Chapter 52 – Fame (3)

Baek Joo-hwan frowned, recalling Lee Hyunbin’s special garter authority.

“Seriously, just because he’s a special garter and an S-rank, he thinks he can do this? Have some fucking professional courtesy.”

Baek Joo-hwan, who ran two of Tushin’s squads, gritted his teeth.

“Even if he’s an S-rank, he’s alone. And since he’s a supporter type, he’ll be A-rank level at best.”

Baek Joo-hwan gathered his demoralized colleagues and spoke.

Lee Hyunbin was the first S-rank supporter.

Supporters were, of course, indispensable for clearing dungeons and gates.

A trained wolf might be able to beat an untrained tiger, but if both are equally trained, the difference in species cannot be overcome.

“We just need to do our thing and get the boss first. That’s all that matters. We’re Tushin. You know what that means, right? The best guild in the country, one that no random scrub would even dare to look at.”

At Raid Leader Baek Joo-hwan’s words, the entire raid team’s faces filled with pride.

Tushin wasn’t a guild for just any Tom, Dick, or Harry. It was a guild only the absolute elites could join.

Though their clear rate had recently dropped, preventing them from reaching the number one spot yet, their guild master was providing full support with the expectation they would reclaim the top rank within the year.

“Let’s crush that arrogant bastard who just got lucky with his S-rank.”

“Raid Leader, haven’t you seen that video…?”

“Video?”

Baek Joo-hwan knew what he was talking about.

He sneered.

“The one where he got the last hit on the dragon?”

“The last hit?”

“Hey, you think there were only one or two hunters there? Everyone else had already worn it down, and Lee Hyunbin just got lucky with the final blow.”

The team members hesitated, unable to respond quickly to Raid Leader Baek Joo-hwan’s words.

Anyone who had seen the video knew the truth.

How many people could fight a 4-star monster alone?

Even for an S-rank, that would be difficult.

Above all, the hunters and soldiers who had participated in the dragon raid had all praised Lee Hyunbin in their interviews.

If Lee Hyunbin had truly relied on his gear and just gotten lucky with the last hit, would the people on site have praised him so highly?

Moreover, there was something Baek Joo-hwan was overlooking.

Quite a few people had become fans after watching videos of Lee Hyunbin’s solo hunts.

His refusal to back down to save people, even when his own life was in danger, was the very image of the hero they had always imagined.

But contrary to his team members’ thoughts, Baek Joo-hwan believed it was more than doable—in fact, he was certain they could win.

The large party, consisting of ten attackers and six supporters, entered the dungeon first.

Lee Hyunbin had yet to enter, as he was still filling out the procedural paperwork for the dungeon.

‘Arrogant bastard. I’ll make sure you never stand in my way again.’

If he let a regular raid team take the dungeon from him despite his S-rank title, he’d lose face.

“Supporters, run a full scan. Tanks, take the lead. We’re moving in immediately.”

Tushin’s supporters were different from those of other guilds.

Though their class was support-oriented, they were all skilled enough to eliminate monsters on their own.

“Kweheong!”

A pack of kobolds that rushed to block their advance was instantly wiped out.

As expected, their clear speed was fast.

They weren’t just blindly charging forward; they moved with stability, utilizing their six supporters for active scouting and swiftly clearing the area.

“Raid Leader, I can feel the boss’s mana!”

“Good. Squad 2, clear out any monsters that get close. Squad 1, follow me. We’re going straight for the boss.”

A bitter smirk formed on Baek Joo-hwan’s lips.

Things were going perfectly. He hadn’t expected to find the boss this quickly.

He headed straight for the boss room. Squad 2 handled the kobolds that swarmed or tried to hinder them along the way.

“Huh?”

“What is it?”

“The boss’s mana… it’s gone.”

“What? Why?”

The supporter looked just as baffled, unable to explain it.

“Scan again. It might be an invisibility type or one that conceals its mana.”

“I can’t feel anything.”

It was the same for the other supporters, not just the one in the lead.

‘Don’t tell me.’

Baek Joo-hwan entered the boss room. And there, he saw the guest who had arrived before him.

“Lee Hyunbin?”

“Oh, you’re here?”

The boss was already dead.

The items that dropped from it didn’t seem particularly valuable. There were no high-priced skill USBs or special weapons, so it was basically a bust. But that wasn’t the problem.

Someone else had snatched the dungeon they had won in a solo bid.

As he tried to figure out what had happened, he noticed there must have been more than one path to the boss; there was another passage on the opposite side.

Furious, Baek Joo-hwan approached Lee Hyunbin.

