Murim Login - Chapter 281

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 281
The limousine glided across the road without the slightest tremor.
Park Ji-hoon retrieved a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator installed inside and offered it to the middle-aged man sitting across from him.
“Care for some?”
“In this situation? And where did you pick up the habit of offering someone else’s belongings as if they were your own?”
“Then drinking half should be fine. I’ve earned at least that much stake in what the Myeongdong Guild is today.”
…
Park Tae-seop, the middle-aged man and Guild Master of the Myeongdong Guild, glared silently at Park Ji-hoon as he tilted the water bottle to his lips.
“You’re remarkably composed.”
After draining exactly half, Park Ji-hoon leaned back against the plush seat and replied.
“Is there any reason to be concerned?”
“A disaster has struck, and you act as though nothing happened?”
“It’s merely a minor incident.”
“A sandcastle crumbles with a single drop of water.”
“That’s because it’s a sandcastle.”
“The Myeongdong Guild is different?”
“Five hundred hunters under our banner. Among them, twenty are A-rank hunters. By that measure, calling us an iron tower rather than a sandcastle wouldn’t be an exaggeration. And besides….”
The corners of Park Ji-hoon’s mouth curved upward gently.
“The Myeongdong Guild stands in a category of its own. ‘That person’ is here, after all.”
…That much is true.
Park Tae-seop nodded reluctantly, though his expression remained displeased. Observing this, Park Ji-hoon posed a question.
“What is it? What’s making you so uneasy and restless?”
After a brief silence, Park Tae-seop spoke.
“Intuition.”
“Pardon?”
“At my age, you develop an inexplicable instinct.”
Ha.
Park Ji-hoon could barely suppress an inward laugh. So this was what he’d been getting at—nothing more than the complaints of a man past sixty.
‘Merely a feeling. How amusing.’
Such thoughts were plainly written across his face. And Park Tae-seop possessed enough experience not to miss such a thing.
“You might think it’s nonsense. I understand. It’s a realm beyond the comprehension of greenhorns like yourself.”
“If that’s how you feel, I apologize.”
“That insincere tone of yours is also something only a greenhorn could manage.”
“I simply cannot fathom it. What troubles you so deeply?”
After a brief silence, a single name escaped his lips.
“Jin Tae-kyung.”
The name exhaled like a sigh—one that had haunted his mind ever since contact with Team 11 was lost.
For a moment, he’d thought it merely a vague unease about things going awry, but it was more than that.
His instinct, honed through surviving even catastrophic upheavals, had delivered its verdict on this anxiety.
“That man is a siege cannon. He can fracture not just sandcastles, but iron towers as well.”
Park Tae-seop didn’t wait for a response. He reached out and grabbed the water bottle Park Ji-hoon had left behind, chugging it down desperately.
The moment he finished speaking, his throat burned unbearably.
Meanwhile, Park Ji-hoon’s brow furrowed deeply as he watched the display.
‘Has the old man lost his mind….’
I’ll admit the process of handling this matter wasn’t entirely smooth. Particularly regarding the Black Hunters and Team 11, there were unforeseen complications.
But even accounting for those factors, Park Tae-seop’s reaction now was excessive.
It was only natural that Park Ji-hoon, who absolutely revered ‘that person’, felt unsettled.
“I didn’t expect you to rate Jin Tae-kyung so highly.”
“He demonstrated results.”
“Jin Tae-kyung hasn’t been prominent for very long.”
“In that short time, he’s shown considerable capability.”
“Shown capability?”
Park Ji-hoon continued with a scornful smile.
“Won Myung-hun was garbage. Bottom-tier among rankers. His name was only listed once out of charity during that Korean Wave craze. You know this as well as the Guild Master does.”
“I’ve heard he was foolish, greedy, and his skills were merely packaged with fame.”
“And a Named Monster? It’s called a Named Monster, but that Black Drake was the weakest Named Monster to appear in the past twenty years. The magic stone from its corpse barely differed from an A-rank monster.”
“So, could you defeat that weak Named Monster alone?”
“There’s no reason I couldn’t.”
Park Ji-hoon’s answer came without hesitation.
He took pride in his own abilities.
Because of his innate talent, he’d been chosen by ‘that person’, and at an age under thirty, he could sit across from the Myeongdong Guild Master and meet his gaze in conversation.
But the next question made him falter.
