The right to disconnect.
The right not to receive work-related contact outside of working hours.
But Oh Won-taek was currently in the middle of working hours.
Unable to invoke the right to disconnect — he was instead entertaining, with considerable desperation, the extreme and idiotic fantasy of his phone simply breaking on its own.
“Team lead! You have a call!”
“I know……”
He had ears too.
Oh Won-taek, wearing the expression of livestock being walked to slaughter, pressed the answer button.
“Yes. This is Oh Won-taek, head of Talent Management at the Korean Awakened Association.”
His eyes remained fixed on the computer screen as he delivered the formality.
The world announcement that had just gone out — from Seo I-an.
An impossible feat achieved.
Given that she had a personality that loved to show off, combined with her standing as the Community’s resident ghost — it was a foregone conclusion that she’d cover the Community in posts the moment she emerged from the Tower.
Which was why Oh Won-taek had been hammering the refresh button, watching for new posts.
But.
“Yes. Looking into it now.”
The Association director kept pressing him through the receiver. His concentration shattered instantly.
So he chose to deploy a skill.
Not an Awakened — but precisely because he wasn’t, there were skills available to him in the real world.
“Oh! Director! That’s a call-waiting tone! Must be someone calling about the Awakened Seo I-an situation!”
The skill of neatly and swiftly ending a phone call, honed through years of experience.
Instead of mana or aura, Oh Won-taek activated it with the critical resource of an urgent-sounding voice.
[Then go take it quickly!]
— Click.
Highly effective.
“As expected of our team lead! Impressive!”
Yun Jin-gi, who had watched the whole performance from nearby, gave a thumbs up.
“Don’t try it on me! I know how it works because I’m the one who uses it!”
Oh Won-taek issued the preemptive warning against potential future misuse.
Then went to set his phone down——
— Ping!
The phone buzzed right on cue.
[Sender] : Kim Woo-joo
— First team member secured: Seo I-an.
“Oh……?”
The message’s contents were beyond anything Oh Won-taek could have imagined, even by accident in a dream.
“Yun Jin-gi!”
“Sir!”
“Come here and read this out loud!”
At Oh Won-taek’s urgent summons, Yun Jin-gi came over.
“Team lead! Could this be a name error……?”
“Right?”
“Though it does seem like someone was recruited as a team member.”
“Should we call?”
A quiet exchange of glances.
“I think we should, sir!”
Yun Jin-gi agreed emphatically.
Oh Won-taek pressed the call button without delay.
But.
“……Why isn’t he picking up?”
Floor 19.
Nest of the Hideous Ant.
Floor 12 was lower and easier, but he’d specifically chosen Floor 19.
Because the name next to this Tower was very, very familiar.
Hwang Gyu-beom.
The warm, dependable-looking man who lived with his daughter.
He’d been running Floor 18 before — apparently he’d grown in the meantime, because this time he was on Floor 19.
But.
“HWANG GYU-BEOM-NIM!!”
He called out urgently.
That basement studio he’d lived in until recently — until last week, actually.
Uninvited guests had included silverfish, earthworms, the occasional centipede, and frequent appearances from the cockroach dignitary.
Which had made him more resistant than most to ordinary bugs.
“PLEASE DEAL WITH THOSE THINGS!!”
But these ants were something his heart could not withstand.
Nest of the Hideous Ant.
They weren’t just hideous — they were wrong.
Proportions not just distorted but completely shattered. Even if you specifically tried to design something disgusting, could you actually produce something this horrifying? And they were individually the size of a two-story house.
Practically squeezing his eyes shut, he pointed at them frantically and shouted — and Hwang Gyu-beom responded with a cheerful well, isn’t it the wandering merchant, long time no see! and carved him a path through.
“Wow, no — okay.”
Still processing the sight, unable to form words — Hwang Gyu-beom started laughing his characteristic booming laugh.
“So even wandering merchants have things they’re afraid of!”
“First time in a Nest of the Hideous Ant.”
He’d recovered some composure from seeing Hwang Gyu-beom’s good humor, and opened with the most dignified non-acknowledgment of his recent meltdown he could manage.
“Either way — any chance of getting some food today!”
“Burger combo, sandwich combo, or rice soup combo.”
Earlier.
He’d checked the elapsed time next to Hwang Gyu-beom’s name — it wasn’t long, so he’d gone out and bought food before coming in.
Hwang Gyu-beom used a greatsword, making his attack speed slow, which meant his Tower clear speed was also slow.
Which meant he was probably pushing through the Tower hungry again, just like last time.
“Oh! Rice soup!”
The man laughed as broadly as he had when showing off the family photo.
Extremely happy. That much was readable without Eagle Eye.
“By the way — first-time clear or repeat?”
He asked because if it was a first-time clear, he wasn’t planning to help fight the boss.
The ranking record was the reason.
In a normal Tower, if a party helped kill the boss during a first-time clear, no ranking record was registered at all.
Which would make it apparent that there was an unseen party member sharing in the contribution.
What had he been working so hard to maintain his NPC merchant act for?
All of it — the pretense of not being a party member while quietly siphoning contribution.
With Seo I-an earlier — it had worked out, probably because the Hidden Dungeon was a special case, and her name went up in the ranking. But that situation was unusual.
The moment a significant number of Awakened realized the wandering merchant rabbit was being applied as a party member —
and understood that a portion of their contribution was being funneled out to someone else —
the rabbit would stop feeling like a welcome helper.
It would start feeling like a freeloader who showed up uninvited to take a cut.
Before entering, he’d checked the domestic Floor 19 clear ranking.
Scrolling all the way down, he couldn’t find Hwang Gyu-beom’s name — but that wasn’t enough to conclude he was on a first-time clear.
