Monster Contract: My Pets Will Bring the Apocalypse

Packless No More

Evening settled over Seoul like cooling metal. Neon blinked through the twilight, traffic roared and pulsed along the avenues, and the sidewalks filled with tired workers and the occasional glowing eyes of stray beasts perched on rooftops above them.

Han Seojin walked with his hands in his pockets, and his thoughts turned down low, legs aching, stomach twisting from hunger he'd been ignoring since school. It had been hours since he'd crawled out of that collapsed dungeon, hours since he'd been scanned and questioned and handed a folded check for his trouble, and none of it had left him time to actually eat.

He spotted a small diner tucked between a shuttered arcade and a laundromat, warm light spilling out through its front window onto the wet pavement. It looked plain enough, worn booths and a chalkboard menu, but it smelled like something real was cooking, and that was enough to pull him through the door.

A bell above the frame jingled as he stepped inside, and a waitress waved him toward an open booth near the back. He slid in, and after a moment of quiet, he reached into his jacket, felt the check still tucked there, and remembered he had no way to use it yet. He'd need to deposit it somewhere first. For now he had a little cash folded in his pocket, and that would have to do.

He glanced down at himself. "What do you even eat?" he asked quietly, mindful of the few other people scattered around the diner. "Wolves eat meat, right?"

Fenrir's voice answered inside his head, dry and a little put upon. "I am not some common wolf scrounging for scraps in a forest."

"Okay. So what, then?"

A pause, like Fenrir was actually considering it rather than just being difficult. "Meat," he finally said. "Any will do."

Seojin waved the waitress over and ordered a plate of grilled meat and rice for himself, along with an extra portion on the side, paying with the cash from his pocket once the bill came. When the food arrived, steam curling up off both plates, he pushed the second one a little to the side, close enough that it would look normal to anyone glancing over, and quietly summoned Fenrir into his small compact form beneath the table where the booth hid him from view.

Fenrir sniffed at the plate once, unimpressed, and then tore into it without further comment. Seojin ate his own meal in relative quiet, listening to the soft clatter of dishes and passing conversation around them, until Fenrir finally sat back, licking at one paw.

"It is not the food of gods," Fenrir said. "But it is not bad."

Seojin allowed himself a small, tired smile and kept eating.

The warmth of the meal settled into his chest, and for the first time since that morning, his hands stopped shaking. He was halfway through his rice when a sharp little chime sounded in the back of his mind, and a clean white box with gold lettering flickered into view.

[New Quest] Objective: Join a Registered Guild Reward: +5 Skill Upgrade Points (System Advancement Locked Until Completion)

Seojin sighed, long and quiet.

"What," Fenrir asked, ears twitching beneath the table.

"System wants me to join a guild," Seojin muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Guess dinner's over."

He finished the last few bites, wiped his mouth, and stood, dropping the change on the table before heading back out into the cooling night air.

The Guild Plaza glowed like a piece of some other city dropped down in the middle of Seoul. High glass towers curved upward, guild banners flickering across massive holographic displays, and every other window held a mounted beast standing still as a gargoyle. Towering golems. Winged panthers. One building even had something like a mutated whale asleep along its roofline, half phased into the concrete beneath it.

Seojin walked into the largest of the buildings, sliding doors hissing open ahead of him into a lobby too clean to feel real, marble floors and transparent panels and a long crescent shaped desk lined with glowing terminals.

The receptionist he approached wore thin glasses and silver nails, a headset curled around one ear. Her nametag read Min Seori, and her smile was polished and polite right up until she scanned his ID chip and the screen in front of her flickered red.

Bonded Beast: [UNREGISTERED] Core Compatibility: 0.00% (Previous Attempted Syncs: 4)

Her expression didn't change much, but her eyes did. "I'm sorry, did you say you were here for evaluation?"

"Yeah," Seojin said.

"There must be a mistake," she said gently. "This system shows no registered bond, no license, no compatibility record, and four prior failures."

"It's not a mistake."

She sighed and folded her hands. "I'm afraid we can't offer evaluations without at least a C tier compatibility record or a licensed beast bond. Guild placements are highly competitive."

"I'm not asking for placement, just—"

She held up a hand before he could finish. "I understand. But guilds aren't charities, and without a registered beast you wouldn't even qualify for our entry level auxiliary program." Her voice dropped a half tone, softer but somehow more condescending. "I'd recommend trying an independent license. Or perhaps something less centralized. I hear the Obsidian Fang Guild still takes applicants like yourself."

Seojin closed his mouth and stared at the counter for a moment before turning and walking out, quiet and even.

Outside, Fenrir's voice rumbled once in his head. "She was fortunate I remained hidden."

"Not now," Seojin muttered, though there was a faint pull at the corner of his mouth he didn't bother hiding.

He pulled out his phone once he was clear of the plaza and searched the name that had stuck with him. Obsidian Fang. Small time, D rank, tucked into the edge of the old tech district. Most of the reviews called it eccentric or unorthodox, and a handful complained about the smell. But one review near the bottom caught his eye and held it.

They accepted me and trained me up even though I didn't have a bond at the time.

He read it twice, then started walking, checking his map every few blocks as the streets grew narrower and the storefronts older, neon signs giving way to flickering fluorescent tubes and shuttered shops with metal grates pulled down for the night. He passed two other guild offices along the way, smaller than White Bell but no less dismissive once they saw his scan results, and by the third rejection he'd stopped bothering to argue and just walked out before they could finish their explanation.

