Headhunting (2)

“If you’re here to recruit her, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

?

I was stunned by the sudden confrontation.

Yua Dokjon… weren’t they a major guild? And they’re picking a fight… like this?

“Ms. Seo A-gyeol has already applied for an internship with us at Yua Dokjon.”

“Ms. Seo A-gyeol… you say.”

I’d had a run-in with the youngest son of the Yua Dokjon Guild Master before. Right… I’d written my name on an internship application and given it to him then.

I could feel Namgung Yoon stiffen beside me. Why are you getting flustered?

“Yes. So… I hope we can avoid any unpleasantness over this.”

The man kept provoking me with his sharp, clipped tone. I wanted to snap him in half.

But the problem was, he was right.

While I could do an internship with Yua Dokjon, I couldn’t possibly join Elemental.

The chances of Yua Dokjon discovering that Lee Han-gyeol and Seo A-gyeol couldn’t exist at the same time were low, but the same couldn’t be said for Elemental.

And I had filled out that internship application with my own hand.

I’d seen that the Yua Dokjon scion, Yoo Ha-jin, was completely smitten with me, so I’d planned to suck him dry of his money and Essense.

And sure enough, after we slept together, he’d showered me with all sorts of gifts.

…Was this a fight I was destined to lose?

“Well, it is just an internship, isn’t it? Once she hears my proposal… she might just change her mind. Besides, we have an internship program as well.”

Elemental did have an internship program.

However, opportunities were mainly given to Awakeners with the ‘Elemental Mage’ trait or something comparable, and those people were usually hired directly without an internship.

Why bother, when there was already a probationary period? Sure, an internship might shorten that period, but interns faced all sorts of restrictions.

It was practically a defunct system, but still—

This guy’s attitude was really starting to piss me off.

His tone, his phrasing, everything about him made me unwilling to accept defeat meekly.

And come to think of it—

Isn’t this a chance for me to raise my own market value?

The more I coveted the position—or rather, the more it looked like Elemental coveted me—the more Yua Dokjon would want me, too.

It was a self-orchestrated scam.

I was both the shill bidder driving up the price at the auction and the prize whose value was rising.

“To be frank, there are plenty of substitutes for Enhancement-types, but when it comes to Magic-types, especially Elemental Mages, Elemental is—”

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

A woman from the same group cut him off.

“My colleague was a bit sharp with his words. I do apologize. In the end, which guild she joins is her decision, isn’t it? There’s no need for us to get so heated. Choi Hyun, apologize at once.”

“…My apologies.”

A one-two punch, delivered in the blink of an eye. It was now awkward for me to say anything more.

She hadn’t done anything to stop the man, Choi Hyun, when he’d approached me. She’d even just stood by and watched as he provoked me.

“…I suppose I got a bit heated myself.”

“Yes. It all comes down to who can offer more, so there’s no need for us to be like this. We’ll be on our way now.”

“…Right. Of course.”

*

When I got home, my burner phone—Seo A-gyeol’s phone—was flooded with notifications.

Naturally, I hadn’t taken it with me on my visit to Blue Forest.

It would be a disaster if someone called Seo A-gyeol and the phone started ringing in my pocket, right?

A quick scan of the notifications showed they were about the exchange proposals and headhunting offers from today.

It seemed the offers weren’t just from Yua Dokjon and Elemental.

The missed calls… were probably because I hadn’t been answering my texts.

I started replying to the messages one by one.

I delegated everything regarding the ‘exchanges’ to Park Eun-su.

When I asked why these proposals had suddenly increased, he explained that wiping out the Swallow Faction was seen as a demonstration of our stability.

If a gate’s ownership changes hands frequently, any agreements tied to that gate have to be renegotiated every time.

And even if the new owner ‘inherits’ the agreements, the situation remains unstable due to unwritten clauses that can’t be documented.

He also said that even if the owner doesn’t change, various external factors can severely undermine the stability of an agreement.

The Swallow Faction had been one of the most prominent ‘external factors.’

Therefore, our battle, where we annihilated them with minimal losses, could be seen as a turning point.

For reference, the reason major guilds want to establish these exchanges is to exert their influence over as many gates as possible.

They have money to burn, so it’s a form of ‘investment’ for them, just in case.

No one knows what might be discovered inside a gate, or how the value of its primary resources might change in the future.

…He said it’s best for an unregistered gate like ours to accept such proposals.

Since our very existence is illegal, we can’t exactly go to the police if we get screwed over…

However, government-certified guilds, especially the major ones, can’t just openly seize an unregistered gate. So they try to exert influence through these kinds of investments.

Then there was another type of proposal, separate from these ‘exchanges.’

