Chapter 106

“Huh? S-Suho!”

In an instant, Yoo Jinho’s icy expression melted completely. He grabbed his phone and shouted urgently.

“Suho! Where are you right now? Pick up! Answer your phone!”

“S-sir. You need to press the call button first...”

With Jinho back to his usual self, his secretary breathed a sigh of relief.

* * *

“... Why is Uncle calling all of a sudden?”

Suho, who was resting after making it safely(?) out of the Pyeongtaek dungeon, was puzzled by the unexpected call from his uncle. He had only sent a text about some minor paperwork, something a secretary would normally take care of. So why call him out of the blue?

“Ahem. Suho? How are you finding hunter work? You haven’t had any particular... accidents, have you?”

“...?”

Yet when he answered, the voice on the other end was remarkably calm, mature, and solemn.

“It’s going fine, Uncle. There was a minor problem, but I managed to sort it out and get back.”

“Ah, a minor problem, was it? Hmm. Well, that’s a great relief.”

“...?”

His uncle sounded a little awkward. Or was Suho imagining it?

“There isn’t something wrong on your end, is there, Uncle?”

“Haha. With me? Hahaha. Why would anything be wrong with me? I’m safe.”

“... Safe?”

Having no idea what was going on, Suho could only feel bewildered. Apparently, his uncle really had called just to check in. But after asking after Suho once more, Jinho slipped in one last remark before hanging up.

“You’ll probably hear from the Hyunmoo Guild soon. They’ll agree to most things, so negotiate yourself a good deal.”

Sure enough, almost the instant his call with Jinho ended, the Hyunmoo Guild contacted him. The moment he pressed the answer button, someone he didn’t recognize shouted at full volume.

“We are terribly sorry, Hunter Sung Suho!”

“... Hm?”

As he wondered what this was about, Suho finally remembered Section Chief Lee Youngho, whom he had encountered just before entering the Demon Realm.

‘Oh, right. I completely forgot about him. That guy died to the demons while he was fighting me, didn’t he?’

The fighting in the Demon Realm had gone on long enough that Suho had forgotten all about Lee Youngho—the Hyunmoo Guild section chief who had brought along a whole crowd of menacing second-string hunters to get in his way. Suho recalled him with a wistful expression.

‘I certainly got plenty of use out of him as a shadow soldier. He helped me deal with the demons, too. I wonder if he’s in a better place now...’

Suho offered a brief prayer for the repose of Section Chief Lee Youngho, who had been killed by demons, become a shadow soldier, and now returned to nothingness. He had no idea what Jinho had said to them, but the Hyunmoo Guild was apologizing unconditionally, without so much as an explanation.

“If it wouldn’t be an imposition, might we visit you briefly to offer a formal apology in person?”

“In person?”

Beside him, Im Dogyun, who had been listening intently to the call, began nodding fiercely, his eyes flashing.

‘Absolutely! Meet them! I’m telling you, meet them!’

He nodded and nodded and nodded!

“... S-sure. Let’s do that.”

Under that tremendous pressure, Suho had no choice but to agree.

* * *

“We are truly sorry!”

The Hyunmoo Guild’s division director bowed a full ninety degrees before Suho and Dogyun.

“Although our employee acted improperly of his own accord, the responsibility lies with the Hyunmoo Guild for failing to supervise him! Our sincerest apologies, Hunter Sung Suho!”

“Hmm. What good is an apology that’s nothing but words?”

Dogyun sat before him with his legs crossed, looking supremely haughty. Meanwhile, he kept winking at Suho as if to say he should leave this to him. Suho could only give a helpless laugh.

For all his apparent naivety, however, Dogyun was something of an elite. He had graduated at the top of the painting department at Hankuk University, Korea’s finest art school, making him Suho’s senior in the same program. He had then gone on to earn a master’s degree and work as a teaching assistant in the department.

Which meant...

‘His read-the-room skill is maxed out.’

Teaching assistants were thoroughly accustomed to dealing with lofty professors. At the same time, they were middle managers skilled at handling those below them—the students. Surviving while getting squeezed from above and below made for an exhausting job.

Of course... the Hyunmoo Guild division director sitting before them was also someone far too important for Dogyun to dream of meeting under normal circumstances.

‘But right now, you’re our dear little underdog. Hehehe.’

The director went pale at the sight of Dogyun rubbing his hands together with a scheming smile.

‘... This isn’t going to be easy.’

With CEO Yoo Jinho backing him, Dogyun radiated the aura of a battle-hardened warrior blessed by the university president—no, by the chairman of the board, the highest authority at the school.

“Now, Director. You acknowledge that we booked Pyeongtaek Dungeon Three first, correct?”

“... Yes.”

“Then you also acknowledge that the Hyunmoo Guild, a ‘major guild,’ tried to unilaterally take it away from small-time hunters like us?”

“W-well, we still haven’t been able to reach Section Chief Lee Youngho, so I don’t know the exact circumstances, but surely there was some procedural error...”

