“There is a limit to disobedience. At this point, you’re basically saying ‘fuck the Guild Master, I’ll do whatever the hell I want,’ aren’t you?”
“No, hyung-nim. That’s not it…”
“I am deeply disappointed, Jongsik-ah. To think I actually believed your crocodile tears.”
“No, seriously…”
Jongsik parted his lips several times as if terribly wronged, but Sa-yoon completely ignored the pathetic display.
While he felt a profound sense of gratitude and surprise toward Mi-jeong, his feelings for Jongsik were entirely different. An unexpected ally stepping in to save his life was touching; a subordinate deliberately throwing himself into the line of fire after explicit orders not to play the hero was pure, unadulterated insubordination.
Just recalling the serene look on Jongsik’s face as the massive man shielded him and Mi-jeong made Sa-yoon’s blood boil.
What if he had actually taken the curse? The idiot didn’t have a resurrection item or any safety net to fall back on. His stomach churned with nauseating anxiety.
That insolent bastard.
Jongsik had sobbed his eyes out begging to survive together, yet the second a lethal choice presented itself, he chucked his Guild Master’s orders out the window and threw his body to the wolves. Whether the self-sacrifice was a primal instinct or a calculated risk didn’t matter—he had still treated Sa-yoon’s absolute command like white noise.
Refusing to entertain a single excuse, Sa-yoon shot him a glacial glare.
Beside them, Yen chuckled and gently peeled Sa-yoon’s fingers away from where they were threatening to rip Jongsik’s ear clean off.
“hyung-nim. The gate is closing,” Yen said, jutting her chin toward the violently rippling spatial distortion behind them.
Once the gate fully collapsed, the system would forcibly eject everyone inside. Her warning was a polite reminder to consider their dignity and public image in front of the massive crowds undoubtedly waiting outside. Despite the undignified squabbling, they were the victorious raid party that had just cleared the final apocalyptic SSS-rank gate. They deserved to emerge as conquering heroes, and having a top executive dragged out by his ear would severely undermine that majestic image.
Reluctantly acknowledging her point, Sa-yoon released his iron grip.
“I’ll deal with you later.”
“No, Hyungniiiim!”
The desperate, wailing plea fell on deaf ears. Clicking his tongue, Sa-yoon swept a menacing glare over the rest of the Night Rats guild members. The rowdy veterans suddenly found the cavern walls fascinating, coughing awkwardly or intensely inspecting their perfectly polished weapons for imaginary rust.
It was painfully obvious they recognized their own guilt as bystanders; they had let Jongsik charge to his death without lifting a finger to stop him.
It was like entrusting a fish to a cat.
Judging by their synchronized avoidance, if Jongsik hadn’t stepped up, every single one of them would have thrown themselves in front of that curse.
Why would they stop him when they harbored the exact same suicidal loyalty?
A strange, chaotic warmth rippled through Sa-yoon’s chest, violently contrasting the blinding anger he felt he should be experiencing.
Yes, they were insubordinate fools, but their reckless actions proved he was far more than just the terrifying leader of the Night Rats syndicate.
Their constant chants of ‘hyung-nim’ weren’t just empty lip service forged from fear—they genuinely viewed him as family.
Chewing on that profound realization, another wave of unfamiliar emotion crashed over him. Unable to put a name to the swelling affection, Sa-yoon cursed his own soft heart and stared into the blinding light of the collapsing spatial rift. He really couldn’t afford to die recklessly anymore.
FLASH!
An overwhelming, brilliant radiance erupted from the fracture, swallowing Sa-yoon and the rest of the raid party whole.
As the piercing light blinded him, a soft, genuine smile touched Sa-yoon’s lips. Every single person in his life seemed desperately determined to shackle him to the world of the living, and shockingly, he didn’t hate the feeling at all.
“Th-They’re out!”
“They’re out? It’s true! They survived! The Hunters from Noah are here!”
“Wait, there are other people with them.”
“The Swallow Guild went in with them, you idiot.”
