Chapter Text
They thought it was a freak firestorm, at first.
At 03:42 local time, a rift sixteen kilometers wide tore itself open at the southern edge of the Gobi Desert, its emergence detected simultaneously by seismic agencies in Seoul, Pyeongyang, Beijing, and Moscow. For twelve minutes, it burned without form—just heat, pressure, and violent mana readings that overloaded every sensor within a 200-kilometer radius.
Then, the silence fractured—
—into a bone-deep, atmosphere-splitting bellow that sent herds of antelope bolting across the desert and cracked the windshields of three civilian aircraft mid-flight. The shockwave echoed east, bleeding across Inner Mongolia’s highlands, and by the time it faded, the surrounding sand had begun to turn to glass.
The shape that emerged was impossible to misinterpret.
“天啊——目标正在横向喷射火焰。确认，该目标类型未知。”
(“Heavens above—it’s breathing flame sideways. What kind of creature is that?”)— People’s Republic of China Air Force, black box recording, 03:53 Beijing Standard Time
Spikes like volcanic obsidian jutted from its shoulders. Wings unfurled with so much mass they destabilized every thermal imaging scan within range. Its breath scoured the valley floor, stripping earth in layers, leaving trenches carved in black flame.
They named it Ennio.
Later, fragments recovered from the residual mana patterns would confirm what some suspected immediately—that this was no newly spawned entity, no gate-born aberration. It was one of the Dragon Monarch’s old generals. A remnant. A zealot. A loyalist to a kingdom long since razed. Something that had endured in the folds of the Chaos World long after the war was over, waiting for the barrier between realms to thin again.
And by all recorded metrics, stronger than Kamish had ever been.
An emergency alert was promptly pushed to 39 countries.
China activated ten gateside defense protocols.
Japan dispatched its elite hunter division to station across coastal prefectures.
The United States redirected two Pacific carrier fleets to reinforce the region.
North Korea made a show of fueling its long-range missiles “in solidarity,” despite magical beasts being largely immune to nuclear payloads and their own highest-ranking hunter being last seen on a fishing boat.
South Korea, however, issued a memo.
Just four words: “Hunter Sung is en route.”
.
The response was immediate, sweeping across borders like a sigh of relief shared between allies.
China quietly rolled back two defense protocols.
Japan restructured its hunter division into a watch-and-hold perimeter.
One of the U.S. carrier fleets altered course mid-rotation—slower than necessary, the delay not mechanical so much as bureaucratic. Somewhere in Washington, a chain of command paused, as if still calibrating to the absurd reality of Seoul being the epicenter of planetary crisis response.
The comm line crackled.
“…Understood,” said a voice at last. “Holding pattern. Awaiting confirmation.”
A brief pause followed on the regional frequency.
“…..should we still deploy backup?” came a hesitant voice from the Chinese side..
“Backup?” someone from the Japanese command echoed, flat. “For him?” The tone landed somewhere between disbelief and incredulity.
There was a soft click as a new voice joined the channel, clear and composed, the perfect English tinged lightly with a Seoul accent.
“Ah,” said Director Woo, pleasant and polite. “We would appreciate the gesture. Just in case.”
Another beat passed.
Then, from an Australian comm node—
“Oi, is there a stream? Someone drop a link—I need to see this guy in action.”
.
The aerial feed stabilized at 04:03 KST.
High above the desert, the drone’s lens adjusted, filtering through layers of residual heat and chaotic mana. Slowly, the frame cleared—resolving into the full sweep of devastation below. What had once been the southern edge of the Gobi was now a crater veined with molten seams, glassed over in places where the sand had flash-fused under pressure. Thermal imaging couldn’t keep up; the distortion pulsed outward in waves, like a heartbeat made visible, a signature too dense for calibration.
And at the center of it all—
A single shadow.
Small. A silhouette shaped like a man.
Walking with unhurried steps across terrain still smoking at the edges, the molten fractures parting beneath his feet like they’d been waiting for him.
