It is after business hours and the restaurant is empty. Ui-jae sits on a neatly wiped table and stares intently at his cell phone. A thread of Knowledge ON questions and answers with multiple answers and comments appears on the screen.

"If the hunter is a known hunter and the evidence is strong, the Bureau will come directly."

Ui-jae slumped down on the table. Damn it, the Korean officials worked too hard. If he reported Lee Sa-young for obstructing business, he wouldn't be surprised if the director of the Awakening Management Bureau himself showed up.

His face crumpled into a grimace and he stroked the screen with his fingertips. The ramblings under the kind words he'd just read were mostly unrealistic. What? You want me to tell you his first name? I'm sorry, but that bastard could cut Korea in half if he wanted to.

That's what you get for being number one. His every move is met with a constant battle between detractors and defenders. Ui-jae has been through this before. No matter how bad he was, he wasn't going to start a volcanic eruption on the internet just to make it easier for himself.

Mana stone recorders were too expensive, and interviews were something you couldn't do without going crazy. As he scrolled down, he involuntarily hit his head on the table. The sound startled him and he checked the table, but luckily it wasn't cracked. After rubbing his forehead furiously with his hand, he put his cell phone back down.

I'm stuck... ....'

Cha Ui-jae's anguish is not for any other reason...

It's all because of a nasty bastard who burst into the quiet life of a part-time Haejang-guk house.

Haejang-guk House had a reputation as a restaurant for hunters, so there were many people who paid in advance. There were many hunters who didn't bother to carry their cards, and it was not uncommon for them to run out of the restaurant without paying, let alone putting down their spoons.

When Ui-jae first learned the trade, he was given the responsibility of taking care of the prepayment books, so prepayment was no big deal, but Ui-jae swears that Sa-young was the first crazy person to come in and offer to pay 15 million won in advance since the shop opened. No, you mean 15 million is your dog's name?

In the end, Cha Ui-jae glared at Bae Won-woo, who came in with a useless hunchback and lost what little life he had left.

Stop this crazy bastard.

That's what he meant.

But Bae Won-woo, who jumped about 0.5 cm from the spot, stopped Lee Sa-young with sharp eyes like an updated artificial intelligence.

"Hurry up and pay and go back to the guild. You said you were really busy."

"I'm not really busy."

"You said you had to go to the office. Weren't you supposed to meet with Jung-bin?"

"We can postpone it."

Lee Sa-young was nonchalant in the face of a meeting with the government, something most people would never want to do in their lives. Bae Won-woo didn't think it would work, so he changed tactics and spoke selflessly.

"Hey, exchange my armor for the 15 million yuan in advance. I heard there's an auction for Hongye Castle equipment in Songdo."

"How can you buy equipment for only 15 million? Are you a beggar?"

Wow... What a bastard.

Every word that came out of that hateful mouth was art. It was clear that not only Ui-jae, but all the hunters who heard the conversation on the spot thought the same. May Lee Sa-young's card melt like a precious 6,900 won trophy that died heroically that night... That's when Ui-jae thought about it and refused to pick up the card in front of him.

Bae Won-woo held out his right hand and shouted bravely.

"Five hundred!"

"Huh?"

"Just five million. I'll come to the company dinner with my team members often. Fifteen million is too much."

"Hmm."

"If it's fifteen million, you'll have to eat heajang-guk three times a day for 333 days!"

I'm sure I can eat enough, you're already doing it, thought Lee Sa-young, who looked at Bae Won-woo in disbelief, then looked at Ui-jae. When their eyes met, Ui-jae smiled a cold, socially awkward part-time smile. Pay quickly and get lost. Something like that.

After pretending to think for a moment, Sa-young soon nodded.

"Well, okay..."

He put the card into the calculator, locked eyes with Ui-jae and added.

"Let me know when it runs out and I'll pay you again in advance."

Please fuck off.

As if to pay for ruining the day's business, Lee Sa-young paid back the five million won advance and left the restaurant more easily than he expected. It was a boring goodbye compared to the intense meeting. He waited all night in the next room with a ladle, just in case. If he saw a single hair on his head, he would kill him.

Fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't have the misfortune to return in the middle of the night. Instead,

"Yeah, it's hot."

"Sorry, what?"

"The Haejang-guk is hot."

"Yes, it is."

From that day on, they started coming and eating haejang-guk as if it was a stamp of attendance!

