107. Aah, So This Is A Declaration Of War (2)

At Shin Junseok’s introduction, Yujin stepped up onto the platform and swept his gaze over the room. The place had frozen over so completely that it was hard to believe it was the same space that, only moments ago, had been brimming with excitement.

Reporters. Hunter-industry insiders. Every last one of them had their eyes fixed on him.

‘But of course. That’s how it should be.’

Being the center of attention was something he was used to.

While Yujin chuckled to himself, one of the reporters shot a hand into the air.

“Lee Jeongsik, with Yeonmaeng News. Is the Black Company the organization that recently came to blows with the Rakshasa Guild?”

‘A reporter to my liking. Good. Lob a question like that and there’s real pleasure in answering it. Maybe I’ll grant him an exclusive interview.’

Yujin answered with a broad smile.

“That’s correct.”

“There’ve been no shortage of rumors, but as it turns out, not a single scrap of information about you has reached the outside.”

“Once this press conference is over, the company will be quite well known.”

Yujin gave a light laugh, hah, and the hall laughed along with him.

‘Now then, where shall I begin? The opening ought to land with some impact.’

After running the story he’d prepared once through his head, he slowly parted his lips.

“The clash between the Rakshasa Guild and the Black Company. It seems you’ve all heard the rumors.”

“Yes. But could you explain why the borderlands, and just why there’s friction with the Rakshasa Guild?”

“For that, I’ve brought in someone else to answer.”

— Clack!

At Yujin’s signal, Fafnir and a woman who had been waiting climbed up onto the stage. The Mad Dog, Kim Mijeong. The person least suited to a place like this stood at Yujin’s side, her face crumpled.

“Why’s the Mad Dog showing up here?”

“Her hands are bound, look.”

“Is she connected to the press conference?”

“Hold on. The Mad Dog was just recently….”

Bewilderment. Fear. Or else suspicion. At the appearance of so unexpected a figure, a storm of emotion swept through the hall.

‘When you’ve got a blade pressed to your throat, staying calm would be the stranger thing.’

Kim Mijeong was a 6th-Rank-peak Hunter. Her build leaned toward Agility, though her Strength was nothing to scoff at either. Hers was a combat style that packed explosive damage into a narrow window, and dealing real harm took a fair amount of power.

‘You’re half right.’

This one was quiet now, but adrenaline likely ran through her veins in place of blood. Let a subject she found interesting come along, and she’d fling herself at it eyes rolled back, heedless of her own safety. Small wonder she was tense.

‘Because she surrendered to me, saying she didn’t want to die?’

‘This one’s taken an interest — in Fafnir, or in me.’

There’d been a reason he’d pressed her to surrender. Given her temperament, he’d reckoned that if surrendering meant staying close to someone who’d caught her interest, she’d do it without a moment’s hesitation. In short, she was no concern for now.

‘Call it insight.’

Good grief. The standard his Constellation held up for what made a hero seemed to grow more slapdash by the day.

“It’s Kim Mijeong.”

“Thanks for the self-introduction. You’re with the Rakshasa Guild, yes?”

“I owe their guild master a debt. Agreed to work for them for three years.”

“So you’re saying you’re currently with the Rakshasa.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Then can you tell me why you attacked me?”

“The Arahan Guild put in a commission to have you killed. Arahan’s the Rakshasa’s patron, you see.”

Kim Mijeong tossed out the bombshell as casually as if she were mentioning a sale at the convenience store down her street. For a moment the hall took it in without really registering it.

“Huh?”

“The Rakshasa and Arahan are… what?!”

“A-a scoop! It’s a scoop!”

A beat late, the meaning packed into Kim Mijeong’s words landed, and the shrieks went up.

Before the demonstration, Yujin had laid down a single condition.

“Expose the relationship between the Arahan Guild and the Rakshasa.”

“What? How’d you find out about that?”

“How isn’t what matters. Just decide whether you’ll do it or not.”

“And if I said I wouldn’t?”

“You’ll die once and end up serving me.”

