‘Insufficient Filial Piety Points = Filial Piety Factory Shutdown’
=Jjapsso Activity Suspended
‘Big trouble!’
Geuru’s mouth fell open as she recalled the consequences of running out of Filial Piety Points.
Her nose stung at the thought of the Hyeonak Guild members sniffling because they couldn’t get their syrup.
‘Everyone must be waiting for Geuru.’
As a Supreme Hunter, she couldn’t just leave them be.
Let’s do this!
‘Filial Piety Point drive!’
There were two main ways to acquire Filial Piety Points.
First was the Filial Piety Piggy Bank!
It was a system where points accumulated bit by bit in the piggy bank whenever many people praised Geuru.
If lots of people knew about her like an Anonymous Santa, the points would pile up greatly—but—
‘I can’t do that now.’
That was something done out of necessity during the Potion Crisis that had engulfed the entire nation in chaos, and even now reporters were hiding in front of Hyeonak, camera shutters clicking.
‘If I do it again…….’
In her mind, her father wolf, furious beyond measure, loomed like billowing storm clouds.
Geuru shook her head vigorously.
If she couldn’t use the Filial Piety Piggy Bank, there was the second method.
‘Quests!’
It was the method she had used to acquire points before the Filial Piety Piggy Bank existed.
Usually, it involved reacting to her Guardian’s danger or responding to Geuru’s steadfast resolve.
‘So this is all I have now, huh.’
Geuru opened the quest window and checked one quest she hadn’t completed yet.
[Guardian Quest: New Guardian Welcome Ceremony!]
[Let’s welcome the new Guardian! Let’s make a friend they can rely on in an unfamiliar environment!]
[Reward: 5,000 Filial Piety Points]
She had even forgotten the new hire welcome ceremony because of Team Leader Seol Yeojin’s sudden ambush from the management team.
‘Great.’
Geuru clenched her fist tight.
‘Let’s launch the Friend-Friend Project!’
If they all went out and had tons of fun and ate lots of tasty food, they’d naturally get close!
It was right when she resolved herself to that.
“I have something to do, so I’m leaving first.”
Today too, they had been huddled together studying at the management team office.
Seureuhi suddenly put down his mechanical pencil and stood up.
“Ng, today too?”
Geuru pouted her lips.
Today of all days, the three minors had been planning to go out and have fun here and there.
Seureuhi smiled softly and caressed Geuru’s cheek.
“Let’s play next time.”
“Heeing—”
“Where are you going. That part-time job again?”
While Geuru rested her chin on Seureuhi’s palm and pouted, Gidan drew out the end of her sentence as if she couldn’t believe it.
Seureuhi had started that suspicious part-time job three days ago.
Without telling anyone what kind of part-time job it was, where or how he did it, he had simply said he had work and breezed out.
Geuru took it in stride, but Gidan couldn’t help but be greatly surprised.
“What, what kind of part-time job are you doing? Don’t you know moonlighting is banned?”
Though she had spoken euphemistically about a moonlighting ban, she was really pointing out Seureuhi’s still precarious situation.
That going off on his own was forbidden.
They had put several prohibitions in place via items, but they couldn’t leave everything up to items when dealing with an S-rank.
“The Guild Master knows too.”
But Seureuhi only replied as such.
Huh? In the end, Gidan raised the end of her sentence with an even more bizarre expression.
Regardless, Seureuhi turned and headed for the door.
“Yeah, I have to go to my part-time job. I’ll go first.”
While Gidan furrowed her brow deeply, Geuru waved her hand with a face dripping with disappointment.
“Bye-bying.”
Seureuhi waved his hand and closed the office door.
‘Seureuhi oppa is still busy, huh.’
“A-arubaituuu……?”
Geuru knew what a part-time job was. There were lots of part-time job postings on Yangpa Market, after all.
‘Part-time job = Work = Hourly wage = Money’
Hm?
“But Seureuhi oppa, are you out of money?”
Even though you’re part of Hyeonak?
‘.......’
If that’s the case…….
Geuru said in a trembling voice.
“Is Dad…… not giving you an allowance?”
Did he give you that black bus card again?
At this rate, Seureuhi, a disillusioned foreign worker, might show up in front of the company leading a troop of mannequins wearing vests and headbands.
As Geuru’s face grew serious, Gidan waved her index finger side to side.
“Stupid Geuru, that’s not it.”
“Um?”
“The way I see it…….”
