The strategy meeting to prepare for the Final War gate—set to open in forty-seven hours—was held in the main conference hall of the Korean Association Headquarters, just as usual. The only significant deviation was the unprecedented attendance of top-tier foreign hunters.
While Sa-yoon’s party had been fighting for their lives in the final SSS-rank gate, the foreign elites had secured permission from their respective governments and camped out in Korea for days, desperately awaiting their return. Thanks to their massive influx, the ninety-seat conference hall was packed to absolute capacity, reuniting many familiar faces.
Looking slightly nervous before the unprecedented, massive assembly, Lee Han stood up from his seat.
“Is there still no word on Geon-joo?” Mi-jeong whispered from behind.
Forced to recall the very thing he was desperately trying to ignore, Sa-yoon nodded with a crumpled expression. Geon-joo hadn’t shown a single sign of waking up during their return to the Association. Consequently, Jongsik was currently occupying his assigned seat—a pragmatic compromise after the Association insisted that leaving an empty chair at such a critical global summit was unacceptable.
“Ahem…”
Thrust unexpectedly onto the hot seat, Jongsik nervously clenched and unclenched his fists under Sa-yoon’s glacial glare. Watching the massive man quietly wipe his sweaty palms on his knees, Mi-jeong unfurled her fan to conceal her lips.
“Don’t worry too much,” she murmured softly. “He’s a tough kid. He’ll wake up soon.”
It was a tender, affectionate comfort, but it didn’t resonate with Sa-yoon in the slightest.
“What part of him is tough?” Sa-yoon scoffed. “He’s always passing out and collapsing, scaring the living daylights out of me. That bastard is a lot more fragile than he looks.”
“…”
“…”
“What?” Sa-yoon demanded.
Mi-jeong, along with Jongsik who had been silently eavesdropping, stared at him with bizarre, highly dubious expressions. Refusing to avert his gaze, Sa-yoon aggressively met their stares until Mi-jeong fanned herself to cool her face and let out a breathless laugh.
“You don’t sound like you’re joking. Do you genuinely believe that?” she asked.
“Uh, hyung-nim,” Jongsik interjected nervously. “Just a few months ago, you were the one praising him for being ruthlessly tough…”
Cornered by the sudden pincer attack, Sa-yoon opted to stare straight ahead. Ignoring disadvantageous questions was standard protocol.
“That rude punk,” Sa-yoon muttered, aggressively changing the subject. “I don’t know who taught him those manners. I preferred it when he used formal language.”
“Should I use it again?” Jongsik asked, entirely missing the point.
“No. Just act like you normally do.” Sa-yoon added with deadpan sincerity that he’d choose ‘annoying’ over ‘creepy’ any day. He then shifted his incredulous glare back to Mi-jeong. “Didn’t you use to smack him with your fan and scold him to show some respect?”
“That was ages ago,” she replied effortlessly. “Even rivers and mountains change in nine years, Sa-yoon-ah.”
“Your face certainly hasn’t.”
“It seems you miss the taste of my fan.”
“Um… everyone, please calm down…” Jongsik pleaded, squirming in his seat as the crossfire intensified.
BANG! BANG!
A fist slamming against the hardwood table echoed like a gunshot through the massive conference room, instantly commanding absolute attention. Lee Han stood at the head of the table.
“I will now commence the meeting. Please settle down.”
He tapped the desk twice more. Since everyone had been anxiously awaiting this exact moment, the noisy hall plunged into pin-drop silence within seconds. Acknowledging their cooperation with a brief nod, Lee Han immediately brought up the exponential surge in gate frequencies and difficulty scales over the past five years. Association staff swiftly distributed the corresponding data packets to the seated hunters.
“As you all know, the frequency and difficulty of gate outbreaks have skyrocketed in recent years. We recently discovered this acceleration is directly tied to the impending apocalypse. Our absolute only method of preventing this end is emerging victorious in the ongoing war of the gods.”
Having summarized the apocalyptic reality with chilling calmness, Lee Han shifted his gaze toward Sa-yoon.
“Furthermore, as mandated by the system, only three individuals possess the clearance to intervene in this war: Kwon Sa-yoon, Lee Jaehee, and Han Geon-joo—who is currently absent due to health reasons but will recover in time to enter the gate. These three will participate in the Final War as the representatives of humanity.”
‘Representing humanity’ felt incredibly grandiose, though considering the sheer, surreal scale of a divine war, the dramatic title was perhaps warranted. Despite already knowing the system’s mandate, the confirmation sent a renewed wave of murmurs rippling through the hall.
Sa-yoon crossed his arms, meeting the heavy, expectant gazes directed at him. His eyes glinted with such reptilian, venomous hostility that the foreign hunters instinctively averted their gaze, as if expecting a viper to strike.
BANG! BANG!
Lee Han struck the desk again to wrangle the restless room.
“We cannot debate the entry roster. The system has already finalized its decision and is awaiting the entry of those three specific individuals. Therefore, our objective today is twofold: predict the catastrophic events that will unfold on Earth after the Final War Gate opens, and meticulously organize our remaining forces to combat the worst-case scenarios.”
With the true agenda established, Lee Han turned to Sa-yoon and asked if he had any predictions regarding the fallout once the gate opened. Sa-yoon immediately recalled his conversation with the God of Wisdom and the rest of the white-haired trio.
“Disasters will strike,” Sa-yoon stated bluntly.
“…Disasters?”
“Like natural disasters?”
The foreign hunters looked baffled, clearly expecting talk of mutated monsters or super-massive gate breaks. Seeing their collective disappointment, a crooked, cynical smirk curled Sa-yoon’s lips.