When he pointed at Song Myeongseok, a blue flame blazed up fiercely in those empty eye sockets.

— At last, my successor is coming in!

“There’s even someone here to welcome you. How nice.”

Then again, the man was already dead, so “someone” might not be quite the word.

A long sigh leaked from between Kim Mijeong’s lips, haah.

“Dying and coming back to life is something I’d like to experience at least once, but this isn’t quite it.”

“So what’ll you do?”

“I’ll do as you say. But I’ve got a condition.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“If I blow the whistle on that, I get my contract torn up too. My life’ll be in danger.”

Talking nonsense, and coolly at that. Testify that the two guilds had colluded and an enormous bounty would land on her head. But still, the Mad Dog Kim Mijeong wasn’t one to go down easily.

“Stop beating around the bush and get to the point.”

“How boring of you.”

Grumbling lightly, Kim Mijeong pointed at Yujin with her right hand.

“You. Hire me.”

“I’ve got no taste for keeping a leash on the Mad Dog’s neck.”

“You’ll change your mind once you hear my terms, though?”

…

That was the reason Kim Mijeong came to expose the secret pact between the Rakshasa and the Arahan Guild.

“Do you have proof?”

“The Arahan Guild handled the supply lines in the borderlands. I’ll give you the coordinates, so go check for yourselves.”

“And how are we supposed to get into the borderlands?”

“That’s your problem, reporter. You want me to wipe your ass for you too?”

At the scathing remark, the face of the reporter who’d asked the question turned a sickly shade.

A bombshell had gone off at the potion demonstration. The clatter of typewriters being hammered and the voices of people trading phone calls rose here and there.

— Master. Isn’t this one a bit much?

Fafnir adjusted the size of his thought so that only Yujin could hear.

Why? It just means the time for your revenge comes sooner. Isn’t that a good thing?

— I’m worried that if you provoke the Arahan Guild too much, they’ll try to do you harm.

Once we’d routed the Rakshasa Guild’s whole company of soldiers, there was nothing left to make worse.

The Mad Dog’s testimony. The word of a 6th-Rank-peak Hunter carried considerable weight, but not enough to shake the nation’s number-one guild. In all likelihood, it would end as a mere incident.

And yet Yujin’s reason for borrowing a press conference to expose Arahan’s secret lay in another aim entirely.

For a while yet, they’ll be in a frenzy.

— You mean Arahan?

The Rakshasa Guild, the same.

Suspicion of a close tie between the Arahan Guild and the Rakshasa. Proving the two guilds’ collusion on Kim Mijeong’s word alone would be difficult, but the point was that dispelling the suspicion itself would take no small amount of time.

And it’ll be hard for them to lay a hand on the one who raised the suspicion, besides.

— The Rakshasa Guild is an organization of the shadows. I’d think they wouldn’t much care for grand pretexts or the eyes of the world?

They got smashed to pieces this time. They’ll need time to muster Hunters again.

— You won’t be able to tie up Arahan’s feet for long. That Baek Seonghyeon fellow — he’s got real ability.

Don’t you worry. I got sick to death of that fellow’s way of handling things before the regression.

If he regretted one thing, it was that no Arahan Guild representative had taken part in the demonstration. Had one been present, the mood would have flared hotter still.

Fafnir. Watch how I bring about your revenge.

The hall had grown noisy with Kim Mijeong’s bombshell. His lines cast, Yujin waited at his leisure for the mood to come to a fuller boil.

The demonstration venue had turned chaotic as a marketplace. Yujin, who had been biding his time, gave the microphone a couple of light taps, tok, tok. A weighty sound rang out, and the people who’d been trying to work out whether the two guilds were in league all turned at once toward the stage.

“It seems the matter of what happened in the borderlands has been explained.”

The Arahan Guild had lost face over the double-gate affair. Song Myeongseok, the up-and-comer they’d poured an enormous sum into, had died during the clear. A man some had even called Arahan’s Supernova had perished for nothing, and every last member of the rest of the clear team had been an outstanding talent besides.

