers sitting beside her, the people gathered in small groups throughout the room, all rose as well.
I was the only one still sitting.
Soon Woo Yeon-hoo, now standing at the center front of the room, looked around the conference hall and spoke.
"You don’t need to stand. I know everyone’s busy, so I’m grateful you came together so quickly."
At that, the people in the room answered one after another. "It’s nothing." "Of course we had to come!"
Kim Min-ju and the coworkers beside me nodded along, saying, "Mm-hm, mm-hm."
There was a clear hierarchy here, but the atmosphere between them seemed good.
It was surprising how little falseness or awkwardness I could sense from them.
"I’ll get straight to the point. The reason I gathered you all here today is that we’ve finally found a plant-harvesting expert."
Every pair of eyes in the room turned toward me.
Because the plant-harvesting expert Woo Yeon-hoo had mentioned was me.
Had they realized why I was here?
Their curiosity had shifted into surprise and admiration.
"Mm, could you stand up for me, Mr. Ji-on?"
The person Woo Yeon-hoo pointed to was me.
It was the name I’d made up because I couldn’t exactly engrave the words warm finger onto a certificate.
If it had been up to me, I would have just used my own name.
But if the certificate had said warm finger, anyone could see it was forged, so there’d been no helping it.
Ji-on.
I’d taken the character for finger and the character for warmth.
I hadn’t come up with it myself. Chairman Woo’s secretary, Um Ju-a, had suggested it.
I took my smartphone out of my hand and rose slowly to my feet.
"Mr. Ji-on, the plant-harvesting expert introduced by Lee Seong-hun of the Baekwooncheon Guild."
"...I’m Ji-on."
I simply gave my name and dipped my head.
What was the point of dressing it up with flowery words?
Several people in the conference room clapped.
They were even clapping...
Thank God I was wearing a mask.
If not, I would’ve been standing there with a face red enough to burn.
"Mr. Ji-on, please show them that."
"That?"
"Yes."
"Ah."
He was talking about the snow dropwort.
He probably wanted to prove to everyone that my ability had been confirmed.
Understanding his intention, I immediately picked up the magic pouch on the table.
That pouch had been given to me so I could store the snow dropwort in it.
If I’d taken that snow dropwort out in plain view, it would have caused a mess.
He’d been right about that, so I’d accepted it without complaint.
In return, there had been one small favor he’d asked of me.
"Here."
I took the snow dropwort out of the magic pouch and showed it to everyone.
Gasps of admiration rippled through the room.
They’d recognized the mushroom in my right hand.
"Mr. Ji-on passed the test in front of my father and me."
All eyes in the room shifted between my hand and my face.
Several people let out loud exclamations. "Whoa!"
"I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you. Thanks to you, we can finally enter Hongyureung Gate for my younger sister."
With that, Woo Yeon-hoo even bowed deeply to me in formal thanks.
Was he being that serious because he was an honest man?
There was no way.
What he was doing was calculated showmanship.
"We’ll be entering Hongyureung Gate in two days. To save my younger sister, Woo Chae-yeon!"
So I quietly sat back down, careful not to draw any more attention.
I wasn’t the star of this room.
The expedition leader was Woo Yeon-hoo, and he was the one who deserved the spotlight.
He pulled a scroll sealed with wax from inside his jacket.
"The expedition will last ten days! Within that time, we’ll harvest Udamhwa and leave Hongyureung Gate."
He didn’t explain what the scroll was, but I could guess easily enough.
It was probably a map showing the shortcut from the entrance to where the Udamhwa grew.
He must have bought it from the Bio Guild and the Pharmes Guild, who had both gone on an expedition to Hongyureung Gate nine years ago.
Kim Min-ju apologized in a small voice. "I’m sorry."
"Hm? Ah. No, it’s fine."
"But Brother Yeon-hoo..."
She trailed off.
They were close enough that she called him Brother so casually.
