The Guilds Come Calling

People closed around me and Gyeol in an instant.

"We're with the Cheongnyeom Guild scouting team."

"As you know, Seonmun Guild stands as the finest guild in the Republic of Korea—"

Half a dozen people in impeccably cut suits were already thrusting business cards at Gyeol.

I had expected something like this, but it was happening far faster than I'd thought. We hadn't even applied for Hunter licenses yet. For our personal information to leak this quickly—it had to be that bastard who'd filmed the livestream.

The corporations driving the Awakener industry, the Hunter guilds, swarmed like bees the moment a promising Awakener appeared, each desperate to snatch them up first. One more skilled Awakener could decide a guild's edge over the rest. Fresh nobodies like us, who had only just Awakened and knew nothing, made easy prey. Prey sounded a little harsh, maybe. It was closer to street-casting a celebrity off the sidewalk.

Either way, they didn't know it, but I was nothing like a clueless new Awakener, even if I had only Awakened yesterday.

"Excuse us."

I caught Gyeol by the arm and drew him behind me. I wasn't about to let my precious friend be swallowed whole by a pack of jackals.

"Ah, we startled you. Everyone came on rather suddenly for people who have only just Awakened. Haha. You must still be confused, with so much you don't know yet. That's only natural. On behalf of everyone here, allow me to apologize for barging in like this."

The voice trying to soften my guard was a shade gentler than the rest. A moment later its owner stepped neatly forward.

He was neatly dressed, with the pleasant, inoffensive face of a civil servant—not a sharp edge on him—and far more at ease than the others, his manner polished and smooth. They had clearly come from different guilds, yet he took the lead as deftly as if he were their captain.

"But there's no need to worry. I'm Shim Woo-jin, sent by Geumseong Guild. Geumseong can contract both of you immediately, on senior-tier terms. You're surely aware that Geumseong is one of the three largest guilds in Korea. I like to think the name alone is enough to earn your trust. Come with us, and you will not regret it. Our terms and benefits are in a different class from the other guilds."

He said it with complete confidence. On the black card he held out, crisp gold-foil lettering caught the light.

He wasn't wrong. It was one of the major guilds whose name I still remembered exactly.

"That thing on your shoulder—is it a pet, by any chance? If so, that's remarkable. An Awakener with a pet is..."

The moment he saw the will-o'-the-wisp, greed flashed in his eyes. I cut him off, cold.

"I'm sorry, but we don't even have Hunter licenses yet. Joining a guild seems a bit much."

"Don't worry about that. There's no problem with contracting with a guild first and going through the licensing afterward. It will be written into the contract, and Geumseong even handles the early training of Awakeners, so—"

"Well, well. Brave of you, when nothing about us has actually been proven."

I smiled, easy and bright, and the Geumseong scout looked faintly thrown. He was the one who knew nothing—so why was I the one at ease? And this wasn't just any guild. It was Geumseong. Perhaps not the very best in the country, but still Geumseong... The look on his face said as much.

"Th-that's... the video already online shows both of your aptitudes..."

"Haha, is that so. Yep. Thank you, really! But we're not interested yet!"

I bowed and hauled Gyeol straight through the knot of scouts.

"H-hey—?"

"Mr. Eun Ha-jun?"

"Wait! Just a moment!"

The scouts stuck to us. I was weighing a run just to shake the nuisance when—screech!—a black SUV stopped dead in front of our noses.

"Mr. Eun Ha-jun."

The door opened, and a familiar voice came out.

"Who..."

"Second Lieutenant An Eun-young, Monster Special Forces."

It was Lieutenant An, helmet off. A severe bob with no bangs, and eyes cut so keen they gave her a blade of a face. She wasn't in civilian clothes: military trousers below, and above them a short-sleeved shirt stamped with the Monster Special Forces mark.

Wasn't she cold? It was the dead of winter.

"Please get in."

Seeing how thrown Gyeol and I were, she gestured us forward.