“There are a few leaps in the logic, but I can buy it.”

“They said they gave Song Myeongseok the Light-Splitting Sword skill book, right?”

“All those Hunters they invested in died off, and then some unrelated party walked away with the credit.”

The hunter-industry people nodded. There were parts that didn’t quite sit right, but come to think of it, the Rakshasa Guild had had no proper reason to attack Yujin either, so no one pressed their doubts. Above all, no one wanted to draw the ire of a co-creator of the Saint’s Tears, the very thing about to send shockwaves through the market.

“Erm, Hunter Cheon Yujin?”

“Reporter Lee Jeongsik. Go ahead.”

“Ha, haha. I’m grateful you remember me. There’s one more thing I’d like to ask.”

“Go ahead.”

“You called it the Black Company a moment ago — could you tell us what sort of company it is?”

The man kept scratching right where it itched.

“The Black Company is a federation of enterprises.”

“A federation?”

“An organization with a foot in several fields, like a major conglomerate. Limited to the Hunter-related sphere, of course.”

Guilds, the mercenary trade, mining, alchemy, and the rest. With Yujin at the center, expanding without limit into each of those fields: that was the heart of the Black Company.

“Joo Seongcheol, with the Goryeo Ilbo. For a business venture from a Hunter in his first year of awakening, the ambition seems a touch excessive.”

“Is subduing the Mad Dog before even a year as a Hunter not enough for you?”

“There could well be someone backing Hunter Cheon Yujin, couldn’t there?”

“Then I’d be truly delighted. If there were someone willing to make an enemy of the Arahan Guild for my sake, that is.”

When he shot back scathingly without letting the smile slip from his face, the reporter who’d asked the question couldn’t manage to go on.

‘The Goryeo Ilbo… that’s a place with a line to the Arahan Guild, isn’t it? I’ll be remembering you lot.’

“Why have you set yourselves up in the borderlands, of all places — a land crawling with monsters?”

“That’s because of the Black Company’s goal.”

“Your goal?”

“To reconnect our nation with the continent.”

Korea had become as good as an island since the division. Nothing had changed even after the anomaly known as the Great Cataclysm struck the whole world. The gates sprang up in such numbers they couldn’t be sealed in time, and so the Kim royal house collapsed. Even afterward, with countless warlords rising and erosion zones scattered all over, things were little different from before the Great Cataclysm.

“Quite the spirit, for someone you’d never take for a first-year Hunter.”

“I happen to be rather talented.”

“Do you have grounds to be so confident?”

The reporters stared, boring into Yujin’s lips.

He’d survived a place in the double-gate affair where even Arahan’s Supernova had fallen. He’d had a hand in creating the mass-produced mid-grade potion, the Saint’s Tears, which might well shake the Hunter industry not just at home but across the entire world. He’d even captured a 6th-Rank-peak Hunter. And still it all fell short of grounds for a feat as great as developing the land north of the peninsula.

‘Whatever it is, it’s a scoop.’

‘This — not the Saint’s Tears — was the real story.’

‘The Black Company? What’s he laying all this groundwork to pull off?’

The people gathered in the hall dimly sensed that Yujin had set the stage for this very moment, and that, having made so bold a declaration, he would need solid grounds to back it.

‘Of course.’

‘What’s there to look forward to?’

It had been about three months since the regression. In that time, Yujin’s sphere of activity had stayed mostly confined to the area around Paju. From the moment he announced the founding of the Black Company, he could no longer remain penned in some narrow region.

‘Why ask a thing like that all of a sudden?’

Yujin muttered as though it were a tasteless question.

Resolve? From the moment he’d resolved to regress, he’d been waiting for this very situation to arrive. The moment he would begin changing the future in earnest. The turning point of history would be today.

After slowly looking around at the people gathered in the convention center, he drew out the card he’d had in mind.

“Within two years, I’m going to wipe the Kaesong man-hunters off the map.”

A declaration of war. Spoken aloud, a declaration there was no taking back came pouring down over the public.