Chapter 9
I arrived at a café in Gangnam and looked around.
The neighborhood was a little too fancy for my old clunker, so I felt awkward handing it over to the valet, but I wasn’t particularly attached to my car.
Even if I made a lot of money, I’d probably just buy something decent and leave it at that.
Besides, I couldn’t afford to spend money on a car right now.
What did a broke, jobless guy who’d come to scrape together startup capital need with a car?
“Over here, over here.”
After looking around for a while, I spotted Zephyros waving at me with a smile.
There’s a woman with him, too?
“Hello. And you are...?”
“She’s my junior.”
“Hello! I’m Bae Sujin! I was there that day, too, but you didn’t see me, did you?”
“Oh, on assessment day. I think I caught a glimpse of you.”
So this was the woman who’d been talking with Zephyros.
“Well, I imagine you’ve had some time to let all that turmoil settle down.”
“Yes. Oh, and please feel free to speak casually. You’re quite a bit older than me, after all...”
“Hmm, then shall I?”
“Yes, that’d be more comfortable.”
“Haha, I really shouldn’t be doing this.”
In fact, Sujin, who was sitting beside him, was glaring at Zephyros.
“The rule for our company’s scouts is to speak politely to everyone, regardless of personal relationships, seniority, or ability.”
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry for making you...”
“No, no. Rules don’t have to apply equally to everyone, you know. Hehe. You understand, Sujin? You can’t do it, but I can. If you’re jealous, why don’t you become a founding member of the company?”
“Tch.”
“Haha... To be honest, I did have some reservations before asking to meet. Of course, I know RHS is a very good company, but you spoke negatively about it, Zephyros.”
At that, a fire lit in Sujin’s eyes.
“What! What are you talking about, Senior? You should be begging him to join us, so what do you mean by that?”
“N-No, I said that?”
“Well, the way you put it...”
“Huh, you’re pretty perceptive.”
Zephyros seemed to half-admit it.
I suddenly grew curious.
“Why?”
“Of course I’m not saying our company is bad. Why would I hate a company I even own shares in? I just feel sorry for the way the industry is these days.”
“Sorry for it...?”
“Back when I was clearing dungeons, they were all state-run. Anyone who wanted to could go in, raise their level, and collect loot. Of course, tax evasion was difficult. The government officials at the entrance checked your inventory and everything.”
Zephyros grinned as he casually brought up tax evasion.
Still, he didn’t seem like a particularly bad person.
“Hunters either advanced through the stages alone, depending on their abilities, or gathered people to clear dungeons together. Eventually, people formed guilds. Those guilds became associations that pursued a little more profit, then grew into companies that pursued even greater profits. Management agencies are companies in the broad sense, so let’s include them, too.”
A first-generation Hunter telling stories about the old days of the Hunter industry.
It was the kind of story I’d have loved to hear over a glass of makgeolli at an old-fashioned tavern. It was a shame we were in an upscale Gangnam café.
“There’s no romance like that in this day and age. Even if a rookie has the ability to make it on their own, all the useful dungeons are held by state-run development companies, private development companies, or guilds. It’s an era where you can’t put your abilities to use unless you belong somewhere.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, since these days it seemed natural for Hunters to belong to an organization.
“But companies and guilds aren’t bad, are they?”
At my words, Sujin, who’d been listening with a sour look, brightened and exclaimed.
“R-Right? Senior, what are you saying—”
Sujin clenched her teeth, her hand fidgeting below the table.
At the same time, Zephyros clamped his mouth shut, as if enduring pain.
Was she pinching him under the table?
“Ha, haha... That’s right... Companies aren’t bad.”
“Exactly, exactly. They provide support, and that’s great.”
As Sujin, still smiling brightly, rummaged through her bag for some documents,
Zephyros wiped the smile off his face and spoke with utmost seriousness.
“The problem is that they’re too good.”
“...Being good is the problem?”
How could something good be a problem?
