Rapture Guild was never absent from conversations about the country’s major guilds, but in truth, they had been latecomers.
Their trajectory was entirely different from Luminary Circle or Moran, the guilds that had established themselves during the height of the Gate Wave chaos.
It was only after the situation had somewhat stabilized, when people had begun accepting the existence of hunters, that Gong Sijin founded Rapture Guild.
In the beginning, Rapture had only two hunters.
Gong Siyoung and Gong Sijin.
Since the two were brothers and both were S-rank hunters, many people called its success inevitable.
But without Gong Sijin’s desperate efforts, the Rapture of today would never have existed.
When recruiting capable hunters, he aggressively appealed to things beyond money, and that strategy worked far better than anyone expected.
When hunters chose a guild, the first priority, no matter what anyone said, was money.
Signing bonuses.
Annual salary.
But back when Gong Sijin was running early Rapture, the internal finances weren’t stable enough to casually hand out nine-figure salaries.
So instead, he aggressively marketed something no hunter could afford to overlook.
At the time, the slogan Gong Sijin put forward was this:
[Our guild will never abandon you under any circumstances.]
Hunters affiliated with Rapture would be protected by the guild in absolutely any situation.
Even when their lives were threatened inside a dungeon.
Even if they were torn apart by monsters during a raid.
Rapture would find them.
Even if it meant staking their own lives, they would at least return the body intact to the hunter’s family.
Gong Sijin called it familism.
Rapture’s hunters were his family, and he would never abandon family.
The same held true outside the dungeon.
No matter what happened—even if it became a social controversy or a public scandal—Rapture unconditionally protected its affiliated hunters.
Amid public criticism, vicious blame, and curiosity that crossed every line, they remained consistently on the hunters’ side.
Even under accusations of excessive favoritism and shamelessly protecting their own people, Gong Sijin never once bent his convictions.
In the end, that gave Rapture its name value.
It became the kind of guild every hunter wanted to belong to at least once.
Watching the guild grow smoothly, Gong Sijin felt proud.
Gong Siyoung did not.
In the early days and even now, his thoughts had always remained the same.
What a joke.
What was the point of pretending to be family when, in the end, they weren’t?
Dress it up however you wanted, it was still just a symbiotic relationship built on mutual benefit.
The way people insisted on calling it family, injecting emotion into it and assigning it meaning, was downright ridiculous.
More than anything, what he found unbearable was what happened after all the lunatics inspired by that forced sentiment started flooding into the guild.
A business relationship should’ve been enough.
Instead, these people stubbornly banded together under slogans like we’re family in life and death, and it was exhausting.
People like that always approached him however they pleased, then demanded exactly as much attention as the amount they had decided to give him.
They expected Gong Siyoung to return the same forced interest they had shoved at him.
And the moment those expectations collapsed, the whispers inevitably started.
He’s rude because he’s S-rank.
He throws his weight around because his brother’s backing him.
For Gong Siyoung, who couldn’t even express that kind of warmth to his own biological brother Gong Sijin, that expectation itself felt no different from violence.
After getting burned by people like that enough times, he’d eventually reached his limit.
So whenever people called him rude, he became even ruder.
Whenever they said he acted up because of his brother, he went all in and really did act like he had his brother behind him.
Once he started cutting down annoying people the same way he dealt with monsters, life got much easier.
But life was an endless chain of hardship, and there was a saying that you could never predict even an inch ahead.
Even Gong Siyoung, who had become a master at driving people away like evil spirits, had natural predators.
The kind of persistent, exhausting bastards no amount of extermination could get rid of.
Like those two, for example.
“Hunter Siyoung! No, seriously, how long has it been? Somehow your face looks brighter than the last time I saw you! I’d actually been meaning to tell you this if we ever met again—when we were doing our briefing the other day, I ran into this reporter, right?”
The rapid-fire chatter just kept going.
The man who physically could not stop his mouth from moving was Woo Yujin.
An A-rank hunter and one of Rapture’s founding members, now in his sixth year.
And for all six of those years, he had remained one of Gong Siyoung’s most hated high-alert individuals.
“So I was like, no, that’s seriously not it, right? And do you know what they said? They told me that’s just how articles are written these days! I didn’t even know and ended up making a whole fool of myself!”
At Woo Yujin’s words, the woman beside him nodded.
Every time she moved, the studs packed tightly across her leather jacket caught the light and glittered.
The woman, Gu Jayeong, spoke almost admiringly.
“Our Yujin got carried away again.”
