Chameleon Troupe

The Chameleon Troupe is the most powerful gang in the story Kim Hajin wrote and one of the few underworld organizations placed on the Hero Association's violet list. Its name refers to camouflage: the public knows that the Troupe exists, but its members' real identities are guarded so completely that even its public mercenary roster is a collection of disguises. What begins as a circle of elite killers held together by a dead founder and an alleged betrayal becomes the institutional home of Hajin's secret life as Black Lotus and the Seat of Black. (Chapters 20, 41, 47, and 83–96)

Across the story, the Troupe connects conflicts that would otherwise remain separate. It protects Hajin's most dangerous secrets, climbs the Tower of Wish as a team, fights in the campaigns against Orden and Baal, uncovers the buried relationship among Yi Yeonjun, Bell, and Yi Byul, and finally turns its covert power against corruption in the Hero Association. Its members never become innocent simply because they help save humanity: assassination, theft, intimidation, and illegal artifact dealing remain part of their history. Their importance lies in the transformation of their shared purpose—from vengeance for an idealized father to a self-chosen commitment to one another and to “justice from the shadows.” (Chapters 143–166, 222–270, 301–376)

Structure and operating principles

The Colors

The Troupe organizes its formal membership through colored seats. A color is both a position within the organization and a persistent public identity, allowing people in the underworld to recognize a reputation without learning the holder's ordinary name. Each member possesses a corresponding proof of office. Boss occupies White, while Black is reserved by longstanding rule for the strongest member. When the story begins, ten colored shadows attend the group's meetings and Black has been empty for three years. Its previous holder is inseparable from the betrayal story surrounding the death of the first boss. (Chapters 41 and 47)

The full roster after Hajin's induction is:

All eleven seats are filled only after Hajin becomes Black. The gathered membership is small enough for individual skill and personal trust to matter more than bureaucracy, but powerful enough that the narration considers every member at least a high-rank combatant and the organization capable of intervening in major incidents. The color system should not be mistaken for a simple descending rank. White leads and Black is conventionally the strongest, but the remaining Colors are specialists whose value changes with the mission. (Chapters 143–144 and 349)

Freedom, authority, and disputes

The Troupe does not maintain the daily chain of command of a guild or army. Members live as they wish and assemble in teams when work appears. That freedom makes the group resemble an elite mercenary company, but its private objective and shared past distinguish it from an ordinary contractor. Candidates are discussed and voted upon, and even Boss cannot manufacture the trust required for a seat merely by announcing a new member. (Chapter 47)

Once a mission begins, however, Boss's authority is real. She selects targets, imposes limits, and expects members to carry out the group's collective decisions. A later account describes an ironclad internal custom under which disagreements are settled by a fight and the victor's position becomes final. The custom prizes strength but also prevents arguments from becoming indefinite factional struggles. Its moral change is visible after the formal disbandment: when Jin Seyeon demands that a new operation use no killing and pursue only justice, the others accept without requiring a duel. (Chapters 145–146 and 366)

The Black contract

Hajin's induction gives the organization its clearest written compact. The contract lasts six years and binds two sides rather than demanding unilateral obedience: Hajin cannot betray Boss, and so long as he does not betray her, she must perform her duty as his boss. Breaking the contract causes magic-power deviation. The terms reflect the wound at the center of the Troupe. A seat associated with the alleged betrayal of Yi Yeonjun is filled through a promise of reciprocal loyalty between the new Black and White. (Chapters 143–144)

Hajin also receives the Necklace of Black, the artifact that proves his color. Besides its symbolic function, it raises variable statistics, provides invisibility, and contains a hidden awakening. The necklace makes Black an institutional identity distinct from Hajin's equipment as Black Lotus, including the Black Lotus Bow, Black Lotus Uniform, Aether, and his modified Desert Eagle. Black Lotus and the Seat of Black overlap in one person, but they are not interchangeable names for the organization. (Chapters 143–144)