"Hey! Mr. Eun Ha-jun!"

The scouts came howling after us, then stopped dead the moment they spotted her. The vehicle itself bore no markings, but Lieutenant An was built so large that even from fifty meters off, the marked shirt told you exactly where she belonged.

"Ahem."

"Khmm..."

The halted scouts kicked at the pavement for no reason, or tipped their faces up at the sky. I tilted my head at the sight. Later the guilds grew so powerful that the Monster Special Forces became an agency with almost no influence, but that didn't seem to be the case yet.

I hadn't thought of them as a particularly strong organization even now. Or maybe Lieutenant An's eyes were simply that frightening. I glanced back and found her staring the scouts down, glare fierce enough to pin them where they stood.

"We'll drive you to the Awakener Management Department."

"Ah... we can get there on our own."

"Hunters worked through the night on containment, but parts of Seoul are still extremely dangerous. The two of you showed remarkable skill yesterday, of course, but Captain Seong Hyeon-jun is quite worried."

"Is that coming from upstairs? Or is Captain Seong just the type who worries too much?"

"Pardon?"

Lieutenant An looked a little startled. I shrugged and climbed into the car. Safer, certainly, to take the Monster Special Forces' help than to wander around on our own.

There are times when someone offers help and you ought to take it with both hands. When I was younger I'd been all sharp edges—I couldn't even ask for help, and when someone offered it I bristled and turned them down. Getting older, I'd often thought I would have suffered less if I'd been a little more flexible back then. Turns out you can live without grinding through every day on spite alone. So this time, a little more of that...

While I was thinking it, the engine rumbled and the car pulled away. Gyeol, sitting beside me and sneaking looks at Lieutenant An, tapped my shoulder.

"Are you insane?"

"Hm? Why?"

"Geumseong Guild... You saw it on Nutube earlier. One of the top three guilds in the country. The benefits alone are supposed to be insane. Among Awakeners they say getting in is harder than a normal person landing a job at a major corporation."

Lieutenant An was sitting right in front of us, and as an Awakener she could hear a whisper just fine, but Gyeol whispered anyway, as if it were some enormous secret.

"It's fine, it's fine. You don't have to worry about that."

"What are you talking about? Even if it isn't Geumseong, there were plenty of names I'd actually heard of."

"Mm-hm. Your big brother knows every one of them."

"If you know, then why are you acting like this?"

The car jolted along with his frustrated scolding. Lieutenant An spoke briskly with the driver's seat, but it didn't seem as if anything serious had happened.

Gyeol's eyes were rolling a little, his face faintly scared. I patted his shoulder and smiled.

"It's all inflated. They call them the top three, but there are only six places in the country right now that you can even call a guild. And as of yesterday, an enormous number of people are Awakening all at once."

I said that much, then checked Lieutenant An's expression. There was more I wanted to say. Not here.

"So we need to watch how things go. We don't know what's coming. Sign a contract too early and it's dangerous. You know the saying—test the stone bridge before you cross it."

Of course, the only reason I could afford to be this relaxed was that I already knew which bridges were stone and which were fakes painted to look like them.

For the record, Geumseong was obsessed with being Korea's number-one guild. After the Second Open they pushed aggressive expansion, trying to bulk the guild up too fast, caused no small number of Awakener-related incidents, took foreign investment and tried to leave the country, and were crushed under government sanctions. They yielded their place to a rising new guild, and a decade or so later they were just another middling guild among the rest.

I didn't remember the finer internal details, but the point was simple: Geumseong had no real substance.

Better to wait, then go to the new guild I knew was about to explode. Early benefits might be thin, but I'd be investing in the future. That guild succeeded in developing new dungeon weapons and kept growing at a ferocious pace right up until I died—a future you could count on. Even the United States had been desperate to do something about them.

I knew the winning lottery numbers, and I knew where a gold mine sat that no one else had found. Become a founding member, and I'd enjoy far more later. My standing inside the guild would be solid, too.