“Confirmed visual on Hunter Sung,” someone said quietly, tapping a key. The formal tone didn’t quite match the quiet shift in the Hunter Association's Monitoring Hall—how people were sitting up straighter, eyes locked on the center screen like it was showing a miracle in progress.
No one asked if the world was going to be saved. That wasn’t the question anymore.
Now, everyone just wanted to know how fast.
.
.
The first blast of flame knocked the drone off axis.
Even through audio-dampening filters, the roar vibrated through the speakers — deep, volcanic, the sound of something ancient waking up angry. The heat signature on the main feed spiked so violently the screen ghosted for a second, pure white across all spectrums.
Someone’s pencil rolled off a desk. A mug trembled against the tabletop edge.
And then the visuals snapped back in.
The fire cleared. The drone focused again.
There, through the still-settling haze of molten sand and flickering mana distortions, a figure walked forward—unhurried, centered.
Sung Jinwoo hadn’t moved to dodge.
He’d simply let the fire pass.
The sand beneath his feet had crystallized into black glass.
“Timestamp,” someone muttered near the terminals. “Evaded. No visible damage. No summons released.”
A beat of quiet held.
Then someone, not even looking up from their desk, let out a half-laugh and reached for their keyboard—to begin their usual ritual.
“Alright. Pool’s open.”
Chairs shifted. Heads turned. A few analysts already had the shared tab pulled up before the line finished leaving his mouth. Park Seunho, from Dungeon Metrics, who normally logged dungeon fluctuations with monk-like dedication, opened the template like he always did—getting ready for the numbers.
Sweep Pool – SJW Solo Clearance, Event Code 047B
Threat Classification: Category: Dragon – Awaiting Final Assessment
Columns arrayed methodically: Time to Kill | Weapon Used | Summons | Damage Radius | Style Score (Unofficial)
A snack bar sailed across a desk. A cold coffee can hissed open. The shiftwas instantaneous—the war room had officially shifted into betting parlor mode.
Three desks down, someone nudged their glasses up and called it at three minutes twelve. “He looks…. mildly annoyed.”
Another analyst shook their head, already logging odds. “Nah, faster. Two forty. That’s a ‘god, not this again’ walk if I’ve ever seen one.”
"Wait, is he armed?"
“Right hip. One dagger. Just the short one.”
“Only one? No summons yet?”
“Swear to god, he’s trying to solo this thing without shadows again.”
“₩30,000 says he doesn’t summon until phase two.”
“…We’re dividing his fights into phases now?”
“He’s either clocking this motherfucker with his bare hands or giving it a head start.”
“I’ll double that. No Beru, no Bellion. Just hands.”
"Bellion was last seen near California—that's a safe bet."
There was a snort. “Bro is running global cooldowns on his summons now?”
"Wow. Even his shadows get better work-life balance than us."
“You think he’s gonna punch it?”
“He’s done worse.”
"I think he’ll catch the first fireblast and throw it back like a dodgeball."
"₩5,000 says he teleports just to spite the betting pool."
“Okay, but what’s the over-under on teleport bait?”
"₩6,000. Classic Hunter Sung move—lets it think it has the range advantage, then yoink."
"₩10,000 says he ‘accidentally’ blinks into its mouth and stabs out through the skull."
“Guys, guys—₩50,000. Dual daggers for the finisher.”
“You got money to burn?”
“It’s not real unless it bankrupts me.”
“What about damage radius?”
“I’m putting him under one-point-five km. He’s being tidy.”
Someone else scoffed. “That’s an optimistic take with a dragon that size.”
“Optimistic? It’s Hunter Sung Jinwoo.”
A sudden jolt rocked the footage again—the dragon dropped like a meteor, wings eclipsing half the aerial feed. A column of fire shot outward in violent rings, folding the valley into dust and heat. One of the secondary drones caught the moment Jinwoo vanished.
“Oh, there it goes.”
“Secondary drone’s catching it—look at that shockwave.”
“Did the ridge just collapse?”
“Probably.”
“₩20,000 says he reappears behind its left shoulder.”
“Too obvious. Rear low—₩15,000.”
“Centerline dash through the flame. Calling it now.”
