Hearing the words direct contract, Geon-mu glanced down at the document.
He had little interest in contracts, where technical terms and word games ran rampant.
"And what is given to me?"
This sort of thing was better heard straight from the source.
"As is set out in the contract, we will treat you to the very best. In terms of money and living arrangements, we will do our utmost to provide for you. And......"
"I am not talking about money and such."
Geon-mu cut Woo Hyo-jeong off.
"If it were a trifling matter like that, I would already have attached myself to that Cheonho Guild my Brother recommended."
"Then what is it you want?"
"Freedom."
"Freedom?"
"What I want is the freedom to refuse a chain of command. The freedom not to be entangled in guild business or state business."
Geon-mu did not know what he would do going forward.
Whether he would beat monsters down, or simply live out his life quietly in this world.
There might come a time when he had to kill a person for his own sake.
Within situations like that, Geon-mu wanted freedom.
At Geon-mu's specific demand, Woo Hyo-jeong closed her mouth and thought.
Having apparently reached a conclusion, she answered him.
"The freedom you want, Mister Cha Geon-mu, will most likely not be granted."
Woo Hyo-jeong knew how the Awakened Management Bureau operated.
The freedom Geon-mu wanted?
There was no way such a thing could exist.
To manage the Awakened, there were times you had to do things you hated, and times you had to be ruthless.
A superior commands, and a subordinate obeys.
Even if they gave him money and special treatment, that system did not change.
They had given him expensive money and authority, so they had to make use of him when the need arose.
"Then there is no need for either of us to wear our mouths out."
Geon-mu handed the documents back.
Woo Hyo-jeong did not press stubbornly; she took back the papers and added a remark.
"In that case, I ask that you at least visit our head office for your grade measurement."
"Send me a message and I will come."
Woo Hyo-jeong held out her business card and rose from her seat.
Once Woo Hyo-jeong had gone out of the café, Kang Ho-seok blew out the breath he had been holding.
"Whew, you've really got some nerve on you."
Kang Ho-seok let out an exclamation of amazement, but Geon-mu only shrugged.
"What is so amazing about it? It was just a conversation between a man and a woman."
"Not simply a man and a woman, a team leader of the Awakened Management Bureau. She's someone even the heads of decent mid-sized guilds can't treat carelessly."
"In that case, shouldn't you have told me that a bit sooner?"
"Would tipping you off have changed anything?"
"True enough, it would not have."
Geon-mu chuckled.
To anyone watching he would seem an insufferably arrogant human, but it was a conclusion Geon-mu had reached through enduring hardship beyond counting.
"That woman isn't a human who can do me harm in any case. There would have been no particular problem."
At Geon-mu's words, Kang Ho-seok probed a little.
"I'm asking just in case, but do you know what that woman's Patron Star is?"
"I do. The <Lady with the Scales and Sword>, isn't it?"
"Of course you wouldn't...... How do you know that?"
Kang Ho-seok's eyes went round at the unexpected answer.
He had only learned it at their first meeting, at that.
Had he not looked at Woo Hyo-jeong through Myriad Phenomena, he might never have known.
And what he knew was only the name and the skill; how impressive it was he could not tell.
"I heard she uses techniques called Judge Eye and Judgment Hammer, roughly. Is that so very good?"
"So you really do know only the name and nothing of what's inside it."
Kang Ho-seok showed a curiously relieved look.
Justitia, one of the goddesses of the Roman age.
The goddess of justice, famous as the statue that stands before courthouses.
Take her as your Patron Star and you gain two traits.
Judge Eye, which can see through an opponent's information and psychology.
And Judgment Hammer, which is strengthened through Judge Eye.
The deeper the opponent's guilt, and the more the opponent lies, the stronger Judgment Hammer becomes, and those who can beat a once-strengthened Judgment Hammer one on one can be counted on the fingers.
"I'd only seen it in a video. To think she went over to the Awakened Management Bureau......."
"There's a video?"
The word video stirred Geon-mu's curiosity.
"I'll show you. Wait a moment."
Kang Ho-seok went into the gallery on his phone and opened a folder labeled 'Mad Movie.'
When he opened a title that read <Lady with the Scales and Sword>, a video began to play of one woman surrounded by seven men.
The woman was a high school student in a school uniform.
Her hair was tied up and she wore glasses, the very picture of a bookish student.
The sort of child who could easily become the usual sacrificial lamb.
And that was only true for thirty seconds of the video.
The girl, who did not even reach the men's chests, muttered something, and light burst out.
The instant the light burst out, the high school girl vanished and a paladin encased in holy armor appeared.
Ten more seconds passed in the video.
Ten seconds later, seven men had been reduced to a state beyond recovery by a single girl.
"Oho?"
Geon-mu's eyebrow twitched.
"That's the video about the <Lady with the Scales and Sword>, and the last one. I tried putting people on it to find her, and here she is as a team leader at the Bureau."
"How many years ago was this?"
"About four, roughly?"
"Four years......."
Hearing that, Geon-mu sank into thought.
Kang Ho-seok assumed Geon-mu was feeling competitive toward Woo Hyo-jeong.
'So he does have some human nature in him after all.'
It was a touch of humanity he felt in Geon-mu, who seemed like an alien every time they spoke.
But Kang Ho-seok had barked up the wrong tree.
'So she's the same age as me.'
Geon-mu had merely been calculating her age.
***
The Awakened Management Bureau.
Twenty years ago, gates opened and Awakened appeared indiscriminately, and for a while the world was thrown into chaos.
It seemed the age of no government had arrived, but efforts were made to bring order among them, and in the end an organization named the Awakened Management Bureau began to control the reckless behavior of the Awakened.
