By Zephyria 
The lifespan of a mercenary usually doesn’t exceed 10 years.
This is partly because the work is dangerous, but also because the pay is ambiguous unless one risks injury.
Areas where Beasts or Aberrants roam offer hundreds or thousands of Deals per job, whether it’s exploration or escort. On the other hand, relatively safe and peaceful areas offer mediocre pay even after several days of work.
Incompetent mercenaries are naturally weeded out, and even veterans can’t return to the same kind of missions once they suffer a critical injury.
Therefore, skilled, older mercenaries like Jackal are rare. Even then, the mercenaries in his squad were constantly being replaced.
Jin Mu-hae, for one, hadn’t seen any of the mercenaries he met when he first started working who were still on the front lines.
Some must have died, and the rest probably switched jobs for various reasons, such as injuries and declining physical strength.
‘Cheonjong Street 34-248…’
Mu-hae took in the cool morning air as he walked down the dirty street. In the slums, trash rolled around everywhere as if by agreement.
Many people carelessly threw things away, but the main reason was that there was no one to clean it up.
“Ew. I stepped on something weird.”
“Rub it on the ground.”
Joo-oh, who had his hat pulled down low, rubbed the sole of his boot on the ground with a screeching sound.
Then, when Mu-hae stopped and didn’t wait for him, he hurried to close the distance again.
They were currently on their way to the house of a retired mercenary. To be precise, the house of someone whose whereabouts they knew.
Even Mu-hae hadn’t been doing solo missions since he first jumped into the mercenary business.
He never imagined he would meet someone he had encountered a few times back then like this again.
“His name is Banya. Right?”
“Yeah. Though it’s probably not his real name.”
Banya was a mercenary who had come from another city. Word was that he had run away in the night one day because he had accumulated debts where he lived.
Although the borders between countries had become blurred in this era, cities in specific regions were still largely made up of similar ethnic groups.
Perhaps that’s why it was easier to find him. Banya had high-saturation red hair and green eyes, as if not even 1 percent of his blood was from Goryeo City.
There were many people in Goryeo City who didn’t have black hair or eyes, but it was quite rare to see someone so conspicuous.
“Still, Banya lives in a better place than we do.”
“Is it right to call this good?”
You wouldn’t think there could be a good place in the slums, but there were still levels within them.
Cheonjong Street was a slightly better neighborhood than Starlight Road. Criminals didn’t loiter around in broad daylight, and the buildings were at least in a state where people could live in them.
Bee-ik!
When they pressed the bell, which had traces of being patched up all over, a frivolous sound echoed.
There was the sound of heavy footsteps from inside, and then the door opened a crack with a clank, still on the latch.
Visible through the gap was a middle-aged man with a smoking glass stick in his mouth. His face, with its sparse red beard, looked ten years older than his actual age.
“What is it?”
The man scanned Mu-hae with a sullen expression. When Joo-oh waved his hand gently behind Mu-hae, who had his hands shoved in his pockets, the door seemed to slam shut, but then it reopened without the security device.
“Seriously, what is it? Aren’t you Jin Mu-hae?”
“He is Jin Mu-hae.”
“Don’t interrupt. It’s been a while.”
Greeting him, Mu-hae took out a small box from his pocket and showed it. ‘Codefil.’ At the name of the brand written in red, the man looked around and took a step back.
It was obviously an invitation to come in. Mu-hae threw the medicine box into his hand and entered the smelly house with Joo-oh.
“This is out of the blue. What’s a celebrity doing here?”
“Celebrity, my ass.”
“No, really. You’re not the kind of person who meets with loser scraps, are you?”
“Anyone would think I have a terrible personality.”
It’s just that he’s never made any mercenary friends. Mu-hae carefully checked that Joo-oh was taking off his shoes properly and strode into Banya’s living room.
“I’m looking for you because I have something to ask.”
“Something to ask? You? Me?”
His expression, which was becoming more and more complicated, was annoying. He certainly had no history of interacting with anyone like this.
Since he had become skilled, Mu-hae had always worked alone. He didn’t react to anyone’s provocations, and he lightly ignored all partnership offers.
There was naturally no way he would go around meeting washed-up has-beens who had quit the mercenary business. It had been almost five years since he had last seen Banya.
“You’re still managing to make a living. Is that a surround speaker? It looks expensive.”
“I had to stay alive after quitting dangerous work. And my income isn’t bad.”
He made a gesture of shaking something in the air with a chaka-chaka sound. It seemed he had gotten a job at a place that concocted illegal drugs, as was often the case with guys who couldn’t even do mercenary work anymore.
“Ah. I shouldn’t say things like this in front of upstanding citizens, should I?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Mu-hae’s face, which had been maintaining its composure, slightly frowned. It was annoying enough to hear that from Joo-oh, but now seeing others talking about being upstanding made him even more angry.
