Black Market Arc

Ranked seventeenth among the Ragnarok arcs, this one follows the dungeon break at Busan's Haeundae Beach and gives way afterward to the Asura Guild Arc. It opens on an ominous heads-up from Thomas Andre: Apostles are turning people into devotees of the Outer God Cult, and their marks include former National Level Hunters who once played host to the Rulers. One such target is none other than Sung Il-Hwan, Suho's own estranged grandfather.

Suho races to his grandparents' Yangpyeong home and finds Sung Il-Hwan gone. When the local Hunters Association branch refuses to lift a finger, he and Beru mount their own investigation, which turns up an illegal black market in the vicinity that may be tied to the cult's reach. The arc's settings sprawl from the Gwangalli Gate and the USA through a shadow dungeon, Yangpyeong, the Ahjin Hospital, the Void, the Black Market itself, and the Cartenon Temple acting as the Outer Gods' chapel. Its central fights see Suho kill Kim Chul, Sung Il-Hwan slay Hwang Dongsoo, and Suho team with Greed to wreck the Statue of Itarim. Plenty of figures cross the page, with Sung Jinah and Park Kyung-Hye joined by Antares and Ragnar, Hwang Dongsoo and Kim Chul, plus Rio Singh and Lee Joohee, Arsha alongside Adam White and Laura, Thomas Andre, and the avatar belonging to Sung Jinwoo.

The arc redraws the larger struggle. Having killed Christopher Reed after the man turned into an Apostle of Itarim, Thomas Andre voluntarily surrenders over that slaying, walking into the Federal Bureau of Hunters to report himself. Suho takes possession of Kamish's Egg, which Cha Hae-In had pulled from the tomb that holds the Berserk Dragons, and tucks it away in the Shadow Dungeon. Two shadow soldiers return to him, Iron sourced from Kim Chul and Greed from Hwang Dongsoo. It surfaces that Sung Il-Hwan had recovered his previous-timeline memories not long before Jinwoo left to battle the Itarims, declined to become a hunter, and chanced upon the Black Market while clearing small dungeons close to home. Suho crosses paths with Antares in the Dragon Rest, takes on the Dragon King's Trial quest with its level-99 goal, Ragnar is made Antares' priest, and both Sung Jinah and Park Kyung-Hye regain every memory of their past lives.