FLIA 106

***

“Fuck!”

As soon as the live broadcast ended, Hwang Yeongcheol exploded in rage and hurled an expensive whiskey bottle. Crash! The bottle shattered loudly, glass shards scattering in every direction. On the desk where the brightest shard landed sat a gleaming gold nameplate.

[Minister of the Ministry of All-Rift National Security, Hwang Yeongcheol]

Kim Jongseo, who was standing beside him like a scolded child, flinched.

“You bastard, you’re supposed to be the commissioner! You should have found out what they were planning no matter what, or stopped that announcement! At the very least, you should have gotten that low-level into the government somehow! Earn your keep, damn it!”

There was a crashing sound again sound of more expensive items breaking echoed again. Kim Jongseok could only bow his head without a word. The truth was, if not for being his cousin, he would never have climbed this high in the first place.

Once under the Disease Control Bureau for a short time before becoming independent, the Ministry of All-Rift National Security was now the government’s most powerful institution. It had been given its own military under the pretext of subduing corrupted awakeners and protecting citizens from monsters, and on top of that, it ran the Special Suppression Unit, an awakener force directly under the Rift Management Bureau. Using this as an excuse, it swallowed massive amounts of funding.

Sitting in that minister’s chair through backroom deals and shady alliances, Hwang Yeongcheol had an ambitious goal: to bring every awakener in Korea under his ministry and rebuild a military as powerful as in the past.

The greatest obstacle to that plan was the Sunrise Guild. Having a high-level awakener with an inflated reputation as a national hero preaching about awakener rights made things difficult. So he worked on persuading one of the guild executives, Go Jaewon.

‘Tell me, are you going to be satisfied staying a nameless team member forever? Fine, you can’t replace that friend Lee Hyunmook since he’s a high-level awakener, but at least push Lee Chanha out and take the deputy leader position. The deputy leader seat of the world’s top guild, no less.’

It had taken little persuasion for Go Jaewon to agree. But even after lending them an awakener with rare hallucination abilities, the result was the disappearance of Lee Hyunmook and the entire Sunrise Team. At first, the shock was immense, but on second thought, it was not entirely bad.

Lee Hyunmook was not the only high-level awakener in Korea. There was also Jeong Siyoung, who was far more cooperative. As long as Jeong Siyoung stayed with the Rift Management Bureau, the minister’s life would not be in serious danger. Hwang Yeongcheol was even pleased, thinking he had done well to buy land near the Bureau.

The absence of Lee Hyunmook and the Sunrise Team was a serious blow, but Hwang Yeongcheol blamed the resulting chaos on lazy awakeners. When a monster appeared that even Jeong Siyoung could not handle alone, he spent huge sums of taxpayer money to bring in foreign mercenaries. Those had been three happy, comfortable years. Then, Lee Hyunmook and the Sunrise Team returned from the Abyss.

For Hwang Yeongcheol, this was not good news. He had even placed a press embargo, but some media outlet had completely ignored it, so there was no way to bury the news.

With the whole nation aware of their return, he worked desperately to find proof that the returnees had severe corruption symptoms so they could be isolated and detained. There was no way they could have come back from the horrifying, unknown Abyss without being corrupted.

But the awakeners who returned from the Abyss were clean and healthy. Repeated tests confirmed it. Even more astounding, they had brought back a way to cure corruption.

A cure for corruption! Hwang Yeongcheol burned with urgency, trying to learn the method. But Lee Hyunmook and the others never spoke, and the one low-level who returned with them was a clueless rookie, so there was no hope there.

‘Think about the times we’re in. Countless people are suffering because of corruption! I understand things were hard in the Abyss. If you want compensation, name it. I will give anything for the sake of the nation.’

He remembered how, in the past, invoking the nation’s interest or citizen safety would get Lee Hyunmook to act without complaint. But this time, Lee Hyunmook only smiled faintly and looked at him with strangely cold black eyes. Hwang Yeongcheol felt as though he were facing a terrifying monster wearing human skin, and he broke out in cold sweat. He forced himself to dismiss it, deciding his pride was only wounded by this young man’s arrogance.

‘Will you really give me anything? In that case… promise to give the minister’s position to Captain Jeong Siyoung. If that is too much, the commissioner’s seat will do.”

Hwang Yeongcheol clamped his mouth shut. Give the minister’s position to Jeong Siyoung?! Impossible. Just imagining an awakener, an ordinary lowborn lucky enough to gain power, sitting in the seat he had fought so hard to reach, made his blood pressure spike. The commissioner’s position was no different.

‘I thought so.’

When he stayed silent, Lee Hyunmook’s lips curved as though he had expected this reaction. But his eyes were nothing like his smile, only dark and bottomless.

‘You don’t even understand your wrongdoing, and you feel no remorse. There are plenty like you… and you will surely keep doing the same things, won’t you?’

The man’s mouth did not move, yet he could hear his voice. Was it a hallucination, or had he really heard it? When Hwang Yeongcheol’s eyes widened in shock, Lee Hyunmook gave no reply and left. It took some time before Hwang Yeongcheol could gather himself. He insisted to himself that the inexplicable fear was only his pride being hurt, and he brushed it off, then grew angry.

