An underground club in Itaewon. Thump, thump, thump, thump. The low bass sound constantly pounded against one’s chest, and a hazy smoke filled the air.
Alcohol, cigarettes, or perhaps something else, clouded the eyes of the people. People swayed their bodies haphazardly, having lost all control. Among them, one man stood out.
He was the only middle-aged man in this space, and his attire didn't look like that of someone here to have fun. With a fedora pulled down low and a mask on, nothing was visible except for his wrinkled eyes. The man followed a huge man in front of him, his wary eyes darting around.
Knock, knock.
The huge man knocked before opening a door and motioned with his eyes to the middle-aged man. It was a signal for him to go inside alone. The man hesitated for a moment, but soon entered the club room alone with a furious expression.
"Welcome, client."
A man with bright yellow hair, styled to stand up sharply, greeted him. With his small frame and hollow cheeks, he had an overall unfortunate-looking face, but everything he wore was from expensive luxury brands. The unbuttoned shirt, the unusually wide, gleaming whites of his eyes.
He gave off the classic air of a playboy.
"..."
The middle-aged man sat silently on the sofa opposite him. He furrowed his brows at the pungent smell, one he would never encounter in his daily life, and the yellow-haired man bared his teeth as if he found it amusing.
"You don't look like the type to frequent a place like this."
"I heard you don't ask any questions here."
"Of course, that's right."
The yellow-haired man flashed another vile smile. According to the official data released by the Hunter Association, there are fifteen registered S-rank Hunters, including Cheon Hae-seon. However, few believed this was the total number of S-rankers.
The industry's view was that if you included those not active as Hunters, the number would be at least twenty. So, where did the gap beyond the fifteen come from? People who used their power for the wrong reasons.
They were the nation's designated Level 1 fugitives—in short, 'criminals'.
"It's just that you resemble someone who was desperate to tear us down."
The middle-aged man's body trembled slightly at the yellow-haired man's words. The yellow-haired man before him was not a Level 1 fugitive. He was merely a contact.
Including three top-tier Hunters who were once S-rankers, a massive contract organization breathed in the shadows of the Republic of Korea.
Tenebra.
A dark cartel that handled heinous crimes like contract killings, kidnappings, and drugs. The place the middle-aged man had come to was one of Tenebra's fronts. 'I thought I'd hidden it as much as possible, but did they find out after all?'
The shivering middle-aged man clenched his jaw tightly. It was something he had already braced himself for. Whether they knew his identity or not, there was no turning back now.
Wasn't his son's soul, wandering the underworld, still screaming in resentment?
"Think whatever you want."
"We will."
Not asking why a client was making a request, or who the client was. That was Tenebra's principle. They would simply do as requested, as long as they received a 'reasonable fee'.
Of course, that 'reasonable fee' varied wildly depending on the content of the request.
"Would you like a drink?"
The yellow-haired man poured a glass of whiskey and offered it to the middle-aged man. The man hesitated for a moment before downing the glass in one go. What he was about to do was something that truly couldn't be done with a clear mind.
An act that would tear down a lifetime of achievements in an instant. But despite that, he had to do it. 'He's completely lost his mind.
Well, his son died, so I guess it's understandable.' The yellow-haired man took great pleasure in watching the man break down. How could he not be pleased?
The very man who had looked down on them like insects and scorned them as the 'shame of Hunters' was now here, making a request. The fact that the Hunter Association knew about this contact point was a little unsettling, but right now, watching the hypocrite crumble was far more enjoyable. They could just change the location.
It wasn't like the organization's true nature would ever be caught anyway.
"You've finished your drink, shall we get down to business?"
The yellow-haired man twirled a tablet pen, preparing to take notes. The middle-aged man's gaze was endlessly gloomy. But within it, a passion hotter than anything else was burning.
Hatred.
There was no other word to describe it.
"The content of the request?"
"Murder."
"Is the target a civilian?"
"A Hunter."
"A Hunter, you say. In that case, the fee will be set quite high."
"I don't care how much money it costs."
At that, the yellow-haired man burst into a mischievous laugh.
"Hehehehe. Everyone says that at first. But did you know? There are more people who end up crippled after tucking their tails or protesting the fee than those who actually go through with the request after hearing the amount."
"... Are you always this talkative? That's not what I heard."
"Ah. My apologies."
As the middle-aged man said, the yellow-haired man was not one for idle chatter. He had just become talkative out of excitement due to the man's identity. 'He must have a lot of corruption to his name, huh?'
The yellow-haired man thought to himself as he asked.
"What is the target Hunter's tier?"
"S." "...!!!!"
Even the yellow-haired man, who had been smirking the whole time, couldn't help but stiffen. A contract to kill an S-rank Hunter. That was something that even Tenebra couldn't accept rashly.
Not only was the difficulty immense, but it could also potentially lead to a war with an entire Guild.
"You've suddenly gone quiet. Is it difficult?"
"Anything involving an A-ranker or higher is a decision for headquarters. However, your assets will need to be in the tens of billions."
"I don't care how much money it costs."
"... The Hunter's name?"
"Cheon Hae-seon."
The yellow-haired man's face twisted bizarrely. Because, in his mind, Cheon Hae-seon was someone the man before him should never, ever kill. A promising prospect with a bright future and a good image, enough to earn the nickname 'Noble Hunter'—why would he want to put a hit on him?