“Where’s the dagger—wait, is that the reverse grip?”
“Yep. Just one. Black blade. Pure shadow-mana.”
“Ughhh, yes. He’s going feral.”
The smoke parted.
Jinwoo had jumped high, drawing momentum using a spin.
The camera barely caught the sequence: blink to shoulder height, reverse-kick to the base of the wing joint, shadow-step off a floating boulder, a diagonal arc slash that shouldn’t have been physically possible. The dragon roared as mana sheared off in brilliant white sparks. Jinwoo landed—silent, balanced, as if gravity were optional.
“North-northeast. Shadow-stepped into a low feint.”
“Told you.”
“Baited that charge like a goddamn conductor.”
“Feint-and-snap pattern confirmed. He’s not even breathing heavy.”
“No shadows out yet.”
“He’s styling on it.”
“Style Score?”
The feed blinked—then popped.
9.3
Groans erupted. Cheers tangled with laughter.
“Ugh, I had 9.6. So close.”
“Who bet against the blink?”
“Me. I was hoping for a parry. Don’t judge me.”
“I’m judging you a little.”
“Did he just do a full aerial twist off a summoned platform?”
“Did he summon the platform or was that a chunk of the dragon’s wing?”
“Shadow terrain is legal, shut up.”
“Fine, fine—but I’m still collecting if he lands a dual-dagger finisher.”
“You’re insane. He’s doing a one-dagger clear on purpose. You can see it in the footwork.”
“He’s not going dual. He hasn't even summoned the other—goddammit .”
.
"SEE? HE JUST SUMMONED THE OTHER DAGGER."
The cry of betrayal rang out from two desks down, from the aforementioned single-dagger gamblers—projected to be on the losing side of the bet. “Hunter Sung, I trusted you! Nooooo…”
But then—on screen—Jinwoo spun, redirected his momentum mid-air, a shadow platform blooming just long enough to pivot, and hurled the second dagger in a clean, brutal arc. It sliced through the smoke and embedded itself directly into the dragon’s eye with a sickening crunch, mana flaring on impact like a short-range nova.
The room went dead silent.
“…Did he just throw it?”
“He threw it.”
“Wait. Wait. That doesn’t count as dual-dagger finisher—”
“Oh my god.” Groans echoed from the other side of the room , followed by the soft thud of someone dramatically letting their forehead meet desk.
“Who—” someone rasped, with the breathless horror of a man watching his paycheck vanish. “Who— the fuck— bet on that?”
From near the coffee machine, a young analyst woman—grinning like the cat who owned the entire aviary—lifted her yogurt drink. “I did. Partial dual-wield entry with projectile finish. It’s a known variant. Look it up.”
“That’s illegal. That should be illegal.”
“That’s like… a 4.65% probability across all his recorded fights. I HAVE THE SPREADSHEET.”
"No, no, no, no, he's still technically using both daggers in like…3 seconds?"
“Nope,” she said, popping the cap off her yogurt drink. “It’s technically not a finisher if he doesn’t land with both.”
“He can re-summon the one in the dragon’s eyeball!” someone snapped. “That dagger’s still in play!”
“Eww,” muttered the intern. “Monster eyeball gore.”
One of the dual-dagger hopefuls was now collapsed across two chairs. “He summoned both. That was the whole point. The entire probability tree hinged on second-phase dual stance—”
“Yeah, and then he yeeted one.”
“Y’all,” someone muttered from under their desk, “he turned my high-odds bet into a mid-tier trickshot.”
The single-dagger betters and dual-dagger contingent had, by this point, joined forces in collective grief.
“My money,” someone wailed, clutching their coffee like it owed them a severance package. “I lost on both ends! Not a single-dagger win, not a dual-dagger kill. I bet snack rights for a week.”
“Can we file a complaint to HR?”
“Hunter Sung isn’t technically employed here.”
“I don’t care. Watch me sue the Shadow Monarch.”
"—over a snack bet?!"
“Dual-dagger finishers always had over seventy-five percent probability—”
“And you lost. Deal with it.”