“Then if you fought Jin Tae-kyung? Could you be certain of victory against him?”
“…Of course.”
This answer came half a beat late. Noticing this fact, Park Tae-seop spoke as he watched him bite his lip firmly.
“That hesitation just now seems to say something about who Jin Tae-kyung is.”
Park Ji-hoon replied coldly.
“I simply remembered something from the past.”
“Ah, you called him a friend?”
“I’d rather not discuss that. What I want to tell you is that this incident isn’t as serious as you think it is.”
“Team 11’s status is still unknown, and a celebrity currently drawing the nation’s attention has invaded the Myeongdong Guild headquarters—and this isn’t serious?”
“He’s a fool. That’s why he couldn’t overcome his momentary rage and recklessly invaded the Myeongdong Guild headquarters.”
About ten minutes ago, while speaking with Team Leader 1, Park Ji-hoon was startled by Jin Tae-kyung’s voice suddenly coming through.
And simultaneously, he felt relieved.
‘This will resolve easily.’
The Myeongdong Guild employed over five hundred hunters. Even if half had departed on raids, an enormous number remained stationed at headquarters.
Of course, that included Team 1, the guild’s elite force.
“Jin Tae-kyung has walked into a tiger’s den. Once we restrain him, it’s simply a matter of managing the situation.”
Even if reporters caught wind of this, there was no concern.
He—or rather, ‘that person’—possessed the power to silence cameras and microphones.
“I’ll have everything cleaned up by today.”
Park Tae-seop muttered with a noticeably aged face.
“Something feels off. Is it age catching up with me? I’m starting to feel the strain.”
“It’s merely a passing wind. A man who endured the great cataclysm shouldn’t be trembling at the knees, should he?”
Park Tae-seop closed his mouth as he caught the reproach beneath the words, when a monotonous phone notification rang out from somewhere.
“It’s not my call.”
“It’s mine.”
“Who is it?”
“Manager Kim, my security detail. I had him look into what happened to Team 11. Looks like he just arrived.”
“Good timing. Tell him to erase all traces related to Team 11.”
“Are you giving me orders?”
Park Tae-seop frowned and answered the call.
“It’s me. What happened? Huh? Ah, I see.”
His brow furrowed, then relaxed. His pupils dilated and contracted repeatedly.
Park Tae-seop’s expression grew increasingly strange as he pulled the phone from his ear.
“What is it?”
“Take it.”
Park Tae-seop handed him his phone. Veins bulged prominently across his forehead.
“Yes?”
“Hurry!”
Park Ji-hoon took the phone with a bewildered expression and brought it to his ear.
Then a voice as soft as a cat’s paw burrowed into his ear.
– Park Ji-hoon, Hunter of Team 1 at Myeongdong Guild?
Park Ji-hoon understood the moment he heard it.
The person calling was not Manager Kim, whom he’d crossed paths with several times before.
The voice was young, polite yet emanating an air of unapproachable authority.
“That’s me. Who are you?”
Something felt wrong.
A strange voice answered Park Ji-hoon’s question, which carried an instinctive unease.
– My name is Choi Min-woo.
“Who?”
– Ah, I belong to the Peace Guild. I’m a Team Leader.
“…Peace Guild?”
– Yes.
Damn it. Park Ji-hoon’s lips trembled.
Just a few words were enough to grasp what had happened. He’d fallen cleanly into the trap laid by the Peace Guild.
What became of Manager Kim, the phone’s owner, was obvious without even looking. He was either bound and unconscious, or watching helplessly as his phone was being used.
‘Myeongdong Guild, you pathetic bastards.’
Choi Team Leader’s voice coming through the receiver sounded leisurely, like that of a victor.
– I wanted to have a conversation with you.
“That is, well.”
Just as Park Ji-hoon’s mind was spinning furiously, a vibration traveled through my chest.
It wasn’t Park Tae-seop’s phone in my hand.
– Hunter Park Ji-hoon?
“Just a moment. One moment, please.”
Park Ji-hoon pulled out his own phone from the inner pocket of his suit jacket with his remaining hand and checked it.
There was a text message, and the sender was….
[Team Leader 1]
It’s done.
A smile of relief bloomed on Park Ji-hoon’s lips. Jin Tae-kyung, who had ventured into the tiger’s den of Myeongdong Guild, had finally knelt.
