“H-Hello…….”
Test Guild’s dormitory occupied the entire twenty-fifth floor, right in the middle of the building.
And Haewon was the first Guild member to move into it.
The room itself was nothing extraordinary.
Each dormitory room was a one-room unit with a kitchenette and a small bathroom, measuring roughly twenty-three square meters.
But to Haewon, who had suffered from crushing poverty all her life, even this seemed to feel like a palace.
There was almost no trace in the current Haewon—so visibly withdrawn and intimidated—of the Archmage who had indiscriminately brought death to monsters and Traitors before his regression.
Only, every now and then—
‘There’s venom in her eyes.’
The beatings and neglect she had endured from her parents, the suffocating poverty, and the memories of adults pressuring her and taking out their frustrations on her even more severely simply because she had Awakened—all of those things had probably knotted together inside her and occasionally surfaced.
‘Before my regression, getting dragged off by those thugs must have made that venom even fiercer and crueler.’
The dormitory on the twenty-fifth floor had separate bedrooms for Guild members, along with shared areas such as a dining room and living room, similar to a share house.
And now Dojin, Rahi, and Haewon were sitting across from one another on the sofa in the communal living room.
Haewon’s gaze was vacant.
Her expression said she could not believe what was happening.
“What you said just now…… is it really true? I don’t have to see those people anymore?”
By ‘those people,’ Haewon was primarily referring to the loan sharks.
But Dojin could hear another person subtly hidden within the nuance of her words.
Her father.
‘How old is Haewon again right now? Seventeen, right?’
This was eight years ago, so she should definitely still be in high school.
Yet simply because she had Awakened as a Player, she had been forced into Arenas and made responsible for earning money.
‘By the time I met her before my regression, she’d already seen everything the underworld had to offer.’
This time, he had barely managed to stop her from being handed over to a criminal organization.
But there was no doubt she had already endured every kind of hardship under her drunken father.
‘She probably doesn’t trust anyone…… not me, and not Ms. Rahi either.’
After speaking with Haewon for a while as the Guild Master, Rahi turned to Dojin.
“She’s extremely withdrawn. Maybe you could say she’s constantly on edge…… In any case, as you recommended, her Guild admission is complete.”
So the rest is your problem!
Rahi, whose head was already complicated enough because of the matter involving the underworld Players, glared at Dojin with that message blazing in her eyes.
Faced with Rahi’s sharp stare, Dojin smiled amiably.
“Thank you for giving her a chance, Guild Master. Ms. Seo Haewon will definitely exceed your expectations.”
***
“…….”
Haewon stood alone in her dormitory room.
She stared blankly around the room, then looked down at the clothes she was wearing.
Clean, new clothes.
The first she had ever worn after spending her whole life receiving old hand-me-downs that other people had already discarded.
THUMP!
Haewon flopped onto the bed.
The soft new mattress gently caught her thin body.
‘It all feels like a lie.’
That was what Haewon felt in the face of all these changes.
A lie.
A dream.
Or another trick from adults.
How many times had adults deceived her already?
‘Dad, who kept pushing me into Arenas while saying, “Just once.” The loan sharks who smiled and told me not to worry about the money. And…….’
Mom.
The mother who never came back.
That was when—
DING!
“……!”
Haewon’s phone suddenly sounded with a message notification.
Only her eyes, one red and one blue, moved as she looked at the screen.
-Hey, a decent Arena slot opened up.
-You’re coming, right?
The sender was someone Haewon had known for some time.
Not a friend.
Just a thug she had gotten tangled up with somehow.
-Awakening Department hasn’t started cracking down yet.
-What are you going to do?
Haewon knew perfectly well that people like this could not be trusted.
“…….”
But she had no choice.
No.
It would be more accurate to say that people like this were the only ones who ever approached her.
-I’ll go.
Haewon’s face remained utterly expressionless as she typed the reply.
CREEAK!
She threw on a jacket and trudged out of the building.
Never realizing that someone was watching her retreating figure from a distance.
“…….”
***
-Are you sure this is okay?
Rahi’s voice came through Dojin’s earpiece.
There were many meanings contained in that single question.
Could he really trust a girl like Haewon?
Was she truly worth investing in?
Could Dojin actually handle his entire schedule for the day?
“Don’t worry. I just need to keep an eye on Haewon, then log into an Under Arena.”
-No…… I heard you already logged into an Arena this morning…….
An Arena could be logged into once per day for each theme.
In other words, as long as a Player had enough time and mana, they could log into two or more different Arenas in a single day.
But in practice, almost no Player tried to log into two or three Arenas and clear their Quests in one day.
It was more profitable to prepare thoroughly, then properly clear an Arena with good Mana Stone and Gold rewards.
Of course, popular Arenas attracted so many Players that civil servants dispatched by the Awakening Department often had to impose login restrictions.
-By the way, where exactly is that girl going?
“Isn’t it obvious?”
A bitter smile appeared on Dojin’s lips as he spoke with Rahi, who was working back at the office.
“Bad people tend to gather around young Players who show potential but have been abandoned without proper adult protection. Especially children under pressure to earn money.”
-……?
This was also something Dojin had experienced before his regression.
‘Back then, I was living hand to mouth too…… I didn’t even know what kind of proper Player support existed, much less how to receive it.’
It was also a limitation of a world only two years removed from the Great Upheaval.
A sudden and enormous change.
An unstable shift in power.
The direction of tremendous profits.
The resulting changes to politics and institutions.
Amid circumstances that might even overturn the international order and the hierarchy between nations, the entire world had become flooded with rumors and fake news.
And more than a few Players had fallen into the underworld during that process.
“If I hadn’t been lucky enough to learn about Awakening Department officials immediately after Awakening, I probably wouldn’t have been much different from Ms. Seo Haewon.”
-There are still that many holes in the system?
“Korea is actually one of the better countries.”
What Dojin said was true.
Perhaps because Koreans were known for doing everything quickly, or perhaps because the country had been suffering from a lack of resources and nearly lost its mind when Mana Stones and Gold—resources of the highest caliber—appeared.
Either way, Korea had adapted and reformed its institutions relatively quickly after the Great Upheaval.
“More than thirty percent of the world’s countries still haven’t even established an Awakening Department.”
-…….
Dojin heard Rahi sigh through his earpiece.
‘Well, if I started complaining, there’d be no end to it.’
For the first year after the Great Upheaval, Korea had also been in complete chaos.
Only after another year had passed had the Awakening Department finally been established.
And even now, all it really did was register Players and manage Arenas.
‘Well, Players fight most fiercely over Arenas, so I suppose it can’t be helped.’
After all, Arenas had limits on both how many times they could be entered per day and how many people could log in.
‘And the Awakening Department still hasn’t identified every Arena in the country.’
For example—
Arenas discovered first by Players, who never reported them to the Awakening Department or broadcast them through streaming, instead monopolizing the rewards among themselves.
“So, Ms. Rahi…….”
-……What is it?
Rahi seemed to tense at the subtle change in Dojin’s tone.
“Wouldn’t it be fine if Hangang Group just swallowed up these unregistered Arenas……?”
-……?!?!
For a moment, it felt as though the earpiece had frozen into silence.
Why was she reacting as though it were such a shocking suggestion?
Perhaps she had been raised too sheltered and knew less about how the world really worked than he had thought.
‘Well, what can you do?’
Everything would disappear in three years anyway.
Before that happened, someone had to spoon-feed them the advantages while they were still available.