Hearing the refusal, Woo Hyo-jeong did not back down.
"I will guarantee your freedom myself, Mister Cha Geon-mu."
"You will?"
"With ability enough to be recognized as S-Grade, we can meet whatever terms you present."
"Hmm...... And the reason for that?"
"Because if you belong to another guild or another nation, it becomes a drain on our national strength."
"Do you think I would abandon my hometown and leave?"
"I do not know what sort of person you are, Mister Cha Geon-mu, but of the hunters assessed as S-Grade hunters, five have slipped away abroad. To China, to Japan, and to the United States."
"That was those bastards' choice. It was the price for not giving them what they should have been given, wasn't it?"
Geon-mu spoke calmly, and Woo Hyo-jeong did not like that answer of his.
Suppressing her feelings, she spoke once more.
"A contract with our Bureau. Could you reconsider it one more time? If you present terms, we will meet them."
"You'll meet them......."
Hearing that, Geon-mu grinned.
Woo Hyo-jeong felt a sense of foreboding, but she kept her mouth firmly shut.
"Money, rights, and freedom. Any of those is fine, but there is something else I value most of all."
"And what would that be?"
Geon-mu spoke with a serious expression.
"A person with loyalty."
"A person with loyalty, you say?"
Woo Hyo-jeong was thrown by the answer she had not expected at all.
"There's that stock phrase, isn't there? 'For you, I would gladly give my life.' That sort of thing."
"Yes. Is that what you want?"
Geon-mu shook his head.
"No. I want more than that. Someone who can hold out a hand to me before I ever ask them to give their life for me."
Woo Hyo-jeong could tell what he meant.
Someone who, whatever they did, would do him no harm.
He wanted the sort of person he could leave his back to without ever having to think about it.
"Regrettably...... what you are looking for is not something to hope for from the Bureau."
"Is that so?"
"This is a place that looks for people who do work matching their compensation, rather than for companions like that. It is a long way from such a thing."
Woo Hyo-jeong answered honestly.
"My thinking is a little different."
"What do you mean?"
Geon-mu looked at Woo Hyo-jeong quietly.
Woo Hyo-jeong stared into his eyes with a face that said she had no idea what he was getting at, and Geon-mu tipped his chin.
"How about you?"
"......Sorry?"
Bewilderment showed on Woo Hyo-jeong's expressionless face.
It was the face of someone wondering whether what she was thinking could possibly be right.
Geon-mu confirmed her thought for her.
"I think you're someone I could leave my back to."
Geon-mu was reverse-headhunting an Awakened who belonged to the Bureau.
And a team leader, at that.
A shadow fell over Woo Hyo-jeong's expressionless face.
"That is rude. I am a member belonging to the Bureau."
"If you're a civil servant of the Republic of Korea, isn't it enough to hand in a resignation?"
"At the very least, until my contract ends I cannot belong anywhere else and cannot receive such an offer. More to the point, why should I go with you?"
Woo Hyo-jeong's expression twisted with displeasure.
"Do you think you alone are worth enough for me to set down my title as team leader, Mister Cha Geon-mu?"
"Worth is whatever you decide it is."
Geon-mu shrugged at once.
"I simply think that you are the one who needs the freedom to act as she pleases."
"What......?"
"Your body is bound by that many restrictions, so if there are restrictions outside it too, isn't it only you who suffers?"
Woo Hyo-jeong flinched.
The words seemed to have been tossed out without any thought behind them, yet they landed as though aimed precisely at her heart.
'Does that man...... know everything about my ability?'
The ability of the <Lady with the Scales and Sword> was known to nearly everyone.
That was because it was a matter of principle for Awakened belonging to the Bureau to disclose their abilities.
Of course, that did not mean everything was disclosed.
Abilities that would be awkward if made public.
Or abilities that could lead to the worst outcome if seized upon as a weakness were all kept undisclosed.
Woo Hyo-jeong was no exception.
Weaknesses that could threaten her very survival she always kept hidden.
"Looks like I struck the right spot."