“Wait, isn’t Swallow just a cover for Night Rats…?”
“Who the fuck cares right now?! Just cheer! They cleared the final SSS-rank gate!”
A chaotic cacophony of overlapping shouts washed over them, rapidly swelling into an ear-splitting, thunderous roar of applause that welcomed the returning conquerors. As the teleportation sickness faded and Sa-yoon’s vision cleared, the raid party was collectively struck speechless by the endless sea of humanity stretching before them.
“Thank you for clearing the final gate!”
“Thank you! Because of you, we get to live!”
“Thank you so much!”
Though half-drowned by the deafening roar, scattered screams of pure, unadulterated gratitude pierced the air. Festive firecrackers detonated in the distance, showering the bewildered hunters in a colorful blizzard of confetti.
The aggressive swarms of journalists had been physically shoved to the far periphery; instead, the very first thing Sa-yoon’s party encountered was an impenetrable wall of weeping, beaming citizens.
Cardboard signs dangled from their necks, bearing a simple, unified message: NO Reporters! NO Broadcasts! Only Gratitude!
It was a fiercely protective, overwhelmingly genuine display of public support. Spotting identical signs rippling through the massive crowd, the stunned hunters exchanged bewildered glances, their mouths hanging slightly open.
Veterans who had just carved their way through an apocalyptic battlefield with eyes full of murder now looked like confused children.
The absurd contrast between their current dumbfounded expressions and their recent bloodthirsty battle trances was too much, and breathless laughter rippled through the ranks.
The Noah hunters were the first to recover, flashing brilliant smiles as they bowed deeply to the cheering masses. Taking the cue, the Night Rats executives led their subordinates in synchronized, respectful bows.
The only person standing rigidly upright was Sa-yoon.
It wasn’t because cradling Geon-joo’s unconscious body physically prevented him from bowing. He was simply paralyzed by disbelief.
The roaring cheers, the soaring confetti, the sheer, unfiltered adoration—it all felt far too surreal to process. He was too busy desperately engraving this impossible fantasy into his memory to even formulate the thought of returning the greeting.
It was a first for him.
Historically, emerging from a gate meant braving a gauntlet of vultures—journalists hurling invasive questions to dig up scandals or expose weaknesses. He had never once been the recipient of public gratitude.
He had stood firm while taking rotten eggs to the face, scoffing at the childish hostility, but standing beneath a rain of flower petals was entirely uncharted territory.
He had never seen faces twisted in such profound joy right in front of him.
He had never been welcomed without an undercurrent of disgust or terror.
“…”
No one rushed the frozen Guild Master.
No one ordered him to bow, nor did they chant his name in demand. The crowd and his comrades simply waited, offering him the silent grace to absorb the moment.
Breaking the unspoken reverie, a tiny child darted out from the front row of the welcoming parade and brazenly grabbed Sa-yoon’s hand.
“You saved my dad,” the child squeaked. “Thank you. Mommy says you shouldn’t say thank you empty-handed… so I made this.”
The little girl, barely five years old, clumsily pressed a crudely woven flower ring into Sa-yoon’s palm. The fragile gift instantly overlapped with the memory of a flower crown he had once received from a young boy in a long-gone field. A wistful, hazy smile touched Sa-yoon’s lips as he looked down.
Meeting his intense gaze, the child beamed with absolute, innocent purity. Her chubby, baby-fat cheeks bunched up adorably, her eyes crinkling into happy little crescents. Mesmerized by the sweet arc of her small lips, Sa-yoon snapped back to reality and shifted his focus to the crowd directly behind her. A couple—undoubtedly her parents—watched the interaction with a frantic blend of protective anxiety and overflowing joy.
Realizing the terrifying Guild Master of Night Rats was staring directly at them, the parents flinched, but quickly recovered to offer awkward, deeply respectful smiles.
There was absolutely no contempt in their eyes.
No disgust, no jealousy, no veiled suspicion.
There was only nervous awe and pure gratitude.
