Lee Aseok’s expression was unreadable. Bored, maybe. Gloomy. Tired. His eyes didn’t flinch when someone tried to speak to him, nor did they flicker when the crowd made way.

  A guild leader stepped forward slightly, perhaps out of habit or ego, and opened his mouth to speak.

  “A moment, Chosen..”

  Lee Aseok walked past him like he didn’t exist.

  Not a glance.

  Not a pause.

  Just walked.

  Even the guards near the doors stiffened, unsure whether to bow, salute, or simply step aside. In the end, they did nothing. Because something about the way he moved told them instinctively..

  He wouldn’t stop even if they tried.

  Mu Yichen followed quietly behind, his gaze fixed on Aseok’s back. His jaw was slightly clenched, a quiet storm brewing in his eyes.

  Seo MinHyun walked a bit slower, lips pressed tight, muttering under his breath, “Well, there goes our PR department having a heart attack.”

  Park Taegun brought up the rear, walking with military precision, but even he couldn’t help the way his eyes lingered on the floating sword. His jaw twitched slightly.

  The four of them entered the building.

  And the crowd outside was left frozen.

  The reporters, despite being warned, twice, by the HQ staff to keep away, were already leaning out from behind vehicles and bushes. Camera shutters clicked quietly, and recorders buzzed softly. The fact that the entire event was supposed to be top-secret had evidently done nothing to slow down the media vultures.

  “Look at that sword. Is it floating? It's floating, right?”

  “Is that Seo MinHyun? He looks like he’s posing.”

  “He’s always posing.”

  “Who’s the guy in white?”

  “Idiot, that’s the chosen one!”

  “Wow, they are all good looking but the chosen one looks a bit gloomy?”

  “He’s still hot though.”

  Meanwhile, inside the building, the staff assigned to escort the group to the top floor were doing their best to keep a professional face.

  Keyword: trying.

  The young staffer leading the group looked like he was sweating bullets as he sneaked peeks at Lee Aseok through the corner of his eye every few seconds. It didn’t help that the holy sword was floating just behind Aseok’s shoulder, gleaming like a supernatural warning sign.

  Seo MinHyun noticed, of course.

  He leaned forward slightly and stage-whispered, “Do you want a picture? He might autograph your forehead if you ask nicely.”

  The staff nearly tripped over his own feet.

  Mu Yichen let out a soft chuckle and said nothing. His gaze was fixed on Aseok, who walked slightly ahead of them all, as if the group behind him didn’t exist.

  Aseok never looked around. Never commented. Never paused. He moved like he was sleepwalking through an overly bright dream, uninterested in the people, the whispers, or the history unfolding around him.

  Mu Yichen tilted his head slightly.

  How is someone like him going to sit through a council of a dozen egos who talk in circles for three hours?

  He smiled to himself.

  This will be entertaining.

  The elevator reached the top floor with a soft ding.

  The heavy, silver-inlaid doors of the main conference room were already open, and inside—

  Chaos.

  Important guild leaders. High-ranking officials. Tactical directors. Political figures. Financial heads. Hunters who had once slain dungeon lords and turned the tide of battles.

  Each of them sat around the oval conference table like beasts in suits. Every gaze was sharp. Every voice clipped with authority. Some of them had been waiting for hours, and none of them were in the mood to be gracious.

  “He’s late,” someone murmured with contempt.

  “And makes no effort to communicate. Typical of someone drunk on their own title.”

  “Let’s see how long he can hold that attitude.”

  The room had its own hierarchy. A silent tension dominated the air. No one dared raise their voice, but their expressions said enough.

  At the head of the table sat Qin Yue, the infamous master of the Shadow Guild.

  Mu Yichen’s mother.

  She was elegance carved in marble. Long hair swept back, lips painted a severe red, and a high-collared coat that framed her cold expression. She didn’t speak. She didn’t blink. But her very presence seemed to lower the temperature of the room.

  Mu Haejoon sat quietly near the middle of the long conference table, his fingers laced over a file he hadn’t opened in over an hour. Around him, the room was a quiet storm of resentment and anticipation, as if the air itself were holding its breath.

  Government directors whispered to one another, their mouths tight with frustration. Guild masters stared at the double doors, their expressions carved from varying shades of irritation and political pride.

  The chosen one was late. That, in their eyes, already said everything they needed to know.

  Arrogant. Entitled. In need of correction.

  But Mu Haejoon said nothing. He had met Lee Aseok twice, and that had been enough. The rest of them could stew in their assumptions. They would see soon enough.

  He’s not arrogant, Haejoon thought. He just doesn’t care.

  And that, to them, would be far more dangerous.

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  The doors to the conference room creaked open.

  All at once, the atmosphere shifted.

