Team Leader Choi rarely showed a change in expression.
He kept his feelings to himself, and in interviews he stuck to the essentials. Even veteran reporters—the kind who claimed they’d grabbed a microphone at their first-birthday celebration—struggled to get a word out of him.1
But Team Leader Choi was flesh and blood. Sometimes he showed plenty of emotion, especially when he was talking to me. Then he let out everything he usually kept hidden.
Like now.
“Odin Guild. I feel like going to see the boss’s ugly mug.”
“……!”
The instant I finished speaking, his mouth fell open in a daze. Beneath his trembling eyelids, his pupils were already shaking like an earthquake.
This bastard’s planning to cause trouble again.
Team Leader Choi stared at me with exactly that look in his eyes. After a long silence, he finally managed to force out his voice.
“Are you serious?”
“Hm.”
I thought for a moment.
“Maybe fifty-fifty?”
“So you’re half-insane.”
“Is that how it works?”
“I am genuinely curious. Where did this insane idea of going to see the Odin Guild Master right now come from? Your heart or your head?”
“My heart.”
Team Leader Choi sighed.
“That is a relief, at least. You have not gone completely insane.”
“You’re calling a perfectly sane person crazy? I’m just planning to look the man in the face and have a cup of coffee with him. Ares Guild has branches in France anyway, so I can use that as an excuse and kill two birds with one stone……”
“It is a Guild branch, not a chain store. And you expect me to believe that? Are you joking?”
At Team Leader Choi’s utterly serious question, I smacked my lips.
“Well, if the conversation doesn’t go smoothly, there might be a little trouble.”
“I will take that to mean an enormous amount of trouble.”
I almost asked what he was making such a big deal about, but stopped myself.
I couldn’t honestly say his concern was exaggerated. It had only been a few weeks in the modern world since I’d stormed into Ares Guild alone and cracked Go Jun’s skull.
Can’t exactly argue after pulling a stunt like that.
Besides, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew perfectly well that following my heart right now would probably end badly.
“All right.”
“The Eiffel Tower collapses, the Guild collapses, public opinion turns into a wasteland…… What?”
“I said all right.”
Team Leader Choi, already a step ahead of me in his hallucinations, blinked.
“Really?”
I gave a small nod.
“We don’t have a pretext.”
Even in Murim, where human lives were worth no more than livestock, you needed at least some justification. If I flew to Paris and picked a fight with Odin Guild now, all I’d get was an Interpol wanted notice.
At least I had public support when I dealt with Go Jun.
That incident had caused an international stir, but it had happened in Korea. Unlike this time, there had been clear testimony and evidence. The public had also been furious over Go Jun’s many crimes against humanity.
Those were the reasons I’d been able to step outside the law without becoming a criminal.
Paris would be different.
My heart was screaming at me to storm into Paris and raise hell, but the part of my reason that was still alive was facing reality.
Team Leader Choi’s eyes widened at my decision. The Skeleton King, who had been staring at his smartphone while shoveling down yukgaejang,2 dropped his spoon.
“This cannot be. Did you just say ‘pretext’?”
“Impossible. You bastard, you’re a monster! What have you done with the treacherous human?”
“……”
“Mr. Jin Taekyung, this is a simple verification procedure. Please do not take offense. Where did we first meet?”
“Doppelganger! Get out of the treacherous human’s body!”
These two were acting like fucking idiots.
Instead of answering, I picked up the spoon on the table and smacked the Skeleton King on top of his head.
Crack!
“My skull! My beautiful skull!”
Team Leader Choi watched the Skeleton King howl and nodded.
“What a relief. You are Jin Taekyung.”
“……”
After completing that strangely unpleasant verification procedure, Team Leader Choi let out a sigh of relief.
“In any case, I am glad you changed your mind.”
“If this were something I could settle that way, I’d have bought a ticket to Paris already. To hell with international crime.”
“That is true. If Odin Guild disappeared, another Odin Guild would take its place.”
It was the same as when Ares Guild had been our enemy.
The world was vast, and another enemy would fill the space left by the one we defeated. We’d taken Ares Guild by siege; others could do the same to us. Now the City Lord’s duty was to defend the castle from the competitors swarming around it and expand his territory as far as he could.
And Odin Guild wasn’t some stray wolf that had wandered in from who knew where.
It was a beast with a massive body and sharp claws.
A greedy one, too, judging by what was written on the tablet Team Leader Choi had just put in front of me.
“What is this……?”
“The proposal the Chinese government sent Odin Guild during the Monster Wave in Sichuan Province, inviting them to participate. It was unofficial, of course, and had no legal force.”
An unofficial proposal.
I wondered how Team Leader Choi had obtained something that should have been nearly impossible to leak. Then the answer came to me.
“Grandpa Jongseok gave it to you?”
“Not Grandpa Jongseok. Chairman Xiao Yang.”
“Right. Grandpa Jongseok.”