Mu-hae had gone through enough people to get here. How many Deals had he given to the dregs of society, whom he would never normally encounter, all because of Solar City?
After asking around here and there, the conclusion was that Banya was the most worth investigating.
Because the guy who used to hang out with him during his mercenary days had told him that. Before Solar City collapsed, Banya had lived there.
“I heard you came from Solar City.”
At the direct question, a faint wariness crossed Banya’s face. When he threw him another of the same drug with a flick, he dropped the glass stick on the floor and quickly grabbed it.
“Um… it’s a bit ambiguous. To be honest, I did stay there for a while.”
“I heard you rushed there as soon as it collapsed. Even renting a flyer when no one else would go near it.”
“It was a bonanza, that place. You know. There’s always something to eat where people have died.”
There probably aren’t many guys alive who know that, so I’ll have to round them all up. He shrugged, throwing out a mercenary-style joke that wasn’t funny at all.
When his bear-like face raised only one corner of his mouth, his impression became unbelievably fierce. His face, covered in scars, was more pale than white.
“I’m looking for a researcher. I heard he’s from Solar City.”
“A researcher…? How would I know guys like that?”
“Well, you lived in Solar City, right?”
“Do you even know how many people lived there?”
Banya pushed the drugs under the sofa and made a dumbfounded face. He circled his index finger around his head, as if to say he wouldn’t know even if you asked him about bums like himself, let alone researchers.
“I’m not asking you to find that researcher. I’m just asking if you know any former researchers.”
“Would I? I’m telling you again, I only stayed in Solar City for a while. I didn’t live there.”
“Where did you get into debt?”
“Solar… City? Shit. Did I even mention that I was in debt to you?”
Banya rubbed his forehead as if he was going crazy. He probably never imagined that something he had blurted out while drunk in the past would come back to him like this, years later.
Then, when Joo-oh offered him another of the same drug from the side, he took it, his eyes rolling back even further.
“If you had to go into debt so much that you ran away without paying it back, there must have been someone who lent it to you. It doesn’t seem like you were living this kind of life there either.”
“…You’re sharp. You’re smart for a mercenary. Is it because you’re upstanding?”
“Stop talking crap. What kind of guy was he?”
“Kid, if you dig too much into other people’s pasts, you won’t live long.”
The man, who had contorted his face as if threatening him, sighed and slumped down on the sofa. He picked up the dropped glass stick, wiped it clean, and put it back in his mouth.
Whoosh, a strange smell spread with the smoke, and Joo-oh twitched his nose. His eyes were becoming more persistent, as if he was trying to remember the smell. Unnecessarily.
“The pay’s not enough.”
“You’re not even a mercenary anymore, and you’re talking about pay.”
While scolding him, Mu-hae tapped Joo-oh and received four more boxes of drugs from his hand.
Joo-oh, who had put his bag back on, made a proud face with a look that asked if that was enough.
It was a painkiller that was hard to get outside of hospitals. It was effective on its own, but bums would melt, boil, and distill it to create pure narcotics.
Even a child knew that these manufactured drugs sold for a high price. Thinking it was a reasonable fee, Banya unfolded his arms and quickly snatched the Codefil.
“Ahem… I don’t know who you’re talking about, but if you’re just looking for a researcher, I do know a guy.”
“What kind of person was he, really?”
“He has a lot of stories, a lot of stories. But there are few people in this world these days without stories, so it’s nothing special. Anyway, that guy isn’t a real researcher either, but he went to a post… no, a research facility.”
“So?”
“I haven’t met him once since I left Solar City, but I did get in touch with him right after. I don’t know if he’s still alive?”
The man scratched his neck, which was covered in scratches, and leaned back on the armrest of the sofa.
Banya looked lazily at the ceiling for a moment, then stretched unnecessarily and said casually.
“He said he was going to Seogyeong City. He somehow knew I had come to Goryeo City and sent me a message.”
His gaze slowly turned to the floor. Now that he looked, there was dust sparsely stuck to his hair.
“I ignored it. I wanted him to think I was dead. That way, he wouldn’t know I was living like this.”
His voice, which had been trying to be cheerful, was soaked in a musty regret.
It wasn’t difficult to find transportation to Seogyeong City.
It was originally a nearby city, but even though civilian traffic had been cut off, logistics between companies continued steadily.
Jin Mu-hae found an empty truck that was returning after transporting primary products to Goryeo City. On the surface, it was an escort, but in reality, he had given them a premium and hitched a ride.
The two of them sat in the disgustingly large and sturdy cargo hold for a whole day.
In the dark and sweltering space that was almost completely sealed off, they played Othello for hours with a holographic projector.
“Yeah. We should go now.”
“Don’t talk nonsense and hurry up and put it down. Before I flip it over.”
Annoyingly, Joo-oh was incredibly good at it.