  The first to enter was Mu Yichen.

  Elegant as always, posture straight and dignified. He offered the room a polite smile that carried no warmth but also no flaw.

  As expected of the only SSS-rank hunter in the world. Every eye in the room gravitated toward him naturally, some out of admiration, some out of fear. Some, like his mother Qin Yue, showed no reaction at all. But even her fingers, resting on the conference table, paused for half a second.

  Following him was Seo MinHyun.

  Seo MinHyun, who clearly thought the red of his suit wasn’t bright enough, had added a lapel pin shaped like a phoenix that shimmered every time he turned his head. He walked in with the self-assurance of someone who believed the room was too dull before he arrived.

  “Don’t all stand up at once,” he said cheerfully as he passed the guild masters. “I’m touched.”

  “MinHyun,” Park Taegun muttered under his breath.

  Park Taegun, as always, was third. His dark coat was unadorned, his hair trimmed short, and his gaze straight ahead. He neither smiled nor frowned. Just walked with purpose, every step echoing military discipline.

  The three were a trio of contrasts, light, flame, and iron, and the room instinctively responded to their presence. Straightened backs. Subtle nods. Eyes sharpened in recognition.

  And yet.

  Even as those powerful names entered, eyes kept drifting back to the door.

  Waiting.

  Expecting.

  And then..

  He came.

  The room fell still.

  Not quiet, still. Like something divine had passed through it and pressed the pause button on the world.

  Lee Aseok walked in slowly, like a dream half-remembered. His long white coat trailed behind him, a shade too pristine for reality, like snow that refused to melt.

  The strands of his black hair brushed just past his shoulders, slightly tousled but not messy. His eyes, half-lidded, ringed with exhaustion, swept the room with the same expression one might give to a mildly interesting painting: observed, noted, quickly dismissed.

  But it was the sword that made the room hold its breath.

  Floating beside him was the holy sword, the holy sword. No sheath. No chain. Just suspended in the air as if gravity itself bent to its presence. Its blade glowed faintly, light refracting through invisible runes that pulsed like a heartbeat. It didn’t hover idly.

  It moved with purpose, always perfectly at Aseok’s side, like a beast on a leash only he could hold.

  It wasn’t hard to understand why the room was silent.

  He looked like a myth had stepped into a boardroom.

  Lee Aseok’s expression didn’t change as he scanned the people before him. His face was unreadable. Not out of calculation, like Mu Yichen, or performance, like Seo MinHyun, but because he simply didn’t care to give anyone anything.

  He walked toward the empty seat reserved for him near the head of the table. No ceremony. No pause. He sat down without a word, without even a glance at the notable names around him.

  One of the directors opened his mouth, only to close it again when Aseok lifted a hand, slow, almost careless, and rubbed his temple as if already bored.

  Mu Yichen sat down calmly beside him, his polite smile never wavering. He leaned slightly in Aseok’s direction and whispered, “You made quite the entrance.”

  Lee Aseok blinked once. “No choice.”

  Seo MinHyun took the seat beside Taegun, dramatically flipping his blazer back before sitting.

  “I feel like I’m in a fantasy drama,” he whispered, nudging Taegun with his elbow.

  Taegun didn’t even blink. “Sit properly.”

  “You’re so boring.”

  “You’re too loud.”

  Their bickering faded into the background as Lee Aseok turned his gaze across the table, and sighed.

  He wasn’t sighing at the situation. He wasn’t even sighing at the power players glaring holes into him.

  He was sighing at the man sitting a few chairs down.

  A few chairs away, a man sat with an elegant posture, one hand lightly holding a pen over his notepad, the other resting neatly over a slim file. He looked calm. Thoughtful. Like a university lecturer preparing to deliver a lecture on macroeconomic theory.

  Round glasses. Pale gray suit. Trimmed black hair that glinted slightly under the overhead lights.

  He looked like a man who would ask politely before stabbing you.

  Lee Aseok stared.

  And then sighed.

  That man, Kang Juwon.

  Guild master of the Moon Guild. Top five in the country. Revered for his calm demeanor, praised for his logical leadership. Even the government favored him for his 'balanced ethics.'

  But Lee Aseok knew better.

  In his past life, Kang Juwon had never laid a hand on him. Never even raised his voice.

  But he had made Aseok’s life hell.

  Lee Aseok shifted slightly in his chair, his gaze still fixed on the smiling “scholar” who was currently pretending not to notice him.

  In his past life, Lee Aseok had been F-rank. A walking ghost. No one paid attention to someone like him… until he accidentally touched the holy sword.

  Until he accidentally became a “problem.”

  That was when Kang Juwon noticed him.

  And Kang Juwon, who had S-rank Illusion skills, liked problems.

