A cheerful electronic chime sounded when Taehu tapped his employee ID against the attendance card reader.
"Your arrival has been recorded."
It was a morning no different from usual.
But the moment he opened the door to Appraisal Room 3 and stepped inside, Taehu sensed something strangely off.
The clattering of keyboards stopped.
The gazes of his coworkers, who had been chatting over coffee, all turned toward the same place at once. The way they hurriedly averted their eyes or ducked their heads behind their monitors was painfully obvious.
'What is this about?'
Without breaking stride, Taehu headed for his desk.
Over the past few days, he had purchased several discarded items. His spending habits had changed somewhat in the process, and he had also started carrying around newly acquired equipment.
Apparently, people had begun talking behind his back because of it. They had mocked him for paying money for trash everyone else had thrown away, yet now they were looking at him with suspicion. Their attitude was obvious enough.
Taehu had just draped his coat over his chair and was about to sit down.
"Hey, Hwang Taehu."
A sharp voice came from behind him.
Taehu turned his head to find Senior Appraiser Min Jeongho standing there with his arms crossed. Behind him, several Appraisers who usually followed him around stood like a backdrop, watching Taehu with interest.
"Yes. What is it?"
Taehu answered calmly.
Min Jeongho curled one corner of his mouth and took a step closer.
"You've been acting strange lately. You keep buying dungeon by-products and discarded items with your own money. What are you scheming?"
"Scheming? I submitted formal purchase requests in accordance with company regulations and paid the full price for everything. I believe I already told you I bought them because I needed them for practice."
"Practice? Even a passing dog would laugh at that."
Min Jeongho snorted and raised his voice. Every eye in the appraisal room focused on the two of them.
"A C-rank Appraiser completely upgrades his equipment in just a few days and starts walking around reeking of money, and you expect us to believe it is all for practice? Are you leaking company secrets?"
His voice was thick with petty jealousy and the sense of authority he derived from being Taehu's senior.
"I'm asking whether you're secretly siphoning off the valuable items that come into the company and profiting from them on the side. Otherwise, how could someone with your ability have that kind of money?"
It was clearly an intentional attempt to humiliate him in public.
But Taehu neither looked aggrieved nor tried to defend himself. He merely stared quietly at Min Jeongho.
160 million won.
What that number in his bank account had given Taehu was more than simple financial freedom.
It had given him a profound certainty that his way was not wrong.
With that conviction settled deep into his bones, Min Jeongho's shallow provocation sounded like nothing more than irritating noise.
"You're going too far. You're treating someone like a thief without any evidence."
"Evidence? Should I pull up the entire list of discarded items you've bought? It's obvious. You secretly took the things we overlooked and sold them behind our backs..."
Min Jeongho was still pointing a finger at him when Taehu's gaze shifted past him toward his workbench.
A crude, old iron shield sat there, apparently having just undergone appraisal. A report beside it bore clear lettering.
[B-rank Mana Shield - Good condition. Ready for immediate use.]
But Taehu saw entirely different information.
Instead of golden text, ominous red letters appeared in the air like a warning.
[Cracked Mana Shield]
-Actual Rank: C
-Status: Severe internal Mana Circuit damage.
-Warning: Mana Circuit collapse and explosion after 3 or more mana infusions.
A fatal defect was hidden inside the shield.
If a Hunter trusted that appraisal report, believed it to be B-rank equipment, and took it into a dungeon, the shield would not protect its owner from a monster's attack. It would explode and could kill them instead.
Naturally, the company would become embroiled in a massive damages lawsuit, and the responsibility would fall squarely on the appraisal center.
Taehu's gaze turned cold.
"Senior."
"What? Why? Did I hit a nerve?"
"Before accusing me of doing shady things behind the company's back, perhaps you should do your own job properly."
At Taehu's calm remark, Min Jeongho's face flushed red with fury.
"You X bastard! Have you lost your damn mind?! Is that any way to speak to your senior?!"
"I'm not being disrespectful. I'm stating a fact. You just appraised that shield, didn't you?"
Taehu gestured toward Jeongho's workbench with his chin.
Min Jeongho frowned and glanced behind him.
"Yeah. I just rated it B-rank and finished the mana inspection too. What about it?"
"You finished the mana inspection and still rated it B-rank? That shield is C-rank. Worse, it's defective scrap with fatal internal damage—a ticking time bomb."
A frigid silence descended over the appraisal room.
The coworkers watching them began to murmur. Min Jeongho let out a disbelieving laugh.