“No! I wasn’t trying to get carried away—I was trying to help!”
“Which means you got carried away again.”
At that, Woo Yujin stomped his feet in protest.
Watching the two’s comedy routine, Gong Siyoung pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead.
Woo Yujin was bad enough, but Gu Jayeong wasn’t someone you could reason with either.
The fact that the two people he most wanted to avoid had been bundled together doubled his stress level instantly.
The hand gripping the phone after the call ended tightened.
Murderous intent bloomed toward Gong Sijin, who had gathered these lunatics together without saying a word.
You knew damn well I hate this and still built the team like this?
No. Calm down. At least that bastard isn’t here.
Gong Siyoung rubbed his forehead.
Yeah.
If it was only Woo Yujin and Gu Jayeong, it was irritating but manageable.
Because that bastard—the one he truly hated—wasn’t here.
Thinking that at least the absolute worst had been avoided calmed him a little.
“So anyway, I went to the market the other day, and they were selling these ridiculously tiny watermelons, right? Isn’t it still too early in the season for watermelon? But they were seriously mini watermelons. Do you think it was small because it didn’t grow properly, or is mini just the breed? Anyway, next to them they were also selling soda and kimchi containers together, and I was like wow, now that is real marketing. But what do I do? Now I suddenly want watermelon punch.”
Beside Woo Yujin, who never stopped talking for even a second, Gu Jayeong casually stretched her neck.
Even while tightening her sneaker laces, her lazy replies made it clear she was used to his stream-of-consciousness conversations.
“You want punch? Want me to buy one?”
“Yeah. Want to eat it together after the raid?”
“Deal.”
Letting their routine wash through one ear and out the other, Gong Siyoung silently repeated endure, endure to himself.
Fortunately, before the last thread of his reason snapped, a waiting Hunter Management Bureau employee called everyone over.
Even the atmosphere was different from the last time.
From what he’d casually heard from Gong Sijin, it looked like something had gone wrong with the dungeon itself.
“We’ll now begin the briefing regarding the A-rank dungeon that manifested at approximately 4:00 a.m. on April 6. The initial clear time was around 4:30 a.m. on April 6, and at that time Hunter Gong Siyoung of Rapture Guild entered the dungeon. Is that correct?”
Arms folded, Gong Siyoung nodded.
Checking the contents on his pad, the man continued.
“After the initial clear, a regeneration phenomenon was observed. The dungeon appears to have reactivated, and time until overflow has been confirmed at 17 hours.”
Murmurs broke out from every direction.
Even Gong Siyoung had never heard of an A-rank dungeon regenerating this quickly.
That’s way too short.
There wasn’t a fixed timer for every dungeon, but normally even the shortest was at least a month.
He’d seen seven-day resets.
A daily reset was a first.
An A-rank dungeon already took a considerable amount of time just to clear.
The thought of doing that every single day was already giving him a headache.
“If this dungeon is confirmed as a new pattern, the Hunter Management Bureau will explore future resolution methods under official supervision. At that point, it will proceed as a joint operation regardless of existing dungeon ownership……”
The useless explanation dragged on and on after that.
At the front, the Bureau employee kept talking.
At the back, Woo Yujin and Gu Jayeong never stopped either.
He really shouldn’t have left his noise-canceling earbuds in the car.
With a faintly depressed look, Gong Siyoung glanced toward where he’d parked at a distance.
“At 13:30 on April 7, entry into the A-rank dungeon will proceed. Hunters Gong Siyoung, Woo Yujin, and Gu Jayeong of Rapture Guild, please enter.”
The three names were called one after another.
At last Woo Yujin stopped talking and hurried over behind him.
After confirming Gu Jayeong was following too, Gong Siyoung stepped forward first.
Even for him, entering the exact same dungeon after only one day was a first.
After the familiar sensation passed, the system notification announcing dungeon entry appeared.
+
[ System Notification ]
▶ Entered 『B-Rank Dungeon』
▶ Attribute: Freezing / Ice Zone
▶ 234 hours until overflow
▶ Current Personnel: 3
+
“Huh? Didn’t they say this was A-rank?”
Woo Yujin tilted his head.
According to the briefing, it should’ve been fire-aligned.
Instead, what stretched before them was a frozen mountain range.
Gu Jayeong activated a skill and conjured fire into the empty air.
As the area brightened, Gong Siyoung’s lips twisted crookedly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Inside the dungeon he had returned to after only one day, everything had changed.
From the rank to the environment.
All of it.