Chapter 49
In modern times, a nation's power was no longer proven only on the battlefield.
After the Renaissance.
After the Industrial Revolution.
After two world wars.
Humanity had reached an age in which, at least outwardly, it spoke of peace.
Fighting with tariffs instead of all-out war.
Choking others with investment instead of invasion.
An age in which the media, diplomacy, trade, and culture—not guns and swords—were used to seize an adversary's lifeline.
Hunters were no different.
Of course, strength was still the most important thing to a Hunter.
Superhumans who entered dungeons to kill monsters, stopped rifts, and were deployed in national disasters.
Their essence had not changed.
But when the times changed, so did the way strength was used.
Hunters could no longer afford to be merely strong.
Popularity.
Image.
Media exposure.
Political influence.
Corporate value.
Advertising revenue.
Fandom, and so on.
Because once a guild became global, one Hunter's combat power became a brand, the brand became diplomatic power, and diplomatic power became money.
In that modern Hunter society, the Cheongryong Guild was an outlier.
Cheongryong of Gangdong.
One of South Korea's four major guilds.
Yet at the same time, it was the most 'old-fashioned' guild.
Only one thing mattered to them.
Strength.
Strength capable of forcing others to their knees.
Strength to seize whatever they wanted and take it for themselves.
The law of the jungle.
Winner takes all.
The strong prevailed, and the weak perished.
Even while others judged a Hunter's caliber by appearance, reputation, brand value, and political clout, Cheongryong still believed only in bloodstained fists.
In a way, it was a remnant of the days when South Korea's Hunter world was still underdeveloped.
A remnant of the era when gangsters, political thugs, private mercenaries, and dungeon brokers ran wild together.
The last filth of Korean Hunter society, never fully scrubbed away even after the War on Crime.
That was the Cheongryong Guild.
Even so, the reason Cheongryong was called one of the four major guilds was simple.
“No matter what anyone says, strength is the most important thing to a Hunter.”
Cheongryong did not discriminate.
Convicted criminals.
Excommunicated Hunters.
Those who had sold out their comrades inside dungeons.
Traitors who had stabbed their guild in the back and fled.
People whose résumés a normal guild would tear up the moment they landed on a desk.
Cheongryong gathered up that trash.
If they had strength.
If they had ambition.
If they had the nerve to do dirty things with a smile for money.
Whatever they were, Cheongryong took them in first and asked questions later.
As a result, it was the only one of the four major guilds without a currently active S-rank Hunter, but—
In exchange, it gained overwhelming numbers.
The guild with the largest number of professional Hunters in South Korea.
A group whose standards varied wildly, but whose sheer manpower and violence surpassed those of the other three guilds.
And now.
The Korean branch of the Life Resources Administration.
The branch director's office on the top floor.
Seo Mun-hee had invited Cheongryong's guild master.
Black tea brewed from premium tea leaves.
Even small cookies prepared to be savored one bite at a time.
But the guest was far removed from such etiquette.
Gulp, gulp.
A woman with striking scars running lengthwise down both sides of her face drained the tea like water.
The Cheongryong Guild Master.
Ma Jaerim.
She mulled over for a moment whether Seo Mun-hee had been insulting or praising them, then shrugged.
“Kehahaha.”
A low, rasping laugh.
“So, why did our esteemed Life Resources Administration branch director summon me, Ma Jaerim, the Cheongryong Guild Master?”
Seo Mun-hee set down her cup.
“It's simple.”
A thin smile played at the corners of her lips.
“Guild Master Ma Jaerim. Would you like to become friends with us?”
“⋯What?”
An international organization with branches around the world.
And among them, the Life Resources Administration, which managed the resource known as men, was extending a hand first.
Its counterpart was the Cheongryong Guild, treated as filth by Korea's Hunter world.
It was plainly not a normal proposal.
Nor had Ma Jaerim risen this far on luck alone.
The Murim smuggling routes of Yanbian, China.
The closed-dungeon zones of Kyushu.
Even the illegal Hunter auction houses of Southeast Asia.
Starting in Korea's private Hunter underworld, she had tasted every flavor the world had to offer—the bitter, the sweet, and the shit—in all sorts of places.
So she laughed right away.
Grin.
“You want to use us as your 'shield'?”
“Hmm?”
“I'm not some sucker, you know.”
Thump.
The expensive teacup made a soft clink.
“Even if our Cheongryong is weaker than the other three guilds when it comes to the entertainment world and information networks, did you really think I wouldn't know the Life Resources Administration's current situation?”
“I'm not sure what you mean.”
“Don't play dumb. You fell out with Korea's Hunter world over the Baekho Guild affair. When you tried to forcibly tie Hyeonmu and Baekho together.”
Hunter society is run by Hunters themselves.
It was an old unwritten rule.
And the Life Resources Administration had crossed that line in a big way not long ago.
It had effectively tried to force Baekho Guild into Hyeonmu Guild, and in the process had provoked two S-rank Hunters.
The result was failure.
More than a month had passed, but the fallout had yet to settle.
So Ma Jaerim had drawn a conclusion.
The Life Resources Administration needed a shield.
Not a legal shield, but one to take on dirty work in its place.