"That is enough. I know perfectly well this is a ploy to shake me."
"Do I look like someone who would do something that stupid?"
"Looking at your words and behavior right now, you look like a blackmailer."
"Blackmail, she says. I don't do that sort of thing to make someone mine."
Geon-mu, who had been lying on the bed, rose from it.
"If it works, it works, and if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. Forcing it, grabbing someone and shaking them, is not to my taste. And doing it that way wouldn't get me what I want anyway."
With the tip of his index finger he scratched at the bandage tape wound around his hand and peeled it loose.
Woo Hyo-jeong moved to stop him.
"Mister Cha Geon-mu, for the wound to heal you need to rest a little more......"
Woo Hyo-jeong had meant to say he needed to rest more.
But at the sight of Geon-mu unwinding the bandage, the words slipped straight back into her mouth.
'They're completely healed?!'
Geon-mu's arms had healed cleanly.
They had changed so completely that it was hard to believe fragments had been embedded in them and they had been caked in blood only an hour before.
"How......."
"That's a secret."
Geon-mu let out a short laugh and walked past Woo Hyo-jeong.
***
The front gate of the Awakened Management Bureau.
No sooner had Geon-mu set foot outside than the people waiting in front of the door fixed on him.
"Ah, ah, that's him!"
"The master from Tapgol Park!"
"Kim Jin-hyeok, no, Mister Cha Geon-mu! Could you spare a moment?!"
"Mister Cha Geon-mu, you remember me, don't you? I was the first to give you a card!"
The instant Geon-mu's identity became known, the sales staff waiting at the entrance swarmed onto him like a pack of dogs.
The skill he had shown at Tapgol Park and the ability he had shown at this grade assessment testing ground were more than enough to make even large corporations set their pride aside.
Geon-mu enjoyed the situation and began collecting their business cards.
"Make way! I'm with him!"
At the familiar voice he shifted his gaze and saw Kang Ho-seok pushing through the crowd.
Kang Ho-seok, who had barely fought his way through in a fierce scuffle, took hold of Geon-mu's forearm in a familiar way.
"What brings you here?"
"I came to pick you up. No need to thank me."
"Is there any need to thank you? I didn't ask you to come and pick me up."
"You didn't, no, but I figured you wouldn't much like a situation like this."
"I like it, though."
"......Right, fair enough. I'm doing it because I don't like it. You have to go home anyway, so I'll drive you. Okay?"
"Okay."
Geon-mu accepted it coolly and moved to the car under Kang Ho-seok's escort.
Only after boarding the car did things finally go quiet.
"Looks like you knew something like this would happen."
"There's no way I wouldn't."
Instead of answering, Kang Ho-seok pulled up a video on his phone and showed it to Geon-mu.
Geon-mu himself and the Minotaur were there, standing in the Simulation Room.
Geon-mu let out an exclamation as he watched.
"The internet is a frightening thing. Anything happens and it spreads at once. I figured you'd cause trouble. Did you do it expecting a situation like this?"
"Not particularly."
More than standing out, Geon-mu had purely wanted an A-Grade.
If he had wanted someone to film him and spread it around the internet, he might have done it himself.
Thinking that, an idea he had held only vaguely took shape for Geon-mu.
"Come to think of it, things like YouTube are popular these days, aren't they?"
"You're going to try it?"
"I'm only thinking about it for now. Even so, I don't want to see total strangers making money off me. You know that well enough, Brother."
"What do I know well?"
"What else? You rushed over to pick me up because you don't want to see anyone else doing well out of it, didn't you?"
"You really do say everything without hesitation."
Kang Ho-seok shook his head in amazement at Geon-mu's unflinching directness.
"Food?"
"Right, let's eat something. I used a lot of strength today, so I think I need meat."
"Sure, your Brother will treat you. What do you want to eat?"
"I feel like beef."
"B-beef?"
Kang Ho-seok's words wavered.
"Beef. Beef is good. Tasty...... and nutritious. Just the thing for building yourself up......."