Gidan, who had been tilting her chair back and swaying, crossed her arms and spoke seriously.
“Seureuhi is getting scammed.”
“Huhk!”
Geuru, who had trauma regarding fraud, inhaled sharply and trembled her shoulders. Did this mean Seureuhi was facing such a terrible thing?
In the meantime, Gidan reeled off a series of scary stories.
About how Seureuhi knew absolutely nothing.
How when someone told him you had to take off your shoes to ride the bus in Korea, he had really tried to do so.
How when told that guild members had to prostrate themselves before the Guild Master, his face had turned pale.
“I don’t know if it’s because the kid’s naive, but if you tell him to do something, he does everything?”
Geuru went “Huh,” her mouth falling open.
Because he knew nothing, Seureuhi meekly did whatever he was told, and it looked like Gidan was having a field day scamming him using that.
Listening to Gidan’s story, Geuru suddenly thought, ‘So this is why no one can trust you,’ and held her tongue.
“By now, she might be working as a voice phishing contact or something…….”
When Gidan even said, “For a worn-out scammer, deceiving one naive foreign minor would be easier than stealing candy from a kindergartener,” Geuru’s face turned deathly pale.
‘Then Seureuhi oppa too……!’
The image of Seureuhi wailing after losing 20 million won to a scammer floated fuzzily before her eyes, and Geuru grabbed Gidan’s sleeve tightly.
“Geuru, why?”
“W-we have to catch them!”
Geuru stomped her feet anxiously.
Because she couldn’t let Seureuhi get scammed!
At that, Gidan smirked.
“Shall we?”
*
“Jjapssooo?”
Just a few days ago, Seureuhi had scoffed.
After helping Geuru and getting an earful from Joorim for no reason.
He had just learned from Gidan that Geuru was active as a Hunter with the nickname “Jjapsso” while wearing a mascot costume.
‘So this is what she meant by the kid wearing weird stuff…….’
In Korea, there were people called “concept freaks” who acted out bizarre antics, and Gidan had said there was even a trend where concept freaks wearing mascot costumes like Jjapsso had increased lately.
As absurd rumors spread online that Jjapsso had been scouted by Hyeonak while acting like a concept freak, all sorts of losers’ bizarre deeds were said to be incessant.
If they were concept freaks, they were the nutjobs often seen in games too, so there was nothing new about it—but that was inside a game.
Dungeons were unmistakably reality.
Seureuhi shook his head. He thought that because the era of peace continued, everyone had gone mad with attention-seeking disorder.
At least, until he himself ended up wearing a mascot costume.
Several parties gathered at the Guerrilla Dungeon were glancing at him.
A-rank and above dungeons were difficult to clear with a small number of parties. Because it was an unspoken rule for several parties to move in an alliance, many people had gathered.
“.......”
Seureuhi was truly experiencing what it meant to be so embarrassed he wanted to die.
‘Such bullshit…….’
Seureuhi deliberately ignored the gazes stabbing toward him, cursing only inwardly.
He could well understand why people were looking at him like that.
Because he had entered the dungeon while wearing a cat mascot costume with deranged, vertically crooked eyes.
‘Crazy Koreans. No, crazy Korean civil servants…….’
The reason Seureuhi had ended up in this situation was due to the recent “A-rank Boss Poaching Incident.”
*
One day, the boss of an A-rank dungeon disappeared.
Not slain by Hunters, but “captured” by someone.
After the Great Upheaval, as great changes occurred in industry as well, each country began pouring countless resources into dungeon management.
Maintaining dungeons with essential raw materials like Eungwangcho became one of the government’s major businesses.
Usually, when a dungeon occurred, dungeons worth maintaining continuously were left with their cores intact.
Because when the boss fell, the dungeon’s core would regenerate the boss based on the surrounding mana and stored data.
The core would repeat this cycle until the mana inside the dungeon was exhausted.
The Hunter Bureau carried out various management tasks, such as periodically supplying mana for this purpose.
However, the dungeon boss had vanished without a trace, so the core could not detect the boss’s death, and no matter how much mana was injected, the dungeon simply became a depleted mine.
There were already two confirmed cases so far.
Judging it to be no trivial matter, the Hunter Bureau hurriedly launched an investigation.
The civil servants’ conclusions converged on one point.
‘Someone is capturing the bosses.’
And they were targeting them during Guerrilla states, when no significant entry or exit records remained.