By the time he found the right street, it was fully dark, streetlights buzzing overhead, and the Obsidian Fang Guild did not look like much of anything. It looked like a condemned internet cafe. A cracked black sign hung above the entrance, half lit, a faded fang emblem barely visible through years of grime on the glass. Someone had spray-painted something rude across the front once, scrubbed off just enough to still be legible underneath.

He checked his phone again. The address matched.

Fenrir's voice came through, low and unimpressed. "This is where you intend to place your faith?"

"No one else is taking applications from cursed nobodies," Seojin said quietly and pushed the door open.

It creaked loudly on its hinges. Inside, the air was stale, a ceiling fan spinning slowly and crooked overhead. A front desk sat empty, a couch dragged sideways behind it to block off a back hallway, crushed snack wrappers piled in one corner. And behind the desk, sprawled in a recliner wrapped in a lumpy purple blanket, a woman slept with her chin tucked into her chest, gray hair escaping a bun that had long since given up. On her head, curled like a hairy crown, sat a fat bat like creature with oversized ears and oily black fur, wings folded neatly around itself.

"Hello?" Seojin said.

Nothing.

He stepped closer and knocked on the desk. Still nothing.

The bat cracked one eye open, ears twitching, and let out a sharp squeaking bark before launching itself straight into the woman's face.

"GYAH-!"

She jolted upright, swinging blindly as the bat zipped around her head, cursing something that sounded half ancient and half like a grocery list. The bat finally settled back onto her head, looking entirely pleased with itself, and she blinked hard, squinting toward the desk until her eyes landed on Seojin, and her whole demeanor shifted.

"Oh. There's a person here."

"Yeah. Hi," Seojin said, hands half raised like he was trying not to startle anything else awake.

She reached for a chipped mug, took a slow sip of something that might once have been tea, and studied him. "You a delivery boy?"

"No. I'm here about the guild."

"Oh." She looked him over again, longer this time. "You're a kid."

"I'd like to join," Seojin said before she could wave him off.

She stared at him flatly, then pointed at the wall behind him, where a mess of faded polaroids and yellowing papers had been stapled to a corkboard. "You see that? Every idiot on that wall begged to join once. Wanna guess how many are still around?"

"...A lot?"

"Two."

The bat snorted from atop her head. She reached up without looking and flicked its nose, then settled back in her chair. "You got a beast?"

Seojin nodded and flicked his hand, calling Fenrir forward in his small, compact form. The moment he appeared, the temperature in the room seemed to drop. The woman's mug trembled slightly in her hand. The bat went rigid, wings flaring.

She leaned forward slowly, studying him like he was a puzzle she hadn't expected tonight. "That's not a runt," she muttered. "That's an apex." She stood and circled the desk with careful, measured steps, crouching slightly to look Fenrir in the eye. "What are you?"

Fenrir held her gaze, silent and unreadable, and after a long moment she straightened back up and nodded to herself, something like respect settling into her expression.

"Alright, kid. You didn't steal that, did you?"

"No..."

"Good. You'd probably be dead anyways if you tried." She rubbed her chin. "You know what it is?"

"Not really."

"Good. Sometimes a little mystery is good." She dropped back into her chair and kicked her feet up onto the desk. "Anyways, I'm Yang Mirae, Guild Master of Obsidian Fang. This parasite on my head is Soondae. Yes, like the blood sausage. He picked the name himself."

The bat let out a rude little noise, and she ignored it entirely.

"I train a few young ones on weekends. School gonna get in the way?"

"A little."

"Tough luck, but we can work around it. You're in."

"That's it?"

"That's it. I can tell you've got a killer sitting quiet in your back pocket, and plus you're young enough to be shaped into something amazing." She held out a hand. "Training costs money, though, and my VR room still smells like piss. You got anything to put down?"

Seojin pulled the folded check from his jacket and handed it over. She took it laughing, already halfway through some joke about the smell, until her eyes actually landed on the number, and the laugh died in her throat. She read it again. Then a third time.

"Where the hell did you get this?"

"A reward," Seojin said. "From clearing a rift."

She looked at him like he'd handed her something that might go off in her hands. "This is a six layer clearance payout. What are you doing wasting it down here with me in the gutter?"

Seojin shifted his weight. "I was just hoping to go where I'd be accepted..."

Mirae raised an eyebrow, glancing between the check and him. "Oh wow, a bleeding heart, what was a kid like you gonna do with money like this anyway?"

He hesitated, then rubbed the back of his neck. "I wanted to show my mom I actually earned something. That's all."

Something in Mirae's face softened, just slightly, before she caught herself and cleared her throat. She counted out a stack of bills from a drawer beneath the desk and slid it across to him. "With what you're handing over, I can spare this much easily. Guild's about to have more than enough to work with."

"Thank you," Seojin said, tucking the cash away.

"Don't get used to it." She grabbed a black scanner pad and held it out. "ID, now."

He pressed his chip to the pad. The scanner flickered, then glitched, lines of text scrolling too fast to fully read.

[Bonded Beast: UNKNOWN]

[System Integration: ERROR]

[User Type: ANOMALY]

[BestiaCore Connection: FLAGGED]

[Manual Override Initiated...]

Mirae frowned at the readout for a moment. "That's a first."

"Is that bad?"

"Probably nothing." She slammed her thumb down on the confirm pad anyway and grinned, wide and a little dangerous. "Welcome to Obsidian Fang, kid."

The system chimed softly in Seojin's mind.

[Quest Complete]

[+5 Skill Upgrade Points Earned]

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and beside him, unseen by anyone but him, Fenrir's tail gave one slow, considering sweep across the floor.

"She is strange," Fenrir said.

"Yeah," Seojin murmured, watching Mirae count the rest of the check with open delight. "I think I might actually like it here."