C15
The Combat Suit
—Ding-dong.
In the peaceful atmosphere, Gwanghyeon got up from his seat when the doorbell rang.
With a slightly tense expression, he carefully walked toward the front door.
‘…So, it’s finally here.’
Click.
Gwanghyeon opened the front door and silently met the eyes of the woman standing outside.
“…”
She smiled brightly and greeted him cheerfully.
“Hello! Hunter Choi Gwanghyeon!”
“…Yes, hello.”
The person who had come to see Gwanghyeon was none other than Min Hyeong-eun, the branch manager of the Gyeongsin Guild.
“Please, come in.”
“Ah, is that really okay? Then, excuse me.”
A few days after the incident with Uminhyuk, the Gyeongsin Guild contacted Gwanghyeon as they had promised.
Gyeongsin said that, as compensation for what had happened that day, they would provide him with a piece of Hunter equipment.
Getting a piece of Hunter equipment for free was obviously not a bad deal, so Gwanghyeon gave the Gyeongsin Guild his home address.
‘Still, I didn’t expect the branch manager herself to come…’
The problem was that on the day the equipment was supposed to be delivered, Min Hyeong-eun had contacted him and said that she would personally deliver it.
Gwanghyeon had been a little flustered when he first heard that.
He had expected them to send it by courier at most.
But she had already said she was on her way, and Gwanghyeon figured there couldn’t be any harm in having the branch manager come over, so he ultimately waited for her.
And that was how this awkward situation had come about.
“You weren’t waiting at home because of me even though you’re busy, were you? I’d feel terrible if you were.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go today.”
“Hahaha! That’s a relief. Oh? You were with your children too? Hello, kids!”
…She really is quite friendly with people.
In any case, Min Hyeong-eun’s atmosphere was quite different from when they had met that day.
Back then, she had been fully equipped with combat gear from head to toe, giving off the impression of a professional Hunter.
But now that she was wearing a casual business suit, she looked like an entirely different person.
If anything, she simply looked like a pretty young woman who had just started working.
‘What an interesting person.’
As though she had already forgotten why she had come, Min Hyeong-eun approached Seojun and Seoyun and cheerfully greeted them.
It wasn’t until she noticed Gwanghyeon sitting at the table and staring at her that she belatedly went, “Oops,” before carefully taking the seat across from him.
“Hahaha, I’m sorry.”
“Ah, it’s fine.”
“Then let me show you what I brought right away.”
After giving a small smile, Min Hyeong-eun placed the black equipment case she had brought onto the table.
She entered a password into the lock on the top of the case, and it slowly opened.
Gwanghyeon immediately saw what was inside.
“This is…”
“We put some thought into preparing this, but I’m not sure if you’ll like it.”
What the Gyeongsin Guild had prepared as compensation was B-rank Hunter equipment.
A navy-colored combat suit.
“When I saw you before, it looked like you weren’t wearing a suit or anything similar. So we decided to prepare one for you. It’s a B-rank combat suit.”
Gwanghyeon was honestly quite surprised when he saw the contents.
Combat suits generally started at tens of millions of won, while expensive ones could cost hundreds of millions.
As far as he knew, a B-rank combat suit would cost at least 100 million won, and a brand-new one could easily cost 200 to 300 million.
“…Hmm.”
Gwanghyeon had originally intended to simply say thank you, accept the free gift, and be done with it.
But after seeing what they had actually prepared, he suddenly became curious about why they were going this far.
‘Sure, I helped them, but did the guild really need to go this far?’
From the Gyeongsin Guild’s perspective, they could compensate Gwanghyeon if they wanted to, or they could simply choose not to.
He was someone they might only ever meet once.
Why go out of their way to treat him so generously?
From a basic human perspective, it made sense to compensate him because he had prevented the guild from suffering tremendous losses.
But a guild wasn’t a person. It was an organization driven by profit.
Having lived longer than most people and experienced countless things, Gwanghyeon knew very well that the world didn’t operate purely on goodwill.
Now that he thought about it, there seemed to be another motive behind the branch manager personally coming to deliver the equipment.
“Are you just giving this to me?”
Looking at Gwanghyeon, who asked with a hint of suspicion, Min Hyeong-eun gazed at him for a moment before answering.
“Why? Is something bothering you?”
“I have a feeling this isn’t where it ends.”
“…You’re really perceptive!”
Min Hyeong-eun immediately grinned.
She took the suit out of the case and pointed toward the space underneath it.
“…What’s this?”
“Would you like to take a look?”
There was a document lying underneath.
It was a proposal for Gwanghyeon to join the Gyeongsin Guild.
Gwanghyeon briefly scanned the document with his eyes, then looked up and met her gaze.
Min Hyeong-eun immediately began explaining with a bright expression.
“Along with compensating you for what happened the other day, I came here to offer Hunter Choi Gwanghyeon a position in our guild. Our Team Leader Nam said you seemed incredibly skilled when he saw you that day! And when we looked into it, we also learned that the villain you subdued was a Level 4 threat.”
Min Hyeong-eun’s eyes sparkled as she continued enthusiastically.
Based on their estimates, Gwanghyeon was clearly a B-rank Hunter or higher, which was exactly the kind of talent a small- to medium-sized guild like Gyeongsin desperately wanted.
The reason she had come all the way here wasn’t simply to give him compensation.
She intended to use the opportunity to build a favorable impression and recruit him into the Gyeongsin Guild.
“There’s no way we could meet someone like you and simply sit back and do nothing. So, on behalf of the Gyeongsin Guild, I’d like to respectfully offer Hunter Choi Gwanghyeon a scouting offer!”