What made it worse was knowing that if Lee Hyunmook went public about this negotiation, it would not work in his favor. Lee Hyunmook and Jeong Siyoung had overwhelming public support.

“Lee Hyunmook, that arrogant bastard…”

Grinding his teeth, he listened as Kim Jongseok spoke in a crawling voice, watching his mood.

“I-I’m sorry. I tried to stop the press conference, but it had already been reported to every media outlet…”

“And you call that an excuse!”

Hwang Yeongcheol grew even more furious at his incompetent cousin’s excuse. Most of what had been announced at the press conference today was nothing but trouble. With the Sunrise Guild disbanded, the value of the guild the government had spent a fortune to acquire had plummeted, they had publicly cured corrupted people in a live broadcast watched by the entire nation, and the awakener coalition he had worked so hard to block had now been formed. The higher-ups were already pressuring him so much that he was about to lose his mind.

When he picked up a heavy porcelain vase this time, Kim Jongseok screamed.

“Run over there right now and negotiate for an Eternal Stone! If you don’t bring back even one, that’ll be the day we hold your funeral!”

“A-all right! So please, put that down! Aaah!”

The moment Kim Jongseok ran out and shut the door, the vase flew into it and shattered with a crash. Breathing heavily with rage, Hwang Yeongcheol dropped into his seat. He gripped his thinning hair and tugged at it. What on earth was he supposed to do? He had to do something… but what?

***

[I’m starting a guild today]

So I can get an Eternal Stone rental right

I’m going to treat my mom

Recruiting guild members (1/n)

└Me me me (2/n)

└Me too (3/n)

└Move, I’m first (4/n)

[They’re treating awakeners first?]

Then what about civilians…

You’re telling us to just live like this, with bodies even the hospital can’t heal?

This is seriously unfair, fuck

Turns out Lee Hyunmook is just another muscle-flexing, rotten awakener bastard lol

└Hey, check this out (link)

It’s the shelter application link, civilians can apply too, the only difference is the category

└Lol so what, they’re prioritizing severe cases anyway

└Well of course, severe cases can’t even go outside, unlike mild cases who can still function in society

└Not my problem, treat mild cases too

└Lolololol knew someone would whine like this “treat mild cases too~~”

[Isn’t this the government’s job?]

Why is Lee Hyunmook’s guild doing this?

Something this important should be handled by the government, why is he monopolizing it?

└Lolololol I’ve seen some dumb takes but this is next level

└If it were you, would you hand over a treatment you nearly died to bring back? Even for 10 billion, I wouldn’t trade it

└Who trusts the government? When a monster shows up, it’s faster to report it to a nearby guild than wait for the military

└I’ve been rescued by guilds more often than by the government too

└The government even fines you if you over-report a monster’s rank

└???? Don’t lie, seriously?

└I’m a civilian and I’m telling you, I thought it was definitely rank 7, so I reported a rank 7 monster, but they said it was rank 5 and slapped me with a massive fine for a false report. Life’s already hard enough, made me think I should’ve just died instead of reporting it

└Lolololol what bastards, like you’ve got time to check the rank when your life’s on the line

└You know why, right? Special Suppression only gets deployed for rank 7 and above. They don’t want to send them out for rank 5 stuff

└All the lawmakers live near the Rift Management Bureau anyway, fuck lololololol

[Does it even work for everyone?]

Saw them treat a reporter, looked like a mild case, took 27 minutes

Even if they only treat mild cases, that’s just 48 people a day

Howlong will ittake totreat everyone?

└Please, use spaces when you type

└They said at the press conference they have several, so they can treat more than that

└And that one was small, bigger ones will work better

└I’d wait even 10 years if I had to

└Yeah, as long as they don’t export them abroad, it’ll be our turn eventually

[Shouldn’t we actually explore the Abyss?]

If there’s a way to cure corruption in there

Then we should send people to get it

Not just sit around like this

└Didn’t you hear him at the press conference? Even he said he nearly died countless times in there

└Exactly, send a mid-level awakener and they’ll die for sure, send a high-level and they might come back alive? Who’s gonna volunteer for that

└Then send Lee Hyunmook again

└Lolololol with people like you, it wouldn’t be strange if he defected abroad

└If he tries to defect, we have to stop him

└And how would you stop a high-level awakener from defecting? The government exempts them from taxes for a reason, they are basically begging them to stay. There’s no way to stop them, so they give them that benefit

└Just tell Special Suppression to stop him

└Special Suppression, already busy, on 24/7 surveillance? And you think they can stop a reawakened high-level awakener with force? Get out of your fantasy, please

[But why ‘Great Sheep’?]

Why’s the guild name ‘Great Sheep’? I don’t get it

└Isn’t it a typo? If it was Sunrise, the next should obviously be Sun

└As if they’d make a typo at a press conference that important

└Not a typo, I just saw the Taeyang Guild logo, it’s a sheep

└The logo’s cute though

└But seriously, why sheep??? Why???? I’m dying to know