The Time-Limited Leader Makes the Raid a Success - Chapter 408



Only Noblemtl

Episode 408

#408. Are you ready to take the next step?

“Are you by any chance the Seodaechi Hunter?”

“who……?”

“Oh, my name is Kim Bu-yong. You may not remember, but we met once at the daycare center when the orcs came to Nampocheon two years ago… … .”

Only then did Seodaechi remember who Kim Bu-yong was.

“That police officer from back then?”

“That’s right. I remember you meeting him when he was in a daze after the orc was captured.”

“Yes. I remember that time because there were so many unusual cases. But what brings you here?”

“I saw the Ironwill security team recruitment notice and applied. I had an interview today.”

“Oh? I hope it turns out well.”

Seo Dae-chi offered Kim Bu-yong some appropriate words of encouragement and tried to leave. He, who didn’t have any casual conversations with fellow hunters he saw often, felt uncomfortable in this kind of situation.

But Kim Bu-yong didn’t just let it go and grabbed Seo Dae-chi and asked him.

“How is Hunter Baek Seong-bin doing? I owe you something back then. Hunters Kim Soo-jung and Yoo Seong-ju too. I heard they joined Iron Will.”

“Baek Seong-bin… Baek Seong-bin is no longer in Iron Will.”

“Oh, did you transfer to another guild?”

“… … I have resigned. I am busy, so I will go now.”

Kim Bu-yong could no longer hold on to Seo Dae-chi. He noticed that his expression was not normal. Because of that, he ended up misunderstanding Baek Seong-bin’s whereabouts.

“I guess you died on duty.”

Hunters always carried death on their backs. It was a dangerous job where you never knew when or how you would die. The public’s belief that fighting monsters was a result of the noble sacrifice of hunters was the result of marketing that the large guilds had planted in them.

That is why Kim Bu-yong never dreamed that Baek Seong-bin would become a villain and be imprisoned in Ujungdo.

I just thought it touched Seo Dae-chi’s heartbreaking wounds over the death of his colleague.

Kim Bu-yong was also able to sympathize with Seo Dae-chi’s pain(?) because he lost a fellow detective and junior whom he cared for like a younger brother.

“I guess I hurt your feelings for no reason. If I ever join the guild, I should at least apologize.”

Kim Su-jeong and Yoo Seong-ju, who were secretly watching Kim Bu-yong sadly looking at the moving away Seodaechi, had similar thoughts.

‘Detective, that’s not it.’

‘The one who caught Baek Seong-bin was Seo Dae-chi.’

* * *

It was past 6pm and the first day of the second draft was over.

Kang Mu-hyeok was handling the piled up guild work in the guild officials’ hotel room in Gwangalli.

Outside the darkened window, the new Gwangan Bridge was lit up. As I looked at the streetlights twinkling over the sea, I couldn’t help but get lost in thought.

The Gwangan Bridge, which collapsed during the Great War, was a symbol of Busan’s revival. It was not rebuilt due to the unstable monster security even during the Little War, but it was a building that was rebuilt after stability was restored.

The same goes for the BEXCO event venue, as there were quite a few buildings that were destroyed during the Great War and the Little War and then rebuilt.

All of this was because the hunters struggled to protect this land.

‘It remains to be seen whether it can be maintained in the future.’

Kang Moo-hyuk was always suspicious and skeptical of every situation. Even when everyone was talking about hope, he always said the worst. He was never optimistic about the gate and monsters.

‘It’s a shame that even hunters aren’t viewed so favorably these days.’

Since joining the Titan Guild and becoming the leader of Iron Will, over 10 years have passed, and for Kang Mu-hyeok, the Hunter is no longer the main character of the song of hope.

The Hunter Association still spent huge amounts of money each year on public service campaigns promoting the idea that hunters protect people, but the target audience of the ads was not ordinary people.

The Association constantly reminds hunters not to forget this point.

‘Association President Han Byeong-gu also knew that the hunters no longer have a sense of mission.’

Kang Moo-hyuk didn’t expect anything from Hunter. If he didn’t expect anything, he wouldn’t be disappointed. Since he wasn’t disappointed, he didn’t get frustrated.

He was looking for a way to make the Hunters take the lead in hunting monsters, a reason to save people.

It wasn’t a sense of mission, responsibility, or duty. It was the old way.

Those who know the industry well saw money, fame, and power as alternatives. That is how the current guild system was born.

But at some point, money and fame became the reason rather than the means.

‘If that becomes the reason, the sense of purpose also changes. The guild becomes more eager to develop a profit-generating model than a hunting strategy. Because they have to satisfy the hunters’ greed.’

People were creatures of greed. Hunters were also people, and ultimately, greed was the problem. Money and power were monsters that had no end no matter how much they had. In some ways, they were more persistent and scary than monsters.

Kang Moo-hyuk diagnosed the problems facing the current hunter world from a different perspective.

It was precisely the sense of challenge.

Trapped in a small piece of land, the small hunters eat small pies together.

In some ways, it seemed like a perspective that could not escape the limitations of pursuing money and power, but as Shinuiju was developed and it became a stepping stone for advancing into the realm of magic, we were able to see changes in the hunters.

‘Material pursuits have limits to satisfaction, but the spiritual aspect has no limits. We must create a place for hunters to challenge themselves.’

As Guild Master Jusea became S-rank, the Hunters’ rank-up became more flexible, and the Hunters’ areas of activity also had to be expanded.

During the Great War, it was routine for hunters to challenge higher level gates and stronger monsters.

Kang Moo-hyuk knew that hunters are beings who must constantly challenge themselves, and that by taking on challenges, they can walk the natural path of a hunter without looking back.

Kang Moo-hyuk took his gaze away from the window and focused again on the tablet where the guild documents were floating. It was full of reports sent by Guan Hong.