Anchored by that revelation, Sa-yoon slowly swept his gaze across the rest of the cheering sea. The deafening roar continued to rattle his eardrums.
“…Ah.” A soft gasp finally escaped him.
When the system updated and unleashed impossible gates, he had initially joined Noah just to maintain the status quo, only to be practically chased out by public resentment and fear. Even after he had repeatedly thrown himself into catastrophic gate breaks and apocalyptic raids to save lives, he had never once bothered to genuinely look at the faces of the people he was protecting.
Today, for the very first time, they entirely filled his vision.
These are the people.
These were the fragile lives he was fighting so desperately to save. It was the first true meeting between the savior and the saved.
Awestruck that the public harbored such warm expressions toward him, Sa-yoon straightened up from the child’s eye level and drew a deep breath.
Poke. A gentle finger prodded his spine. It was probably Jaehee or Mi-jeong reminding him to bow. Or maybe Jongsik. Or even… Gyeongjin.
Fuck, there are so many of them now.
Chuckling softly at the sheer number of comrades he could casually suspect, Sa-yoon didn’t hesitate any longer and bowed his head deeply to the crowd. A momentary hush fell over the plaza, followed instantly by a volcanic eruption of cheers that dwarfed everything he had heard so far.
Perhaps the explosive reaction was amplified because Night Rats was finally cooperating with Noah, the golden guild backed by the Association and universally trusted by the public. Perhaps the thunderous applause was genuinely meant for the pristine heroes like Lee Han, or even the boisterous Ho-cheol, rather than him.
But for once, Sa-yoon refused to entertain cynical hypotheticals.
He chose to absorb the pouring adulation simply as it was, letting the unfamiliar, awkward warmth wash over him. The very first time he had bowed before the masses, he had been drowning in vicious condemnation and hatred.
To be showered in screams of joy instead felt delightfully bizarre.
“We need to go, hyung-nim,” Gyeongjin murmured from behind.
“Yeah. If we dawdle, the reporters are going to break the line and start demanding interviews,” Yen added. “I mean, unless you actually want to do one.”
Raising his head, Sa-yoon offered the little girl a final, gentle nod before turning to follow the secure pathway carved out by Association staff.
And then, it happened.
“…!”
A bloodcurdling, suffocating aura of murder descended from the heavens, making every hair on his body stand on end. Every battle-hardened hunter in the plaza snapped their heads upward simultaneously. Sensing the abrupt shift in the atmosphere, the civilian crowd nervously followed their gaze, tapping their neighbors and pointing at the sky.
It was red.
The sky, which had been a pristine, brilliant blue just moments before they exited the gate, was now bleeding a horrific, apocalyptic crimson. It wasn’t the natural gradient of a sunset. It was a visceral, unnatural red, as if the entire atmosphere had been painted in thick, fresh blood. Tremors of terror rippled through the hunters’ eyes.
Just as panicked murmurs began to infect the crowd, a shrill, piercing siren—
BEEEEEP!
—detonated across the world. A blood-red system window materialized directly in front of every single pair of eyes on the planet, sparing neither hunter nor civilian.
<49 hours remain until the emergence of the gate: 'Final War: Treason and Reformation'.>
[1st. Kwon Sa-yoon 2nd. Han Geon-joo 3rd. Lee Jaehee 4th. Jincheong 5th. Lee Han . . . 100th. Greyna]
A suffocating, graveyard silence paralyzed the plaza, only to be shattered seconds later by an exploding uproar of absolute panic. Sa-yoon’s icy gaze locked onto his own name in the 1st place slot, tracking down to Geon-joo and Jaehee right below him.
Without a word, he resumed his stride.
The war was no longer an impending threat; it was breathing down their necks. Adjusting his grip on Geon-joo, Sa-yoon raised his left hand slightly, signaling Gyeongjin to approach. As the executive quickly leaned in, Sa-yoon whispered a single, chilling command.
“Summon Perse.”
It was time to consolidate their ultimate military power and pass down his teachings to those who would defend the earth in their absence.