The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"This is the First Forge — one of Bawi Guild's three signature training halls."

Seo Jihyeok gestured at the middle of the chaotic hall and went on, matter-of-fact.

"There are things fighting monsters alone won't develop. This is the place Hunters go head-to-head with each other and grind their combat instincts to the absolute limit."

He wasn't exaggerating.

Inside, the hall looked like nothing so much as a battlefield.

Boom—!

A massive fireball detonated in midair, and a tanker holding a heavy shield took the shockwave with his whole body, boots scraping the floor as he was driven back.

Through that opening a dealer slipped in silent as a shadow and swung a dagger; sparks flew with a sharp cheng-gang.

On one side, a mage was chanting an incantation and pouring out freezing spells; opposite him, a swordsman loaded mana into the aura of his blade, batted the ice spikes aside as they came, and closed the distance.

Every time the floor thudded, dust bloomed up, and the whole training hall hummed with the collision of mana.

Fierce, killing auras crashed into each other and shattered, over and over — an untamed arena where power slammed head-on into power.

"Whoa..."

Lee Jinwoo let out an awed sound with his mouth hanging open.

I got briefly caught in the sight too — spells and blade-auras cutting the air on every side — but shook myself out of it.

I hadn't come to sightsee.

"Where's Choi Juran?"

"Ah, there she is."

The spot Seo Jihyeok pointed to was at the deep end of the hall — the section where the booming was cracking especially hard.

An unbelievable trade — pure speed against pure defense — was playing out there.

Kwaang—!

Along with a rupturing sound like air being torn open, something too fast to see shot forward.

Kang San.

Kigigigik!

Kang San's body, accelerated to near the speed of sound, hurtled in with a sonic boom.

His fist crushed the air as it drove forward, striking in like a thunderbolt.

Bare-fisted, and yet the force of it was more destructive, more razor-edged, than any weapon.

But at the spot where that monstrous fist landed stood a woman, planted like a boulder.

Choi Juran.

"Hup!"

She didn't dodge.

Didn't even look like she'd considered it.

The instant Kang San's fist connected clean with her forearm, a clean, ringing clang! burst out.

By any normal reckoning, flesh should have torn and bone should have broken.

But her skin was untouched, not a scratch on it.

If anything, from the point of impact outward, a brilliant gold light began to spread.

The more impact she took, the harder her skin hardened — beyond diamond.

Her body was, in itself, a moving fortress.

"Ha! You have no idea how badly I've been wanting this fight! Noona! Let's see you block this!"

Before Kang San's hearty laugh could finish scattering into the air, his shape vanished again.

This time it wasn't a single strike.

Kwa-ga-ga-ga-gak!

Fists rained down on Choi Juran from every direction.

Punches slammed in at supersonic speed, leaving dozens, hundreds of afterimages as they hammered her whole body.

The tremendous shockwaves split the floor's special alloy with sharp cracks, and dust surged up like a storm.

But at the center of that storm, Choi Juran didn't so much as blink.

If anything, the more attacks she absorbed, the more her whole body burned with a brilliant gold light bright enough to sear the eyes.

Watching the monsters' brawl unfold in front of me, I couldn't help shaking my head in disbelief.

These weren't movements a human being could make.

Beside me, Lee Jinwoo — mouth wide open like his jaw was about to unhinge — had gone ashen and was stammering.

"But... how... how are we supposed to break that fight up? There's no way we can jump in there."

Anyone who stepped into the middle of that wouldn't leave enough behind to bury.

At Lee Jinwoo's shaky question, Seo Jihyeok stepped forward, calm.

"One moment, please."

Seo Jihyeok pulled a spellbook from his coat and opened it.

The heavy weight of earth and the blue chill of ice twisted together as one on the pages, instantly.

"Fusion — [Permafrost Wall]."

At a single sweep of his hand, the training hall floor surged up violently.

Kudugung—!

An instant before Kang San's fist could land, what rose between the two of them was a massive stone wall crusted with vivid blue ice.

An unbreakable cold barrier had forced the two monsters apart.

"...!"

Kang San flinched hard at the huge wall of cold and scrambled back, and Choi Juran, too, dropped her defensive stance and looked up at the wall with startled eyes.

At the huge frozen wall thrown up out of nowhere, the crashing sounds erupting across the training hall cut off all at once.

The other Hunters who'd been mid-spar dropped their weapons and stared at the imposing ice wall.

In an instant the din that had filled the hall faded, and a cool silence settled in.

As the dust cleared, Seo Jihyeok snapped the spellbook shut and pushed his glasses up.

"Hunter Choi Juran, Hunter Kang San. Spar ends here. Please come to the conference room immediately."

A little later.

The familiar conference room door swung open, and Choi Juran strode in, still trailing heat from the fight.

For all the brutal spar she'd just been through, her breathing was completely steady, unruffled.

"Ah, sorry about that. Heard you'd made it, but the meeting with the Guild Master sounded like it was running long. Body was itching for a fight — couldn't hold out."

She pulled off her sweat-soaked leather gloves, tossed them aside, and let out a hearty laugh.

Then she stepped up in front of me and thrust out a rough, blunt hand crusted with heavy calluses.

"Right. Let's do this again."

"You introduced yourself last time."

At my flat reply, Choi Juran shook her head and hooked the corner of her mouth up wide.

"Ha! It's different this time. Back then I wasn't a Hunter, was I?"

The playfulness drained out of her eyes, and the heavy presence of a veteran who'd been through the wringer settled into them.

"This time I'm greeting you as a real, whole Hunter — with the busted core mended."

She held my eyes as she gave her extended hand another easy shake. Her voice carried the ready cheer of a woman with real spine.

"Let me introduce myself properly. Bawi Guild First Assault Squad, Diamond Team's main tanker. Hunter Choi Juran. Pleased to work with you, Director."