“God,” someone sighed, squinting at the slower playback screens on the side of the hall, away and about 20 seconds behind from the main action screens. “the footwork lied to me.”
“I thought he was loading for a double-blade cross.”
“Did he just reverse-grip mid-spin?”
“He reverse-gripped mid-air. That’s MY bet. Hah! I won. Pay up, losers!”
“Still holding ₩40,000 on a delayed Beru entry. Gotta make it dramatic.”
“Bold of you to assume we’re even getting a phase two.”
"—why are we dividing his fights into fucking phases guys??!"
“No way. Beru’s his encore. He’s milking this.”
“₩10,000 on him saying absolutely nothing the entire fight.”
..
“Oh come on, that’s a guaranteed win.”
“Exactly. Free money.”
“Wait, wait—what’s the odds on a one-liner post-kill?”
“Negative. Hunter Sung doesn’t quip—"
Then, Ennio—the dragon— screamed.
The pressure wave rattled the screens and sent empty coffee cans clattering. The dragon’s single open eye focused on Jinwoo—burning with anger so fierce it crackled around the room—
A ding from the office microwave inappropriately sliced the tension of the moment, followed by the rich scent of freshly popped popcorn. HR—logistics support or whatever-unofficial-team—swept in shamelessly with paper bags full of buttery kernels, as if this were a movie night, not a dragon fight.
“Uh. I think he’s mad.”
“Like the dagger in his eye was supposed to soothe him, yeah?"
Just as Ennio spread his massive wings for flight, Jinwoo reached out— Ruler’s Authority pulsed outward. The giant dragon faltered mid-air, half-lifted, then caught in place—pinned as cleanly as if held by invisible steel beams.
“Called it!” burst someone near the back. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call the Antares special.”
“Same grip he used to drag the wyverns out of the air. Damn.”
Jinwoo flicked his dagger—a low, lazy spin—and raked Ennio’s flank, orange mana geysering open. He leapt onto a sudden mana platform mid-air, spun off it, and launched into a skyward assault—blade carving chaos in slow-motion arcs.
Ennio thrashed—wings aflame, tail sweeping boulders into dust—but Jinwoo dove in from above and buried his dagger deep in the dragon’s shoulder joint, nearly shearing off the wing.
…and left the dagger there as he swiftly jumped out.
Collective groans and frustrated chuckles bounced between desks. The single-dagger fans slumped deeper into their chairs. The dual-dagger crowd—no less emotionally invested—winced as one at the sight of their second hope still unsummoned.
Someone near the front of the KHA monitoring station had abandoned his desk entirely, half-perched on the edge of a colleague’s chair, eyes locked on the drone feed like it was the last minute of a championship match. “That’s our finale right there,” he muttered, slapping a crumpled ₩50,000 onto the table without looking away. “No finish this phase. He’s pacing.”
Park updated the pool board. The terminal flared like a Wall Street stock ticker in freefall—bets blinking into life, odds dancing, the countdown timer ticking faster than a heartbeat.
A soft ping cut through the hum of chatter. The latest wager pulsed onto the overhead feed in bold, glowing text:
WHITE TIGER GUILD – ₩100,000 @ 2:50 finish – Summons: zero.
They were currently winning.
One of the side-feed tiles flickered, currently broadcasting a live window into the White Tiger Guild’s HQ. Baek Yoonho leaned forward over the back of an analyst’s chair, flanked by uniformed staff huddled around monitors. The lighting there was crisp and cold, but their Guildmaster's grin betrayed the heat of someone deeply enjoying the show far too much—even if his jaw was working a little too tightly and his brow had furrowed in moments of disbelief.
Just two screens over, the Hunters Guild feed was less animated. Choi Jongin sat stone-still in his chair, arms folded, surrounded by UI overlays flashing elemental predictions and kinetic flow charts. His stylus an erratic rhythm against the console, over and over—a dead giveaway of his fraying patience. The probability bar next to his name—₩150,000 on a high-tier mana burst with multiple summons—was a pitiful red sliver inching toward oblivion.
The probability meter for the Hunters Guild was slumping miserably toward 75% loss.
