My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 08

========== CHAPTER 8 ==========

As soon as the question ended, the answers burst out simultaneously.

“One day.”

“Two days.”

“……What?”

Lee Seong-ha’s brain froze for a moment. It wasn’t just that the answers were different; the content itself was shocking. For real? My friend? Without even telling me?

Then, it was Kang Ji-hyun’s furious shout that broke the silence.

“Why one day?! Hey, Go Gyeol! We clearly dated for two days, didn’t we?”

“If you calculate strictly by the hour, it wouldn’t even be 24 hours.”

Go Gyeol answered while calmly drinking his tea. Kang Ji-hyun glared at him as if she were resentful.

“You know you have a really shitty personality, right?!”

“Only to you.”

It was a double-edged answer, both a jab meaning ‘I’m only as bad as you’ and a statement that ‘I only act like this toward you.’

Having perfectly understood the meaning of those words, Kang Ji-hyun couldn’t bring herself to retort, and instead bit her lower lip, looking resentful.

“Eueueu…!”

Childish anger flashed across her perfect face.

“So, why are you here?”

Kang Ji-hyun, struggling to suppress her childish anger, brought up the main topic. There were still sharp thorns in her voice. Go Gyeol quietly set down the teacup he was holding. The small sound of the cup touching the table rang out unusually loudly.

“I’m going to create a Hunter Management agency.”

At the unexpected answer, Kang Ji-hyun tilted her head for a moment. She furrowed her brows slightly as if trying to grasp his intention. Then, a thought occurred to her, and she made an expression of disbelief.

“Don’t tell me… you’re not asking me to join that, are you?”

“That’s right.”

An affirmation without a shred of hesitation. At that moment, deep purple magic began to rise like a haze from behind Kang Ji-hyun’s back. As if her anger had taken form, the ominously undulating magic was fierce enough to swallow the cabin whole at any moment.

“Hey, you crazy bastard! You’re asking your ex-girlfriend, whom you only dated for two days and dumped first, to join the company you’re making? Do you think that makes any sense? Hey! Do I look that easy to you?!”

As her shouting intensified and the waves of magic grew violent, the teacups on the table trembled precariously. Lee Seong-ha, terrified by the momentum that looked like she might pour magic onto Go Gyeol at any second, jumped up from his seat.

“W-wait! Kang Ji-hyun-ssi! Let’s talk, let’s talk it out! Go Gyeol, this bastard, doesn’t think you’re easy at all! Let’s solve this with conversation!”

Unlike Lee Seong-ha, who was hurriedly mediating between the two, Go Gyeol was as calm and relaxed as the eye of a storm. He remained leaning back in his chair, staring straight into Kang Ji-hyun’s fiercely burning eyes.

“You can’t get to the Tower without me.”

“…What?”

Kang Ji-hyun’s beautiful face twisted menacingly, as if she couldn’t believe it. Out of insult, the purple magic fluctuated violently once more.

“Exactly 3 months from now, the Tower will appear. Anyone can climb to the 30th floor, but after the 29th floor is cleared, the Tower will hold an ‘Audition’ for hunters. And only the top 1 to 10 will get the qualification to enter the Tower. Are you confident you’ll pass that audition?”

“Why wouldn’t I! Where in this world is there a hunter as strong and outstanding as me!”

She shouted fiercely at the words that touched her pride. Her confidence was sky-high, and it was by no means groundless arrogance. However, Go Gyeol crushed that confidence with a single sentence.

“The audition will be conducted via a National Voting System.”

In an instant, everything stopped.

The purple magic that had been burning fiercely around Kang Ji-hyun stopped its movement as if it were a lie. Just like a video that had been paused while playing. It was clearly visible that her menacing expression was turning into bewilderment, and soon, cold anxiety. Go Gyeol was accurately piercing through her fatal weakness: that while she was stronger than anyone in the world, she couldn’t get along with anyone in the world.

In an instant, the purple magic that had been undulating as if to swallow the world faded away like a lie. The flames that had been burning with fierce momentum died down in a single moment, and it was as if only cold ash remained in their place.

People called her a Witch. A woman who kept others at a distance, was arrogant, and did as she pleased. But that wasn’t her true self. Kang Ji-hyun was actually so fragile that she was like a rose with sharp thorns covering her body to protect herself. The reason she loved roses so much was also because she saw herself in them. A thorny existence that was gorgeous and alluring, but would hurt you if you approached carelessly.

Go Gyeol’s words had pierced her deepest, most vulnerable spot.

“If you don’t change your image now, you won’t even make it into the top 100, let alone the top 10.”

It was a cruelly obvious fact.