“Being a Hunter means following a set strategy in a set dungeon, with plenty of support. That’s what working for a company or guild is like. I really hate dividing people into generations, but... the rookies these days are practically parts. Parts that only perform their assigned roles inside a Gate.”
The Hunters of the past had relied on their instincts and made their own way through all kinds of dungeons, guided by their own judgment.
As one of the leading figures of that first generation, it was only natural that Zephyros wasn’t fond of the way things were now.
But what he said next went a little beyond what I’d expected.
“What do you think would happen if Hunters like that were thrown into an untamed dungeon?”
“It wouldn’t be easy.”
“Most of them would die.”
“Well, then they could just stay away from those untamed dungeons, couldn’t they?”
At my words, Zephyros gave a faint smile and glanced out the window.
“How much do you trust this Awakening system and these dungeons that suddenly appeared?”
“How much do I trust them? Uh... I’ve never thought about it in those terms...”
“I don’t trust them.”
Back when nobody was a Hunter.
Back when dungeons didn’t exist.
One day, people suddenly became Hunters.
That man had been thrown into an unfamiliar world, fought desperately with his life on the line, and survived.
“People seem awfully sure that dungeons will keep being this accommodating forever.”
So Mr. Zephyros was a dungeon pessimist, too.
Humanity had advanced at a breathtaking pace thanks to new substances from dungeons and the technology of the Awakened.
Some people praised the dungeons for that, while others, like Mr. Zephyros, viewed them pessimistically.
“Even the wind, when it’s just a gentle breeze, is something precious that cools your sweat...”
Zephyros touched his teacup with a finger and sent mana flowing. A small whirlpool formed inside the cup.
The whirlpool grew larger and larger, then shattered with a sharp crack, scattering fragments everywhere.
Of course, the flying shards and droplets hit some invisible barrier in midair and fell straight down.
“But a typhoon like this is bound to cause a lot of damage.”
That was an incredible display of mana control.
And that man was... a retired Hunter?
I was staring in shock when the sharp smack of Sujin hitting Zephyros across the back brought me back to my senses.
“Why’d you break a perfectly good cup in a café?!”
“I-It was... for educational purposes? I can pay for it...”
“Honestly, I can’t with you.”
“Anyway... I think dungeons are part of nature, too. Nature is unpredictable, and it’s difficult to hold back. If things change even a little from the way they are now, the current Hunter industry will take a huge hit, even if the past didn’t.”
“So, what do you recommend, Zephyros?”
Zephyros glanced at Sujin, then smiled and began to speak.
“I want you to avoid signing on with anyone.”
“If I don’t belong to anyone...”
“Freelancing.”
“Are you insane?!”
Before I could even respond, Sujin cried out sharply.
“That’s ridiculous. You don’t need to listen to that. What does Hunter Kim Segyun lack that he’d have to freelance?”
She had a point.
These days, “freelancer” was just a fancy word for day laborer.
A cheap way to fill out the numbers in a low-priority role.
“I don’t mean that kind of freelancer. I mean a real freelancer. The grease that keeps dungeons running when they can’t function on parts alone.”
“D-Don’t tell me...”
I had a feeling I knew what Zephyros was getting at.
And it was only natural that Sujin was horrified.
In a way, they were enemies of dungeon development companies.
“You mean Hunters who take on one-off contracts.”
Hunters who cleared dungeons that the dungeon development companies couldn’t handle themselves.
They were exactly what the name suggested: Hunters who signed one-off, job-by-job contracts to clear dungeons.
Naturally, they needed the instincts and ability to clear dungeons they’d never seen before, and they charged a fortune.
The most prominent example was Ahmad Triain, the French necromancer.
As the only person capable of clearing a Stage 57 dungeon, he collected enormous incentives from the French government every time he cleared one of its state-run dungeons.
“I-I’m going to pretend I never heard that.”
