Jeffrey looked at the people in front of him. There were a total of four people, men and women, and they all stared at him.

He smiled brightly at them and said, “Nice to meet you. I am Jeffrey and I’ll be responsible for teaching you.”

“What are you going to teach us?”

Jeffrey looked at a depraved-looking high school student, slowly closed his eyes and opened them again. He had been through numerous battles before.

The high school student got scared of Jeffrey’s look, and Jeffrey turned to the others and said, “I will be teaching you how to survive the Dimensional Battlefield. It’s the least I can do.”

After he said that, he gave them two-handed swords.

“Wielding a weapon should be basic, and your powers will help out your allies. Shall we check your powers?”

They wondered if they should follow Jeffrey’s order, so they just stared at him, but Jeffrey looked at them and laughed.

“Sorry to tell you, but if I don’t pa.s.s you, your contract will be nullified.”

“What do you mean by the contract being nullified?”

“That’s the authority I have.”

—

Wednesday.

Junhyuk had just killed monsters and come out of training. After walking out of the shower, he noticed his cell phone ringing.

He checked the number first and picked it up.

“What’s the matter?”

“I have something to tell you. Can we talk?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in front of your former house, but is the construction not finished?”

“I moved to next door.”

“Oh! I’ll there soon.”

THe doorbell rang, and Junhyuk opened the door. Jeffrey was holding a six-pack and chuckled.

“Really, I can’t understand the reason for your empty houses.”

“I live alone, so I don’t need a lot.”

“True, but this is too much.”

Junhyuk laughed and brought some fruit out of the refrigerator. Jeffrey opened a can of beer and gave it to him.

“You are something else. You bought this house like it was nothing.”

“I had no other choice.”

Jeffrey sipped on his beer and said, “You know they are collecting novices, right?”

“Any good results?”

“Doyeol has five of them including Tsubasa. She has already been to the Dimensional Battlefield and returned, so I don’t have to watch her, but the others haven’t gone yet, so I’m training them.”

“Training?”

“On how to survive the Dimensional Battlefield.”

When novices survived they could be a lot of help. Doyeol knew that, so he was having them trained.

“What’s Doyeol going to do with these novices?”

“He wants to weed out the good from the bad. Tsubasa is protecting Eunseo at Guardians. Doyeol wants to do something with those who survive.”

“Is that right?”

“And if he can make a security team made up of novices, it’ll be his best shot at keeping safe. Novices have powers that go beyond the laws of physics, afterall.”

“Just like when he hired you.”

“Yes.”

Junhyuk stared at Jeffrey and said, “Elise invented an expert wavelength detector.”

Jeffrey frowned.

“How did she do it?”

“An expert appeared during the last poring incident. Haven’t you heard?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, she did it, so if you want to hide the fact that you are an expert, talk to her.”

“Will she listen to me?”

“Not sure, but it’s the only way.”

“Why are you telling me this all of a sudden?”

“I told you, we are a team.”

Jeffrey was glad to hear that and said, “That’s good to hear.”

“Can you tell me about monster taming?” Junhyuk asked him.

“I don’t know much.”

“Help me here.”

Jeffrey answered nonchalantly, “If you take monsters to the brink of death, you can tame them.”

“OK.”

Junhyuk thought about the relationship he had with Jeffrey. He wanted to maintain a certain distance from him and decided he couldn’t give Jeffrey B-ranked monsters for him to tame. He couldn’t allow Jeffrey into his training facility yet.

In the evenings, he trained with Sarang, but he trained by himself from home in the mornings. If he went to Seoul to train, he would have a hard time meeting Jeffrey.

“So did you recruit any novices?” Junhyuk asked calmly.

“Unless they’ve already been to the Dimensional Battlefield, I have no intention of recruiting them. And I can’t offer more money than Doyeol.”

In reality, Junhyuk had more liquid a.s.sets than Doyeol. However, while at first he had wanted to gather all of the novices, now that he had the bracelets, he only wanted to recruit the ones he could trust.

Jeffrey smiled and asked, “I heard Sora Shin has left Guardians. Did you pay for her contract termination fee?”

“That’s correct.”

“She’s in your team.”

“I can trust Sora.”

Sora thought she had survived the Dimensional Battlefield because of Junhyuk, so she followed him blindly. That’s why he had taken her into his team.

Jeffrey’s lips twitched.

“You don’t trust me?”

“You tried to kill me. For us to trust each other, we need more time.”

Jeffrey didn’t want to be Junhyuk’s enemy, thinking that, among the surviving human, Junhyuk was probably the strongest.

He had figured it out after becoming an expert. There weren’t a lot of weapons that could crack his armor, even heavy artillery couldn’t do it. So, what about Junhyuk’s armor? He was a champion, so he had to have acquired an unimaginable amount of gold coins.

He must not be touched.

“I’ll try harder.”

Junhyuk doesn’t respond.

—

Jeffrey had left, and Junhyuk was on his way to GST. With the bracelet on, he could let the living spirit go through his arteries, so it was now possible for him to train 24/7.