'Aha...'
The yellow-haired man finally felt like a tangled thread was unraveling. He had thought there was something fishy about the news articles. Yoo Ji-won hadn't died from spontaneous combustion; he had been killed by someone.
And the man before him must have vowed revenge. Vice Chairman Yoo In-won of the Hunter Association. He couldn't just let Cheon Hae-seon, the one who killed his child, go.
'They said those bastards from the Glory Guild were there too... So why Cheon Hae-seon...?' There were still suspicious points, but the yellow-haired man stopped thinking about it.
After all, what happened next would be decided by his superiors, not him.
"Take this."
The yellow-haired man handed a phone to Yoo In-won.
"This is a device that can only send short messages. We will use it to inform you of the request's acceptance and the fee."
Yoo In-won silently shoved the device into his pocket. It felt like he had crossed a river of no return. But instead of agonizing, Yoo In-won chose to pour himself another whiskey and toss it back.
"No... I have never heard of a change like that."
Supervisor Pyo Hyeok-gyu adjusted his glasses and took a sip of coffee. He had the impression of a typical, mild-mannered civil servant, but from time to time, a sharp glint would flash from behind his glasses.
And today.
As he listened to the story about Yoo Ji-won, Supervisor Pyo Hyeok-gyu's eyes held a piercing aura.
"That's a shame."
I scratched my head and expressed my disappointment. I had been hoping that even if the Association didn't know, Pyo Hyeok-gyu might know something.
"Rampage is fundamentally an unstable state. The entire body swells up like a balloon and then shrinks, releasing Ether in the process. But according to what you said, Hunter Cheon Hae-seon..."
That was no longer the form of a human, but a monster. It was to the point where I wondered if that's what you'd get if you just mashed a person and a Monster together.
"Furthermore... for him to eat people while in a state of Rampage is truly..."
Yoo Ji-won ate people. But that story was missing from the Hunter Association's information network. The missing persons were all recorded as having their bodies disintegrated during the Ether explosion.
Could it be that he couldn't bear to announce his dead child as a cannibal? In any case, Pyo Hyeok-gyu came to face the 'truth' through me.
"Not only cannibalism... a substance from his body caused an adverse condition in my own."
"In you, Hunter Cheon Hae-seon?"
Pyo Hyeok-gyu asked back with a surprised look. Most poisons cannot affect my body. It wasn't a matter of curing the poisoning; they would wither away and die from the very beginning, unable to take hold.
Pyo Hyeok-gyu was one of the few people who knew that fact. That was why he had asked me to clear the Poison Dungeon.
"It healed quickly, but it definitely affected me. I didn't think it was something to be taken lightly."
"Yes. This is quite a significant event."
Pyo Hyeok-gyu tapped the table with his fingernail and softly muttered a few words.
"Cannibalism... potent poison... Rampage..."
Then he suddenly took out his laptop and started searching for something. Tap, tap, tap. A moment later.
Pyo Hyeok-gyu adjusted his glasses and stared at the monitor.
"A similar incident was recorded in India a year ago."
"India?"
"Yes. There are parts that match what you've described, Hunter Cheon Hae-seon. Please take a look here."
Pyo Hyeok-gyu turned the laptop screen towards me, and my expression turned sour.
"..."
What would I understand just by looking? It was all in Hindi.
"Ah, my apologies."
Pyo Hyeok-gyu cleared his throat and summarized the incident for me.
"According to the records at the time, a Monster with a human face was caught by Hunters after eating local vagrants. It was dealt with immediately on site... and some of the surviving Hunters are said to have suffered from severe poisoning symptoms."
A Monster with a human face. It was certainly plausible to think of it that way. It was a good thing I knew Yoo Ji-won's face; if I had seen that thing without knowing, I would never have thought it was human.
"At the time, it seems they didn't pay much attention to the poisoning symptoms. There's only a joke left that it might have been from drinking the polluted Ganges River."
"If it's the Ganges River, that's certainly plausible."
Pyo Hyeok-gyu gave a bitter smile and closed the laptop.
"No further information is available. It seems India did not attribute any special meaning to this incident."
"That could be. Among Monsters, there are species that mimic human forms and species that eat humans."
However, Yoo Ji-won was a person. No matter how he had changed in the middle of it, this wasn't something to be judged by the standards of a Monster. From the look on his face, it seemed Pyo Hyeok-gyu was thinking the same thing as me.
"I will look into the India incident further. And Hunter Cheon Hae-seon."
"Yes?"
"The current situation is growing more and more unusual. Double Gates are now commonplace, and strange anomalies are surging not only in the country but overseas as well."
"And the cause... is unknown?"
"We are investigating from various angles, but for now, that is the case."
'Various angles' must mean both the Hunter Association's official activities and the actions of the hidden powers behind the scenes.
In any case, Pyo Hyeok-gyu was the one who had recognized my potential and even provided me with a Gold Core. It was more beneficial in many ways to share information rather than make an enemy of him right away. The coffee we ordered had grown cold.
We each grabbed our things and stood up from our seats.
"Let's contact each other if anything new comes up."
"Yes. Let's do that. Are you going home now?"
"No. I'm heading out of town."
"Out of town?"
I have to. I heard a new Hunter device has been completed. Leaving the rest unsaid, I said goodbye to Pyo Hyeok-gyu and turned my back.