“Sujin, we can’t keep this guy under our roof no matter what. Think about it. Even if we offer him a two- or three-year contract and manage to sign him, do you really think he’d renew with our company? It’s better to approach him another way.”
“......”
“Plan B. Hand it over.”
Reluctantly, Sujin took some documents out of her bag and slid them toward me.
“Is this a contract...? Could I read it for a moment?”
“Of course. Were you going to sign without reading it?”
But was it all right for a contract to be this short?
I’d heard that Hunter contracts were incredibly thick.
Even my employment contract at that waste disposal company, which was nothing special, had been ten pages long.
But this was...
“It’s not an employment contract... It’s a sponsorship agreement?”
“You caught that right away. I’m going to claim the ad space first. And the best spot, too.”
As he said that, he pointed at my chest.
“The contract fee is... o-one... billion won?”
“That’s the total for five years. It’s nothing to be surprised about.”
Zephyros shrugged as if it were no big deal.
“So all I have to do is wear a big logo on my chest while I work? And you’re paying 200 million won a year for that?”
Some companies had offered me employment contracts worth 100 million won a year.
“In five years, that spot on your chest could be worth 10 billion won. Maybe even 100 billion.”
Even without knowing much about the Hunter industry...
It didn’t seem like the kind of deal you’d offer a rookie.
“It’s a gamble for the company, too. I’m pushing it through on my own authority.”
“So it’ll only be worth it if I grow enough to meet your expectations.”
“Raising people is my specialty.”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the contract.”
“Sign first, and you’ll find out.”
I thought it over for a moment, then picked up the pen and signed without the slightest hesitation.
The contract was so clear that I didn’t need to have a lawyer check it.
I wouldn’t belong to anyone, I could work independently, and I’d resolve my initial funding problem. Fundamentally, it was the best possible contract for me.
Once I secured some startup capital, the Elixir business would take off sooner or later, and I’d make more money than I knew what to do with.
More than the money, I liked the idea of Zephyros saying he’d help me grow.
Zephyros checked my signature and said cheerfully,
“Sujin, deposit one billion won into Hunter Kim Segyun’s account.”
A text arrived almost immediately saying one billion won had been deposited into my account.
Even though the coffers that had always been empty were now full, I wasn’t particularly interested in the money.
“So, how are you going to help me grow?”
Instead of answering, Zephyros smiled and stood up.
I stood up with him without thinking, and he said,
“Set the navigation and follow me. Chungju, North Chungcheong Province...”
**
Two cars arrived side by side at an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of Chungju, North Chungcheong Province.
Perhaps Ms. Sujin had gone back to the company, because Zephyros was the only one who got out of his car.
“Is this... a Gate?”
“That’s right.”
“It doesn’t look like it gets much use.”
Not all Gates were kept in perfect condition.
For one reason or another, unpopular Gates were sometimes left to languish like this.
But even if that was the case, this place seemed especially neglected.
What was going on here?
“You’re Level 3 now, right?”
“Yes.”
I’d cleared the Stage 1 Gate completely and gone up two levels.
It was impressive that this man knew my level even though I’d never told him.
He must have the dungeon rewards and the experience needed to level up completely memorized.
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem skipping the Stage 2 Gate and entering Stage 3.”
Your level was the minimum required to enter a Gate of that stage.
In other words, you had to be at least Level 3 to enter a Stage 3 Gate.
“As long as you explain it before we go in.”
No matter who Zephyros was, I couldn’t just enter such a suspicious Gate without an explanation.
“This is a Stage 3 Gate called the Abandoned Temple of the Stone Golems. In fact, it’s a dungeon with zero risk.”
“Aren’t stone golems incredibly strong monsters?”
“They are. But if they were, this wouldn’t be a Stage 3 dungeon.”
“Oh.”
Stone golems normally only appeared at Stage 20 or higher.
If they appeared in a Stage 3 Gate, that meant they were degraded versions that couldn’t perform at their full potential.