If clear times got too slow, even first-time clears dropped off the ranking entirely, meaning the status screen wouldn’t confirm it.
So he’d asked directly.
“Repeat run! And if my level goes up a bit more, I’m thinking of trying Floor 20!”
He said it while spooning up the rice soup enthusiastically.
Confirmed: repeat run.
Good. He’d be able to get out faster.
“By the way, wandering merchant! Do you know Awakened Kim Woo-joo?”
Suddenly that name again.
“I would — wandering merchants don’t handle just one Awakened, unlike Tower Merchants.”
Source: Ragcho.
“Which guild is that person joining, do you know?”
“Guild?”
The person being discussed had no idea this topic was circulating.
A vaguely annoyed suspicion rose in him and he asked back with a slight frown.
Though the frown was behind the rabbit mask — hastily purchased as a replacement — Hwang Gyu-beom had no way of seeing it.
Which was probably why he continued cheerfully.
“Oh — the wandering merchant lives inside Towers, so you might not know! It’s nothing dramatic — Seo I-an and Hong Je-hun and the Association have all apparently been burning the candle at both ends trying to recruit that young person into their respective guilds!”
He already knew about Seo I-an.
He’d heard it from her directly, just moments ago.
But Hong Je-hun too?
He’d just secured Seo I-an for the team — which meant Hong Je-hun had moved up to the number-one spot on his recruitment list. And now Hong Je-hun was also trying to pull him into something?
And the Association — not a guild but a TF team, unless the mainstream faction was trying to establish a directly-affiliated guild of its own.
That would be easier to manage than an independently formed guild from outside.
Which meant Oh Won-taek’s minority faction was pushing the TF team model as the counterproposal.
Affiliated versus cooperative — those were fundamentally different in terms of autonomy.
“……Sounds like the person in question doesn’t know about any of this.”
He gave Hwang Gyu-beom a vague non-answer.
“How would they not know? By the way — did you make this yourself?”
Hwang Gyu-beom had scraped the rice soup bowl clean and was patting his stomach contentedly as he asked.
“Stock comes in fresh every morning.”
From where exactly he himself wasn’t sure — but apparently that was the explanation.
“I thought as much! The taste is extraordinary! A wonderful flavor one simply cannot find outside the Tower!”
Was this some kind of placebo effect?
The way a fake pill could still work — in the same way, fictional Tower food tasted better?
Either way, his conscience pricked at him a little.
Getting into rice soup territory meant questions he didn’t know the answers to might start coming out — so he naturally changed the subject.
“Would you like some help with the mobs?”
“I’d be grateful! But — aren’t you scared?”
He’d clearly remembered the earlier spectacle of the wandering merchant trembling in front of the ants, and asked with a look of genuine concern.
Scared, yes. Honestly, those ants’ faces were something he was not going to adapt to.
But like a horror movie that got less frightening with each repeated viewing — as long as they didn’t come running at him——
He wasn’t the type who fought in close range anyway.
“If you tank up front, I can help clear some from behind.”
“Then I’ll take you up on it! The fee?”
He’d asked for roughly double the rice soup price earlier.
When Hwang Gyu-beom had asked if there was anything else — he’d sold the boss damage elixirs he always kept a few extra of, at the usual rate. Nothing else to sell.
After confirming it was a repeat run, he’d mentally committed to going for the supplementary damage contribution effect — which meant gathering and synthesizing had gone out the window entirely.
As previously noted: today’s energy had been fully spent in Seo I-an’s Hidden Dungeon.
He wanted to go home and properly rest.
“No charge for this. Still in testing.”
He’d decided not to ask for payment when actively helping.
Think of it as the beta phase before launching a Mercenary Bunny service, as opposed to the existing Wandering Merchant Bunny service.
Well — that was the official framing. More honestly: the fact that he was sneaking a contribution share through the supplementary damage effect had been sitting uncomfortably on his conscience, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to charge on top of that.
Even if cutting down the clear time meant Hwang Gyu-beom got a bigger total reward — when you looked at it from a certain angle, this was righteous theft without the target’s consent.
If Ragcho had been a hedgehog with a red bow rather than a cat, he might have concluded that his trait was specifically designed for theft.
“Well, I won’t argue with that! I’ll buy you a drink sometime to make it up to you!”
After that — things moved quickly.
Except not quite.
“Can’t see a thing over here!”
“Oh — I’ll keep the fog to the back! You handle the front, Hwang Gyu-beom-nim!”
The Misty Light Bowgun (3-Star).
The weapon’s built-in effect: a thick mist spreads across a set radius, continuously dealing damage-over-time.
The radius wasn’t enormous — but apparently it was more than enough to obscure the field of vision of a melee fighter like Hwang Gyu-beom.
Hwang Gyu-beom could be seen fanning his greatsword back and forth trying to disperse the fog.
And Woo-joo learned today, firsthand, that fog was not so easily dispersed by wind.
“I can see now!”
“Great!”
After that, things really did move quickly.
Fast approach to the boss.
Hwang Gyu-beom pulled the boss’s attention.
Woo-joo moved around to the rear and sent arrows flying.
A small consideration for the man — with the fog making visibility difficult, at least keeping it to the rear meant Hwang Gyu-beom’s front line had something to see.
And at last — Hwang Gyu-beom smiled a wide, bright white smile, like someone declaring that’s the answer, alchemist!
Immediately after——
— Ding!
The familiar chime of a floor successfully cleared rang out.
“Wandering merchant! A new personal record, thanks to you! I keep feeling like I owe you one!”
He gave Woo-joo a hearty thumbs up, grinning with his teeth showing.
“Not at all!”
Woo-joo made a thumbs up back.