Said Guildmaster looked about five seconds from raising hell at his analytics team. His voice cut through the noise, dry and dripping with exasperation. “Front-line dives and daggers. Again. Because why use magic when you can just juggle a dragon?”
Yoonho's grin widened in the feed. “Please. You’re just mad he’s flashier than you.”
“I’m mad because I bet on a mage doing mage things,” Jongin snapped, his voice fraying at the edges like a man watching his life savings vanish into a slot machine. “Which he is not. Because apparently, he’s auditioning for a goddamn circus.”
The moment Jinwoo had skipped summoning Beru, Igris—hell, even Tank (or anyone, dammit—his shadow soldiers, his mother, a single godforsaken skeleton, ANYTHING), Jongin’s odds had nosedived straight into the abyss. No entourage. No spell barrage. Just a relentless spam of shadow teleportation, aerial daggerwork, and the kind of showboating that would make a Hollywood stunt coordinator blush.
Beside him, one Hunters Guild analyst looked visibly ill. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple as he clutched the betting ledger like a holy text—praying, desperately, for two mutually exclusive miracles:
-
Hunter Cha Haein storming in to rescue the guild’s finances.
-
Hunter Cha Haein never finding out about this stupid betting sheet.
(She was absolutely going to murder the Guildmaster. And then the staff.)
“He has a literal army,” Jongin added darkly, fingers twitching like he wanted to strangle the screen—or Sung Jinwoo. “And he’s out there doing pirouettes with a steak knife.”
“Still hasn’t summoned a thing,” Yoonho's voice filtered over comms, faintly amused. “Damn necromancer’s being stingy.”
He leaned forward and called toward the KHA station, like a man tossing gasoline onto an open flame. “Raise you a hundred—no, screw it. ₩200,000 on ‘no shadow this phase. Let’s go, come on.”
Jongin's scowl deepened to catastrophic levels. “Fine. ₩250,000 on the dragon’s first lethal hit—spellcast only. With summons.”
Behind him, his staff visibly wilted, exchanging glances of pure despair. One accountant made a small choking noise, hands fluttering toward the guild's financial reports like he was calculating how many healing potions they'd need to sacrifice to cover this. All over President Choi's stubbornness on Hunter Sung doing proper mage thing.
(There goes the new espresso machine...and possibly next quarter's bonus pay.)
Yoonho's teeth flashed, competitive glee lighting up his face. "Summons optional. ₩300,000. Solo blade finale."
That got Jongin to slam his fist down on the console. "You're betting on what now?" His finger stabbed at the main feed where Jinwoo stood empty-handed, both daggers buried in the dragon's smoldering hide. "With what blades, you absolute bastard? Both are stuck in the damn dragon."
“Man’s resourceful,” Yoonho said, unconcerned. “Adaptability is style.”
“Adaptability is not flailing around like a brawler on a caffeine bender,” Jongin snapped. “He could end this in two spells if he stopped showing off. You know. Like a mage.”
"Oh no," Yoonho rolled his eyes, folding his muscular arms on his chest. Here it comes. The ‘real mages don’t melee’ lecture.”
“Because real mages don’t!” Jongin flared, hands slicing through the air. “He’s a walking magical arsenal with the world’s best summon corps! And he’s choosing to parkour through a fight he could’ve ended with one mana burst!”
Yoonho gave a long, performative sigh. “Says the guy who almost incinerated half of Busan during a spar.”
“Oh fuck off, Yoonho." Jongin snapped in irritation, and choosing to channel said irritation once again at the main feed, glaring at the younger hunter as if he could incinerate him with his glare." All that power and he chose to brute forcing his way through what magic could solve cleaner!"
The screen flickered. Jinwoo rolled under a tail strike, dust billowing behind him—cloak trailing like a shadow stitched to light, no blades in sight. Very much in physical frontline style—much to the Hunters' Guild's increasing exasperation— instead of waving his hands and poof! problem solved
“How the fuck is he supposed to pull a blade finisher now?” Jongin hissed, more to himself than anyone.