Secrecy and Jeronimo Mercenary

The Troupe's most durable defense is not a fortress but a separation between reputation and identity. Its name is notorious, yet the Colors move through ordinary society, Hero institutions, mercenary work, and the criminal world behind other faces. Jeronimo Mercenary provides the principal public shell. Its twenty-three listed members do not represent twenty-three separate employees: five or six Troupe members maintain the roster through Jain's disguises and camouflage. Jeronimo supplies documents, employment histories, and plausible public missions while concealing who performs the work. (Chapters 47, 83–86, and 96)

Compartmentalization continues inside the organization. Boss does not automatically explain one member's private commission to every Color. Only Boss, Jain, and a tightly restricted circle understand the Troupe's assistance in Hajin's killing of Chae Jinyoon. This secrecy protects Hajin and prevents the act from becoming general leverage against the whole group, but it also demonstrates how readily the same safeguards can hide an ethically ruinous deed. (Chapters 124–126 and 141–143)

History

Yi Yeonjun and the first Troupe

Yi Yeonjun is explicitly identified as the founder and former boss of Chameleon Troupe. To Yi Byul, he is also the father figure who gives a home and purpose to abandoned children. Bell's later testimony adds a concealed layer to that history: after meeting Yi Yeonjun, a man who had attracted Baal's attention, Bell forms the Troupe with him and meets the young Yi Byul, Jain, and Kaita. He remembers the resulting circle not simply as an organization but as a family. Yi Yeonjun is therefore the recognized founder and first leader; Bell is a covert co-founder and architect whose role is obscured by the story told after Yeonjun's disappearance. (Chapters 301 and 336)

The first Troupe eventually breaks around the apparent death of its leader. Eleven years before the early present, the previous boss dies in what the survivors understand as a betrayal. A new leader is selected, and grief hardens into a mission to kill the alleged traitor. The vacant Black seat becomes a reminder of both the group's greatest strength and its deepest fear. The later revelation that Bell did not murder Yi Yeonjun does not merely correct one historical detail—it removes the premise on which Yi Byul built the new Troupe. (Chapters 41, 47, 302, and 312)

A famous gang without faces

Before Hajin joins, Chameleon Troupe is already an international underworld power. The Hero Association classifies it as a violet-list organization, and the wider criminal world treats its members as people who cannot be carelessly provoked. It rejects identification with Djinns even though it operates in Pandemonium, trades through black markets, and accepts work that lawful institutions would call criminal. Temporary allies, territory managers, and intermediaries handle matters that eleven people cannot administer directly, but the Troupe remains the dominant side in those arrangements. (Chapters 20, 47, and 122)

An abandoned factory in Suwon serves as an early meeting place. The deliberately unimpressive exterior matches the Troupe's practice of revealing as little fixed infrastructure as possible. Members arrive as colored shadows, discuss candidates and missions, and then disperse into separate lives. The organization is dangerous precisely because it does not need a visible army, public headquarters, or stable civilian workforce to project force. (Chapters 36–47)

White Crystal and underworld finance

The struggle around the White Crystal demonstrates that the Troupe is not limited to contract killing. After acquiring the crystal, Droon discovers that it can be used to create partial artifacts. Hajin estimates a gross value of roughly five hundred billion won and, after expenses and fees, a distribution on the order of twenty billion won per member. The exact calculation is a projection rather than a permanent treasury statement, but it shows the scale at which eleven hidden operatives can participate in the artifact economy. (Chapters 71–80)

The operation also establishes a recurring pattern. Jain and Khalifa make identities and movement flexible; Droon identifies information that changes the value of a captured object; combat members make possession enforceable; and underworld channels turn a dangerous acquisition into money. The Troupe's true resource is the combination of specialized abilities rather than any single artifact.