Sweat trickled down Kang Ho-seok's face.
Reluctantly, crumpling his pride in the process, he asked.
"So...... Grade 3 is all right, isn't it?"
This adorable bastard.
Geon-mu snorted a laugh as he looked at Kang Ho-seok.
"Will eating that sort of thing do? I'll pay for the beef, so just arrange the place."
At Geon-mu's words, color came back into Kang Ho-seok's face.
***
Kang Ho-seok rented a spot at a small butcher's grill house.
He spent about thirty thousand won on the table charge and the drinks, but compared with the price of the meat that was blood from a bird's foot.
Kang Ho-seok stole glances at Geon-mu as he asked.
"Am I really allowed to eat this?"
"You are."
Kang Ho-seok was confident he could eat 1++ Hanwoo with relish.
But this was the ox of an Indian god.
It meant meat beyond mere 1++.
"Th-then......"
Even his guilt over that sacrilege lasted only a moment.
At the taste melting on his tongue, he set to eating in earnest.
"Here, Brother, a drink."
"One for my little brother too. There we go, cheers!"
They grilled meat and drank, and the mood loosened.
Around the time three soju bottles were rolling about, Kang Ho-seok seized his chance and threw out a question.
"How do you think your grade assessment will turn out?"
Geon-mu answered his question.
"It seems I'll pass A-Grade comfortably, but they said they'll record all the other tests as failures. Grade assessment held in abeyance. So for the time being I'll be B-Grade."
"And you just let that happen?"
"The reason was reasonable enough."
"Well, B-Grade already stands out plenty, and becoming A-Grade would be a headache. That's how it was for Gwak Min-seo, the Swift Wind Sword."
Gwak Min-seo again.
Just how impressive was that fellow, for the whole nation to know him?
His existence stirred the urge to challenge that lay inside Geon-mu.
Geon-mu had heard this story already, so he did not listen closely.
Kang Ho-seok wrapped up the tedious tale and asked Geon-mu a question.
"So what will you do now?"
Kang Ho-seok was hoping the answer would not be that he was going to disappear again.
As though his prayer had been heard, the reaction was a rather welcome one.
"Since you ask what I'll do now, it's convenient. Can you help me with something?"
"Help?"
"I want to run dungeons for a while, so I need someone who knows them well."
Dungeons!
The man who had said he would not join any guild was raising the subject of dungeons, and Kang Ho-seok's heart began to pound.
"When we talked before, you mentioned dungeons too, didn't you?"
"I did."
"You said there were problems with going into a dungeon without joining a guild. What are they?"
Kang Ho-seok waved a hand as he answered.
"That's not something you need to worry about. It's just a matter of safety and insurance."
"Safety and insurance?"
"Unlike the trials that Patron Stars hand down now and then, dungeons are completely random. You use something called a <Single-Use Magic Map> to work out the dungeon interior entirely, or you send an advance party to survey it first. Working out the dungeon's interior comes first, either way."
"Hmm......."
There's no romance in that.
That was what Geon-mu thought, but modern Awakened seemed to think differently.
Geon-mu considered it complacent.
Any human values his own safety.
But if you pursue safety even in the moment you brave danger for the sake of safety, it is no different from dropping yourself into a trap.
'Until you see it yourself, do not trust rumor or information.'
It was a lesson he had picked up during his mercenary days.
A commission needed only ever to be delivered in a single sentence.
"Anyway, among the dungeons with reliable information, anything above B-Grade is hard to find...... but if you're going for uncertain ones, they're lying around everywhere, so I'll pick out a few and show you."
"Then I'll ask that of you, Brother."
Geon-mu smiled brightly.
Kang Ho-seok had agreed, but inwardly it did not sit right.
His purpose was, in the end, to talk Geon-mu into joining Cheonho Guild.
It nagged at him that a man whose job was to sell was instead helping an outsider.
'It'll work out somehow.'
Kang Ho-seok shook his head and cleared away the stray thoughts.
For now he decided to concentrate solely on grilling the meat.