“Easy,” said Yoonho, settling back in his chair like a man already spending his winnings. “He doesn’t.”
Jongin muttered a curse. Then at the hovering bet counter. Then back at the screen. “Fine. Your loss. ₩300,000 on pure mana kill. Let’s see your little street fighter improvise that.”
Yoonho’s grin sharpened. “You want the nuke? Fine. I’ll take the rubble.”
He jerked his chin at the screen, where Jinwoo’s eyes locked briefly on a spinning chunk of twisted steel flung from Ennio’s last impact.
“₩300,000 says he weaponizes debris in the next thirty seconds.”
And as if Jinwoo could hear the bet himself, the broken steel spun low across the debris field—just within reach.
Jongin's jaw worked tensely, glaring at Jinwoo on the screen. The silent command might as well have been broadcast on the main feed: Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare.
The KHA staff—Park and the other small-fish bettors (none daring to wager over ₩50,000)—swiveled between the screens and the bickering guildmasters with stunned expressions.
There was a beat of silence.
"...Did they just escalate to half a million in side wagers?"
Then the battlefield shifted.
Jinwoo wasn't moving for another strike—or grabbing any weapon or his embedded daggers.
Instead, he stepped—slowly—toward the dragon’s scorched flank.
Baek Yoonho’s confident smirk faltered.
Jinwoo crouched just outside the sweep of the smoldering tail, low to the ground, weight balanced. At first it looked like a feint. A moment of staged hesitation to lure the dragon into overextending.
But he just stayed there.
The camera auto-zoomed. The feed flickered to close-range infrared. There—barely visible—his mouth moved.
The dragon turned its head.
Silence fell across the room like a dropped curtain.
"Is he—" someone whispered. "Is he talking to it?"
Every screen in the war room flickered as all feeds automatically magnified the interaction. Heads craned toward the feed. Analysts hovered over scanners. One intern angled a secondary screen toward the lip-read algorithm in the corner.
“The hell?” someone muttered. “Is it talking back?”
Yoonho's betting slip slipped from suddenly limp fingers. Jongin's stylus snapped in half.
Somewhere in the back, a junior staffer whispered, "…We didn't account for diplomacy in the betting pool."
With a careful tilt of his head, Jinwoo murmured something the microphones couldn’t catch—words that made the monstrous dragon called Ennio freeze mid-snarl. The camera caught it then: black-violet energy, pulsing faintly at Jinwoo’s fingertips, as shard-like mana crystals began to coalesce in the air around him—glimmering like fractured starlight.
Then he summoned Tusk.
"Ha!" Jongin's triumphant shout from the Hunters Guild feed made several staffers jump. Yoonho frowned deeply as he and the very few no-summon bettors (an admittedly very foolish position when betting on a necromancer) from both KHA and White Tiger Guild groaned in unison.
A giant shadow orc bounded into being at Jinwoo's side, haloed in ethereal light. The grand mage orc's massive form locked into position, staff already tracing crimson runes in the air as a translucent, dome-like barrier bloomed outward in a perfect sphere that froze falling debris in suspended animation.
Jinwoo crouched beside Ennio, low and deliberate—his presence alone enough to draw a visceral, shuddering twitch from the dragon’s remaining eye. Something passed between them.
A heartbeat of perfect stillness—
Then he rose, shadows streaming off his coat like liquid night.
Then chaos began anew.
Ennio's answering roar shattered the remaining functional microphones, massive claws tearing to the place through where Jinwoo had been—only to shred empty air as the hunter simply blinked behind its skull in a swirl of darkness. The dragon's whip-like tail demolished a support column, sending rubble flying—
—which melted midair, reforming into a twelve-ton stone golem that—
—exploded into gravel as Igris materialized inside its chest, bursting outward in a storm of blade flashes and shadow.
(Somewhere in the back, three separate staffers screamed "FUCK!" as their Beru/Bellion betting slips spontaneously combusted.)
The knight landed in a crouch, his cape flaring as the last pebbles pattered harmlessly off Tusk's barrier.
Then the screens whited out.