The scales that had tipped in the other direction were finally balanced.
However.
“…What?”
The smile vanished from Park Ji-hoon’s face as he read the message.
What filled the six-inch phone screen was not a report from Team Leader 1 about capturing Jin Tae-kyung, but a single image file.
‘What is this.’
Familiar faces.
A young man in the photo grinning widely with blood spattered across his face. And a middle-aged man with a sickly pallid complexion, as if addicted to drugs, clinging to him.
‘Jin Tae-kyung, Team Leader 1?’
That wasn’t all. A familiar background appeared behind the two men.
His own nameplate reading “Myeongdong Guild Team 1 Hunter Park Ji-hoon” was the decisive clue revealing where they were right now.
And one more thing.
‘Could it be… no one stopped him? Just that bastard Jin Tae-kyung alone?’
A reality he didn’t want to believe.
It was at that moment when Park Ji-hoon’s lost gaze wavered.
Buzz.
Along with the vibration, a new message arrived. The content was brief, but intense.
Just five characters crushed Park Ji-hoon’s mental state.
〈 Team Leader 1
Team Leader 1
Bring ice cream when you come
“You, you fucking bastard…!”
Crunch. The phone in Park Ji-hoon’s hand crumpled like tissue paper.
Myeongdong Guild Master Park Tae-seop, watching this scene, muttered quietly.
“We’re screwed.”
* * *
〈 Manager Choi
Manager Choi
I’ve captured the personnel dispatched from Myeongdong Guild.
A text message that had arrived from Choi Team Leader.
A few hours earlier, after we’d burned down the Secret House that the Black Hunters had been using, we split into two groups.
An ambush team to secure concrete evidence. And me, who demanded individual action.
It was because of Choi Team Leader’s insistence that we absolutely had to obtain something that could serve as evidence or testimony.
‘He’s right about that.’
Due to meticulous management, all of the Black Hunters, including Lim Young-jun, had already undergone complete identity laundering. There was naturally no connection whatsoever to the Myeongdong Guild.
Choi Team Leader had pinpointed that aspect precisely.
‘Always composed and level-headed.’
Looking back, he never lost his sense of direction.
While Kim Butler’s role as an exceptional mage and wise counselor certainly played a part, this level of capability had to be innate.
‘With this, we’ve secured one definite weakness in our hands.’
In addition to the captured Black Hunters, even the official employees of the Myeongdong Guild.
This would serve as an excellent shield.
‘And it could be used as a blade as well.’
I sent the photos I’d taken earlier along with a message thanking them for their hard work.
Perhaps because it was a high-end phone, even shots taken carelessly came out well.
“Maybe I should upgrade my phone too while I’m at it.”
As I muttered this, someone’s body flinched. It was the Security Team hunter I’d hired as my dedicated cameraman for the day.
Of course, without compensation.
“Why?”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing!”
“Make yourself comfortable. Don’t stand—why don’t you sit on the sofa?”
“This is comfortable enough!”
“It really doesn’t look comfortable to me.”
“It’s fine, agh!”
Was it my imagination? There seemed to be a whimper mixed into his cry.
For a mere Security Team hunter, it made sense—I’d utterly demolished Team 1, the elite unit he wouldn’t even dare make eye contact with.
‘The ones who came later were similar.’
The other hunters from the Myeongdong Guild who rushed in late didn’t dare challenge me either when faced with the spectacle before their eyes.
Of course, there were quite a few armed with unwavering company loyalty.
But sadly, they lacked the skill, so those who rushed at me all ended up in terrible shape and were carried away.
After I’d dropped around fifty people, no one else dared to challenge me, and Park Ji-hoon’s office became a forbidden zone that no one could enter.
I sank into the chair he’d been using and thought.
‘He must be rushing here like a madman right now.’
Just thinking of him made my heart turn cold.
A middle school classmate I’d happened to run into on the street after ten long years.
I wondered just how much of Park Ji-hoon’s true nature I’d actually seen.
‘Come quickly. Before I get any angrier.’
Crack.
It was right then that the armrest of the chair snapped under the force of my grip.
“Oh, you’ve arrived!”
“Guild Master!”
A roar of voices spread like wildfire beyond the office door.
Simultaneously, I sensed two massive presences rushing toward me without hesitation.
‘They’ve arrived.’
And in the next instant, the door exploded inward with a deafening crash.
Boom!

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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