When Kang Mu-hyeok was away, Gwan-hong was in charge of the guild’s duties, so he was involved in all the guild’s big and small affairs. However, that did not mean that Kang Mu-hyeok’s workload was reduced.

Kang Moo-hyuk had a habit of creating work. Iron Will was lacking in many things by his standards, and he had a lot of work to do. Since Gwan-hong took over the existing work, he just had the leeway to start new work.

“The first thing I need to address here is the personnel section… This keeps bothering me.”

A postmortem report of low importance among the files sent by Guan Hong.

It was the report on the Bukaksan Gate explosion incident.

The report that Kang Mu-hyeok clicked on had the subtitle, ‘Operation to secure Baek Seong-bin.’

Afterwards, this title would be encrypted and stored in the database with the guild’s security level determined.

To do so, the final approval of the division chief was needed, but Kang Moo-hyuk was unable to adopt this report for nearly two months after the incident.

‘Seodaechi… Why didn’t you use Baekgan during the fight with Baek Seongbin?’

There was a part that he had guessed. Considering the context, it was a guess that was close to certainty. However, Kang Moo-hyuk was not sure if that certainty was correct. This was because he knew Seo Dae-chi well.

So, confirmation was needed.

‘Are you ready to take the next step?’

Seo Dae-chi was originally a promising prospect who was supposed to join Titan following his older brother, Seo Dae-gil. His future was bright, but his path changed drastically due to his older brother’s death.

Although it wasn’t outwardly apparent, Kang Moo-hyeok had at least put in place a few measures to prevent Seo Dae-chi from going astray when he met him. One of them was the diary that Seo Dae-gil wrote for his younger brother.

The diary was not simply a record of Seodaegil’s daily life, but could also be considered a hunting journal. He meticulously wrote about the attitude, training methods, and hunting tactics that a hunter should have.

Kang Mu-hyeok gave the twenty volumes of diaries to Seo Dae-chi as his brother’s heirloom. Afterwards, he contacted them and personally filled in the missing parts. Thinking that Seo Dae-chi would one day return to his original position.

I didn’t know that time might be now.

‘I think we need to talk.’

Kang Moo-hyuk thought that he should go up to the headquarters and meet Seo Dae-chi as soon as the second draft was over.

Then suddenly I changed my mind and called the communications team in charge of Hunter Care.

“I’m Kang Mu-hyeok. Hunter Seo Dae-chi. Please send me down to Busan.”

* * *

Despite the cold sea breeze on a winter night, people visited Gwangalli Beach.

The unusually warm weather this winter played a part, but after its reopening, Gwangalli Beach became famous not only as a tourist mecca in Busan but also for its well-organized scenery, which is rare even in Asia, so it was always crowded with people.

“It was so damn cold last year, but it feels like spring already this year.”

“I heard that the global temperature, which had dropped during the Great War and the Little War, is rising again these days. What was it? Global warming? They say that the Earth is getting warmer and causing problems. My grandfather said that there was chaos because of that in the past.”

“Monsters are running wild right now. Isn’t the creation of the Red Gate a bigger problem than the Earth getting warmer?”

“That’s true.”

The young men sitting on the beach drinking the alcohol they had bought became quite drunk, chatting about this and that as an accompaniment.

When youth gets drunk, they sometimes release strange forms. These young men also got drunk and started acting up. I don’t know how they got into it, but they tried to hunt, and if they failed, they decided to get into the sea as a punishment.

As expected, there was no way I could succeed in hunting with my mind clouded by alcohol.

The young man who was punished screamed and jumped into the sea. He must have been confident in swimming, because he didn’t just dip his body but swam deep into the water. His friends laughed at how good it was and shouted at the friend who had done the punishment.

“Oh my, it’s so cold. Should we go now?”

The young man, who had come to his senses from the cold that penetrated his bones, was about to head to the beach.

Suddenly, his body suddenly stopped. He felt something caught in his ankle. He tried to twist and shake his ankle, but it didn’t seem to come off easily. He had no choice but to dive in and pull it off with his hands.

The young man took a deep breath and entered the water.

The darkness of the sea obscured his vision. Even with his goggles on, it was difficult to see even an inch ahead. With his eyes tightly shut, the young man felt his way down his body, trying to tear off the thing holding his ankles with just the feel of his fingertips.

Squishy.

‘Huh? What is it? What is this thick… Ugh!’

Something grabbed the young man’s face. He struggled to pull it away, but it wouldn’t budge.

Instead of throwing a punch, the young man threw a punch at the unidentified being that had grabbed his face. His fists were struggling against the resistance of the water, and it was a completely useless resistance.

“Ugh, ugh… uruk… urur.”

The air in his mouth was escaping. The young man, in his fading mind, begged for something that had grabbed his face to please let go. He tapped it with his palm, but it would never let go.

He felt the same sensation on his palm as he had felt on his ankle. Only then did the young man realize that this was a monster.

At that moment, something sharp entered his abdomen and exited through his back. Soon, the young man lost his strength and fell limp.

While the young man was in the water, his friends on the beach noticed that something serious had happened.

But they didn’t know it was a monster. They thought their friend had gotten drunk and went into the water, had a heart attack, or was too drunk to come out.

“Hey, call 119! Quickly!”

“Stop him. Inma, if you go in drunk, you’ll die too!”

“Let go. Jaesung has to be saved.”

Due to the fatal accident that occurred in the middle of the night, Gwangalli Beach became quiet that night as people were restricted.

Nearby merchants closed their shops for the day, saying they were taking a day off. Rescue divers searched for the body, but were unsuccessful because it was nighttime.

The Gwangalli accident that day ended with the morning news pointing out the lack of safety awareness among drunken youths.