Ennio's chest split open like a furnace door, revealing a core of swirling magma. The heat distortion alone cracked two drone lenses before a single column of concentrated hellfire erupted toward Jinwoo—only to meet an oncoming tsunami of brilliant, crystalline darkness from the hunter's outstretched palms.
The resulting mana clash lit up every screen in the war room. Two nearby feeds burst into static after a short, flickering OVERLOAD warning. Shadows and fire twisted into violent spirals—until Jinwoo’s darkness consumed the dragon’s flames entirely. The black-violet backlash surged up the stream faster than Ennio could recoil—black lightning ripping across its wings, its throat, its—
—annihilation.
The containment dome turned into a miniature supernova for exactly 1.3 seconds.
Then Tusk’s barrier flickered off, revealing a perfect radius of undisturbed terrain—smooth glass where a catastrophic blast had been contained.
The top half of Ennio the great dragon was simply… gone, vaporized from the head down.
And the desert around him remained untouched.
The rest of the Gobi emerged unscathed, safely untouched outside Tusk's dome.
Whether that was foresight or just Hunter Sung’s infamous post-battle tidiness was unclear—
but at least the Mongolian environmental bureau wouldn’t be filing a formal complaint.
(Korean-Mongol relations hadn’t fully recovered since the late Hwang Dongsoo, back when he was still “our problem,” demanded territory from the Mongolian military mid-raid. Then the U.S. snapped him up and made him their diplomatic headache.)
For half a second—silence.
Then the room erupted.
Chairs scraped back. Desks rattled. Someone howled like they’d just won the World Cup. A flurry of betting slips hit the air like confetti, and a chorus of groans rose in counterpoint from the unlucky.
“Mana finisher, baby!” shouted a logistics officer, two hands raised to the ceiling. “PAY UP!”
“Confirmed magic kill!” Jongin's voice cracked over the guild feed, triumphant and hoarse, as if he hadn’t just been tearing his hair out two minutes earlier. “That’s right! Summon-supported mana kill with core rupture! I told you! Baek Yoonho, you’re going down!”
It sounded like a playground taunt, not the battle cry of one of Korea’s top guildmasters—the public darling of hunter PR, “Mr. Ultimate Hunter.”
But nobody cared. The war room was too busy celebrating. Only Yoonho’s scowling face seemed to register the insult.
A flood of chatter overtook the comms—protests, swearing, someone trying to haggle over the exact ratio of summon involvement, another person aggressively arguing that dome support didn’t qualify as “combat-relevant.”
“He used Tusk for the dome, not the kill—"
“Doesn’t matter! Mana did the finishing blow! Play it back at 0.3x if you need to, I dare you!”
Yoonho groaned audibly through the White Tiger feed, rubbing his face with one hand. “He almost used rubble. You all saw him look at it.”
“Almost doesn’t win bets, Guildmaster.”
“Fine. So rubble was a bust. Whatever. I still cleaned house on the first half.”
“Not how finale bets work.”
“You try betting against a guy who teleports mid-air and tell me how that pans out long-term.”
Jongin practically stood up in his chair, slamming his palms against the console. “No. I win. You bet on junkyard improv. I bet on spellcraft. And look at that—” he jabbed at the screen, where the crater was still glowing faintly. “Magic. Eat it.”
From the far end of the KHA station, Park’s voice drifted up, exhausted and resigned. “Alright, people. Confirming payout queue. Please form a line and stop assaulting the intern with receipts.”
Someone who had clearly just lost snack rights groaned into their mug. Someone dropped their head onto the desk. “I hate that he always wins by doing the exact opposite of what anyone bets on.”
"You people are monsters.”
“Technically,” someone muttered, eyes still fixed on the screen, “Hunter Sung's the monster here."
A pause.
Senior Researcher Lee sighed, rubbing his temples. "That's not fair and you know it." He gestured weakly at the screen where Jinwoo was now using a dragon's severed claw to scrape gore off his boots. "At least he's... our monster."
"Excuse you. He's our national treasure."
On screen, Jinwoo planted one foot on the dragon's half-melted skull. The remains sloshed.
"A national treasure who just turned that dragon's skull into a fucking soup bowl."