Ignoring what Bae Won-woo was whispering through clenched teeth, Lee Sa-young pulled a set of disposable cutlery out of thin air while listening to Ui-jae's equally clenched teeth. That bastard started carrying around his own personal cutlery, saying that he couldn't waste money on cutlery from the prepaid amount. I guess he couldn't take it anymore? Bastard. Do you have any inventory left?

Okay, let's just say I gave in a hundred times and had a spare pair of disposable cutlery. You could have flavored your haejang-guk with it, you know.

But I couldn't stand the fact that the tables around him would empty whenever Lee Sa-young appeared. The hunters, famous for their unnecessarily strong egos and their refusal to listen to anyone else, practiced distancing themselves so diligently when no one asked them to! Ui-jae laughed in disbelief.

Fuck, this should be an obvious business interruption.

The pride of Haejang-guk House was its high turnover rate and low prices, but when Lee Sa-young showed up, it was a disaster. Not only did the turnover rate plummet, but so did sales. So far, thanks to the heavy Haejang-guk maniacs... At this rate, he was about to lose even his regular customers.

Thanks to this, Ui-jae had recently looked up a lot of things on the portal site, such as the Hunter Crime Reporting Act and the Awakener Special Act, and finally came to a conclusion.

In order to solve this... I either have to become a hunter again, or I have to have money!

I know this is a bit radical, but Ui-jae had his reasons.

In order to make Lee Sa-young's behavior public, he needed hard evidence. Vague testimonies are not enough, as they could backfire by accusing Korea's number one hunter of smearing him.

The most obvious way to do this is to release a recording of his atrocities. However, as a KnowledgeON respondent said, an ordinary recorder can't even "sue" an S-class hunter with the evidence he has gathered. An S-class hunter can easily detect and destroy recorders and cameras.

This means you'll need an indestructible, dungeon byproduct, or undetectable recorder... Actually, these items are hard to come by,

Bargains.

I didn't realize this when I was Hunter J, but dungeon byproduct items are incredibly expensive. Cha Ui-jae, a part-time worker in a modest Haejang-guk house, couldn't buy them even if he saved his entire life!

He didn't ask for much in salary, just a small portion of the shop's profits, which was more than enough for his needs. He has nowhere to go but home and a few clean clothes and a pair of sneakers to keep him going, and he wouldn't have to worry about any of this if Lee Sa-young hadn't come into his life in the second act.

...Should I register as a hunter?

All he has to do is go to the Awakening Center, have my powers measured, and get a rating... What if the data on J that he doesn't know about remains intact? What if he somehow manages to get to the center, but loses control of his powers? What if he hits the weakest possible blow and the meter still shatters?

At that moment, quiet life crosses the Jordan River. The only good thing was that there was no Awakening Management Bureau when he awakened, and when he went through the registration process afterwards, he was given the J privilege, so he didn't have to fake an ID.

"If it wasn't for that bastard Lee Sa-young..."

Lately, Ui-jae had vaguely understood why the other hunters didn't want to go near him. He was a snake. A snake that slithers around its prey and slowly tightens its grip.

He could have blackmailed him outright about what happened that night, but instead, he kept coming back to the shop, subtly pressuring him. For some reason, Lee Sa-young hasn't asked Ui-jae's name since his first visit to the Haejang-guk house. He doesn't know if he already knows his identity or not.

His current behavior was like sticking a finger into still water. Even if it's not a big blow, it's enough to stir up the water. Even if it wasn't a big hit, there was something unpleasant about being reminded of it all the time...

It's unpleasant.

He felt like an animal whose territory had been violated. Staring into space with a frown on his face, he suddenly reached into his inventory.

The inventory was filled with empty potion bottles. All of them had been used in the Incheon Rift. The black longsword from the rift, the Fang of the Basilisk. Ui-jae stared at the Fang of the Basilisk, then turned his attention elsewhere. Something glittered between the rows of potion bottles.

A golden gem the size of half a thumb.

It was a mana stone.

In the past, he didn't have anywhere to use it or sell it, so he kept it in his inventory or somewhere in the corner of his house, but nowadays there are a lot of magic stones around. From what the regulars at Haejang-guk House said, there seemed to be quite a lot of equipment for processing magic stones.

"Should I sell one?"

If he sells this, he can probably buy a pretty good recorder, right?

Ui-jae secretly took out a magic stone from his inventory and started polishing it with his apron.