Chapter 174

The Knights Guild took the hundred million from the Woojin Guild and handed over the rights to enter three mid-grade dungeons. They were all located in the Yeongnam region, which included Busan and its surrounding area.

The fact that the Knights Guild accepted only a hundred million for this transaction showed just how grateful they were to Suho for taking care of the recent incident. They even offered something that Suho hadn’t asked for.

“We noticed that you don’t have a healer in your guild yet. We will lend you the services of our best healer during your activities in Busan.”

“A healer? We don’t really...”

Dogyoon, who was buried in a massive pile of contracts that would have otherwise been left to Suho, was about to refuse Park Jongsoo’s offer at first. But Lim Taegyu, who’d been helping with the contract process, jumped at the offer. “Do you mean Lee Joohee, by any chance?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ah!” Taegyu looked quite surprised by this. He immediately whispered in Dogyoon’s ear, “Take that offer, no matter what. You’ll find her very helpful, in more ways than one.”

“What? In more ways than one?”

Taegyu didn’t wait for his son’s answer. He grabbed Jongsoo’s hand and grinned. “Thank you for your kind offer. People always say so many good things about the Knights Guild, and I can see why, what with how thoughtful you are.”

“Oh, please don’t mention it. Joohee volunteered to help, you see.”

“Ah, that’s Joohee for you!”

Dogyoon was still confused, unable to understand what was going on.

In any case, the guild gave us a discount, and they’re sending us a healer to work with us.

This was proof of how valuable Haeundae Beach, the location Suho had protected, actually was.

And so, the Woojin Guild led by Suho got to work in earnest in Busan. Not all the hunters in Busan were as friendly to them as the Knights Guild had been, however.

“Hey, did you hear? The Knights Guild handed over no less than three mid-grade dungeons to the Woojin Guild. For next to nothing, too!”

“Wait, what? Why did they bother to bid against us so eagerly back then? “

“I don’t care how impressive they were on Haeundae Beach—this isn’t proper!”

“If the Knights Guild lacked manpower, they shouldn’t have claimed the dungeons for themselves in the first place. Shouldn’t our guild be the first to get a chance at it, not the Woojin Guild?”

“The Knights Guild should have done a proper job in the first place. Then they wouldn’t have needed to call in reinforcements from elsewhere for Haeundae.”

“They’re a big guild, but sometimes I think they have very little going for them other than their size.”

The small- and medium-sized guilds who had been eclipsed by the Knights Guild, the biggest guild in Busan, began to complain. They were unhappy to have someone from outside Busan clearing their dungeons.

Their complaints were not entirely unfounded. Many had seen how serious the situation was at Haeundae, but the hunters of other guilds had been busy clearing other dungeons at the time of the incident. As a result, they had mostly only heard about it after the fact, rather than being there in person. A disaster, when seen through a screen, was not as impactful if seen with one’s own eyes. Now that even the mayor of Busan had stepped forward to publicly thank the Woojin Guild, the smaller guilds were beyond themselves with rage.

“Goddamn it! Who is this Woojin Guild, anyway? What’s the big deal?”

“I hear they’re a new guild with only three members.”

“Seriously? The guild master is a C-rank hunter, and the vice guild master is E-rank? What a joke.”

“So what did they do, exactly?”

“That foreigner named Esil found the gate toward the end of the video, right? Is that it?”

“I hear a man named Sung Suho defeated the boss, but there’s no footage of how that happened.”

Because most of the real battle had happened inside the instance dungeon that Harmakan had created, the resentment began to grow unabated.

“You. Stop.”

And when the Woojin Guild arrived at a gate to clear a dungeon they had paid for, someone got in their way.

Huh?

Puzzled, Suho watched the individuals blocking them. He didn’t know who they were.

“Suho— I mean, Guild Master,” Dogyoon quickly whispered in his ear. “They’re hunters famous in Busan. Their names are...”

“What do you want?” Suho asked as he listened to Dogyoon’s explanation.

A large man among the hunters stepped toward Suho with a wide frown, baring his teeth. “You. Look here—”

“W-wait, Mr. Noh Jungi! You can’t interfere like this! This is the Woojin Guild’s territory now!”

The employees of the Hunters Association in Busan, who were in charge of maintaining the gate, seemed greatly confused as they stepped in between the hunters and Suho’s guild members.

The large man, Jungi, glared down at them unhappily. “I know that. I can read.” He glanced at a sign nearby.

—Gwangalli Gate

*Access Restricted to Woojin Guild Members Only

Jungi ground his teeth and turned viciously toward the association employees again. “Does the association think this is really proper?”

“What? I’m not sure I follow...”

“The association is breaking its own laws.” Jungi looked at each of the hunters of the Woojin Guild in turn—Suho, then Dogyoon, and finally Esil. “Ha! Are you serious? Only three people? Since when was it allowed to clear a mid-grade dungeon with only three people?” he asked.

“He’s right. An assault team is supposed to consist of at least ten people!”

“This is clearly illegal!”

The hunters that had come with Jungi raised their voices immediately, joining in.

Suho laughed incredulously.

Looks like they’re here for the express purpose of getting in our way,

he thought. Hunters could be far more threatening than civilians when they complained. These hunters, with Noh Jungi at the lead, were summoning their mana as they stood threateningly. It was making the air around them ripple.

“P-please calm down...”