Within it, Woo Hyo-jeong's work was tracking Awakened who had not undergone grade assessment and registration.
"I have brought the list of evidence items you requested, Team Leader."
"Thank you, Investigator."
The male investigator in his forties treated her with strict courtesy, and Woo Hyo-jeong showed him the same respect in turn.
"Is that the end of the work?"
"Yes. Unless there is anything else you wish to assign, that is everything."
"Then let us all go home for today."
"Will that be all right?"
"We haven't been able to budge from here for three days, so leaving early one day is fine. I will go home myself once I finish what I have to do, so there is no need to watch for my reaction."
She was on an entirely different plane from the other team leaders, who were desperate in their chase after results.
She treated every member of her team as a person, and things went more smoothly because of it.
'There is the penalty of faith to consider.......'
The ability of the <Lady with the Scales and Sword> was powerful, and its targets were correspondingly limited.
Against criminals and those marked with a brand in particular, it yielded to no one.
But strong power came with a strong price.
She carried a penalty as strong as her strong power.
Not to kill anyone innocent.
To keep her reputation among those around her always in a good state.
If she broke those conditions, then by the judgment of her Patron Constellation the contract would be voided, and she would be given the punishment of living only as an ordinary person.
'And that too is impossible unless your disposition properly follows along.'
The reason she had been able to sustain it for four years was, in the end, that her character matched what the Patron Star demanded.
Strict, but a woman who knew how to look after her own people.
That was why an investigator many years her senior could support Woo Hyo-jeong as though raising a daughter rather than serving a superior.
"Come to think of it......."
The investigator, who had been about to withdraw, passed on a message as though he had nearly forgotten.
"There is that Cha Geon-mu you went to make a contract with the other day, isn't there?"
"Yes, there is."
"They say the man has come in to take his grade examination. Looking at the time, it will soon be his turn to sit the test."
"......Is that so?"
Woo Hyo-jeong answered without so much as blinking, indifferently, but Bae Hui-su could read her feelings.
She had asked after the man's whereabouts for three full days, so he knew well how long she had been waiting for this moment.
"Then I will be going."
Bae Hui-su smiled and withdrew from the room.
Three minutes later, Woo Hyo-jeong rose from her seat.
As though she had belatedly remembered urgent business, she moved off in short, quick steps and boarded the elevator.
***
Standing on the road, Geon-mu looked up at a building.
The Awakened Management Bureau.
Its size and height showed how well the Awakened were treated in this world.
Geon-mu lowered his head and looked toward the front entrance.
Salarymen in suits were smiling broadly at the young men trying to go inside.
"Are you currently affiliated with any guild or company?"
"If not, do give our guild a call. Seven to three, the four major insurances of course, and even liability compensation insurance for anything that happens in a dungeon......"
Guild recruitment, just as he had expected.
Some walked past them as though uninterested, and most took their business cards and gathered them up like a collection.
Geon-mu counted among the most.
Only, compared with the number of cards the others received, his did not amount to half.
The biggest reason for that was Geon-mu's clothes.
'What's with that guy?'
'Comfortable clothes are all very well, but you should dress properly for a grade assessment.'
A loose T-shirt and jeans.
He had put so much weight on freedom of movement that the result came off as shabby.
Even those who gave him a card had only thrown one out on the off chance.
Geon-mu's clothes looked strange to them, and the reverse was equally true.
'This is where you go for a grade assessment, isn't it? Not an idol audition?'
It made him wonder whether he was a duck that had wandered into a chicken coop.
There were people in their finest clothes, and some had even come in makeup.
"Everyone here for a grade assessment, please board the elevators at this point!"
Geon-mu walked along at the staff member's shout.
Only when he saw the words 'Grade Assessment Room' written at the thirty-fourth floor could he finally put his doubts to rest.
Up on the thirty-fourth floor, a waiting room of some two hundred pyeong greeted Geon-mu.
On the wall of the waiting room was one large glass window, and beyond it stood a room laid out in a lattice pattern.
Geon-mu could tell instinctively that it was the testing ground.
Roughly two hundred Awakened had gathered, and someone climbed onto a platform and took a microphone.
"Welcome, Awakened. I am Kim Cheol-mun, the assessor charged with verifying your potential and combat ability. You will all have been briefed on the grade assessment, but for procedure's sake I will explain it once more."
Geon-mu already knew, having heard it from Kang Ho-seok in advance.
A grade assessment could be taken every six months, and the grade used was the most recently updated one.
The grade examination used the latticed room, the Simulation Room, summoning monsters matched to the user's level, and the user fought those summoned monsters one on one a total of five times.
Through those five battles, a grade between B and F was assigned.
'A-Grade and above is different, was it?'
That was what Kang Ho-seok had said.
Up to B-Grade was a territory you could reach simply by raising your level enough.
But from A-Grade the screening apparently grew complicated.
Which meant, conversely, that there were cases of Awakened whose level was lower than a B-Grade's yet whose Awakened grade was A.
There were cases where a man could be among the highest in the country by level alone and still be unable to wear an A-Grade.
Even in the case of someone like Woo Hyo-jeong, at Level 80 the average grade would put her somewhere between C and B, yet she held A-Grade and a team leader's post at the Bureau.
'The criteria are Bureau confidential, and they said it's based on potential?'
He could not learn the exact standard.
Either way, Geon-mu's goal was unchanged.
He intended to take the highest grade he could in this examination.
Yes.
If he was going to take one anyway, he ought to take the best, an A.
"We will now begin the examination! Please enter in order as your numbers are called!"