“Don’t you think this is out of line?”

“What is?”

“Honestly, the special garter thing. I know about your authority, your priority access rights, I get all that. But if you have any professional courtesy, you shouldn’t be stealing bosses like this, should you?”

There was some truth to Baek Joo-hwan’s words.

But Lee Hyunbin just smiled and said.

“Stealing? I killed it fair and square.”

“No, it was our prey, so shouldn’t we have been the ones to hunt it? Shit, are you abusing your power just because you’re S-rank or what?”

Baek Joo-hwan’s tone turned openly aggressive, so much so that even his raid members behind him were startled.

Electronic devices don’t work in dungeons or gates.

Even if you bring them in, they break down quickly.

In other words, no one outside would know what happened in here.

“So you’re saying since our guild paid for it, it’s ours.”

“Don’t complain to me about whether you paid for it or won the bid; the government decided that. Do you know your image will be tarnished if you play this out in the media? Or do you not care?”

“That’s a shame.”

“What’s a shame?”

“Yes.”

Lee Hyunbin’s nonchalant response made Baek Joo-hwan’s blood boil.

“I know clearing dungeons makes money, and I won’t deny that it’s become a national industry.”

Lee Hyunbin continued, looking at Baek Joo-hwan and the other hunters.

“But since when did dungeons become places for hunters to mine for money?”

“What?”

“Aren’t dungeons supposed to be closed as quickly as possible? If something goes wrong and the dungeon boss grows stronger or the dungeon expands, won’t someone have to bear the full brunt of that damage?”

“You’re saying that now?”

“Wasn’t the raid supposed to start two days ago?”

At Lee Hyunbin’s words, Baek Joo-hwan’s brow furrowed.

“The raid was scheduled to start two days ago, but you won the bid and then left the dungeon unattended until now.”

“That was to prepare…”

“The preparation period was before that. The bid proposal clearly stated the raid execution date was two days ago.”

It wasn’t a major issue.

In fact, raids were sometimes delayed, as long as it wasn’t an urgent dungeon.

But it had given Lee Hyunbin an excuse.

“Those who call themselves Villains use dungeons to summon monsters. It’s happened before, and before that.”

Indeed, the dragon incident was caused by a Villain who sent a dungeon into overdrive to draw out the monster.

“If you have any objections, I suggest you file a formal complaint with the authorities.”

With that, Lee Hyunbin left the boss room.

Baek Joo-hwan gritted his teeth, glaring down at the dead boss.

“Fuck, just loot the corpses.”

“What?”

“That bastard came alone, so he couldn’t have extracted the mana stones. At least grab those.”

“B-But…”

In the end, the Tushin raid members had no choice but to farm all the dead monsters along the path Lee Hyunbin had taken. However.

“There’s nothing here.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are no mana stones in the corpses.”

“All of them?”

Baek Joo-hwan blinked.

The path Lee Hyunbin had taken was littered with monster carcasses.

Honestly, there were more of them than the monsters their own team had killed.

It was baffling how he could have killed them all by himself, but even more surprisingly, there wasn’t a single mana stone left in any of the monsters’ bodies.

***

Not bad.

When I first awakened as a Porter, I cursed a lot.

There is no god. God is dead. I killed him. Heh heh heh. That’s how I felt.

But this is actually really good.

I’d used the new inventory ability to save the hostages captured by the Villains. But on second thought, it’s also perfect for farming.

“Store.”

All the mana stones embedded in the monsters’ bodies were extracted and neatly stacked in my inventory.

To extract mana stones from a monster, you usually have to stab and dig into the carcass. But now, I could handle it all at once, cleanly, without any of that troublesome and disgusting work.

Looking at the hefty pile of mana stones in my inventory, it seemed like the profits would be substantial.

‘I wonder if the Tushin Guild has another dungeon lined up.’

Checking the bidding network, I saw that Tushin had indeed won bids for several more dungeons. The sight of it made my lips curl into a smile.

“It’d be a huge problem if a Villain showed up in a place like this. Of course.”

***

– To the youth of today, some say hunters are the heroes of our time.

– Others disparage them as mere miners who excavate expensive mana stones and live lavishly. But here is a hunter worth paying attention to.

– The Deliveryman. Have you heard this moniker? It is the title given to the franchise hunter of the Hanul Guild, who has been growing at a terrifying pace.

The first S-rank supporter.

And the hunter who dramatically dealt with the giant monster a while ago.

In any era, in any situation, people have always wanted a hero.

