"Awoo, awoo… mmm… nom nom… chew chew…"
Burgers, fried chicken, fries, cola—junk food covered the living room.
Esil sat cross-legged in the middle of it all, a ketchup-smeared fry clutched in her left hand and a half-eaten drumstick in her right. Her cheeks were puffed out, stuffed to bursting, like she meant to make up for every single piece of junk she'd missed during the Jeju Island operation in one sitting. The sheer ferocity of her eating was almost impressive.
"Waking up and your first thought is to binge?" Scáthach leaned against the doorframe with both hands in her hoodie pockets, a helpless smile tugging at her eyes. "I don't recall raising you into this kind of child."
"Ugh—like you have the nerve to talk about 'raising' me!" Esil choked, thumping her chest. After she finally forced the mouthful down, she waved the drumstick angrily in protest. "My god! Was that even a life a person can live? It was hell! Do you understand? Hell! Looking back, it's all blurry—like someone swapped me out for a different me!"
"Isn't that a good thing?" Scáthach replied, unbothered. "Thanks to my training, you shone on Jeju Island. You've got quite a few fans now. And Akari—you saved her. She wouldn't stop talking about you before she left. She was genuinely sorry she didn't get to see you again."
"Fans? Fans aren't edible. Not a single one of them is worth even one fry." Esil snorted disdainfully. She bared her teeth at Scáthach with a feral expression and bit down hard on the fry in her hand—like the fry was Scáthach herself.
Rude.
But Scáthach looked at the girl's profile and remembered the blood-soaked figure fighting on Jeju Island. The tiny spark of irritation melted into a sigh. This child really had been through it. She deserved rest.
So Scáthach didn't argue. She only shook her head, amused and resigned.
Everything was relative. After a great war, Cú Chulainn and that crowd would eat meat, drink, throw obscene parties—then, once they were drunk enough, go slaughter a few people or a few monsters for fun. Compared to them, Esil merely loved junk food and hated going outside. She was far, far easier to deal with.
Esil was completely absorbed in the TV. The cartoon's main cast had just fallen into a crisis—the plot balanced on a hair's-breadth moment—and then the screen abruptly cut.
A news anchor's grave face filled the TV.
"Huh? Another breaking-news interruption?" Esil pouted. The fried chicken in her hand creaked under her grip. She hated it when something exciting got chopped off like this, and she reached automatically for the remote on the coffee table, her oily little fingers already about to hit the buttons.
"Don't touch the remote with hands that just ate fried chicken and burgers." Scáthach's voice came from behind her. Footsteps drew closer, and a pale hand snatched the remote away first, leaving Esil grabbing air.
Not only that—Scáthach casually hooked the cola off the edge of the table as well. Condensation beaded on the cup. She took a sip through the straw. The chilled brown liquid slid up; the carbonation was mostly gone, leaving only syrupy sweetness washing over her tongue.
Esil shot her a wronged look. Scáthach ignored it completely, eyes fixed on the television. The anchor was fumbling with his papers, and the panic he couldn't quite hide made Scáthach's attention sharpen.
This was happening in Japan—but it had the whole world watching.
On the screen, a Black Gate of unprecedented scale stood like a colossal abyssal maw tearing open the sky. It howled with a sound that made the heart seize, like something snarling from another world. Skyscrapers—once proud symbols of human civilization—looked like a child's blocks beside that towering darkness.
Nothing like it had ever appeared in recorded history. When that light-devouring silhouette was broadcast worldwide via satellite, a single shared dread took root in countless hearts—
Was the end of the world about to arrive?
"Akari and the others have it rough," Scáthach murmured, taking another sip of cola. "They get home and immediately run into this. It's like the Rulers are picking on them."
Her [Clairvoyance], born from [Wisdom of Dún Scáith A+], had already shown her this slice of the future. That Gate was something Akari, Goto Ryuji, and the others absolutely couldn't handle. If they charged in blind, they'd be killed in a single exchange.
So Scáthach would definitely be making a trip.
