Business ethics.
Unwritten rules.
No matter the industry, there are rules that must be followed in that field.
Things like our beautiful customs that have been passed down through a long history.
Of course, sometimes “a minority” of illegal activities are included in those, but that’s only ever a minority. In the end, rules can bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
—That was the belief of Lee Geum-seok, representative of <Jet-B Guild>. In other words, what he wanted to say right now was—
Lee Shin, you son of a b***h!! Do you have no business ethics at all?!
“What do you mean? Suddenly saying you can’t match the potion supply? Our raid is the day after tomorrow! Are you telling us to go in without potions?!”
— “……What do you want me to do! The investigation came down and all hell broke loose, potions or whatever, I’m about to die her— (muffled commotion) Ah! Not there! Hey! Block them!! Block them!! Don’t touch thaaaat!”
“Boss? Boss?!”
— “F***, kill me and take ittttt!!”
Click. Beep— Beep—
“Arghhh! F***, you f***ing %!#!$%#!!”
When the supply gate scandal first broke out in Busan, Lee Geum-seok, as someone in the same industry, clicked his tongue.
How are those guys managing their market, letting some newbie punk run rampant? He couldn’t help but lament their incompetence.
And at the same time, he was pleased.
Once an investigation starts, supply companies inevitably freeze up. And in this industry, when suppliers freeze, the ones who take the biggest hit are the lower-league guilds he belonged to.
With competitors gone, it was nothing but good news for Lee Geum-seok.
Yes.
At least until then, to Lee Geum-seok, who lived in Pyeongchang, Gangwon, the “Busan supply gate” was nothing more than something like watching a fire across the river.
So he never imagined that once he checked, it would be his own house on fire.
As the cigarette ash piled up just like the heat burning inside him, the call finally connected, and Lee Geum-seok was so desperate he didn’t even notice the ash going into his mouth as he shouted into the phone.
“Hello?! Boss! Boss!!”
— “…Representative Lee.”
“Boss, please save me. Our raid is tomorrow, and we have no potions or supplies at all. At this rate, my raid team will have to walk through the gate empty-handed. Please.”
A sudden sense of déjà vu.
Lee Geum-seok was now receiving the exact same treatment he had mocked Busan for.
— “Representative Lee…”
“You have reserve stock, right? Please help me just get through this round. If I can get past this, I’ll handle the rest somehow. I’ll pay you back double—no, quadruple.”
— “Representative Lee…listen to me…”
“If you don’t have any, then at least give me an introduction. I’m begging y—”
— “Listen to me…”
“Boss?”
— “I’m telling you this because I care about you. Listen well.”
But this was the part Lee Geum-seok hadn’t expected.
— “Forget reserve stock. The whole factory’s been seized. I can’t even get close to it. Contacting other places won’t help either. They’ll be in the same boat as us. Even if you jump to another region, it’s the same. The investigations are just as loud over there.”
It wasn’t just his house burning.
The entire country was already on fire.
— “Give up. We’re screwed.”
The fastest way to gain competitiveness: crush your competitors.
Lee Shin had, just as he said, smashed the whole board.
________________________________________
The ripples of the rapidly spreading supply gate went far beyond expectations, extending into the underworld of the guild world…
For example, the Scavenger Guild of Jung Sumi, who was now urgently on a call.
— “As you asked, your guild’s been taken off the list.”
“Thanks, Prosecutor Kim. I won’t forget the favor.”
— “Favor, my ass. I just got paid. But remember this—you really have to be completely uninvolved. If they find your name during the investigation later, I won’t be able to help you then.”
“Don’t worry. I swear we have nothing to do with it.”
— “Hmm, well, if the ‘cleaner’ herself had planned this, it wouldn’t have been so sloppy.”
It was the truth. The Scavenger Guild had not the slightest connection to the supply gate—or whatever soldering gate it was. Why would a major intelligence guild like <Scavenger> bother sniffing around the countryside?
But even with such innocence, the situation wasn’t looking good.