Scouting and apprenticing Kim Hajin

Boss first takes a special interest in Hajin when she detects his anti-magic. Because the Troupe's revenge plan requires a weapon capable of overcoming the alleged traitor, she considers him a possible silver bullet for the empty Black seat. The organization does not know his history as the author of the world, and Hajin does not initially seek membership. Their relationship begins as mutual surveillance: Boss and Khalifa scout him, while Hajin recognizes the importance and danger of the gang he created in his novel. (Chapters 41 and 83–85)

Hajin enters through Jeronimo as an apprentice. His first assignment is to assassinate Siemens, a notorious mafia criminal and suspected Djinn, for money or an item reward. The mission tests whether his unusual marksmanship can function inside the Troupe's hidden methods; the false identities prepared afterward test whether he can live with its continuing secrecy. Apprenticeship separates useful power from full membership and gives the Colors time to evaluate not only whether Hajin can kill, but whether he can be trusted with who they are. (Chapters 92–96)

Chae Jinyoon and protected guilt

The killing of Chae Jinyoon changes Hajin's relationship with the Troupe more deeply than a public victory would. Hajin believes Jinyoon's transformation into a Devil must be stopped, but the act will devastate Chae Nayun and cannot be explained through ordinary Hero institutions. Troupe members arrange access and extraction, then keep the truth restricted. Boss's protection does not make Hajin's decision morally simple; it gives him a place whose loyalty can contain the secret when his public relationships cannot. (Chapters 124–126 and 141–143)

This episode helps explain why Hajin later accepts the Black contract. The Troupe has already acted as his organization before it names him a member. In exchange, his eventual loyalty is not abstract obedience to a criminal brand. It is loyalty to people who accepted responsibility for helping him perform an act that none of them can safely disclose.

Induction and Old Revenge

After the apprenticeship, the Colors formally accept Hajin and fill Black for the first time in three years. Boss presents the contract and Necklace of Black; Hajin acquires a room, a color, and obligations that exist independently of his temporary covers. With all eleven seats occupied, Boss launches Old Revenge, a campaign against those who mocked, abandoned, or exploited the Troupe when it was weak. The targets include Djinn executives in Pandemonium as well as heroes and businessmen connected to the old harm. (Chapters 143–145)

Old Revenge is organized violence, not a general license for every member to kill anyone in reach. Cheok Jungyeong and Jin Yohan are instructed to kill executives, and Boss watches the operation. Those limits do not transform the campaign into lawful justice, but they show a leader directing anger toward named institutional targets rather than allowing indiscriminate destruction. At this stage, the Troupe still understands restoration as the ability to punish people who once believed it could be discarded. (Chapters 145–146)

The English Channel sanctuary

When expedition activity makes the Suwon factory unsafe, the group relocates to an underwater cave near the Bristol and English Channel area. Hajin turns the raw cavern into a domed sanctuary with a lobby, individual rooms, a workshop, and a research laboratory. Later, goblin servants produced through the Goblin Tablet maintain it. The construction gives members private spaces without forcing them to surrender the independence on which the Troupe was founded. (Chapters 112 and 146–166)

The sanctuary becomes more than a secure base. Training between Hajin and Boss, shared meals, arguments, rest, and the members' casual use of one another's rooms create a domestic rhythm. This found-family function is not separate from the organization's strategic strength: it is why the Colors continue answering one another after the revenge purpose ends. The cave survives the establishment of newer bases and remains the setting for the formal disbandment. (Chapters 147–166, 249, 334, and 365)

Tower of Wish

The Tower of Wish gives the Troupe an environment in which its members can appear as an identifiable team without exposing their ordinary identities. Boss, Jain, Cheok Jungyeong, and Hajin operate around Prestige, while other members enter later. A Lv.5 Chameleon Troupe's Hideout provides a recognized internal base, and rival Hero groups know that both Chameleon Troupe and Black Lotus are significant participants in the first-floor artifact struggle. (Chapters 167–188 and 219)

The formal [Team Chameleon Troupe] begins climbing seriously in Chapter 222. It clears floors sixteen through nineteen in two weeks and reaches the twentieth as a unit. Skill-book distribution and disagreements between White and Black show a working expedition rather than a display of independent celebrities. Hajin's knowledge and crafted support become part of a team system; the Colors' infiltration, transport, physical force, and control abilities cover weaknesses that no one member could eliminate. (Chapters 222–226)