The problem was that the association employees who were supposed to soothe them were office workers, and therefore non-hunters. They were finding it hard to even breathe amid the stifling energy that filled the air.

“S-sorry I’m late!” Lee Joohee, the B-rank healer sent by the Knights Guild, had just arrived.

“Huh?”

The menacing mood in the air vanished completely.

“L-Lee Joohee?”

“What is she doing here?”

Jungi and his hunters’ eyes went wide after they recognized her.

“Oh! Nice to see you again. I’m glad to see that you all seem well,” Joohee said, noticing them and bowing.

They seemed embarrassed, waving their hands in the air.

“Oh, Joohee! Don’t do that! We should be the ones to bow to you!”

“How have you been, Joohee?”

“We heard you joined the Knights Guild. What are you doing here?”

Joohee responded, “Oh, I’m going to be helping the Woojin Guild for the time being. They don’t have a healer.”

Hmm?

Suho’s eyes gleamed with realization. Joohee’s appearance had affected the hunters rather oddly.

“Mr. Sung, I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, coming up to Suho and apologizing again politely.

“Oh, it’s all right. You were only a few minutes late.”

“I have to apologize about one more thing, actually,” she continued. “I ran into the scene of a car accident on my way here, and I spent some of my mana healing the wounded.” She then apologized again in a serious tone. It was a serious discourtesy for a healer to use her mana prior to a dungeon raid, but nobody could hold it against Joohee if they knew the sort of person she was or why she had done so.

“Oh. She hasn’t changed a bit...”

“Joohee, incredible as always.”

“Ahem...”

Any hunter of Busan who had received a free heal from her at least once, especially in the days when they’d had neither money nor connections, would still be extremely grateful to her. Even until relatively recently, Joohee had continued working as a freelance healer and provided her services free of charge to wounded hunters. There was a reason people called her the Saintess of Busan.

There was a whole lot of clearing of throats. The hunters seemed embarrassed, all their vicious energy suddenly gone.

So this is what my father meant.

Dogyoon finally realized why Taegyu had said that Joohee would be helpful in more ways than one.

“B-but still!” Jungi said again, clenching his eyes shut for a moment.

The other hunters also did their best to avoid meeting Joohee’s eyes and tried to resume their complaining.

“What’s illegal is illegal!”

“It was the association that defined a minimum headcount!”

The rule was a minimal safety precaution, intended to prevent small groups of hunters from attempting dungeons they could not handle and possibly being killed.

“It’s unacceptable that a weak guild like this was allowed to purchase this dangerous dungeon!”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Joohee said with a smile, realizing what was going on.

“I’m... sorry?”

“It’s true there is a minimum required number of hunters. But Mr. Woo, the president of the association, did include a caveat when he made that rule.”

“What would that be?”

As Joohee watched the frowning hunters, she suddenly wondered about Woo Jinchul, the amazing individual who had done nothing but impressive things since the Great Cataclysm. Perhaps, in his wisdom, he had foreseen even situations like this one.

“An assault team’s size shall include summons as well.”

As soon as Joohee spoke, Suho issued the command. “Arise.”

The hunters were shocked as countless creatures appeared around Suho. The shadow soldiers released a powerful burst of energy, dark smoke wafting from their bodies.

Jungi, who had been in the front, nearly faltered back with surprise. Suddenly, a tiny ant—Beru—suddenly sprang headfirst toward his face with a nasty shriek.

“Kieeeeek!”

“Ugh!” Jungi fell flat onto his bottom.

“Now, then,” Suho said, turning away from the startled hunters. He smiled faintly as he watched the gate ripple with a sinister blue energy. “Shall we begin?”

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

It took only three days for the Woojin Guild to clear the mid-grade dungeons they’d bought from the Knights Guild. This included the time required to mine the resources within them.

“This... This is unbelievable!”

Noh Jungi and all the hunters in Busan were appalled by the speed.

***

Meanwhile in the United States, Thomas Andre—the greatest S-rank hunter in the country and the guild master of the Scavenger Guild—was slowly pulling out his phone. “Hmm... I’ll have to tell Suho about this.”

“Thomas?”

“Ah, I didn’t expect you to pick up right away.” Thomas grinned as he heard Suho’s voice over the line. “I’ve noticed you’ve gotten pretty famous in South Korea as of late. Look, both of us are busy, so I’ll keep it short and to the point.”

A faint glow wrapped around Thomas’ body as he spoke. “First of all, your mother found something in the Grave of the Dragons,” he continued. “She asked me to give it to you in her stead. Laura said she found some high-quality mana stones as well, so I’ve sent those along. They’ll arrive soon.”

Haein had decided to stay in the Grave of the Dragons a little longer and had asked the Scavenger Guild, which was working on Facade, to deliver a package.

“Oh, and by the way...” Thomas glanced down at the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. He was gripping a man’s body by his collar. “I just killed a follower of Itarim.”

Suho’s stunned silence was palpable.

Thomas was standing in some kind of giant crater. The body he was holding soon began to dissipate, scattering like ashes. The ashes turned into fragments of light that were then absorbed into Thomas’ body.

“Who was it?”

Suho asked.

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

“It was just as we guessed.” As he took in the power as his own, Thomas looked upon the face of the hunter he had killed. “Christopher Reed...” He had been one of the U.S.’s National Level Hunters in the past timeline.