– Hanul’s Hunter Lee Hyunbin has donated the profits from the Earth Dragon to the families of the victims…

– Centered around Hanul’s Hunter Lee Hyunbin, efforts are being made to support the marginalized who have suffered due to gate accidents…

Lee Hyunbin was returning his profits to society.

It couldn’t have been easy to give away earnings for which he had risked his life. But Lee Hyunbin did it.

He didn’t deliberately show off his donations. In a way, you could call it cunning.

Even if he didn’t publicize it himself, there were reporters tracking his every move, as he was a hot topic.

Thanks to this, Lee Hyunbin’s image, combined with the dragon raid incident, was soaring to new heights. And as his recognition grew, so did his income.

In other words, even from a purely financial standpoint, managing his image resulted in no losses whatsoever.

Whether he was a real hero or a manufactured one, the public didn’t care. They saw what they wanted to see and knew only what they were shown.

The early S-rank hunters were a prime example.

The public had been worn down by the gate crisis and needed hope.

And the spotlight fell entirely on the nation’s first S-rank hunter, Yeomje, Hwang Jae-yeon.

However, as strong as he was, his sense of superiority was just as strong. His skills were undeniable, but various incidents revealed his character to be the worst.

The public couldn’t hide their disappointment. The spotlight then shifted to the second S-rank hunter and government agent, Lucky Boy, Lee Han-seong.

He was a hunter who was very conscious of the public eye. In fact, he even looked like a hero. But his frequent drunken incidents earned him constant criticism.

In such a climate, Lee Hyunbin’s emergence was galvanizing the public.

The name Lee Hyunbin had become the franchise of the Hanul Guild.

It was an achievement accomplished in just two months since his awakening.

At one point, there were even rumors that Hanul would withdraw from the hunter business, but the guild had shown a steep and sudden growth spurt.

As a result, Hanul, once ranked 21st, had broken into the top 10 in just over two months.

“This is driving me crazy.”

Kim Shin, the head of HR at the Tushin Guild, scowled as he reviewed the dungeon clear report.

Their clear rate was plummeting.

‘That Lee Hyunbin again.’

At this point, it could truly be called a star-crossed fate.

With his special garter authority, he had priority access to all dungeons, meaning he could monopolize them if he wanted to.

The damage was so significant that they had filed a complaint with the authorities, but the response was that the objection could not be accepted.

That was how good Lee Hyunbin’s public image was right now. Even this incident, which could have been problematic, was being framed not as an act of personal greed, but as a form of service in the war against Villains.

‘Damn it.’

He never imagined that the person he had rejected would grow so much, so quickly.

Even as an executive, you can’t know everything about a person just from an interview.

That’s why you look at their ‘specs.’

Of course, things like TOEIC scores or educational background don’t mean much in the hunter profession. But they offer a glimpse into the path a person has walked.

The specs on a resume were like a benchmark for distinguishing talent.

Even now, if Lee Hyunbin came for an interview, he might still be rejected based on his resume alone.

Besides, how could you see someone who spouted nonsense about being a Hero during an interview as a sane person?

At the time, perhaps due to the social climate, there were quite a few kids with eighth-grade syndrome who claimed to be heroes, regressors, or returnees.

Regardless of the reason, Kim Shin was becoming an arch-traitor within Tushin.

He had already lost valuable talent before, and now he was seen as the fool who had kicked away a gem like Lee Hyunbin when it rolled right up to him.

‘Did I provoke him for no reason?’

As a warning to Lee Hyunbin, he had once put pressure on a center connected to him. But that had backfired.

Starting with the recently returned Raid Leader Baek Joo-hwan, all of Tushin’s dungeon raids were failing.

A report had just come in this morning that even a party composed of Tushin’s A-rank elites had failed their raid.

“Team Leader. An urgent bid request just came in from the raid team.”

“Urgent?”

“Yes, a gate appeared in a deserted rural area, but the elderly residents didn’t know what it was and didn’t report it. Thanks to that, the entrance has opened and it’s solidifying into a dungeon. It’s a high-rank.”

A high-rank dungeon.

Hearing this, Kim Shin turned his gaze to his subordinate.

“What’s Hunter Seol Ji-hoon’s schedule?”

Seol Ji-hoon. Tushin’s prized S-rank hunter, a talented individual who boasted a dual awakening.

He was a figure of debate among netizens, who argued he might be the strongest hunter in the country.

“He just finished a long-term gate clear yesterday and is currently resting.”

“Good.”

He might be a mere porter, but he was still an S-rank. If A-ranks couldn’t handle him, then they would just have to counter him with an S-rank of their own.

Kim Shin smiled, thinking this was actually for the best.