Go Gyeol was looking at her, but his gaze was tracing the afterimages of the past he had already experienced, beyond the current Kang Ji-hyun.

Before the regression, she had participated in the audition as if it were a given. She believed she could make everyone submit with her overwhelming skill. But the result was disastrous. She couldn’t even find her own name on the rankings, let alone make the top 100. The public revered her strength, but pushed her away with an even greater sense of repulsion.

After the first audition, the door to the Tower was effectively closed. The Tower held popularity votes for the top 100 hunters, and small-scale auditions were only held when someone died during a dungeon or Tower raid. Kang Ji-hyun had aimed for those opportunities every time, but she kept drinking the bitter cup of failure amidst the public’s indifference.

In the end, until the day Korea was destroyed, S-class hunter Kang Ji-hyun never climbed the Tower even once.

People mocked her as the natural end of an arrogant witch who only relied on her skills and acted out. She, who was strong on the outside but rotting on the inside, couldn’t endure the endless humiliation and ridicule. Eventually, during a common dungeon raid, her sturdy mentality crumbled like a sandcastle in front of the pouring monsters.

Then, the last news she heard was that she had died under mysterious circumstances.

Go Gyeol remembered clearly when he heard that news. That was why, sitting in front of him right now, Kang Ji-hyun was not just an ex-girlfriend. Even without a mission given, she was the first piece of the tragic future he had to save.

Ttok. Ttok.

Go Gyeol’s fingers tapped the table. At that sharp sound breaking the silence, Kang Ji-hyun, who had been sitting haughtily with her arms crossed, flinched slightly.

“Is there something to worry about? Wasn’t it your dream to become the strongest Witch-class hunter?”

For a moment, Kang Ji-hyun’s eyes widened. She couldn’t believe that this cold and indifferent man remembered a dream she had once mentioned in passing. However, that surprise was fleeting.

“Hmph.”

She snorted sharply and put her haughty mask back on. Leaning deep into her chair, she crossed her legs and asked.

“So, what will you do for me?”

“What?”

“This is a scout, right? You’re not expecting to take a talent like me without any conditions, are you?”

Kang Ji-hyun’s finger pointed to her own perfect face, then slowly traced down the curves of her alluring body. Despite that posture, which would have bewitched anyone, there wasn’t even a speck of change in the expressions of Go Gyeol and Lee Seong-ha.

“Ha.”

A dry laugh burst from Go Gyeol’s lips.

“Kang Ji-hyun, you seem to be severely mistaken right now. This is me giving you an opportunity, not you giving me one. Do you think there’s anyone else in this world who would take you?”

Eudeuk.

In the quiet cafe, the sound of teeth grinding was clearly audible.

“I told you not to grind your teeth if you don’t want to wear dentures when you’re old.”

Kang Ji-hyun slammed the table.

“You’re the one making me grind them!”

Go Gyeol just shrugged his shoulders. After glaring at Go Gyeol with fiery eyes for a long time, Kang Ji-hyun finally admitted that she was at a disadvantage and opened her mouth with a sigh.

“Fine. I don’t need anything else, so just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

Go Gyeol asked indifferently, picking up his teacup as if he had no interest.

“I’m the main one.”

“Sure.”

At the answer that came out so readily, Kang Ji-hyun’s fine brows furrowed instead.

“…You, you’re not lying, are you?”

“When have you ever seen me lie?”

It had been a short time, barely two days—or to be precise, less than 24 hours—but the Go Gyeol she had seen was a person who wouldn’t lie even if a knife were at his throat.

“…Okay. And one more thing.”

“What?”

“I don’t want anyone else to be my manager. You, you have to do it yourself.”

“Sure.”

The answer returned without a hitch this time as well.

A manager is supposed to be the hands and feet of a hunter, taking on all the dirty work.

The moment she stamped the contract, Kang Ji-hyun imagined rolling this arrogant man around like a hoop. From running coffee errands to managing equipment, she would pick at everything and torment him. A gloomy yet satisfied smile spread across her lips.

The sunlight of a quiet afternoon was cutting diagonally across the large floor-to-ceiling window, brightly illuminating the inside of the office. Dust motes were swimming and sparkling like gold in the air, and the only thing breaking the silence was the clacking sound of a keyboard. It was the very moment Go Gyeol, who had been staring at his laptop screen and typing something for a long time, stopped his fingers to catch his breath.

Kwang!

The heavy door was thrown open roughly as if it would hit the wall, and a man ran inside like a storm.

It was Kang Hoon, with disheveled hair and a flushed face. He walked straight up to Go Gyeol’s desk and shouted in a voice that sounded like he was about to burst into tears.

“Hyung! I really can’t live like this!”