A shield like Cheongryong, which moved for money,
bit when offered a stake,
and smashed its opponents to pieces when ordered.
“So you couldn't get by on carrots alone and decided to pick up a stick?”
“⋯⋯.”
“You want me to break a few people you don't like, turn public opinion around, and shut those reporter bastards up if necessary. That's why you called me, isn't it?”
Silence passed for a moment.
And then.
“Pfft.”
A small laugh leaked out.
At first, it was very quiet.
Like fingertips brushing against a teacup.
“Pff.”
But the next moment.
The laughter burst out as though she no longer intended to hide it.
“Bwahahahahaha!”
The air in the branch director's office trembled.
No, that was how it felt.
It was only laughter.
She hadn't drawn a blade or revealed any killing intent.
And yet Ma Jaerim's shoulders tensed for an instant.
She was used to derision.
Mockery was familiar, too.
She had heard some crazy bitch's laughter time and again on blood-soaked battlefields.
But this was different.
It wasn't laughter looking down on her.
It was laughter from someone who had never even put her on the same footing.
Like the laughter of a human who heard an ant ask whether it could use her as a shield.
That overwhelming gulf was embedded in a single laugh.
“Haa.”
Seo Mun-hee had laughed for quite a while before finally catching her breath.
The motion of wiping the corners of her eyes with her fingertips was elegant.
But after the laughter just now, even that elegance looked somehow grotesque.
“Guild Master Ma Jaerim. Really⋯ Guild Master Han Yura and Guild Master Yoon Mi-ja too. Why does everyone think so highly of themselves?”
“What?”
“The best you can imagine is that the Life Resources Administration wants a shield.”
Her smile thinned.
“And in a country without even one global guild. In this little patch of land that has barely scraped its way into the ranks of advanced Hunter nations.”
Ma Jaerim's expression hardened at those words.
“The International Life Resources Administration is an organization with branches throughout the world. The scarce resource known as men, genes, bloodlines, childbirth rights, parental rights, intergovernmental population agreements⋯ All those interests pass through our hands. And a falling-out with Korea's Hunter world?”
Ripples spread across the red tea.
“That sort of matter isn't even worth the headquarters looking into directly. Compared to the incidents erupting somewhere in the world every month over men's rights, the commotion here is merely a few bothersome mosquitoes sucking blood.”
Seo Mun-hee's smiling eyes curved gently.
“You seem to have misunderstood something. We can afford to fall out with Korea's Hunter world. Our purpose is, after all, the acquisition and management of high-quality male resources, not socializing among Hunters.”
“⋯!”
“And above all.”
She paused.
As if deliberately drawing out the moment.
“At the current level of Korea's Hunter world, I could tear half of it apart by myself in a single day.”
A radiant smile.
A polite tone.
Yet a thick scent of blood clung to what lay beneath.
“Of course, that is, if the Ministry of Men and Family Affairs didn't exist.”
Only then did Ma Jaerim realize.
This woman wasn't merely bluffing.
She was fundamentally different from those lowlifes.
Something deeper.
A kind of monster that, beneath the shell of states, systems, and international organizations, counted people not by name but by number, classified lives not by emotion but as resources, and handled all of it with a smile.
“Th-then⋯ why did you, the oh-so-great Life Resources Administration branch director, seek me out?”
She had said she didn't need a shield.
Her attitude said she didn't need an errand runner, either.
If so, why go to the trouble of calling Cheongryong?
Seo Mun-hee smiled as though she'd been waiting for that question.
“It's simple. Our purpose and Guild Master Ma Jaerim's are the same.”
“Our purpose is the same?”
Hunters and the Life Resources Administration.
Cheongryong and an international organization.
Two names that seemed to have nothing in common whatsoever.
At that moment.
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“Cheongryong Guild. It hasn't been completely unified yet, has it?”
“!!”
A chill.
Ma Jaerim's back stiffened.
It was a fact known to only a tiny handful even within Cheongryong.
Outwardly, the announcement had already been made.
That Ma Jaerim had settled Cheongryong's internal strife.
That the former guild master had died.
And that the guild had been reintegrated under a new system.
At the very least, that was what even the other three major Korean guilds must have believed.
But.
A non-Hunter organization like the Life Resources Administration knew the truth behind it?
“The former Cheongryong guild master, whom you thought you'd killed, is alive.”
“How the hell did you find that out⋯ Don't tell me you know where that bitch is?”
“No. Unfortunately, we don't know her location. It wasn't of interest to us, so we didn't track her separately.”
“Then what do you know?”
“Her purpose.”
Seo Mun-hee's smile became sharper.
“That woman's purpose.”
The air in the room settled heavily.
She waited, seeming to savor the silence for a moment, then continued in a slow voice.
“That woman you tried to stab to death with the Black Blood Snake Poison, one of the Ten Great Forbidden Poisons you thought had been discarded even in Chinese Murim. The bitch who survived and hid herself is now eyeing my ‘prey.’”
“What?”
“That's why I'm proposing we cooperate.”
It was simple.
“Guild Master Ma Jaerim will swallow Cheongryong whole, while I get rid of the bug clinging to my man—that's the idea.”
“⋯⋯.”
“Well? Isn't that more than enough reason for us to join hands?”