"Ha! Now you're going to evaluate my appraisal results too? A mere C-rank like you really doesn't know his place, does he?"
"I may be C-rank, but that doesn't change the fact that the shield is defective."
Taehu rose from his seat and walked over to Jeongho's workbench.
Without hesitation, he picked up the shield with his gloved hands.
"Hey! Don't touch someone else's item without permission!"
"I'm not touching it carelessly. I'm saving someone's life. Yours included."
Taehu casually ignored Min Jeongho's shouting and headed toward the precision mana scanner in the center of the appraisal room.
"I'm putting this on."
Taehu placed the shield on the scanner's circular platform.
Min Jeongho followed him, fuming, but made no attempt to stop him. He intended to prove that his appraisal had been flawless and utterly crush his insolent junior.
"Fine, do it! You don't know a damn thing, yet you're running your mouth. If there's nothing wrong with my assessment, you'd better be ready to pack your things and leave today."
Instead of answering, Taehu switched on the scanner and pressed the precision-scan button.
The machine vibrated with a low hum as blue lasers poured over the shield.
WHIRRRR.
A three-dimensional image of the shield's internal structure began appearing on the monitor.
At first, only the sturdy iron plates on the exterior were visible. Then the mana waves swept through the core deep inside the shield.
BEEP! BEE-BEE-BEEP!
An alarm blared, and one corner of the screen turned red.
The Mana Circuit supporting the center of the shield was revealed in full, riddled with cracks like a spiderweb.
Mana was leaking precariously through the damaged fissures.
Gasps escaped the Appraisers watching the screen.
"Th-that... the circuit is completely severed."
"That's insane. If someone injects mana into it in that condition, won't it just explode?"
"He rated that as a fully functional B-rank item?"
The murmuring around them swelled instantly.
Every trace of redness drained from Min Jeongho's face, leaving him pale as a corpse.
"That can't be... The preliminary tester definitely showed nothing wrong..."
His voice trembled like a goat's bleat.
The shield's outer mana coating was so thick that an ordinary inspection would have had difficulty detecting the fatal cracks inside.
But an Appraiser was expected to read the subtle flow of mana and run a precision scan when necessary. That was basic procedure.
The result of his carelessness—or perhaps his blind faith in his own experience—was now displayed plainly on the screen for everyone to see.
Taehu turned around after switching off the scanner.
"You saw it. If a customer had taken that shield into a dungeon, their arm could have been blown off the first time they tried to block an attack. Then the company would have been sued and forced to pay billions of won in damages."
"......"
Min Jeongho could not answer.
His lips merely twitched. Every trace of the aggression he had displayed moments earlier had vanished.
Taehu saw no need to press the trembling Min Jeongho any further. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the other Appraisers watching the situation unfold.
"And let me say this once more about the discarded items I've purchased."
His voice was calm, but it carried weight.
"Every single one had already received an initial assessment declaring it broken or worthless. Every purchase went through the Management Department's approval process, and every won was deposited into the company's account. Open the records and you'll verify it in a second."
Taehu fixed his gaze on Min Jeongho once more.
"You accused me of doing something shady behind the company's back, but it seems you're the one who just made the kind of major mistake that could get you hauled before the Disciplinary Committee."
There was no sneer and no ridicule.
He was simply stating the facts.
That dispassionate tone only tightened the noose around Min Jeongho's neck.
Not only had a junior he had looked down upon exposed a potentially fatal mistake, but his attempt to stir up suspicion with baseless accusations had also been laid bare in front of everyone.
Cold sweat trickled down Min Jeongho's face as he lowered his head. There was no excuse that could save him now.
The appraisal room sank into a silence so cold that even breathing seemed audible.
No one dared question Taehu any further about where his money had come from or how he was spending it. If anything, the atmosphere had shifted into stunned wariness at Taehu's sharp insight and flawless handling of the situation.
"Rewrite the appraisal report on this shield and have it disposed of properly, Senior. You won't make the same mistake twice, will you?"
With that, Taehu turned away without another thought and walked back to his desk.
He pulled out his chair, sat down, and turned on his computer.
He could still sense Min Jeongho standing rigidly behind him, but the man was not worth his attention.
What mattered to Taehu was not some pointless battle of pride, but the list of unidentified equipment piled up on his monitor.
'Looks like I'll be busy again today.'
A faint smile touched Taehu's lips as he placed his hands on the keyboard.
The commotion was over.
Now it was time to get back to earning money as usual.