Chapter 44
Along with Seo Ji-hyeok’s proposal that we reach an agreement, chains sprang out from the scale.
I tilted my head, staring at the chain that had stopped in front of me.
Now what was I supposed to do with that?
While I was looking at it in confusion, he said, “I’ve proposed a fair agreement to you. If you accept it, we become contractors.”
“Contractors?”
“It means we keep adding and subtracting proposals until the gains and losses between us are roughly equal.”
Then he went on to explain how the agreement worked.
If you drag things out for too long after agreeing to a settlement, you incur a penalty.
The penalty takes the form of the proposal’s weight becoming lighter, which means you have to make a bigger offer than the other side to keep things level.
If you break the contract, your body suffers a defect according to the terms of the agreement, and in severe cases you can die.
The scale’s power was close to a curse, so an arm wouldn’t grow back through regeneration or healing.
He finished his brief explanation and gave a nod.
“I admit there’s room to doubt the fairness. If you don’t like it, refuse now.”
“It was okay for me to refuse?”
“Would it really be an agreement if it started by force?”
“……”
“I’d like to say on my name that it will be fair, but I doubt that would mean much to you.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Seo Ji-hyeok was the head of a guild that took assassination requests to kill people.
He wasn’t the kind of man whose name alone inspired honor, so even if he invoked it, I couldn’t assume fairness was guaranteed.
And yet my intuition was singing at me to agree with him.
As if making an agreement with him was the right thing to do.
“Hmm….”
“If you’re going to agree, all you have to do is take hold of the chain. Think it over seriously.”
He warned me as I reached out, ready to grab the chain.
“Once we start an agreement by taking the chain, it can’t be broken in the middle.”
“Can’t be broken? So that means...”
“Yes. It means we’d be bound to the chain and have to stay together until the agreement ended.”
“……”
“Of course, that won’t happen.”
I’d have to spend eternity with Seo Ji-hyeok?
That was a horrifying thought.
And yet I still followed my instinct and grabbed the chain.
I was also curious to experience that strange ability for myself.
“The Balance Guild will not attack Baek Do-woon.”
Seo Ji-hyeok made the first offer.
“And we also won’t accept any requests to attack the Baekwooncheon Guild.”
At that, the scale tipped toward him.
His offer had been added as a small weight, enough to shift the balance.
“However, that does not apply if Baekwooncheon is the one making the request.”
The tilted scale rose a little.
It seemed the lighter weight had been adjusted.
So conditions could be attached?
I should try it too.
“I won’t attack the Balance Guild first without a valid reason. However, if I don’t recognize them as the Balance Guild, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
The scale tilted toward me, then rose slightly when the condition was added.
Seo Ji-hyeok’s eyes widened a fraction in surprise before returning to normal.
“Not bad.”
“Hm?”
“When people first agree to a settlement, they usually don’t attach conditions right away. They get too focused on making a single proposal.”
Saying that, Seo Ji-hyeok looked at the scale.
It still hadn’t leveled out.
It was leaning a little more to my side.
The scale seemed to judge my proposal heavier than his.
We’d both proposed that we not attack each other, so they should have been roughly equal, but the scale didn’t think so.
Honestly, since it was a scale summoned by Seo Ji-hyeok, I’d expected it to be rigged in his favor.
I’d thought the so-called fair agreement was all a load of nonsense.
Looks like I’d doubted him for no reason.
Seeing it tilt toward me, it really did seem like he’d meant what he said.
“Hmm….”
Seo Ji-hyeok rubbed his lower lip with his thumb and fell into thought.
From the look of him, he hadn’t expected his own proposal to come up short.
He didn’t seem shocked in the sense of, This is insane. Somehow, it looked more like he accepted it.
For some reason, he’d come to terms with it.
My proposal that I wouldn’t attack his guild alone, and his proposal that the entire Balance Guild wouldn’t attack me.
Why on earth had the scale leaned toward me?
I couldn’t make sense of it either, so why had he?
“I, Seo Ji-hyeok, will lend Baek Do-woon a small scale that can be used to reach a fair agreement.”
As soon as he added another proposal, the scale balanced.
A small scale?
“Mm, it’s level now. Will you agree as is?”
“Question.”
“You’re wondering what the small scale is?”
Without me even asking, he answered right away.
It seemed he’d lent out a small scale many times before.
Other contractors must have asked him what it was too.
“The small scale is used for agreements like this.”
Then he explained it.
The scale floating between us now could handle even large proposals without issue.
But the small scale was different.
The thing was much smaller than the suspended scale, and because of that, it could only carry light proposals.
The penalty for that was not as severe.
No matter how severe it got, the worst result was the permanent loss of an arm.
Again, he said regeneration or healing wouldn’t make the arm grow back.
“You can keep adding proposals, but I’d recommend ending it here. For your own good too.”
He said it with a simple, matter-of-fact expression.
He looked like a man who had already achieved the goal he’d set out for.
Almost as if his aim had been to make sure I didn’t attack the Balance Guild.
“Fine, I’ll accept the proposal to end the agreement.”
Whatever his motive was, it seemed best to bring the agreement to a close.
His agreement with me might be fair, but it still imposed restrictions on my actions.
And once your actions were restricted, there was less you could do.
“The fair agreement is concluded.”
Once he and I both voiced our intent to end it, the chains of the scale snapped apart.
The chain wrapped around my arm like a snake, then quickly vanished into transparency.
Even when I touched my arm, I couldn’t feel the chain at all.
Afterward, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, he summoned the small scale.
He held out a hand and caught it as it slowly floated toward me.
“I have one question.”
“What is it?”
“What happens if you don’t teach someone the rules when making an agreement?”
“……”
Seo Ji-hyeok didn’t answer. He only smiled.