“Of course. There could have been an error. That’s why I obtained the security camera footage from outside the Pyeongtaek dungeon.”

“...”

Watching the director flinch, Dogyun gave him a positively wicked smile.

“Why don’t we watch it first, then continue our discussion?”

“...”

Seeing the spite in Dogyun’s eyes, as though he were venting some bitter resentment, the director already sensed defeat.

‘They’re going to bleed me dry. Just what did Section Chief Lee do to this guy to make him go this crazy?’

But he could never have imagined that the one who had actually been tormenting Dogyun until very recently was Ammut, not Lee Youngho.

Dogyun sincerely believed that, if not for Section Chief Lee Youngho, he would never have had to meet Ammut.

Yet the security footage Dogyun showed him was nothing special. It showed no more than a minor altercation between the two groups in front of the dungeon.

After watching the entire recording in a state of tense anticipation, the director’s expression brightened dramatically.

‘Oh, come on. That’s it? CEO Yoo Jinho got involved over this? That man really does dote on his nephew far too much.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. Something like this could be settled by handing over a little money.

Just then, however, Beru returned from the errand Suho had sent him on.

[“Young Monarch, I have brought out the corpses you requested.”]

“...!”

What Beru dragged in were none other than the bodies of Section Chief Lee Youngho and his cronies. Suho had been keeping them in the Shadow Dungeon in case they might prove useful.

The bodies had clearly fallen victim to magic beasts. Recognizing that at a glance, the Hyunmoo Guild director turned pale.

“But these aren’t hunters who would die in a mere Pyeongtaek dungeon! How could this have happened...?”

“Of course they wouldn’t have under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, magic beasts got them while they were ambushing us.”

“...”

* * *

To cut to the chase, Suho and Dogyun extracted substantial compensation for the Hyunmoo Guild’s abuse of power. Money? That went without saying. They secured something even more important than money: experience.

To establish his guild, Suho needed dungeons more than he needed money right now. With only three hunters—Suho, Dogyun, and Esil—their group was closer to a fledgling mercenary band. As a result, the hardest part was finding dungeons they could raid to build up their track record.

Of course, they could easily join other raid parties, but that presented problems of its own. If Suho had to move at other hunters’ pace, not only would his leveling efficiency suffer, clearing the dungeon would actually take longer.

But the Hyunmoo Guild helped them with that. No—rather than helping, it was more accurate to say they had been forced to hand it over.

“... We will share access to around ten of our dungeons. None of them are particularly impressive on their own, of course, but they should be sufficient to build the track record you need to establish a guild.”

“You truly are a wonderful man, Director. Are you an angel, by any chance?”

‘Then are you a demon, you little bastard?’

The director wanted to spit in Dogyun’s beaming face. He never wanted to have anything to do with this fellow again.

‘Damn. They really sank their teeth into me.’

He inwardly ground his teeth. This was all Section Chief Lee Youngho’s fault. Who knew how much the guild had lost because of that idiot? It wasn’t merely a matter of money. Once he factored in having antagonized CEO Yoo Jinho, the losses were truly astronomical.

‘Fine. It’s already happened. Let’s think of it as an investment.’

The director changed his outlook. After all, incidents could happen anytime, anywhere. Wasn’t what mattered how one dealt with the aftermath? Since they had been so proactive in providing compensation, surely CEO Yoo Jinho would have softened at least a little.

‘Yes. Let’s use this as an opportunity to ask him once again to include our guild in the Solo Leveling project.’

With that in mind, the director finished settling the compensation and casually addressed Suho.

“We deeply regret what happened. Beyond this compensation, we intend to offer you our assistance in the future, Hunter Sung Suho. Please contact us anytime. Oh, and I do hope... you’ll put in a good word with your uncle...”

Just then...

“D-Director! We have a situation!”

‘Oh, what now?’

Just as he was about to bring up the most important point, a subordinate suddenly called out to him in a panic. Struggling to keep his face from twisting into a scowl, he excused himself to Suho.

“My apologies. My employee seems to have forgotten his manners. What on earth is all this fuss about?”

Despite his superior’s furious glare, the Hyunmoo Guild employee paid it no mind and showed him his phone screen.

“L-look at this article. It says he’s just arrived in Korea!”

“Who on earth has arrived? ... Huh?”

The director’s eyes widened at the photograph in the online news article, and he hurriedly took the phone. Their curiosity piqued, Suho and Dogyun glanced at the screen as well and soon saw a series of sensational headlines.

-Goliath Arrives in Korea!

-Why Is the Scavenger Guild’s Guildmaster in Korea?

-Goliath, the White-Haired Veteran!

The white-haired veteran. The description fit the photograph perfectly: a muscular old man wearing sunglasses strode confidently out of Incheon Airport, his snow-white hair flowing like a lion’s mane.

There could hardly be a hunter who didn’t know this old man’s name.

“Thomas Andre?!”

“Why has he suddenly come to Korea?”

The troublemaker who made headlines wherever he went had come to Korea.