"...I was eating, Min-ah."
"Honestly, I almost feel bad for the dragon.”
“Yeah. Didn’t even get a full phase two.”
“I can’t believe I lost twice. Single-dagger phase clear and no summon finale—gone.”
“Bro, he summoned Tusk.”
“For defense! Not offense! It’s different!”
“Sure. And my grandmother’s a conjuration mage.”
“Shut up, I’m mourning.”
Money and betting slips changed hands at speed. Somewhere near the payout queue, the intern responsible for tracking debt-to-odds ratios looked one Excel error away from quitting on the spot.
Near the side screen, a junior staffer slumped back into their chair, his wallet already several thousand won lighter. “Well. At least no one bet on him talking to the dragon.”
A beat of silence.
Then Park Seunho, who had been scanning the payout logs, frowned at his screen. “Wait a second—someone did place that bet. Talking to the dragon. It's… it's in the system.”
Chairs creaked. Heads turned.
“Someone bet on that?”
From the back, a very small voice squeaked, “...I did.”
All eyes locked onto the newest intern.
Park squinted at his terminal. “You just won ₩1.8 million.”
The intern froze. ““Oh my god. Oh my god. I just—no. No way. That was a joke—oh my god.”
A long, collective pause followed.
There were groans, cheers, and a general cacophony of disbelief as people processed the horrifying possibility that the intern who once tripped over the paper shredder might now be the richest person on this floor.
Then the door creaked.
"Ahem."
Director Woo Jinchul stood in the doorway, arms folded.
His gaze swept the room—past the overturned chairs, the still-smoking terminal, the war zone of scattered betting slips, and a graveyard of empty coffee and Coca Cola cans now stacked like tribute around the projector table. The monitoring hall looked like it had hosted an exorcism and a stock market crash at the same time.
The screens behind them now showed only the aftermath—half a dragon, the cratered remnants of the battlefield, and the chaos of Mongolian military and hunter teams converging on the site. Of Hunter Sung, there was no trace.
Just the usual aftermath of a quiet shadow teleportation exit and a exasperatingly familiar, distinct lack of explanation.
Jinchul stared.
He then raised one very unimpressed eyebrow.
“Well,” he said, tone bone-dry, very-much-not amused. “I assume someone has an explanation?”
[OMAKE – Hunters Guild HQ Building, later that week]
Hunters Guild's Vice Guildmaster Cha Haein stood in front of the break room counter, expression unreadable as she stared at the gleaming new espresso machine.
It took up half the countertop. Chrome-plated, Italian-engineered, multi-valve pressure system with a digital interface and two steam wands. The kind of model that cost more than a B-rank raid bonus and had no business existing in their office—let alone functioning perfectly with fresh beans already loaded.
She turned, slowly, to the senior staff loitering nearby.
“…We don’t usually have budget for something like this,” she said, voice soft.
There was a pause.
Then a cough. One of the more experienced admins, a man who had fought off an C-rank dungeon beast barehanded, avoided her gaze.
“Ah, well—there was…a little extra room in the guild’s discretionary fund this week.”
Haein blinked.
Another staffer jumped in, tone overly casual. “Unexpected surplus. You know. Fiscal efficiency. New sponsors.”
“Technically,” muttered someone else near the back, “you could say the Guildmaster came into some winnings.”
She frowned. “Winnings?”
“Just a turn of phrase,” the first admin said quickly. “Figurative.”
A beat.
Then one of the junior staff, clearly new and trying to be helpful, perked up. “Oh! No, I think it’s literal. President Choi won big in the betting pool for Hunter Sung’s—”
The room froze.
Eyes widened. Three senior staff members turned toward the junior with horror.
The junior paled and realized her terrible mistake. “I mean—uh—not betting, just…strategic forecasting? Fun predictions? Totally unofficial—”
But Cha Haein was no longer listening to the scrambling.
She was staring.
“…Betting,” she repeated, blinking slowly. “On who?”
A long silence.
In the background, the espresso machine hissed, brewing something dark and very, very tense.
(To be continued...)