  Aseok remembered it all too clearly.

  He remembered waking up days later in a haze, his system overclocked with unstable drugs, his body aching, and his public reputation suddenly in shambles.

  Kang Juwon never directly harmed him. That was the brilliance of it. He only… arranged things. Had ingredients quietly altered. Had rumors conveniently spread. Had Lee Aseok’s dealer replaced with someone more reliable, someone Juwon controlled.

  All while smiling.

  All while never losing his reputation as a “mild-mannered intellectual.”

  Now, sitting in this room, reborn and stronger, Lee Aseok didn’t feel rage. He didn’t feel fear.

  He just felt… tired.

  The past clung to him like wet cloth. Kang Juwon was one of the many who wore down his soul, piece by piece, in that miserable life.

  And now the bastard was still smiling.

  The cold light of the meeting room flickered against the polished table, casting warped reflections across the faces of guild leaders and high-ranking government officials. The air was filled with thinly veiled disdain and forced courtesy, all of them gathered here to see the so-called “hero” the holy sword had chosen.

  But Lee Aseok didn’t care about them.

  His gaze was still fixed on Kang Juwon.

  Even now, Juwon was smiling faintly like he always did, pen resting lightly between his fingers, a portrait of civility and intellect. His polished appearance, quiet demeanor, and scholarly posture could fool anyone.

  Anyone but Lee Aseok.

  He remembered.

  He remembered everything.

  The past was not a memory. It was a scar.

  In that last life, broken, cast aside, and hanging on by threadbare strands of will, Lee Aseok had dragged himself to Kang Juwon’s door just days before entering the Hell Gate.

  At the time, he had nothing left to lose.

  Mu Yichen’s engagement had just been publicly announced. With the team healer, of all people. It had been the final blow.

  The one person Aseok had foolishly allowed himself to rely on… had chosen someone else, as easily and cleanly as breathing.

  No warning. No words. Just a headline.

  The shame he’d swallowed. The nights he spent dry-heaving from mana rejection. The burns along his arms from overusing illegal potions. The loneliness.

  All of it had meant nothing.

  So, Lee Aseok had gone to the devil with a polite face.

  He had gone to Kang Juwon.

  “I need everything you have,” Aseok had said that day, his voice a cracked whisper.

  Juwon had not acted surprised. In fact, he seemed to be waiting.

  “How interesting,” he had said, folding his hands. “Even the holy sword chosen is not immune to desperation.”

  Aseok didn’t argue.

  He just stood there, half-alive, his robes soaked from rain, eyes vacant, and waited for an answer.

  Kang Juwon had slowly risen from his desk. He walked around to stand directly in front of him.

  And said, “I’ll give you what you want. But I want something in return.”

  Lee Aseok had blinked, barely comprehending.

  “I want your soul.”

  “…What?”

  “Not metaphorically,” Juwon had clarified, voice low. “A real contract. Once you clear the Hell Gate… you belong to me.”

  Lee Aseok hadn’t hesitated.

  He signed.

  He didn’t even read the fine print. What would have been the point?

  He hadn’t expected to live through it anyway.

  All he’d cared about was making it through the Hell Gate, killing the core, stopping the apocalypse, and ending the suffering.

  The world had already turned its back on him. Even the people he had fought beside never looked back when he bled.

  If his soul was the price for finishing it, so be it.

  He had walked away with three vials clutched in his fist. Burned his throat. Burned his organs. Forced his mana to spike high enough to rupture his veins.

  And then he entered Hell.

  Lee Aseok never knew what became of Kang Juwon after that.

  He died alone in that place, his body turned into dusthis last, thoughts flickering between pain and bitterness.

  But now, he was alive again.

  And the devil still smiled.

  Snap.

  The sound of a pen cap clicking jolted Aseok out of his memory.

  He blinked. The room came back into view, the polished table, the uncomfortable tension, the self-important voices of the guild leaders still posturing like they were kings.

  Across the table, Kang Juwon looked directly at him.

  Their eyes met.

  Juwon’s smile widened ever so slightly. Not malicious. Not smug. Just…smiling.

  Lee Aseok calmly turned his head away, as if he had just spotted something disgusting crawling across the floor.

  No fury. No trembling. Just pure disdain.

  Seo MinHyun, who had been scribbling something absurd in his notes next to him (which Aseok was certain was not meeting-related), leaned closer and whispered, “Are you trying to kill that guy with your eyes? Because you kind of look like a cat watching a roach.”

  “I don’t like him,” Aseok replied flatly.

  Park Taegun, overhearing from the other side, muttered, “Is that the first full sentence you’ve said today?”

  “I don’t like you either.”

  MinHyun snorted. “That’s two.”

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