Chapter 9

Chapter 9. Necessary Evil

***

"But I refuse."

A heavy silence settled inside the hospital room.

Kim Dae-han's pupils widened faintly, then soon sank into calm.

It was the reaction of someone who had expected this possibility.

But behind that smile, there was unmistakable bewilderment.

"May I ask why? Were the conditions insufficient?"

"No. The conditions are not the problem."

I leaned my back against the wall and folded my arms.

My gaze was fixed on him, but the calculator in my mind was running coldly.

"The moment I carry the tag of being affiliated with City Hall, my actions will come with restrictions. I have no intention of hunting while waiting for someone's approval."

At my words, Kim Dae-han nodded.

He loosened his necktie slightly and took one step closer.

Round two of the negotiation table had begun.

"You saw that precisely. If you were an ordinary civil servant Hunter, that would be the case. A whole day would vanish into paperwork."

He lowered his voice.

As if he were confiding a secret to a co-conspirator.

"That is why what I am trying to create is a 'team.' Nominally, it will belong to the Supernatural Ability Management Department, but its command structure will be a detached unit connected directly to me."

"A detached unit?"

"Yes. Approval lines? They are unnecessary. Everything will be judged by you, Mr. Do-jin, and executed by you. I will only handle the cleanup and support afterward."

This was another tempting offer.

An unprecedented arrangement that would give authority without demanding responsibility.

But I did not bite immediately.

There was no free lunch.

That was the law of the world I had learned in my life before the regression.

"For a salaried Hunter, that treatment is excessive. What more do I have to offer in return?"

"Subjugation."

Kim Dae-han answered instantly.

"The incubation-type Gates that the team finds. Please handle the monsters inside them, Mr. Do-jin. I can see barriers, but I do not have the power to kill the monsters within."

"You can find incubation-type Gates?"

"We are working on a method. There is someone among the team members with a trait capable of that."

Incubation-type Gates were not easy to find. The Donggureung Gate had been the same.

That was a case I had known about only because the incident had already occurred.

By nature, incubation-type Gates were hidden behind concealment barriers.

Detection equipment rarely picked them up, and their mana reactions were faint.

So by the time they were discovered, it was usually too late.

But there was a way to find them?

I could not answer easily.

If it was possible, it was enormous.

But that was why it was even harder to believe.

Not yet.

I could not trust it so easily.

"You seem certain I can do it."

"I am certain."

"I only just Awakened."

"Yes."

He looked me straight in the eyes.

"Because you have the same eyes as I do, Mr. Do-jin."

My heart beat a little harder.

Eyes steeped in malice. The eyes of an avenger who looked calm on the outside, while the inside had burned down into ashes.

Without realizing it, the corner of my mouth twisted.

"I heard your offer. But... I cannot give you an answer right away."

I deliberately drew it out.

So the other party would grow impatient. So he would understand that the choice belonged to me.

"Of course. Please think it over slowly after you are discharged."

Kim Dae-han smiled it off leisurely, but a faint trace of impatience flickered across him.

He picked up the silver metal case he had set on the floor and placed it on the table.

A heavy metallic sound rang out.

Thunk—

"I should give you this. It is your Gate-clear reward."

"What is it?"

"The things that were at the scene when we rescued you at Donggureung. Our team's appraiser has finished the appraisal as well."

Click.

When the case opened, I saw items laid on velvet and a thick envelope.

The Mana Stones had already been converted into cash and placed inside the envelope.

The handling was so clean it was almost unsettling.

Had he already assumed I would accept and prepared it beforehand?

"We have a capable friend on the team. The basic fee has been deducted."

"Should I thank you? Or should I pay this back?"

"Pay it back? This is legitimate compensation."

Kim Dae-han rose from his seat.

A clean departure, as if he would not cling any further.

But the moment he grasped the doorknob, he paused.

"You may suspect me if you wish. You may even mock me, asking what a mere civil servant could possibly know."

His face was shadowed against the backlight, but his eyes alone shone fiercely.

"But please know one thing. I have no interest in anything but the complete annihilation of Gates. That, at least, is the truth."

"......"

The door closed.

Silence returned to the hospital room.

I stared blankly at the metal case on the table.

The Gate Administration Bureau, and Kim Dae-han.

Those two keywords tangled and untangled repeatedly inside my head.

Before the regression, I had no connection to government agencies.

Their intelligence network was not something I could ignore.

Although they were corrupt and painfully slow, the sheer amount of database material they possessed was overwhelming.

What if Kim Dae-han opened a back door into that database?

I might be able to find clues I did not know about.

'Let us keep every possibility open.'

I picked up the metal case.

A business card was tucked into a gap in the case.

[Kim Dae-han, Team Leader, G City Hall Supernatural Ability Management Team].

And a small printed ID photo.

A face I had passed over without much thought.

But seeing it again brought a strange sense of déjà vu.

Where had I seen him?

The news? A newspaper?

As I traced fragments of memory, one article flashed through my mind.

[The Hidden Hero of the Donggureung Disaster, City Hall Civil Servant Mr. K Dies in the Line of Duty.]

[Maintained Barrier Alone Until Citizens Evacuated... Ultimately Made the Ultimate Sacrifice.]

'Was it him?'

A sigh slipped out.

A civil servant who had been a barrier specialist, not a Hunter.

The man who had kept a barrier up while coughing blood until support forces arrived, and who was eventually found with both arms severed.

A follow-up report had said hundreds of citizens survived because of his sacrifice.

"Kim Dae-han......"