“You all seem to be laboring under a massive misconception,” he drawled. “If the rebel gods lose this final war, they forfeit their authority to intervene on this planet. In other words, stopping the apocalypse requires their active intervention. So, what do you think will happen to the earth while they are entirely distracted fighting a divine war?”
“…The apocalypse will accelerate,” Lee Han realized, his face paling.
Sa-yoon tapped his foot, nodding in approval. “Exactly. And the apocalypse won’t just arrive in the form of monsters. The droughts, typhoons, and torrential rains we’ve been struggling with will escalate exponentially. Massive tidal waves and ice storms will ravage the globe. Literally everything designed to bring about the end of the world will happen simultaneously.”
“…”
“So, I highly suggest you all get plenty of sleep now,” Sa-yoon added with a dry chuckle. “Once the war starts, you won’t have the luxury of closing your eyes.”
The hunters’ faces hardened into masks of grim despair. Halting a monster horde was one thing; physically stopping an island-swallowing tsunami, an apocalyptic earthquake, or a continent-freezing ice storm was entirely beyond a hunter’s capabilities. Even their strongest defensive magic would offer barely a fraction of resistance against nature’s absolute fury. Ultimately, their only viable strategy would be mass civilian evacuation while deploying specialized utility awakeners to desperately mitigate the elemental damage.
Silently offering them his sarcastic condolences for the hellish workload ahead, Sa-yoon leaned back as Lee Han quickly wrangled the room to ask the next critical question.
“In that case, will there be additional gates spawning?”
“Probably. We might even see another SSS-rank gate,” Sa-yoon replied nonchalantly.
“What?”
“I thought you said the one you just cleared was the final one!”
“I said it was the last SSS-rank gate before the Final War Gate opened,” Sa-yoon corrected smoothly.
At that calm, devastating rebuttal, the foreign hunters’ eyes shifted greedily from Sa-yoon to the Noah guild members sitting across the table. They were practically salivating, their eyes practically burning holes into the veterans as they desperately calculated how to poach them for their own countries.
Sa-yoon watched their thinly veiled greed with deep amusement. Of course they coveted them. Who wouldn’t want proven combatants who had just survived the most apocalyptic raid in human history? They desperately wanted to borrow that invaluable experience and raw, overwhelming power to protect their own borders.
But it was a pipe dream. A core member of Noah currently sat as the President of the Korean Association; Lee Han would sooner die than let his elite forces be siphoned off overseas.
Life truly is full of unpredictable turns.
Sa-yoon hummed a soft tune, tapping his foot in sheer, petty delight. When he had first fallen out of the Tutorial Tower a year into the future, Korea’s global standing had been utterly abysmal.
He wasn’t exactly a patriot, but unless one was a literal traitor, nobody enjoyed seeing their home country treated like disposable garbage.
Watching foreign elites treat Korea’s best hunters like useless bugs just because he, Geon-joo, and Jaehee weren’t around had been incredibly infuriating.
He had ground his people to the bone with venomous determination, forcing them through hellish training until they grew into true monsters. Now, seeing that brutal effort pay off in the form of desperate international envy brought a vicious, deeply satisfied smile to his face.
The topic naturally shifted to sharing vital intel from the SSS-rank gate, with Jongsik and Mi-jeong taking the lead to brief the assembly. While Sa-yoon watched the duo expertly field a barrage of questions, the heavy conference room doors swung open, and Gyeongjin slipped inside.
He approached Sa-yoon, covering his mouth to whisper the news. “Perse has arrived and is on standby.”
Perfect timing. The foreign hunters were already scowling, their expressions souring after their subtle requests for Noah’s direct combat support had been politely but firmly rejected. Knowing he needed to toss them a highly lucrative carrot before tempers actually flared, Sa-yoon raised his hand. Lee Han immediately acknowledged the gesture and yielded the floor.
“I’ve just been informed that Perse is waiting outside,” Sa-yoon announced. “I suggest you direct your requests for support to him. Supplying your forces with top-tier weaponry is a far more efficient choice than begging for manpower you won’t get.”
“Perse?”
“Hasn’t the Master Blacksmith Perse been living in total seclusion for quite some time?”
He had indeed been a recluse. The man had holed himself up in his workshop for over a year. Sa-yoon had specifically dragged him out by the scruff of his neck to use as leverage for this exact moment. As Sa-yoon basked in his own strategic brilliance, Gyeongjin dropped a second, far more critical piece of news.
“Also, Geon-joo woke up.”
“…”
Sa-yoon clamped his mouth shut. Staring at the conference room that had erupted into a chaotic frenzy over Perse’s arrival, he abruptly stood up. Lee Han caught the sudden movement.
Sa-yoon tilted his head toward the door and gestured sharply at Gyeongjin. Reading the room perfectly, Lee Han frowned slightly but nodded, silently granting him permission to leave the summit. Sa-yoon shoved Gyeongjin into his empty seat and gripped both his and Jongsik’s shoulders in a vice grip.
“Perse is here, so mediate the negotiations well. You know exactly who is taking the fall if things go south while I’m gone, right?”
“Make your threats with money,” Gyeongjin retorted smoothly.
“I’ll wire the deposit on my way out.”
“Deal.” Gyeongjin waved him off brightly, urging him to hurry.
Trusting his executives to handle the fallout, Sa-yoon bolted from the conference room and sprinted toward the VIP suites on the upper floors.
SLAM!
He violently shoved the door open. A man was sitting upright on the bed.
“Ah, you’re here?”
Pitch-black hair. Obsidian eyes. The soft, familiar curve of his eyes.
It was Han Geon-joo.