Without a word, I reached out and gripped her hand firm.

Hard as iron and yet radiating warmth — the kind of hand you could trust.

Beside us, Lee Jinwoo watched the scene facinated, hand clamped over his mouth, moved.

"Not going to keep a busy man too long. I just wanted to say thanks in person."

Choi Juran tightened her grip and went on, serious.

"I'm alive because of you. No exaggeration — the way I see it, you saved my life."

Her eyes moved to my right arm.

Something like deep regret flickered across her open, hearty gaze.

"And... the wound you took because of me — I'm really sorry about that. Helping you out is a given, but for this injury specifically, I'll make it up to you personally, in every way I can."

She said it with real weight — earnest.

"So from here on, Director — if you call, I'll drop everything and put helping you first."

At that dramatic offer, Seo Jihyeok's eyes widened in surprise beside us and he cut in.

"Hunter Choi Juran, that matter's already been settled — the Guild Master has provided ample compensation—"

"That's guild-level business. This is my personal debt of gratitude. Two entirely different things."

She cut Seo Jihyeok off clean and turned to me with a confident smile and a shrug.

"A little embarrassing to say myself, but you won't find many tankers in Korea better than me. Knowing me's going to come in handy — believe it."

True enough. What a windfall.

Inside, I was cheering.

Even ordinarily, tankers were a hot commodity on the Hunter market — you named your price.

The Awakened population skewed grotesquely toward dealer types, after all.

And now here was a top-class tanker sitting at the very apex of Korea, walking in on her own two feet to settle a debt.

For the kids' sake alone, I can't let this connection slip.

Especially where Sea-ah was concerned.

For Sea-ah, who had the same defense-type ability, Choi Juran would be a living textbook.

I lifted my chin, playing arrogant, and made a show of ease.

"Well — I've already had my compensation."

I hooked the corner of my mouth up and gripped her hand firm.

"But if you're going out of your way to offer more, no reason for me to turn it down. Looking forward to working with you, Hunter Choi Juran."

At my shameless response, Seo Jihyeok pressed his forehead with a look that said nothing to be done about this one, and shook his head.

Kang San and Lee Jinwoo, on the other hand, were apparently just plain moved by the whole scene — eyes shining, clapping like a pair of trained seals.

"Hahaha! Right, call me any time. I'll be waiting."

Choi Juran laughed her hearty laugh and walked us out all the way to the lobby entrance in person.

Leaving that satisfying arrangement behind me, I stepped out of Bawi Guild.

Riding back to the institute with Lee Jinwoo, I looked up to find the world outside the window had already gone dusk-dark.

Maybe because the tension had let go, exhaustion hit hard enough that I could barely remember how the day had passed.

"Haah..."

Exhaustion plain on my face, I sank deep into the leather chair in the Director's office.

My whole body felt heavy — waterlogged, like a sponge.

I'd have loved to collapse straight into bed and sleep, but not yet.

I pulled the item I'd carefully brought back out of my subspace and set it on the desk.

An antique teapot giving off a soft sheen even in the dark.

Rest comes later. First I check this thing.

I set the teapot down in the middle of the desk and pulled out the black stone I'd tucked carefully away in my subspace.

The one Sihyeok had grabbed for me after the boss went down during that A-rank Gate breach.

Grabbing it in the middle of all that chaos, no less.

Before we'd entered the Gate, I'd told the kid ahead of time, just in case.

That if we brought the boss down, he absolutely had to grab the black stone that would appear where it fell.

Sihyeok had kept that promise perfectly.

He'd dug this crystal out of the spot where the boss had vanished.

Even more impressive — I hadn't so much as mentioned it, and he'd also carefully grabbed the Doppelgänger Doll and delivered both back safely.

"...Thanks, Sihyeok."

I stared down, quiet, at the black mass in my hand.

This — this was the [Chaos Mana Stone].

The exact windfall the protagonist, Cha Yul, had gotten his hands on in the original novel.

"No question... a whole different animal from the mana stones you normally pull off a boss."

The inside of the stone was writhing, like something alive. Not just glowing.

Black smoke swirled inside, seething as though it might burst the shell any second and swallow everything around it.

Ordinarily, the mana stone you got from clearing a standard Gate boss was already stabilized.

Which was why it was easy to process and usable straight off as artifact material.

But this one was different.

This was the heart of a boss whose mana had gone into overload inside a Gate breach — a very specific kind of catastrophe.

Chaos itself, in the most literal sense.

Unrefined, impossible to process by any conventional means — a hazardous piece of material.

But the Cha Yul of the original had figured it out.

That this unassuming artifact shaped like a teapot was the one and only thing that could tame that violent chaos, cleanly.

"And on top of that... if you process it and eat it... an Awakened's vessel actually expands."

An Awakened's rank — the size of the vessel that held their mana — was set at birth.

An unbreakable law: once you Awakened, it could never change.

But this thing broke that law wide open. It forcibly expanded the size of the vessel.

"In the original, Cha Yul ate it after he'd already completed his Second Awakening, so his rank stayed the same... but what if someone who hadn't hit their Second Awakening yet ate it, and their vessel expanded?"

Rank was generally determined by vessel size.

Which meant, in theory, just eating this could carry someone to their Second Awakening.

What did Hunters normally have to go through to reach their Second Awakening?

Enduring a colossal mana storm bare-bodied through bone-shattering agony, or crossing a razor's-edge line where their life hung in the balance — that was the level of ordeal required just to barely reach it.

But with this, they don't have to go anywhere near that.

I could make the kids stronger — safely, reliably — without shoving them into that pit of hellfire.

I stared at the writhing Chaos Mana Stone, expression tangled, and then let out a short breath as if I'd made up my mind.

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