He wanted to pay more attention to GST. Up to that point, he had had Ganesha and trusted Sungtae, but now, he was making a robotics lab and a biological engineering lab. He wanted to award those of similar importance to Sungtae.

They were the chiefs of his labs, and he thought he had to maintain his position within the company, so he reported to work to do his daily tasks, and after work, he trained with Sarang. That was his daily routine.

The secretaries were nervous because he was showing up for work every day. Sungtae joked around with them, but Junhyuk never did.

Inside a company, if someone was soft, someone else had to be firm, so he intentionally made them nervous so that they’d do their work right.

Junhyuk went to his office, turned on the computer and connected to Ganesha.

“Ganesha, search for these people: Sungtack Lim, Eunkyung Kim, Joonsang Seo, Jungsu Ma.”

[Found: Sungtack Lim, 128 matches; Eunkyung Kim, 1,452 matches; Joonsang Seo, 72 matches; Jungsu Ma, 7 matches.]

“Search for Sungtack Lim, eighteen years old; Eunkyung Kim, twenty-two years old; Joonsang Seo, thirty-four years old; and Jungsu Ma, thirty-two years old.”

[Found: Sungtack Lim, one match; Eunkyung Kim, thirty-five matches; Joonsang Seo, two matches; Jungsu Ma, one match.]

“Put them on the screen.”

As Junhyuk looked over their IDs onscreen, he touched his chin. Jeffrey had told him about them, so he was scoping them out.

There were pictures, and he could tell the four of them right away. Two had attack powers, one had a defensive power, and the other had another kind of power.

“He is moving so fast.”

The country was now trying to gather novices, but Doyeol was moving faster than the government. Junhyuk could only imagine the power Doyeol had.

“That’s about right.”

When Doyeol was ST Capsule’s CEO, he had a large influence among South Korea’s billionaires, but with Guardians, he was earning astronomical sums of money. Among all of Korea’s billionaires, Doyeol was the one that could change the course of things.

It’s been said that money could summon ghosts, and now, Doyeol had the money he wanted to monopolize novices.

“It was a nice move to hire Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey had survived the Dimensional Battlefield many times over. While they drank, Jeffrey told Junhyuk that he was pairing novices according to their powers. If a monster appeared, the new novices would be able to deal with the monster if they didn’t let their guard down.

“But I don’t know what will happen if they actually meet a monster.”

Right now, monsters were showing up everywhere to activate people’s powers, but soon, they would send even stronger monsters.

“Then, we’ll weed out the good from the bad.”

Not all novices were the same. He was thinking about what Jeffrey had told him when his cell phone rang. Junhyuk checked the number. It was Elise, so he picked up.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a monster attack!”

“Don’t you have two iron soldiers?”

“The monsters are appearing in four different sites. Two more than there are iron soldiers.”

Junhyuk looked at the sky. Did management know about the number of iron soldiers?

“So?”

“Can’t you use the iron soldiers I gave you?”

He grimaced. He could deploy one, but the other one was dismantled.

“Only one of them is operable right now.”

“Then, give me some support. I’ll send the monster response team to the other site.”

“The monster response team?”

“They are made up of special forces equipped with weapons to fight against monsters. They can deal with it. ”

Junhyuk said calmly, “I understand. Where do I send mine to?”

“Deal with the monster in Inchon.”

“Tell me the exact location.”

“I’ll send you the coordinates.”

“Sure.”

After he hung up, Junhyuk called Brita. He was waiting for the elevator while he explained everything to her.

“How long will it take to deploy the iron soldier?”

“We can deploy one right now. But there’s no way for it to get out, so it’ll destroy a wall in the process.”

Junhyuk took a moment to think and said, “I’ll decide where to make the exit. Get it ready.”

“Yes.”

“Then, I’ll send you the coordinates.”

“Yes.”

He got on the elevator and went to Brita’s lab. There, he put the iron soldier in his Spatial Bag. Brita had already seen him take it out, so she wasn’t surprised.

“When I call you again, deploy it.”

“Yes.”

He went out and quickly teleported to the roof of the building next to his. He could teleport a hundred meters now, so he did it again. Once he was far away from his company, he pulled out the iron soldier and made the call.

“Brita, deploy it.”

“Yes.”

He watched the iron soldier fly away and said, “Run the feed on a monitor.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

Within forty seconds, he had teleported back to the company and gone to see Brita. She was looking at a large screen.

“I sent it to the coordinates, but what is going on?”

“A monster attack is expected. How long until it gets there?”

“Three minutes. If it breaks the sound barrier, it can get there sooner.”

He was about to order for the speed up, but he checked the coordinates again and said calmly, “Don’t use Mach speed. I’m not sure what will happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was watching the feed when Sungtae walked in. They all had command over the iron soldier, so he had received a warning.

“What is going on?”

“Guardians requested a deployment to deal with monsters.”

Junhyuk crossed his arms and watched the screen.

Elise had requested the deployment, but the iron soldier was headed to a place Jeffrey had talked about, the novice’s training facility.

A monster was about to show up at that exact spot, so it might be stronger than expected. The weeding out would start earlier than expected.