She couldn’t quite say, "He used you to get everyone’s spirits up."
I tapped at my smartphone screen and shrugged.
I really wasn’t upset.
"He already apologized to me. If you add your apology on top of that, it starts to feel too heavy."
"...Ah!"
Right.
What Woo Yeon-hoo had done to me was already something we’d spoken about and settled.
If he’d gone and done it without asking, I might’ve been annoyed...
I looked down at the magic pouch containing the snow dropwort.
"I’m sorry, Mr. Warm Finger."
Woo Yeon-hoo had handed me the magic pouch and then apologised out of nowhere.
I tilted my head, unable to understand what he was apologizing for.
Had he done something to me?
Even after putting the snow dropwort into the magic pouch, nothing came to mind.
"...Out of the blue?"
"I may end up using you a little in the 21st-floor conference room."
The 21st-floor conference room was where his expedition team had gathered.
So that was it.
I realized what he wanted from me.
His expedition team had probably been waiting for someone like me for a long time.
All that waiting must have worn them down.
What he wanted to use me for was to lift everyone’s energy.
"I don't mind being used, but will it actually be useful?"
"You don’t... mind?"
"Why would I mind something that trivial?"
It was nothing worth making a fuss over.
There was no need to fuss over whether it was okay or not.
Since I’d worked as a guild executive, I knew very well that lifting people’s energy wasn’t easy.
We’d often used one another to raise the spirits of the guild members, too.
The one usually doing the using was Do-hee, while the ones getting used were Tae-cheon and me.
It worked better that way. It looked natural, and it was more convincing.
More than anything, I couldn’t picture an image of Tae-cheon and me using Do-hee.
"...Huh."
I really couldn’t picture it...
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
I fled from Ildae Group as if I were running for my life.
The expedition members had all crowded in at once.
If Kim Min-ju and her coworkers hadn’t acted as a shield...
Just thinking about it was dreadful.
As soon as I left the building, I headed for the blacksmith shop in Namsan.
I needed to pick up the forearm guards I’d commissioned.
And since I was about to enter an A+ rank gate, I planned to pick up some more equipment while I was at it.
I’d considered asking Woo Yeon-hoo, but after seeing what he was like today, I figured he’d end up overpreparing a bunch of things for me, so I gave up on that idea.
"Welcome!"
The blacksmith greeted me with a booming voice as soon as I stepped inside.
He was wiping dust off a piece of armor with a dry towel.
"I’m here to pick up my equipment."
"Equipment? What equipment do you mean?"
"What do you mean, what equipment? The forearm guards. I brought the monster leather yesterday and-"
"Ah! The fellow with the great dismantling skills! I didn’t recognize you because you were wearing a mask."
"Huh? A mask?"
I raised my left hand and touched my face.
My fingertips didn’t feel skin.
What they felt was the smooth surface of the mask.
Had I come all the way here still wearing it?
No wonder people had been giving me sideways looks...
"Here you go."
The blacksmith handed me one of the forearm guards.
I put it on at once.
Its size could be adjusted by pulling the straps, so it fit comfortably.
"Do you happen to have any B-rank equipment?"
"I do have D-rank equipment."
The blacksmith answered while scratching his thick arm hard.
Come to think of it, it had been a mistake to expect B-rank equipment from a blacksmith shop in front of an E-rank gate.
"If you need B-rank equipment, I could introduce you to a blacksmith. Want me to?"
"Oh, yes, I’d appreciate that."
"Hold on. I’ll write down the address for you."
The moment he finished speaking, the blacksmith took out a notebook and scribbled down the address.
Then he tore out the page and handed it to me.
"Though you may not be able to buy equipment from him."
"Pardon? Ah, does he run a blacksmith shop with restrictions on who can buy?"
"No, nothing like that."
"...?"
"Being good at your craft doesn’t mean you’re a good person."
Why are you introducing me to someone like that, old man?