And for Sung Jinwoo, it would be a rare chance to level up.
Because… behind that Gate was a Monarch.
Not one like Baran, the Monarch of White Flames in the Demon Castle—worn down, stripped of so much power and reason that he was barely more than residue.
This was a Monarch sealed away by the Rulers.
Even Querehsha, the weakest Monarch, wasn't someone Sung Jinwoo could deal with right now. But a Monarch trapped under a seal, unable to wield its full power? That was perfect. As long as Sung Jinwoo didn't do something stupid like break the seal, he could gain a huge number of levels at once—maybe even jump to the point where he could truly fight a Monarch.
"I'm going to clear a Dungeon now. Esil, do you want to come—"
Scáthach hadn't even finished the sentence when she looked up and saw Esil shaking her head like a broken rattle drum. Her thick hair whipped around in chaotic arcs—so violent you almost worried she'd snap her own neck.
Seriously? That much resistance?
If you tried to empathize… it was like finally surviving the college entrance exam, booting up the dust-covered PC to play a game you hadn't touched in ages—and your parents suddenly told you to go get your driver's license instead.
…Actually, that didn't sound that unbearable, did it?
"…Fine. If you're not coming, you're not coming." Scáthach sighed. "Rest at home. Just don't cause trouble for other people."
"I'm not even going out. How am I supposed to cause trouble for anyone?" Esil demanded, genuinely baffled.
"Not going out doesn't mean you can't cause trouble." Scáthach lifted one finger and gently wagged it. "I envy that excessively naive head of yours—always making everything sound so simple. What if you accidentally blow this place up? Or set it on fire? Wouldn't that be 'causing trouble'? And a lot of it."
"This place doesn't even have a kitchen!" Esil shot back, incredulous. "How careless would I have to be to blow it up? Am I supposed to chop power lines with a cleaver? Or set the sofa on fire with a lighter?" As she talked, she started laughing at her own examples. "That'd be so stupid."
...
After a few more warnings, Scáthach left the hotel. Chairman Go Gunhee had already sent her the location of a newly confirmed Gate.
South Korea didn't have anything on Japan's scale yet, but spatial anomalies were surging at an alarming rate. Across the country, reported Gates were climbing exponentially, popping up like bamboo shoots after rain.
It was opportunity—and it was crisis. If South Korea's Hunters failed to clear those Gates in time, the seven-day limit would hit and the Dungeon's monsters would pour through, invading Earth… just like the Gate that had appeared at Sung Jinah's school.
That was why Chairman Go Gunhee had asked Scáthach for help, hoping she could clear some of the Gates. He had absolute confidence in her ability.
Scáthach didn't bother taking a car.
This Gate's placement was almost perversely perfect—dead center on a bridge spanning the river. Its sudden appearance had paralyzed the entire bridge. Hundreds of vehicles were trapped on the roadway, neither able to advance nor retreat. Drivers laid on their horns in rising frustration, the noise tangling with the river wind into a chaotic symphony.
The towering Gate was already close. A blue vortex breathed dim light through the mist—
But Scáthach stopped instead of moving forward at once.
"Hm… should I change my style a little?" She rubbed her chin, studying the churning Gate.
She still remembered all those complaints from Hunters—about her "wastefulness." She would clear a Dungeon, take only a tiny fraction of the resources, and leave piles of monster corpses, mana crystals, and mana stones behind to be lost when the Gate closed.
Scáthach hadn't cared. Those resources were useless to her. But to other guilds and the Hunters Association, it was painful enough to make them choke.
She did listen when people made reasonable points. It wasn't an outrageous request.
More importantly, she understood the true value of mana-laden resources like monster corpses, mana crystals, and mana stones. The Rulers allowed Hunters to collect them not just for profit—this mana would gradually improve Earth's environment. Without the nourishment of otherworldly mana, this fragile planet wouldn't withstand the shockwaves of another war between Monarchs and the Rulers.
To haul monster corpses and other resources out of a Dungeon required manpower.