To put it simply, it was all because of the operations they had carried out against the Mir Guild.
The many contracts they’d torn up in such a short time—some of which they’d even arranged new clients for—meant that during the investigation, traces of the Scavenger Guild were bound to turn up.
With such solid physical evidence, crying innocence would be idiotic.
Jung Sumi moved quickly to contain the situation.
She searched through her “notebook” and found an appropriate name—that of the woman on the other end of the line, Prosecutor Kim.
“I’ll give you the promised ‘gift’ like last time.”
— “Thanks. See you next time.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Bye~!”
With that cheerful voice, the call cut off, and the incident that had been bothering Jung Soo-mi for days seemed to have come to a close.
But who would take responsibility for her shattered pride?
The always-composed face of Jung Sumi cracked.
“Damn it. Damn it…!! Arghhhhhhh!!”
%!#!! Crack—! Crash%#$#rrr Clatterclatterclatter—!!
It finally broke. Her whole body trembled in rage and humiliation.
She’d been had. Completely toyed with.
Someone she hadn’t even considered worth paying attention to, not even worth going at seriously.
With an unimaginably clever move, he’d rendered her schemes useless, and before she knew it, things had spiraled out of her control, now even threatening the golden tower she had built.
Her gaze turned to the photo in the article.
A man shedding sorrowful tears.
“Lee Shin…”
Just wait.
Next time, for sure.
Grinding her teeth, Jung Soo-mi smashed the monitor.
________________________________________
Meanwhile, at that time in the Vice Chairman’s office of the LeeDo Group, Lee Young-bin’s sharp eyes were following the glow of the monitor.
— Haven’t seen them in a while, but what’s going on? The kids are falling apart.
: Why are they playing it safe when it’s the perfect timing to charge in? Just watching makes me feel suffocated.
└ Yeah yeah;; I think the whole team’s mentality is shot because of “that incident.”
└ It’s even more ridiculous if you look at the records.
└ They’re holding back because they don’t have potions ㅠㅠ
— This is insane, f*** lol. Do they not want to get promoted?
: Add one more tanker, one more supporter. Is our damage supposed to be supplied by the ancestors??? lolol
└ ㅜㅜ It’s promotion season this year, just hang in there a bit more!
└ They were doing fine until last week;;; Did they all get drugged?
└ Maybe they don’t have the “drug” anymore… hehe?
— Please, refrain from mentioning “that incident.”
: ……Due to the ongoing investigation into “that incident,” many guilds are suffering. Since no official results have been announced yet, please refrain from bringing it up.
└ The mod is right. Everyone’s suffering. The clear time got delayed by 10 hours, but the rankings stayed the same lolol
└ Crazy lol, communist-style pain sharing lolol
└ League 4 solidarity lolol
[ Mir Guild keeps setting records in Round 10! MVP is “Park Su-bin” ]
└……They must be celebrating over there.
└ Damn, at this point shouldn’t we be reasonably suspicious? He’s the one who poisoned the league.
└ Don’t be so petty;;
└ Yeah, it is petty to blame the whistleblower for reporting at this timing lol;;
└;;;Why don’t we have a representative like Lee11Shinㅜㅜ?
•
•
What would you think if someone you thought was useless suddenly began making their presence known?
For example, if a good-for-nothing son who not only failed at everything but also brought shame to the family in absurd ways suddenly became praised overnight as a genius leader.
How would you take that?
Should you just be purely happy about it?
Whether or not they knew about Lee Young-bin’s dilemma, the secretary began briefing the materials they had brought.
“According to the SNS traffic analysis at the end of the raid, this week the Mir Guild’s search volume has increased by 180%.”
“This incident was a big factor in absorbing all the neutral fans. That seems to be why the fan café membership increased to 500,000.”
“Looking solely at the guild value evaluation index, Mir Guild can no longer be seen as a League 4 guild. Compared even to League 3, no, even League 2 guilds, their growth is in no way lacking.”
High praise.
Endless praise for the Mir Guild and for Lee Shin.
