novelraw Chapter 219 : Amsa Station (1)
Chapter 219 : Amsa Station (1)
Chapter 219: Amsa Station (1)
For now, the enjoyable and rewarding trip to the United States had come to an end.
He had achieved more than enough by securing the opportunity to challenge the Endless Dungeon.
Of course, that wasn't the only thing he had gained.
He had earned great trust from the Nobility Guild, and especially caught the attention of Frederick.
Before boarding the return flight, he had another separate call with Frederick and Sophia.
Some of it might have just been business talk, but Frederick had clearly said he wanted to see him again.
It was open to interpretation, but since he himself had once said he didn’t make empty promises—
Sanghyun wanted to put some weight on those words. In any case, the United States had now become a stage of activity for him.
Through Han Hyunjeong, he had connected with the Nobility Guild, and the foundation for working as a mercenary there was laid.
At the airport.
Sanghyun smiled as he felt the bustling atmosphere and warmth unique to airports, which felt different from his previous life.
In his past life, he was a player who had almost no reason to go to the airport at this age.
Barely able to make ends meet domestically, there had been no reason to travel abroad.
His only experience was taking a domestic flight to Jeju Island.
Even that was a dirt-cheap budget airline, where “economy” was basically a seat you squeezed into like a folded paper.
To his eyes back then, the airport was a place where people from another world indulged in luxury.
Business? First class? He had grumbled about such wasteful spending while secretly envying their lives.
As a player, he had been a miserable existence who could never afford such luxuries...
No one paid attention to him either. But this life was different.
His international flight back to Incheon Airport was in first class.
It had been arranged directly by Han Hyunjeong.
She upgraded the seat, saying that economy or business class would lower the dignity of her sponsor, Sanghyun.
Not only that, she had booked all the first-class seats to prevent him from being tangled with other players.
She had turned it into a private space just for Sanghyun. Such a touching gesture! That was what this life had given him.
Above the clouds, in the endlessly high sky.
It was a beautiful night with a high-hanging full moon. Wine sipped in the company of the shining moon was exquisite.
Sanghyun was reorganizing his thoughts about the Amsa Station Rift.
He had no doubt about his memory, and the fact that the Amsa Station Rift would occur was unchanging.
Currently, the Amsa Station area was under the jurisdiction of the Eden Guild.
And in the Eden Guild, he had useful connections like Shin Taeri, Jo Jinho, and Kim Miso. They were somewhat close too?
‘I can’t remember the exact location. In the end, I’ll have to use the Eden Guild’s equipment to search…’
The problem was, would it make sense to go straight to Jo Jinho or Kim Miso and say, “A rift is going to open!”?
He couldn’t claim it was future knowledge, and since it hadn’t appeared yet, he couldn’t point to a specific location.
To utilize the equipment, he needed their help, but the real issue was how much they would believe him.
Sanghyun had two major reasons for wanting the rift.
The first was his desire to prevent possible casualties.
Not because he dreamed of being a superhero, but because he didn’t want to turn a blind eye and become a bystander knowing disaster was coming.
Even though he didn’t particularly like the Player Union, he didn’t wish for their influence to weaken either.
The Union got criticized a lot, but it still functioned as a public institution balancing players and guilds.
If their influence weakened significantly, domestic order would become unstable. He had experienced it in his past life.
So he didn’t want to stand by like a fool while talented Union personnel were pushed toward death.
The second reason was the reward.
To be honest, this made up 99% of the reason he coveted the rift.
A rift contained an untouched internal world.
Like freshly baked bread, it was filled with delicious, abundant rewards.
He wanted to sweep them all up. Given the scale of the rift at the time, the rewards wouldn't be lacking.
‘Maybe just charging straight ahead would be better.’
No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a plausible reason to say a not-yet-formed rift was going to appear.
He figured it might be better to half-lie and say he had a prophetic dream, or just had a strange feeling about the place.
Surprisingly, there was a chance Jo Jinho and Shin Taeri might listen with an open mind.
Sanghyun had never talked nonsense to them, never lied or bluffed.
In terms of trust alone, it was 100%. He had always been sincere, and never stabbed them in the back.
‘Alright, let’s go with that.’
Plan established.
As soon as he returned, he would visit the Eden Guild and mention a prophetic dream to those two.
He’d say he had a nightmare that something might happen at Amsa Station, so let’s just run a scan to be safe.
He’d... just say it like that.
A sleepless night.
Though quite some time had passed, and even though his eyes were closed, Sanghyun couldn't fall asleep, so he removed the eye mask he had been wearing.
He couldn’t sleep easily as memories of his experiences in America kept surfacing.
While there were plenty of interesting things in Korea too, the events in the U.S. had been truly refreshing shocks.
He could now understand why players kept trying to associate with higher-ups.
Why they preferred more successful, more powerful guilds.
Because it dramatically raised the level of the world he could see and experience firsthand.
If Sanghyun had been thriving only in Korea and hadn’t come to America?
He never would have met Frederick, nor secured the opportunity to enter the Endless Dungeon.
Furthermore, he wouldn’t have caught Frederick’s interest or received such high praise from Sophia.
