TFN C77

Chapter 77

Cheongmun moved the hovering cube surrounding him with a weary expression.

“If it was an S-rank dungeon, you wouldn’t have cleared it without a holy attribute skill. Even with the attribute cube I lent you, it couldn’t have been easy. You actually managed to end it within the golden time?”

“If you’ve got questions,” Cheongmun said evenly, “save them for the private conference.”

“How about three billion for the info fee?”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

He barely made thirty thousand won a day—talking billions was absurd.

At Cheongmun’s sigh, Yurim broke into a wide grin.

“Come on, if you resign and join me, I’ll start your salary negotiations at a hundred billion.”

“I don’t have the time to quit,” Cheongmun said, dismissing the cube. He placed it in his palm and dissolved it into thin air.

“If you join our guild,” Yurim went on, “you’ll only work four days a week—and I’ll give you full paid leave after every project.”

Before he could finish, a snort of laughter burst from nearby.

Neither of them had made the sound.

Both men turned toward the group standing by the conference room entrance.

Among the bulky hunters—clearly from a body-enhancement class—one man’s face stood out. Yurim’s expression hardened instantly.

The man grinned brightly. “What’s with that look, Guildmaster Yurim?”

“…Oh, damn! Thought you were a monster. Ah, sorry.”

Yurim’s voice carried not a hint of remorse. He merely shrugged and turned back to Cheongmun.

“So, you coming to negotiate your salary or not?”

“I’ll pass.”

The ignored man flushed red and stormed forward.

He was built like two skinny men fused together—broad, heavy-shouldered, his sneer cutting deep. He stepped right between them.

“I’ve heard rumors,” he said. “Haetae Guild’s been headhunting anyone and everyone lately. Guess it’s true, huh?”

“Anyone and everyone?” Yurim tilted his head.

Cheongmun met the man’s gaze silently as the room’s attention drifted toward them.

The stranger chuckled. “Actually, calling them ‘anyone and everyone’ might be too kind, don’t you think?”

“Wow.”

Yurim covered his chin with both hands, pretending to gasp in mock amazement.

The man looked Cheongmun up and down with open contempt. “What are you, some thirty-seventh-floor scrub?”

Cheongmun didn’t bother responding to the snickers around them. He simply looked straight at the man who had come all this way just to provoke him.

“Do you have something to say?”

The polite tone wasn’t respect—it carried the quiet edge of someone asking, You really want to keep talking?

The man clearly expected Cheongmun to back down or bow his head.

Instead, Cheongmun sighed briefly.

“Please move. You’re blocking the conference room door.”

“What? You don’t know who I am?”

The man glared down, his tone dripping arrogance.

“I do,” Cheongmun said calmly, checking his watch. “Seok Juam. First team raider, Baemun Guild.”

“Oh, you do know. Then what’s this attitude?”

“I don’t see how knowing who you are has anything to do with asking you to move out of the way,” Cheongmun replied flatly. “So, please—step aside.”

“And if I don’t? You expecting Haetae Guild to bail you out?”

Seok Juam smirked at Yurim.

Cheongmun raised one eyebrow slightly, then looked past him—toward another figure approaching from behind.

“What’s this?” said the newcomer, his voice sharp. “Seok, are you starting something?”

“Huh? Oh, Team Leader Shin!”

At once, Seok Juam’s mocking smile vanished. He bowed slightly, his tone suddenly polite.

“It’s been a while, sir.”

Team Leader Shin of Baemun’s second team stared over Seok’s shoulder, meeting Cheongmun’s eyes. His face hardened.

Cheongmun gave a small nod, opened the conference room door, and walked inside.

Seok Juam bit his lip, muttering in disbelief.

“Ha, that bastard—slipped away like a damn eel.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly, glancing around at the others. “You know what I mean.”

He spread his arms, addressing the small crowd that had gathered.

“Guy’s never shown a damn thing. No accomplishments, no guts to climb the Tower—just hangs around the lower floors waiting for scraps of info. And yet he walks around like he owns the place.”

Team Leader Shin’s scowl deepened.

“Pathetic. I heard he’s all bluff anyway,” Seok went on.

Shin exhaled heavily, rubbing his temples. “Damn it. I really was possessed by a wraith.”

He muttered the words bitterly, realizing what Cheongmun’s silence truly meant.

Cheongmun hadn’t ignored him—he’d just told him, wordlessly, You made this mess. You fix it.

The leak had started inside. The bucket that dripped from within couldn’t be patched from the outside.

And if Cheongmun had chosen to walk away instead of retaliate—that quietness was far more terrifying.

Team Leader Shin, like Yurim of Haetae Guild, belonged to one of the top organizations in Seoul—second only within the city, and ranked among the top ten in the nation.

People like Seok Juam, who’d spent their whole lives inside Seoul and thought anything beyond it was “the countryside,” were what locals called Seoul hicks.

Their entire sense of hierarchy came from raid rankings.

Since Cheongmun hadn’t yet cleared the fortieth floor—the benchmark for elite hunters—they considered him beneath them.

They conveniently ignored the fact that he had cleared an S-rank dungeon within forty minutes while ensuring every party member survived.

To them, that was just a “bug,” an exception not worth acknowledging.

Ironically, that rumor had started because Shin himself, under a hallucination curse, had spread it.

And now, knowing the truth, he could only wonder: how could a man who’d single-handedly knocked him out in three seconds during the sixtieth-floor raid tolerate fools like this?

“Team Leader Shin?”

Seok’s sharp tone pulled him from his thoughts.

Perfect. Let him think he’d been ignored.

“Anyway,” Shin said curtly, tapping the poster on the wall beside them—the one emblazoned with the Special Administration Bureau’s emblem. “If you were invited here, learn your place.”

“I didn’t say anything wrong,” Seok grumbled loudly. “Ugh, fine. But seriously, who’d run a private guild if they were scared of the Bureau?”

Let him croak, Shin thought grimly, pushing open the door and stepping inside.

“Guy trashes him the most and then acts like that?” Seok scoffed behind him.

Shin ignored it. He had a more pressing concern—Cheongmun’s silence.

That silence meant danger. He had to apologize—fast.

“You’re not planning to kill him, are you?”

Cheongmun didn’t even bother answering—just tilted his head slightly.

“Really? Not even break an arm or leg?”

“…If you want him punished, do it yourself.”

Yurim’s smile spread, as radiant as his blond hair.

“If Baemun and we fall out, next month’s joint raid is going to be a pain.”

“Because you’ll lose your bait?”

“Could you not call it that? Say ‘strategic cooperation’ instead.”

Cheongmun raised his middle finger without looking up and pulled out his phone.

[- I just woke up.]

[(Bowing Rabbit Emoji)]

He opened his system window to check Wonhyo’s condition.

『Tracking marked target…

▽ Yoon Wonhyo (Current location: Jongno-gu, Seoul)

Status: Recovering. Care required.』

Yesterday had been a “dragon day,” when Wonhyo had to stay home making talismans.

Even after a full night’s rest, his energy hadn’t fully returned—no surprise, since the ritual work in Jindo had left traces of dark energy that needed purification.

“Who’s that?”

Yurim leaned over his shoulder, trying to peek. Cheongmun pushed his face away with one hand and turned aside.

“Hey, that hurt,” Yurim whined, rubbing his nose.

Cheongmun ignored him and strode toward the side corridor of the conference hall.

“Wait—who is it? Why do you look so happy—hey! You’re really leaving?”

Without replying, Cheongmun slipped into a smaller waiting room reserved for bureau staff, then through an emergency door to a quiet stairwell.

Summoning a cube, he sealed off sound and presence completely before dialing Wonhyo’s number.

The call rang for a while. Probably still lying in bed, half-awake, he thought.

Then a click.

—“Uh… hello.”

For someone who had “just woken up,” his voice was bright and clear.

He probably had already washed up. The corners of Cheongmun’s mouth lifted faintly.

“Did you sleep well?”

—“Uh… yes. Good morning.”

There was a rustle, soft fabric shifting. Maybe a yawn, maybe the sound of him stretching.

Cheongmun glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to eleven.

“I finished work around five. You’re up earlier than I expected.”

An awakened being like Wonhyo wouldn’t be hurt by sleeping only a few hours—but considering how much energy he’d burned, waking this early was unusual.

—“…I got hungry.”

The sound of another yawn followed, along with footsteps—he was getting out of bed.

Cheongmun mentally checked his schedule again.

Meetings from eleven to one. Even if they ran long, they’d be done by one-thirty. Clean-up would take another hour or two—three or four at the latest.

“How about a late lunch together?” he asked.

—“…Ah! But didn’t you say you were busy today?”

A soft sound—maybe the brush of hair near the receiver—tickled his ear.

Cheongmun smiled soundlessly.

“Only until one. After that, I’m free.”

It wasn’t a lie.

For the past two weeks, he’d been trapped in the Special Bureau, working overtime every day to investigate the link between cursed items, monster outbreaks, and spontaneous dungeonization.

His entire first team had been seconded to the Dungeon Research Division. Nearly a hundred unresolved cases had landed on his desk.

But finally—finally—the emergency-response phase was over.

No more ten-second standby orders.

Now, at last, he could take a little time for himself.