“……”
“What? It sounds friendly. Besides, the old guy likes me a lot.”
Team Leader Choi looked at me as though he’d half given up.
“As you know, Mr. Jin Taekyung, during the early stages of the crisis, China’s State Council and Politburo Standing Committee were reluctant to request help from abroad. They were especially vehemently opposed to support from the West.”
The Skeleton King, still tenderly stroking his skull, interrupted with a puzzled look.
“They opposed it? Why?”
Well, why indeed?
There were any number of reasons, but they all came down to one answer. I kindly gave it to him.
“Because it’s China.”
“What does that mean? Humans are dying either way!”
“Because it’s China.”
“No, treacherous human. You seem not to have understood my question……”
“Yeah. China.”
“……?”
“That’s just how it is. You might not get it yet.”
I left the Skeleton King looking thoroughly confused and turned back to Team Leader Choi.
“But China did ask the West for help eventually, didn’t it? Prince Felix of the United Kingdom and Magic Johnson came, too.”
“Yes. Once the damage from the Arch Lich reached astronomical proportions, China’s leaders had no choice but to accept Chairman Xiao Yang’s argument. They would have to pay a suitable diplomatic and material price when it was over, though, so they had to consider that when assembling their forces.”
That was how four S-rank Hunters had gathered, not counting me.
An incredible force in its own right. But what mattered now was that Odin Guild had backed out when it should have been a central part of that force alongside Lee Jungryong’s Ares Guild.
“Then why did Odin Guild turn down the offer? That looks like enough money to make them accept. More than enough.”
The fee listed on the tablet was staggering—nearly twice what I’d heard Ares Guild had been paid, with several other perks attached. China had offered top-tier treatment befitting the name Odin.
Team Leader Choi’s next words answered my question.
“The Chinese government was the one that ultimately turned it down.”
“What?”
“Odin Guild added a condition when the negotiations were almost complete.”
“What condition……?”
Team Leader Choi took a sip of lukewarm coffee, then spoke quietly.
“They wanted China to lease ten cities—including Chengdu, Meishan, Ziyang, and Suining, the representative administrative districts of Sichuan Province—to Odin Guild for the next ninety-nine years, as well as authorize the establishment of an official branch in Beijing.”
“……!”
“They were effectively asking China to cede Sichuan Province. Permission to set up an official branch, which the Chinese government prohibits, was an added bonus.”
Good God. What did I just hear?
I stared at him and muttered, “Wow. Those bastards are insane. They’re worse than Chinks.”
“According to Chairman Xiao Yang, Odin Guild had contacted the French government shortly before the negotiations.”
“Even so, how could they make an offer that crazy?”
“It is France.”
“No, there’s such a thing as common sense.”
“France.”
“……Team Leader Choi?”
“France.”
“……”
Why did this feel oddly familiar? Was it just me?
As I stared at him with a sour expression, Team Leader Choi spoke to me in a gentle voice.
“Mr. Jin Taekyung, did you know Koreans have another name for the French?”
“Oh.”
With a sudden flash of insight, I let out an exclamation.
“European Chinks……!”
Team Leader Choi nodded.
“Their skin color and culture are different, but they are the same sort. The President can have an affair or do whatever else he likes, and the French do not care. Odin Guild did not put its headquarters in Paris by accident. Scandals there cause little commotion.”
“But wasn’t that just an internet meme?”
“I remember my school days in Paris. When a photograph of my maternal grandfather appeared in our history textbook, everyone in the classroom looked at me and pulled their eyes into slits.”
“Oh.”
“The teacher did it, too.”
“Ah! Ah……”
“It is all right. It was a long time ago.”
Team Leader Choi set aside the painful childhood memory that had surfaced and continued.
“What matters most is that even with the French government behind it, Odin Guild cannot move against us openly. As with their assassination of Wu Xueming’s family, they can only send a warning rather than threaten us directly.”
He was right.
Cheon Taemin’s flag flew over the walls of Ares Guild, and the world couldn’t simply ignore what it had seen me do. That held true even for Odin Guild, the greatest Guild in the world, or any other major Guild.
And above all……
“People around the world are cheering us on. The media may not be able to openly criticize the major Guilds, but plenty of people are condemning them.”
Public sentiment.
The strongest weapon—and shield—we had gained by releasing the Mana Cultivation Method.
We needed to make full use of it. Make sure even Odin Guild couldn’t come near us……
“Um, sorry to ruin the mood.”
The Skeleton King suddenly held out his smartphone.
“Is this the cheering you mean?”
On the screen of the smartphone he offered me was a breaking-news alert that had been posted only a few dozen seconds earlier.
Odin Guild Announces Support for Ares
Odin Guild Unveils New Mana Cultivation Method
Senior Official: “A Project We’ve Been Preparing for Years”
“Though We’re a Step Behind, We Want to Change the World with Them.” The World’s Greatest Guild Shows Its Class
Fuck. What the hell is this now?
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