It was because he boldly challenged mercenary work in the U.S. that all these good things happened. A butterfly effect of choice.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
Sanghyun wrote names on the notepad he had placed beside him.
Kim Miso. Shin Taeri. Ham Jiyeon. Do Kyunghye. Lee Gah Hee.
First, the women he was either already close to or expected to get closer with came to mind.
Because he was a man after all, it was inevitable that pretty women would come up as a priority.
Next came Jo Jinho. Lee Sehwa. Do Kyungsoo. Shin Yoonhyuk. Jung Junhyuk.
These were his male connections. All of them were players who held some kind of meaning for Sanghyun.
The one he considered most important was Do Kyungsoo. He was a player who was also Sanghyun’s role model.
But going forward, Sanghyun also wanted to increase his interactions with powerful mages like Lee Sehwa and Jung Junhyuk.
A narrow network only limited the stage he could perform on. He didn’t want to be trapped by narrow thinking.
And then. Dokgo Yoon. So Hyeongjun. Jeong Heeseon. Kang Boah.
He thought of the prominent names in Korea who wielded swords—names a player couldn’t avoid.
Do Kyungsoo was in a position of an ally, but the rest had unclear intentions.
Judging by memories of his past life, conflicts were more likely to arise with Dokgo Yoon or So Hyeongjun.
As for Jeong Heeseon and Kang Boah, he reserved judgment. He thought it would depend on how he handled things.
‘Busy, so busy.’
The final conclusion was: busy.
Now he understood why named players and guild executives always said they didn’t have enough time.
Because there were so many connections to manage. People to meet either for business or as a player.
And they couldn’t just meet for a word or two and part ways, so it all took a solid investment of time.
In his past life, he had thought that kind of behavior was just showing off or being dramatic—but he had been wrong. It was genuinely busy.
As soon as he got off the plane.
Sanghyun first called Do Kyunghye, Ham Jiyeon, and Shin Yoonhyuk to check in on them.
He didn’t plan to meet right away, but they were people he needed to keep in touch with and check on.
After that, he headed straight for the Eden Guild. Since they say strike while the iron is hot, there was no reason to delay.
Fortunately, both Jo Jinho and Shin Taeri weren’t out raiding dungeons, so a meeting was quickly arranged.
On the way into the guild building.
He ran into the Song brothers—Song Gyujung and Song Taejung—by chance, but the two deliberately lowered their heads and walked past.
Especially Song Taejung, but even Song Gyujung likely had painful memories of being crushed by Sanghyun in training.
He thought that enough time had passed for them to at least exchange greetings, but apparently the shame engraved in their memories was too great.
After the death match with Ma Dongho.
The number of players who recognized Sanghyun had increased significantly.
That’s probably why even in the lobby, there were many Eden Guild players who recognized him and greeted him warmly.
After exchanging greetings without much thought, he almost felt like he was already a member of the Eden Guild.
Just then.
“It feels like it’s been a while, us.”
Shin Taeri suddenly appeared.
There was no need to hide her presence even inside the guild building, but she had appeared from an empty space as if out of nowhere.
He felt it.
In fact… there was no need for it, but Sanghyun could sense that Shin Taeri was a bit tense as she looked at him.
He had a feeling those words were about to come out. No, they would come out. Because they had made a promise.
Sure enough, she spread out all ten fingers and said,
“How about ten bouts today?”
“Isn’t Mr. Jo Jinho also coming?”
“I gave him some extra work so he’d arrive a bit later. I told him we had something to settle between us.”
“Oh dear…”
It seemed she had already removed a potential “interference” from the scene. Thanks to that, he had no other excuses left.
Shin Taeri spoke with conviction.
“I’m serious about this match.”
“I’m serious too. I just worried about keeping Mr. Jo Jinho waiting, but I see that won’t be an issue.”
“Yes. It’s all been arranged.”
There was a sense of relief in Shin Taeri’s words as she said it had been arranged.
He figured it was probably for the best.
As an assassin, Shin Taeri was someone who always kept Sanghyun on edge during their duels.
Thanks to her, he had been able to revise, refine, and polish many of his defensive movements.
And the vague fear he used to have toward assassin-type players had also vanished. He had learned how to respond.
Without even having time to shake off the fatigue from travel, he followed her to the training ground where the ten-round duel began right away.
As expected.
It ended in a draw again.
Shin Taeri had thought that her upgraded skills and sense would allow her to find a gap in Sanghyun’s defenses.
But she was mistaken.
Sanghyun had grown even more in the meantime. The gaps he had shown in the past were no longer visible.
It was clear he had realized something on his own and had gone through the process of patching and refining it.
Even though she had taken an even more aggressive stance than before—abandoning defense entirely—
Sanghyun did not get pierced!
He blocked what needed to be blocked without fail, and didn’t hesitate to strike back the moment he saw an opening.
Just as she had grown stronger with pride, Sanghyun had grown right alongside her.
And cruelly enough.
Sanghyun had gone half a step further. It even felt like the gap between their skills had widened.
Shin Taeri’s head was a mess.
If this were a scene from a martial arts drama, it would’ve been the perfect moment for her to fall into qi deviation.