To Lee Youngbin, it looked almost like the subordinate was desperately trying to cover up for having submitted a report before the league began stating, “Choosing Mir Guild was the worst move; Mir Guild has already outlived its usefulness.”
But he didn’t bother blaming him.
After all, even he himself had never expected that rascal to succeed this much.
Three months? At most half a year and he’d cause trouble again and be dragged back home. How should I discipline him this time?
That was the first thought Lee Youngbin had.
That was it—the reason his feelings were so complicated right now.
“……”
As the legitimate heir of Lee Sang-byeok and the number one successor to the LeeDo Group, Lee Youngbin had always been the best. Good at everything, acknowledged by everyone. Everything he wanted, he seized.
A perfect life. A guaranteed success.
Such a life had led Lee Youngbin to believe that he was the correct answer.
He never doubted that he always made the right decisions, and even if he was wrong, if he believed he was right, he would make it right.
That’s why Lee Youngbin found it hard to accept this situation where Lee Shin—whom he had labeled as a good-for-nothing—was suddenly soaring.
The unexpected recruitment of Mountain King, breaking public opinion with new records, media manipulation so skillful he even used himself as a pawn.
Success flaunted right in his face.
It was as if Lee Shin was saying: You judged me wrong.
“You’re taking quite a while to tell me I made a judgment mistake. I don’t plan on blaming you. It hurts my pride, but I agreed to it in the first place.”
“I’m sorry!”
“So stop beating around the bush and answer my question. What do we do about Lee Shin?”
“We should increase our support for him as much as possible, even now.”
“Why?”
“Because right now is the lowest point.”
Before explaining, the secretary first handed over the documents they had prepared.
It was an analysis report on the Mir Guild and it was clearly no ordinary report—checked thoroughly from Round 1 to the present without a single gap, with the touch of an expert.
The first page was packed with metrics and graphs. A plain analysis based on data, excluding the currently trending topics.
When Lee Young-bin looked satisfied with the report and gestured, the secretary finally took a breath and began speaking.
“Currently, Mir Guild’s metrics are more than abnormal. They’re far beyond League 4 standards, and even in League 3 they have good enough metrics to aim for immediate promotion.”
“And these metrics are improving more and more with each round.”
It wasn’t just the team metrics. Even the individual hunter metrics were all steeply rising without exception.
“One might think they’ve just synchronized well as a team, but experts have confirmed that syncing alone almost never results in improvements this significant.
And they all unanimously said this: If hunters with hidden potential just happened to meet teammates they meshed well with, and by sheer coincidence, without exception, all of them hit their stride at the same time…Wouldn’t it look exactly like this?”
How many times has “by coincidence” come up now?
If these “coincidences” are considered “luck,” then to explain Mir Guild’s current meteoric rise, you’d have to encounter a kind of luck that’s nearly impossible even once—several times over.
And if that luck continues, it’s no longer called luck.
“I believe that at the center of this fortune is Young Master Lee Shin.”
“…!!”
“Vice Chairman, do you remember the very first thing Young Master did when he joined Mir Guild?”
“Squad… Ah!”
“Yes, starting with a hunter named Yang Pan-seok, he completely replaced the existing squad. And in those spots, he gathered only those with true potential. I do not believe that was mere coincidence.”
If it’s hard to explain a change in circumstances, look at when the change happened.
The Mir Guild of the past, in decline, and the Mir Guild of the present, soaring. The one at the turning point of that change—
“Young Master Lee Shin. In my humble judgment, his absolute lowest point is right now.”
So does that mean we buy in fully at the bottom?
As the secretary opened the door to leave, Lee Youngbin, still deep in thought, spoke to the air.
“What do you think?”
At that moment, a crack appeared in the empty air above the vacant sofa.
Like shards of broken glass gathering together, a shape began to form.
Legs, waist, fingertips, shoulders, torso, and finally a face emerged.
A man with a cheerful look sat in the chair.
“What’s there to even say? Just like he said, we should increase the support.”