“The stone golems inside have completely stopped functioning. They don’t attack. They just sit there motionless.”
“Then isn’t this an insanely easy dungeon?”
Kill monsters that don’t attack and just stand there, and gain experience.
What could be easier than that?
At my words, Zephyros gave a bitter smile and said,
“To destroy a stone golem, you have to break the tiny life stone hidden somewhere inside the rock. So how would you do that?”
“Don’t tell me... You have to just keep mining away at a motionless stone golem...”
“Right. You have to find the life stone somehow and break it, whether that means swinging a pickaxe or something else.”
“Oh...”
Only then did I take in the scenery around us.
Good grief. No wonder a Gate had appeared in an abandoned quarry...
“Since these are monsters that normally appear at Stage 20 or higher, their durability goes without saying.”
No wonder it was unpopular.
Instead of looking cool while fighting monsters in a Gate, you spent all day swinging a pickaxe in a safe dungeon.
And since it was a Stage 3 dungeon, the rewards were probably lousy, too.
“But why did you bring me here...?”
“You can break down a hunk of metal in an instant. Do you think a lump of stone will be any different?”
That was true. This was the perfect environment for me.
That alone was already great, but Zephyros continued,
“Besides, this dungeon hasn’t been cleared yet.”
“D-Don’t tell me...”
A clear was only awarded to Hunters whose level was within five levels of the dungeon’s stage.
In other words, since this was a Stage 3 dungeon, only Hunters who were Level 8 or lower could earn the clear.
But no matter how strong a Level 8 Hunter was, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the respawn rate just by swinging a pickaxe all day.
It was designed to be nearly impossible to clear with the abilities of an ordinary Level 8 Hunter.
I knew that much, too. As I stared at Zephyros in shock, he smiled broadly and said,
“That’s right. Let’s make the name Kim Segyun echo throughout East Asia.”
The first-clear reward.
There were other rewards, such as items, proficiency, and experience, of course, but it didn’t seem like those were what Zephyros was after.
Not many people thought of it as a reward, but when a Gate was cleared for the first time, a message went out to all the Hunters in the region.
And South Korea’s region, or Zone, belonged to East Asia.
In other words...
South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, and Mongolia.
It meant that every Hunter in the region—part of the world’s largest economic bloc, with a population of nearly 1.7 billion—would receive the message.
“Fame.”
There were hardly any uncleared Gates left now.
They were known as dungeons deemed impossible to clear.
The immense fame that would come from the short message announcing that one had been cleared.
That was the real goal Zephyros was aiming for.
**
After Kim Segyun entered the Gate, Ryu Hyeonsu, left alone for a while, took out an e-cigarette and put it between his lips.
Bzzzz. Ryu Hyeonsu’s phone vibrated.
It was a call from Bae Sujin.
“Hello.”
─Senior, about the one billion won we just authorized for Mr. Kim...
“Yeah, what about it?”
─CEO Shin rejected it. What should we do? The money’s already in his account.
“What?”
Ryu Hyeonsu’s brow furrowed sharply.
“What the hell do you mean?”
─Exactly what I said. He says it was only a Stage 1 Gate... Maybe he just got lucky and his ability happened to be a good match for it. He says it wouldn’t hurt to verify him a little more before signing the contract...
“Ha...”
Ryu Hyeonsu pressed a hand to his forehead and seemed to think for a moment, then said,
“Change it to a personal sponsorship contract with me.”
─...Pardon?
“Didn’t you hear me? Change it to a contract where I personally sponsor him. Deduct the one billion from my incentives. We can have me take over the sponsorship contract in the form of a debt claim.”
─Are you really willing to go that far?
“Yeah, I really am willing to go that far.”
His creed was that when you had a winning hand in poker, you shouldn’t hesitate to go all in.
Besides, one billion won wasn’t even close to an all-in for him.
Ryu Hyeonsu gazed at the Gate entrance, his eyes filled with conviction.