Pandemonium and the war against Orden

By the post-Tower period, the Troupe maintains a five-level underground base in Central Asia or Pandemonium, including Boss's residence and office, while keeping the English sanctuary. A later Heart of Pandemonium building expands its fixed underworld presence. These headquarters do not make every Pandemonium faction subordinate to the Troupe, nor do they make the Colors Djinns. They represent the group's ability to operate inside criminal territory while retaining its own identity. (Chapters 249 and 304)

The Orden campaign places that underworld force inside a wider coalition for humanity. Boss, Cheok Jungyeong, Hirano Arashi, Kaita, Jin Yohan, and Setryn fight Vast Expanse together, and the Troupe contributes to the broader operation against Orden's monsters. The later settlement explicitly recognizes that Chameleon Troupe helped humanity against both Orden and Baal and grants it a pardon. The legal reversal does not erase earlier crimes, but it prevents the victorious world from treating the group only as a gang after relying on it for survival. (Chapters 254–270 and 368)

Yi Yeonjun's return

Yi Yeonjun's reappearance transforms the Troupe's founding story from memory into an active crisis. Boss has lived according to the belief that Bell betrayed and killed him. Investigation, recovered experience, and the virtual-reality reconstruction of the past establish that Bell did not commit that murder. Yi Byul releases her hatred of Bell, while Bell's account reveals his own role beside Yeonjun in forming the group and caring for its children. (Chapters 301–314 and 330–336)

The recovered truth does not restore an uncomplicated father. Yi Yeonjun's connection to Baal and his own choices expose the difference between the man and the ideal for whom Yi Byul has been killing. The new Chameleon Troupe was not created by a neutral historical record; it was created by a bereaved daughter organizing her life around what she believed her father wanted. Once that belief fails, loyalty to the founder and loyalty to the living members no longer point in the same direction.

The Baal campaign

The Baal crisis assembles the Colors on a world-saving battlefield. During the arrival of reinforcements, Yellow, Blue, Green, Violet, Indigo, Silver, Turquoise, Brown, and White are announced in succession; Red is absent from that entrance and Black is operating elsewhere. For the first time, Hajin personally calls all the members and entrusts the defense connected to Dimensional Entropy and the bunker to them. The moment reverses his recruitment: the candidate once evaluated by the Colors now relies on the entire institution as his chosen force. (Chapters 334–350)

The Troupe fights within Baal's barrier and protects the wider operation while Boss confronts Yi Yeonjun. She returns with his body, bringing the organization's private war and humanity's supernatural war to the same conclusion. Yi Byul then admits that she lived to fulfill Yeonjun's wish, re-formed Chameleon Troupe for him, and killed and stole for him. With that purpose completed and discredited, victory leaves her without instructions for an ordinary life. (Chapters 349–362)

Disbandment and Colored Calves

At the English sanctuary, Yi Byul formally disbands Chameleon Troupe. She states the reason plainly: the new Troupe existed to avenge Yi Yeonjun, and the truth has removed that purpose. The ceremony ends the revenge institution, but not the relationships it created. The members immediately preserve their association as a social club named Colored Calves, with Yi Byul as club leader, six initial members, and the others able to apply. (Chapter 365)

The apparent joke is followed by material reform. Yi Byul works with Yoo Yeonha, and the Yi Byul Foundation directs her wealth toward assistance and war orphans. Former Colors also participate in an operation involving Kwang-Oh and the Association. Jin Seyeon's condition—no killing, only justice—is accepted without the old ritual of combat, demonstrating that the group's operating ethic can change even while its talents and loyalty remain intact. (Chapter 366)

The last mission and continued name

The former Troupe lacks the political power to reform the Association through force alone. It therefore coordinates with Yoo Yeonha, Chae Nayun, and eventually Chae Joochul. Yoo Yeonha speaks of “our” plans, placing economic and information power beside the Colors' covert enforcement. The anti-corruption coup is described as the Troupe's last mission: exposing Association executives who had served as institutional hunting dogs and preserving enough evidence and leverage to make the reckoning public. (Chapters 368–372)