And Scáthach happened to know someone who would never lack manpower.
Her heel tapped the ground, sending ripples through the shadows. A black figure rose slowly from her shadow like ink bleeding through paper—only an upper torso, a shadow soldier with eerie blue eyes burning like small flames.
"I'm going to borrow some soldiers from little Jinwoo. I need them to carry things." Scáthach looked down at the shadow soldier—only its head visible by her feet—and smiled, teasing. "I've joined his guild. That means when I clear a Dungeon, I'm contributing to the guild. As Guild Master, it's only natural he'd send support, don't you think?"
As Sung Jinwoo's level rose, the number of shadow soldiers he could command kept increasing. And as the Shadow Monarch, he could share senses with them—and swap places with them.
For people he cared about—Sung Jinah, Cha Hae-In, Yoo Jinho, Esil, Chairman Go Gunhee—Sung Jinwoo had already sent shadow soldiers to slip into their shadows. It was a safeguard against crises, so he could reach them instantly, anywhere.
That was why, in the Jeju Island operation, he'd been able to arrive in time to save Esil and Goto Ryuji—he'd planted shadow soldiers in their shadows before the operation even began.
And if Scáthach hadn't intervened during the half-orc attack at Sung Jinah's school, the shadow soldiers inside her shadow would have emerged to protect the Shadow Monarch's sister. Because he valued her so highly, Sung Jinwoo had assigned three giant orcs as close protection—though even three giant orcs wouldn't necessarily have been enough to protect an ordinary, helpless girl from a half-orc horde and their leader.
As the shadow soldier reached out to contact Sung Jinwoo, Scáthach found herself thinking again of the guild he'd founded.
She'd never had interest in mundane affairs. Coming to the human world was supposed to be about experiencing life; bureaucratic structures meant nothing to her.
But Sung Jinwoo's naming sense as Guild Master…
It was jaw-dropping, and not in a good way.
She still remembered that afternoon vividly: Sung Jinwoo, wearing a solemn expression, announced the guild name to the room. The meeting went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
"Let's call it the Singles Guild… what do you think?"
It wasn't a joke. Not a placeholder. It was a grave, carefully considered decision.
Scáthach, in the middle of sipping milk tea, was caught completely off guard. She choked—spraying half a mouthful of boba into a mist.
Even as she braced herself on the conference table and coughed her lungs out, she could see the pure innocence in Sung Jinwoo's eyes, as if to say, Isn't it a perfect fit?
His reasoning: everyone in the guild was currently single, so "Singles Guild" made sense…
Never mind that Scáthach—the Scáthach—had been married. That was ancient history, and her husband had about as much presence as thin air. A complete nonentity. Basically ignorable.
It was only then that Scáthach truly realized her disciple's naming sense was… dire. You could already see it in what he named his shadow soldiers. Aside from cases like Igris—where he kept the original name—there was Tank, there was Tusk, and a sea demon he'd recently claimed, which he'd named Sesame.
With a body the size of a hill, Scáthach genuinely couldn't understand why Sung Jinwoo would name it Sesame. Unless he happened to be hungry at the time?
The lucky one was Beru. When Sung Jinwoo was thinking of a name, he remembered a book called Ants and borrowed part of the author's name.
Scáthach suddenly felt a wave of concern for Sung Jinwoo's future children. She couldn't help wondering what kind of absurd name he'd come up with, dead serious, for his own kid…
In her mind's eye she could already see it: Sung Pudding. Sung Little Cake. Sung Cola Zero. Sung Ultraman—
No. She couldn't let that happen.
In the end, the guild was named the Ahjin Guild—a pun on his sister Sung Jinah's name. As long as it wasn't "Singles Guild," anything would do. That one didn't even sound like a real guild—more like something Lü Ziqiao would slap together on a whim: Ultimate Singles Party, Ultimate Pool Party, same vibe.
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T/N: NO YOUR NOT SINGLEEEE IM UR PARTNER :sob: