Yoonji Huh, an officer of Eclipse and the faction’s strongest member after Jeong Uijin, had been swamped from morning until afternoon processing applications to join the alliance.
‘Communication ear cuffs should’ve been distributed sooner! Or they should’ve sold them cheaper!’
If communication ear cuffs had been more widely available, she would not have needed to deal with every indiscriminate application in person. At least half of them could have been screened out with a single call.
Number of members, Levels, available skills, combat styles.
All of it could have been asked and answered remotely. There was no reason for her workload to have become this ridiculous.
‘Looking through stacks of résumés one by one two years ago was better than this.’
She had never imagined there would come a day when she missed email and paperwork.
‘Jeong Uijin, that bastard. He should be helping at a time like this. Where the hell has he been running around?’
Aside from their scheduled check-ins through the communication ear cuffs, Jeong Uijin had not shown his face once since yesterday.
They were scheduled to leave tomorrow to hunt the Minotaur Lord, so he would return by tonight, but…
‘He looked pretty far gone.’
Jeong Uijin’s eyes had lost their usual focus three times.
The first was when the message appeared announcing that the Minotaur Lord had destroyed the Special Supply Station.
The second was after he had single-handedly severed the Minotaur Lord’s arm and begun digging through the wreckage of the station.
The last was when an allied faction in District 3 reported that they had found an NPC’s remains—black ash—at their own Special Supply Station.
Immediately afterward, Jeong Uijin had taken his pet and flown away without offering more than the barest explanation.
He was normally so curt that it was painful, with an expressionless gaze that never changed. Seeing him lose control three times in a single day was anything but normal.
Yoonji knew that well enough that even during their scheduled calls, she had not been able to demand his location. All she could do was tell him to return as soon as possible.
Just thinking about Jeong Uijin threatened to make her head throb again, so Yoonji gestured toward the young man serving as her assistant.
“Who’s next?”
The young man understood immediately and began speaking. He had merely been waiting for Yoonji to finish organizing her thoughts, so his answer came without delay.
“A small team with no faction name. They only have five members.”
Yoonji openly frowned and picked up the plastic cup on the table. It was filled with a blue electrolyte drink and floating ice cubes.
“Five? That’s far too few. Their Levels?”
“One Level 38, two Level 35s, one Level 30, and one Level 9.”
“Pfft! What?! Level 9?!”
Yoonji spat out her blue electrolyte drink and stared at him in disbelief.
“I didn’t hear you wrong, did I? You said Level 9?”
“You heard correctly.”
“Ha!”
She barked out a laugh, then her expression twisted at once.
“They barely have any people, their Levels are mediocre, and they even brought someone who hasn’t reached Level 10?! Did they come here to deliver a corpse?!”
She waved them off as though there was no reason to hear anything more.
“Forget it. Tell them to leave. Or tell them to send the Level 9 back and have the other four interview without him.”
“Well… apparently that Level 9 Player has an unusual skill.”
Even after the young man added that detail, Yoonji merely scoffed, still completely uninterested.
“No matter how unusual his skill is, he’s still a single-digit Level Player. With stats that pathetic, one stray fragment in battle would kill him instantly. Tell them to go home.”
The young man answered that he understood and left the room.
“This is exactly why we need communication equipment. If they’d known in advance, that team could’ve sorted out its members before coming here.”
Now alone, Yoonji shook her head and clicked her tongue.
At the same time, she could not help wondering what kind of person was still Level 9.
Even if someone had completed only safe Quests that did not require hunting monsters, they should have reached at least the mid-teens over the past two years.
And yet this person was still in the single digits?
‘I thought the only single-digit Players left by now would be babies. The world really is wide, and there really are lunatics everywhere.’
Imagining how much trouble the other four members must have endured protecting such a timid, immature, single-digit Player made her feel sorry for them.
As she clicked her tongue again, the young man who had just left returned. His face was visibly troubled.
“Yoonji, about that team from just now…”
“What did they say? They’ll leave that person behind and have the four of them interview?”
“No. That’s not it… They’re asking you to come outside for a moment.”
“What?”
Were they planning to confront her face-to-face?
“The Level 9 Player says he’ll show you his skill if you can spare him a moment.”
Unbelievable.
A mere Level 9 Player had the audacity to offer to demonstrate his skill to someone who had reached Level 55.
Every Player possessed a personal skill, but its effectiveness ultimately scaled with Level and stats.
Yoonji had heard rumors of extremely unusual skills capable of disregarding those limitations, but cases like that were hardly common.
In the end, she assumed it was nothing more than the bravado of an insignificant low-Level Player.
“Does he think I have nothing better to do? Who is he to order me around when I’m already buried in work? Tell him I’m not interested and send him away.”
“He says you’ll definitely regret it if you don’t come.”
“Wow. He really does have a lot of nerve.”
At this point, she was beginning to grow curious.
What gave a single-digit Player—someone whose very survival until now was difficult to understand—the confidence to provoke an officer of Eclipse like that?
The low-Level Player’s insolent challenge, combined with a trace of curiosity, kept needling at her.
Yoonji drained the electrolyte drink in her cup, then loudly crunched the remaining ice between her teeth.
One corner of her mouth curled upward as she rose from her seat.
“Fine. Let’s go see what kind of bastard he is.”
***
I already knew Jeong Uijin was not at Eclipse’s hideout.
‘I checked secretly with Myriad Aspects Map on the way here.’
Since Myriad Aspects Map allowed me to look inside buildings, I had been able to confirm who was currently handling the alliance applications.
The person conducting interview after interview with applicants was a young woman with her hair tied high atop her head.
She was one of the highest-Level Players not only in Eclipse, but throughout all of District 2. There was no way I would fail to recognize her after surveying the District through Myriad Aspects Map every day.
‘Yoonji Huh. An officer of Eclipse and its acting leader.’
She handled the faction’s command duties in place of its reclusive leader and was effectively one of the central pillars keeping Eclipse running.
From what I had observed, Yoonji Huh was cold and practical.
She prioritized numbers and efficiency over emotions or personal circumstances, and if she decided something was unnecessary, she cut it away without hesitation.
At the same time, perhaps because she was still young, she was surprisingly vulnerable to subtle provocation.
Especially warnings framed not as an open challenge, but as: You’ll be the one losing out if you refuse.
As expected, Yoonji seemed to have taken the bait despite how obvious and blunt my provocation had been.
She left the room prepared for interviews and walked all the way to the villa entrance where we were waiting.
Stopping in front of us, she crossed her arms and gave us a crooked smile.
“Whatever it is, show me quickly.”
As she spoke, Yoonji noticed the white baby dragon hanging from my head and visibly flinched.
Her eyes trembled slightly, and she bit her lower lip.
It was almost exactly the same reaction Iseul had whenever she desperately wanted to touch Alt.
I pretended not to notice and stepped forward.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Want me to come with you?”
Wonil glanced at Yoonji as he asked.
There was no mistaking the meaning behind that look.
“Don’t worry. I’ll confirm his skill and bring him back safely.”
Yoonji let out a disbelieving laugh and glared at Wonil.
“Now I understand why he’s still Level 9.”
She had muttered it under her breath, but every one of us heard her perfectly well.
Apparently, Yoonji had misunderstood and believed the other four team members had been overprotecting me all this time.
‘Well, it’s more convenient for me if she thinks we’ve been together for a long time.’
Certainly more convenient than letting her learn the suspicious truth that we had only become a team yesterday.
After leaving Alt with Iseul, I walked farther and farther from the villa with Yoonji alone.
Once the villa was distant enough to appear small behind us, Yoonji looked around with mounting irritation and rested a hand on the dagger at her waist.
“Hey, how far are you planning to go? Monsters will appear if we keep going.”
“I know.”
“Do you really? This area is crawling with monsters above Level 30.”
Without answering, I changed direction.
I did not turn back toward the villa. Instead, I slipped onto a side road leading into an alley steeped in an unusually ominous atmosphere.
“Wait! That way is dangerous!”
Yoonji hurried after me and drew both daggers.
It seemed she already knew what lived in this alley.
“It’s fine.”
I turned to face her with my back to something wavering in the darkness ahead.
Her eyes widened dramatically as she stared past me.
“This one won’t hurt me.”
Behind me, a skeleton wearing a tattered robe rose to its feet, gripping a sinister-looking staff.