The epilogue deliberately complicates the word “last.” Jin Seyeon is said to have fully become a member of Chameleon Troupe, which protects justice from the shadows. It remains willing to steal and destroy, but chooses evil as its target. No second formal founding ceremony is shown. The safest description is therefore that Yi Byul dissolves the revenge organization, Colored Calves preserves its human core, and that core later operates—or is again known—as Chameleon Troupe under a reformed purpose. (Chapter 376)

Major operations

Resources and capabilities

Chameleon Troupe's power comes from interoperability. Jain can create a face and history; Khalifa can place that identity at a target and remove it afterward; Droon can reconstruct information; Boss can command the confrontation; Cheok Jungyeong and the other fighters can overwhelm resistance; Hajin can supply marksman support, artifacts, planning, and anti-magic. A mission does not require every member, and the organization's small size makes it possible to choose only the specialists who need to know. (Chapters 41, 83–96, 143–146, and 349–350)

Its physical resources include color-seat artifacts, Jeronimo's identities, target and information records, black-market connections, artifact inventory, portal access, the English sanctuary, the Tower hideout, and the Pandemonium complex. Its wealth is substantial, but no passage makes every item used by a Color communal property. The Black Lotus equipment remains associated with Hajin, just as the Orb of Regeneration has an owner and history beyond the Troupe. The organization coordinates access; it does not erase personal ownership. (Chapters 71–80, 146, 188, and 249)

External relationships

Hero Association and guild society

The Hero Association initially treats Chameleon Troupe as an exceptional criminal threat. Individual members and covers nevertheless move through the same society as Heroes, mercenaries, and guild personnel, creating a gap between the Association's list and its practical knowledge. Orden and Baal force cooperation, after which the Troupe receives a pardon. The final anti-corruption operation reveals that the conflict was never simply lawful Heroes against unlawful criminals: Association power had also been used for private violence and concealment. (Chapters 20, 254–270, and 368–372)

Pandemonium and Djinns

The Troupe trades and maintains territory in Pandemonium, and many Old Revenge targets are Djinn executives. It is nevertheless not a Djinn organization. Its willingness to use the underworld is pragmatic; its members repeatedly oppose Djinns and world-threatening forces. The distinction allows it to move where official guilds cannot without accepting the ideology or allegiance of every faction around it. (Chapters 20, 122, 145, and 249)

Yoo Yeonha and the postwar coalition

Yoo Yeonha's information and business reach complements the Troupe's covert force. After Yi Byul loses the revenge mission that organized her wealth and authority, their partnership provides a constructive institutional channel through the foundation. Chae Nayun and Jin Seyeon then broaden the coalition's legitimacy, while Chae Joochul becomes a strategically necessary participant in the confrontation with the Association. None of those allies automatically becomes one of the original eleven Colors. Jin Seyeon's later membership is separately confirmed. (Chapters 366–376)

Identity and legacy

The Troupe's identity changes without becoming clean. The first family is built by Yi Yeonjun and Bell; the new Troupe is built by Yi Byul around vengeance; Hajin's membership turns it into a refuge for secrets that Hero society cannot absorb; the Tower, Orden, and Baal make it a defender of humanity; and the postwar circle turns its methods toward corrupt institutions. Each stage inherits the same colors, specialized powers, and fierce personal loyalty, but gives them a different reason to act.

Camouflage is consequently more than Jain's ability or Jeronimo's cover. It is the organization's narrative condition. To the Association it is a criminal name without faces. To Hajin it is both a dangerous gang from his manuscript and a home he did not plan to need. To Yi Byul it is first her father's legacy, then proof of her own crimes, and finally a family capable of surviving him. The distinction between those perspectives prevents either “villains” or “secret heroes” from being a complete description.

The formal disbandment is the strongest evidence of the Troupe's success as a family. An organization held together only by revenge would end when revenge became meaningless. Instead, the members invent Colored Calves, continue gathering at the sanctuary, accept a code against killing, and eventually allow the old name to describe justice performed outside public institutions. Chameleon Troupe's lasting achievement is therefore not that it becomes respectable. It is that its members learn to choose one another—and choose what their power is for—after the false history that once made those choices for them is gone. (Chapters 362–376)