—Slap!
Min Hyeong-eun slapped her palm against the table and leaned slightly forward, bringing herself closer to Gwanghyeon as she met his eyes.
“…”
However, even after listening to everything she had to say, Gwanghyeon simply stared at her with an indifferent expression, showing almost no reaction.
Min Hyeong-eun began to sweat slightly, seemingly flustered.
“D-Did you not like the offer?”
“Hmm… It’s not that. But what would you do if I already belonged to another guild?”
At Gwanghyeon’s question, Min Hyeong-eun slapped the table once more and replied,
“We’ll definitely offer you better terms than they do.”
So they prepared a suit like this just to try to recruit me?
In the end, there really had been another motive behind the visit.
But it wasn’t an unpleasant one.
After hearing her entire explanation and understanding how serious they were about recruiting him, Gwanghyeon smiled faintly for the first time.
Min Hyeong-eun took that as a positive sign, and her expression immediately brightened.
However, she couldn’t help but become disappointed by his next words.
“Well, actually, I don’t belong to any guild right now. But I don’t intend to join yours either.”
“Pardon? W-Why…? You haven’t even heard our terms yet! If you don’t like our guild’s reputation or standing…”
“It’s not that. I simply don’t intend to join any guild right now.”
“Uhh…”
Min Hyeong-eun tilted her head in confusion.
It was understandable.
For an ordinary Hunter to remain without a guild was essentially the same as choosing to work without a regular job.
Of course, there were Hunters who worked as mercenaries, but with the exception of a tiny minority, most only did so temporarily while looking for a guild to join.
“May I ask why?”
“Well…”
Min Hyeong-eun clearly seemed determined to recruit Gwanghyeon into the Gyeongsin Guild today.
Because of that, Gwanghyeon thought he shouldn’t brush her off with a vague answer like he had done when speaking to Team Leader Ryu Se-yeong.
If he didn’t give her some kind of explanation, she would probably keep making the same offer without giving up.
After organizing his thoughts, Gwanghyeon spoke with a serious expression.
“Because I don’t want to have any regrets.”
“Pardon? Regrets…?”
At her confused question, Gwanghyeon began speaking as he recalled his past memories.
“When you’re part of a guild, you inevitably become tied down by it. Then you keep pushing aside the things you need to do right away, putting them off until later. And eventually, everything ends up becoming something you regret.”
“…Hmm.”
“I realized that too late. So for the time being, I want to remain unaffiliated with any organization. Right now, I want to focus on the things I need to do.”
Gwanghyeon thought of all the villains he had encountered so far.
Then he looked toward Seojun and Seoyun, who were playing nearby.
After hearing Gwanghyeon’s honest explanation, Min Hyeong-eun nodded.
“Haha, if that’s how you feel, then I suppose it would be difficult for us to recruit you right now.”
Min Hyeong-eun smiled regretfully, accepting that there was nothing she could do.
Continuing to pressure him after he had explained himself so clearly would have been rude in its own way.
And so, the conversation about Gyeongsin Guild’s recruitment offer came to an end.
Neither of them had any reason to feel offended.
“I understand. Then, unfortunately, I suppose I’ll have to head back.”
“I’m sorry if I made you come all this way for nothing.”
“Oh, not at all. You didn’t make me come here for nothing.”
Min Hyeong-eun put the document back inside the case, closed it, locked it, and carefully stood up.
“At least I delivered the suit properly, so that’s what matters.”
“Hmm, then this…”
As Gwanghyeon picked up the suit from the table and stood, Min Hyeong-eun smiled and nodded.
“Of course. That was given to you as compensation, so it has nothing to do with what we discussed afterward. You don’t need to feel pressured about it.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Gwanghyeon hadn’t really felt pressured in the first place.
He had simply wanted to make sure.
In any case, he had received some pretty excellent equipment, so he was quite pleased.
“Even if you don’t join our guild right now, I hope we can continue to maintain a good relationship. And if you ever change your mind, feel free to contact us anytime.”
It wasn’t an overly burdensome request, so Gwanghyeon gave her a faint smile and nodded.
“Sure.”
Around the same time, there was another group that felt the exact opposite toward Gwanghyeon compared to the Gyeongsin Guild.
They were none other than members of the villain organization Raven.
They were currently scrambling to uncover information about Gwanghyeon.
“Still? You haven’t figured out who the hell that bastard is yet?”
The man asking that was Hwang Geon-uk, a villain who could be considered the leader of Raven.
He shouted impatiently at his organization members.
“W-Well…”
“No matter how hard we try to find out what happened, nothing comes up.”
Unfortunately, there was little they could do about it.
Almost nothing was known about the villain hunter who used gauntlets.
“Where the hell did that bastard come from?”
At first, the members of Raven had suspected that the mysterious man might be a villain belonging to another organization.
But once they learned that he had handed Uminhyuk over to the National Police Agency’s Villain Task Force, they quickly realized that their assumption had been wrong.
There was no way a villain could have a friendly relationship with the Villain Task Force.
And if that was the case, the man had to be a Hunter.
But among the well-known Hunters, they couldn’t find anyone who matched his appearance or fighting style.
‘Damn it. Is he someone whose name isn’t known at all? If so… is he a newly awakened Hunter?’
Hwang Geon-uk’s thoughts became increasingly complicated.
Then, amid the confusion, one of the organization’s members came rushing into their hideout and shouted,
“W-We found him!”
At those words, every member of the organization turned their eyes toward him.