An offer had come from the ‘Black Market Alliance.’

Skimming through it… it was basically a proposal for the black markets to help each other out. Its purpose seemed to be collusion, information sharing, and the like.

This information, by the way, included things like blacklists, officials who were open to bribes, and patrol routes and schedules.

This was another offer that was good to accept, and one that hadn’t come until after we’d wiped out the Swallow Faction.

I delegated this to Blue Forest as well.

Next up… headhunting.

Among the guilds Park Eun-su mentioned, the only ones worth considering were, as expected, Elemental and Yua Dokjon.

Elemental was obviously out, which left Yua Dokjon.

However—

Park Eun-su: The people from Yua Dokjon were very insistent, so I gave them your contact information.

Park Eun-su: If they bother you too much, please let me know.

The number of love calls from Yua Dokjon was unusually high.

There were offers at the guild level, from the group that visited Blue Forest, and most importantly—

Yoo Ha-jin: Do you remember me?

Yoo Ha-jin: You promised me last time.

Yoo Ha-jin: That you’d come for our internship.

*

Knowing it would be a pain to drag things out, I scheduled a dinner with Yoo Ha-jin, the youngest son of the Yua Dokjon Guild Master.

No point in delaying the inevitable.

“Oh, welcome.”

The restaurant looked quite expensive.

Then again, for someone with a separate guest house on their property, what couldn’t he afford?

“Long time no see… though it hasn’t even been a week, has it?”

“That’s just how much I wanted to see you. Please, have a seat.”

The moment I sat down, he began to speak.

“Really, when you said you had a main job, I wondered what it could be. You’re truly amazing. A… business of that scale is certainly worthy of being your main focus.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. Living as an Awakener… sometimes I think it’s better to be the head of a snake than the tail of a dragon.”

“The head of a snake… Well, it certainly has its perks.”

“It does. There are times I think, ‘Ah, so I have all this power just to end up working for someone else.’ I’ve even thought about just leaving and starting my own guild. Of course, being a team leader offers a fair amount of freedom in terms of scheduling, but… human greed knows no bounds, right?”

He smiled at me.

“And I had no idea you were so strong. Do you know how embarrassed I was when I first heard the news?”

I raised an eyebrow in question.

“I asked someone who might be stronger than me to join an internship. I was seriously… kicking myself over it.”

“…The internship offer was a bit underwhelming.”

“See? In that case… how about becoming a team member right away? Oh, no, wait. You’re a head, not a tail, right? I almost made myself cringe again. How about a team leader?”

“A team leader?”

Can you really just decide something like that on your own?

“Yes. There’s a clear difference between a team member and a team leader. And don’t worry about the procedures. Once they find out about your business, you’ll be made a team leader immediately. Of course… there might be some restrictions when it comes to recruiting team members and things like that.”

First Elemental, and now Yua Dokjon, offering me a team leader position?

“And teams often form alliances to tackle gates together. Of course, that’s up to the team leader’s discretion, so you can go or you can refuse. You’re a busy woman, after all.”

“I am busy. That’s why I was trying to avoid joining a guild in the first place.”

“You really don’t have to worry. Of course, there are penalties in terms of support and base salary, but honestly, that part doesn’t matter to you, does it? Since you have your own business. So instead of focusing on tangible benefits, the idea is to focus on the intangible ones—connections, opportunities, things like that.”

Hmm, he was certainly trying hard to persuade me.

“There are quite a few people with contracts like this. They’re guild masters or gate owners somewhere else, but they’re registered and active as team leaders in our guild.”

He was making it so hard to refuse.

Of course,

I had no intention of refusing anyway.

“Alright.”

*

To celebrate me joining, Yoo Ha-jin bought a bottle of alcohol made for Awakeners.

It was delicious, and looking at the price, it would have been a crime if it wasn’t.

In any case, after leaving the restaurant, we decided to head straight to the Yua Dokjon guild to fill out the application while we were at it.

The restaurant wasn’t far from the guild headquarters, so we were walking side by side.

“It was good, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a great spot. It’s a place that shot to three Michelin stars right after the gates opened by using monster ingredients. They adapted well to the new world.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. They have a contract with our guild. One of our gates produces a lot of their ingredients. Ah, you get an employee discount here. You should come often.”

“The alcohol was definitely good, too.”

“Right?”

“But maybe because I’m a little tired, it feels pretty strong.”

“Ah, right. That was yesterday, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The battle with the Swallow Faction had been yesterday.

Yoo Ha-jin seemed to hesitate.

But perhaps thanks to the alcohol, his hesitation was brief.

“Then shall we rest today and go together tomorrow?”

He gestured with his chin toward a hotel.