Looking at that smile, I realized he hadn’t needed to explain the rules on purpose.
What had happened to the people who hadn’t been told the rules?
They would have received penalties, and then they would have paid whatever price came with them.
Was he only explaining them to me out of whim?
I was about to ask, but he seemed to consider the conversation over and vanished from in front of me.
“Seo Ji-hyeok….”
＊＊＊
“Why are you here?”
Seo Ji-hyeok had been waiting for me with one of his subordinates.
Even after seeing me, he stood there with his arms folded, so it didn’t seem like he meant to attack.
Well, we had already reached an agreement not to attack each other.
Even if he wanted to hit me, the penalty would kick in, so he couldn’t.
As the owner of the ability, though, maybe he had a loophole that would let him avoid the penalty.
He introduced the man standing beside him.
“This is Choi Ki-jeong. He’s the subordinate I mentioned before, the one who keeps pushing me.”
He’d once told me that one of his subordinates kept nudging him to come see me.
Choi Ki-jeong, whose entire body was covered in a black robe, revealed nothing but the lower part of his face.
He lowered his head in greeting without even showing his face.
He was holding a staff, so I guessed he was a mage.
“So?”
I had no obligation to return the greeting.
I turned my eyes back to Seo Ji-hyeok and asked what he wanted.
“Why did you come looking for me all of a sudden?”
“You made me come looking for you, and that’s what you say?”
Seo Ji-hyeok snorted as if he couldn’t believe me, then continued.
“Why did you impersonate me?”
“What are you talking about? Why would I impersonate yo... Ah.”
“You remember now? Because of that, I ended up fighting those Crowd bastards.”
I remembered.
Seo Ji-hyeok had come to find me because of something I’d done.
I had told the Crowd bastards that I was Seo Ji-hyeok.
That was clearly why he’d come looking for me.
The Crowd, thinking I was Seo Ji-hyeok, must have kept the Balance Guild under watch.
The Balance Guild, suddenly finding itself targeted by an A-class terror organization, would naturally have been thrown into confusion and tried to figure out why.
It probably wouldn’t have been that hard for them to conclude that I was the source of it all.
“I’m the wronged party here.”
“You lied to them using my name, and now you’re saying you’re wronged?”
“I didn’t lie. They chose to be fooled on their own.”
“They chose to be fooled? What does that mean?”
I explained what had happened back then.
I’d simply been wearing a mask while taking out the small scale.
That had scared the Crowd bastards into thinking I was Seo Ji-hyeok.
Of course, it was also true that I hadn’t denied it because it seemed easier to let it slide.
“So that’s why you said something weird about being careful if I wanted to protect that woman.”
“That woman?”
“The blacksmith woman.”
“Yu Jae-i? Why is she coming up?”
“For some reason, they thought I loved her and had hidden my identity to visit her.”
“……”
What the hell kind of nonsense was that?
I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t even speak.
What sort of misunderstanding even led to that?
Seeing the look on my face, Seo Ji-hyeok nodded.
“Yes, that was exactly the expression I made too. I was so baffled I didn’t even think about killing the idiots who spat out such nonsense.”
“I get that you had a rough time because of me.”
“Then—”
“Wait. That’s not my responsibility, is it? I never once said I was Seo Ji-hyeok.”
I had only failed to correct them when they mistook me for him.
He let out a deep sigh.
“Fine. Let’s move past that.”
“Huh?”
That easily?
Wasn’t he here to argue about that?
“What is your current relationship with Crowd?”
“Naturally, we’re enemies. I don’t like the things those bastards do.”
The World Tree Sprout agrees with the Manager’s words.
So far, I’d met two followers of the demon race.
One was a hunter who preyed on rookie hunters to make money.
The other was trash who used family as an excuse to drag people away.
Neither of them were the kind of people I could ever like.
“...I’m late, then.”
“Late?”
“I came to warn you that Crowd are dangerous.”
“Warn me? You?”
“Of course, the one I’d like to leave a good impression on isn’t you, but your younger brother and Lee Tae-cheon.”
Of course.
But wasn’t that exactly what made this late?
He’d taken an assassination request against me, and now he wanted to leave a good impression?
That wouldn’t happen unless Jeon Myeong-hwan’s neck was handed over first.
“They didn’t look all that dangerous to me.”
At my mutter, both of them shook their heads at once.
It was irritating, the way they seemed to be treating me like someone who didn’t know anything.
“What’s with that reaction? It’s pretty annoying, you know?”
“You may not believe it, but those things aren’t human. They’re the demons’—”
“Followers? I know.”
“......!”
Seo Ji-hyeok’s eyes widened in surprise.
Choi Ki-jeong beside him also looked like he hadn’t expected me to know that.
Was that why they’d been treating me like I knew nothing?
“Wait, you already knew?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’ve already killed two of them.”
“Hah. Now that is unexpected.”
It seemed they’d assumed I’d never dealt with them personally.
Had they thought I was just bluffing without even meeting them?
If so, they’d misread me by a mile.
“That actually works out well.”
As he said that, Seo Ji-hyeok looked at the subordinate beside him.
Choi Ki-jeong gave a nod.
Even with the hood covering his head, his eyes weren’t visible, but they clearly exchanged a look.
“Let’s form an alliance with us, Baek Do-woon.”
“An alliance? You don’t mean the Balance Guild and I should form an alliance, do you?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“You tried to kill me just a little while ago.”
“Well, isn’t there a saying that yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally?”
“Do you have any shame?”
“Would I have taken an assassination request if I did?”
...Fair point.
It was a fair point, but why did I suddenly feel like punching him in the jaw?
The sprout fully agrees with the Manager’s opinion.
Yeah, Saessak.
You think so too, right?