I brushed the name on the business card with my fingertip.

I understood why his eyes were so deep, and why he had been so desperate.

He was not someone who had survived.

He was someone still fighting even after death.

I remembered his name.

***

On the way to my family home.

The street I walked for the first time in a long while was full of life.

The scenery of a peaceful city before gray despair descended.

But irony was hidden behind that peace.

Vroom—

A huge advertisement was attached to the side of a low-floor bus stopped at the station.

[The Future of Clean Energy! Mana Stones Will Change the World.]

[EduMana - Recruiting for the Accelerated Completion Course for the Mana Stone Refiner Certification.]

"The future, huh."

A hollow laugh escaped me.

'Mana Stone.'

When the Gates opened and monsters poured out, humanity sensed its own extinction.

But when this blue jewel from the hearts of monsters was discovered, the situation reversed.

A dream energy source, one hundred times more efficient than oil and producing no pollutants.

One Mana Stone could supply a household's electricity for a month, and a cartridge the size of a finger could run an electric car for an entire week.

Nuclear power? It was now becoming a relic of the old era.

The streetlights illuminating the city's nights, and even the Mana Stone bus passing beside me now, all moved on energy that came from monster corpses.

Economists praised this as the 'Fifth Energy Revolution.'

It was an age in which a nation's competitiveness was determined by how many Mana Stones it could secure.

Gates were no longer disasters.

They were a 'goose that laid golden eggs,' and a 'mine' that drove national GDP.

But Hunters entered those mines instead of miners, and they dug out blood instead of coal.

A city whose lights could only turn on if someone died.

We had become addicted to the by-products of the monsters that had come to kill us.

Humanity had become a body that could not live a single day without Gates.

'That must be why bastards like the cult appeared.'

Fanatics who believed Gates were divine blessings.

What made it more chilling was that their logic was not entirely wrong.

Reality was affirming them.

Swallowing the bitterness, I kept walking.

Within this massive contradiction, Hunters were divided by class.

The 'noble Hunters' of the massive guilds, who monopolized Mana Stone mining rights and colluded with corporations.

And the 'civil servant Hunters,' who gathered the scraps and handled only the dirty work while belonging to public institutions.

The so-called 'rock-bottom Hunters.'

Kim Dae-han's offer had been a hand beckoning me into rock bottom.

It was the kind of offer an ordinary aspiring Hunter would spit on and walk away from.

But I knew.

The real truth lay at the darkest bottom.

I fiddled with the business card in my pocket once again.

For now, I saved the number.

***

Before I knew it, a familiar alley appeared. A savory smell drifted over the wall.

The smell of a home-cooked meal after nine years.

As my tension loosened, hunger surged in.

One night at my family home passed like a dream.

My mother's nagging, even the sound of my sister snoring in her sleep, sounded like lullabies.

The next morning.

I opened the metal case I had placed on my room desk.

When the heavy lid of the case opened, its contents were revealed.

"Wow."

The first thing that caught my eye was a white envelope.

It was quite thick.

When I opened the envelope, bundles of 50,000-won bills were packed inside.

The exchanged value of the Mana Stones. Roughly fifteen million won.

'They did not play any tricks.'

I looked at the stacks of money and fell briefly into thought.

With this much, we could put out the immediate fire.

After my father's disappearance, our family had always been hounded by debt.

My father, a first-generation Hunter, had been forced into service by the state in all but name, but what remained was only one faded medal and loans.

I remembered that even his life insurance had been denied under the pretext of a 'special disaster.'

'I should give this to Mother.'

With this money, we could cover several months of loan interest and living expenses.

Until I established myself as a proper Hunter, it would give us room to breathe.

I lifted the envelope and placed it deep inside my desk drawer.

I thought I should give it to her naturally later.

"Shall we get started?"

Now it was time to check the main dish.

Two objects wrapped in black velvet.

I carefully unwrapped them.

One was an artifact carrying a faint blue glow.

The other was a weapon wrapped in black leather.

They said the appraisal had already been finished, but I would not be satisfied until I confirmed it with my own eyes.

"Airi. Analyze them."

[Scanning...]

A blue information window overlaid itself in my vision.

The appraiser said to be on Kim Dae-han's team seemed to be quite skilled.

Even hidden options, which were hard to identify with an ordinary appraisal skill, had been neatly organized.

[Analysis complete. Appraisal accuracy: 99.8%.]

"What?"

That made no sense.

Even the chief appraiser of the Blade Guild before the regression had a limit of 95%.

At this level, it was practically the 'Eye of God.'

The team Kim Dae-han said he had gathered seemed to be composed of far better talent than I had expected.

[Successor, please review the list.]

[1 Rare Grade defensive artifact.]

[1 Rare Grade weapon.]

Airi's voice rang in my mind.

A faint smile rose to my lips.

'Rare Grade.'

Compared to the SSR and UR Grades that rolled around in the guild warehouse before the regression, they were honestly nothing more than toys.

But things were different now.

This was the point right after I had Awakened and finished the tutorial.

While most beginner Hunters trembled nervously with a single Normal Grade iron club, I had obtained two Rare Grade items.

This was the same as entering the game with cheat codes from the start.

There was no need to feel disappointed that they were not Unique.

If anything, equipment too excessive for my current level would become poison.

These items would become the sturdiest bricks to lay the foundation of my growth.

"Not bad."

I closed the case with satisfaction. Becoming too greedy would bring trouble.

Even now, I was already far enough ahead. No, more than enough.

But I would become stronger faster than anyone.

"Airi, check the equipment."

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