Oh. Right. The lottery... I couldn't remember a single number.

"Well, I'll make more than a lottery win anyway..."

"What?"

Gyeol caught the mutter I'd let slip and threw it back at me, face still knotted with dissatisfaction.

"Ah, nothing."

"You're a very composed person, Mr. Eun."

"Huh? Ah, well... I—I guess so?"

The one who had spoken was Lieutenant An. Maybe she had noticed the air between Gyeol and me going taut. I hadn't imagined she would talk to us personally, and I answered like a bit of an idiot.

"People who have only just Awakened usually lack information, and the aftereffects often leave them psychologically unstable. And yet, even in the middle of all this, you're judging the situation with a cool head. If I may add my opinion, that's a very good choice."

"Ah, um... thank you. Haha."

Worried I might have looked strange, I tried to smooth it over with a vague laugh. Tried. But Lieutenant An went on in a serious voice.

"I'm not saying it to be polite. I mean it. I... after I first Awakened, I fell into a complete panic. Enough that I hurt the people around me..."

A story like that, out of nowhere? I was thrown for a moment, but looking into her eyes I realized it wasn't carelessness. It was her own kind of consideration.

Gyeol still looked anxious, while I was calm to an almost unnatural degree, and from where she sat she seemed to have taken that calm for a defense mechanism. She was offering a story that might stir a sense of kinship, trying to put me even a little at ease—and a compliment that might feel good, besides. She was wrong that my composure was a defense mechanism, but...

She was a remarkably kind person.

"You must be glad, Mr. Han. Having such a reliable friend beside you."

"..."

Fortunately, at her words, Gyeol's temper eased a little. The brat—only a moment ago he'd been going on about how amazing I was and how there was nothing I didn't know, and then he turned around and doubted my choice. Then again, a second lieutenant in the Monster Special Forces was bound to sound more trustworthy than me, who had Awakened beside him only yesterday.

I thought the mood had warmed nicely, but Gyeol just clamped his mouth shut.

The roads weren't as jammed as I'd expected, and with a short squeal of brakes we reached the Awakener Management Department.

"Thank you."

"Not at all. I only did what I should. Please contact us whenever you need us again."

"You must be busy, though."

"This is part of my duty as well."

Lieutenant An gave a light smile, and the door closed. The black SUV of the Monster Special Forces pulled away without fuss and vanished down the road. She hadn't said a word even after seeing the will-o'-the-wisp. Lieutenant An was unusual.

I hadn't thought of it inside the house, but having a pet drew far too much attention.

"Go on inside for a bit."

"Mrrk!"

I gestured, and the wisp writhed as if sulking, then vanished in a flare.

"Ha-jun. Look over there."

I turned at Gyeol's gesture and saw the street torn up in places. Yesterday's commotion, no doubt. I had seen the same scene before the regression, but by then some of the cleanup had already been done, so it had looked quite different. Or maybe I had simply been more frightened back then, and that was why it had felt even more brutal.

"It's dangerous out here. Let's go in."

Spotting a monster flying high in the distance, I took Gyeol with me and stepped into the familiar building.

The Awakener Management Department. At present, the only official government office in Korea that handled Awakeners.

At first it had been lumped in with the Monster Special Forces and run by the military, but over ten years or so a general administrative division had split away. Testing, registration, and the overall management of Awakeners all happened here. Naturally, Hunter licenses were issued here as well.

When Awakeners first appeared, there hadn't even been a word for Hunter. Everyone had to become a soldier. Then their numbers grew, and the government judged that dungeons which didn't spit out monsters weren't all that dangerous. Bit by bit they handed Awakener management over to private enterprise and turned it into a business. And so the guilds were born...

"Huh?"

"Ha-jun?"

I stopped dead, and Gyeol slammed into my back with a thud. I didn't even register the impact. If you came face-to-face with someone who was already dead, anyone would have done the same.