The Rookie Slayer
The Rookie Slayer.
I'd heard the name before, in passing. The monster hunters at the training center used to run their mouths about it constantly—one of those people you were never supposed to get mixed up with. Someone who only ever made an appearance at the training grounds.
Back then, I'd pictured some hulking, monstrous figure. Instead, a girl stood in front of me.
A genius who crushed other people's dreams. Dreygan's granddaughter, Maria.
Her face was barely visible behind a fall of pitch-black hair. She shouted up at Dreygan as if lodging a protest.
"B-breaking other people's dreams?! Grandfather, please don't say it like that!"
"She's my granddaughter. If you didn't want me putting it that way, maybe you shouldn't have wrecked every last rookie who set foot in this yard."
Maria flinched.
At a glance, the coat she wore was thick, but she didn't look particularly muscular. The one thing that stood out was her height—quite tall for a woman. She seemed to have inherited Dreygan's famously massive frame in full.
"Th-that's... they just looked so weak, and they were supposed to be rookies, so I wanted to see how strong they really were..."
Her manner was timid. The words inside it were anything but. She'd packed them with as much destruction as they could hold.
"Hahaha! Now that, I'll grant you, is my granddaughter through and through."
Dreygan threw his head back and laughed, clearly not minding in the slightest. This old man and his granddaughter were not normal.
"So? You here to smash this one too, just 'cause he looks weak?"
The Rookie Slayer. If Dreygan himself called her that, it meant everyone else did too. The moment Maria appeared, the instructors who'd been lingering nearby all vanished. Their judgment was simple: better not to cross paths with her if you could help it.
A genius, by Dreygan's own mouth. A man who had already stepped past the realm of geniuses himself, and he still called her one.
How strong is she, exactly?
I stood, brushing the sand from my clothes, and cracked open my Third Eye for a look.
My body froze on the spot.
It wasn't on Dreygan's level, but a massive life flame was burning inside her—a scale of vitality that far exceeded even a mid-sized monster's. One glance at that life force was enough to understand why Dreygan called her a genius.
"How old is your granddaughter this year?"
"What, planning to run off with her?"
I shot him a look of pure exhaustion. He chuckled under his breath.
"Seventeen, this year."
Seventeen.
The moment I heard it, my eyes slowly widened. Being called the Rookie Slayer meant she'd been active long enough to earn the name. And she was only seventeen?
"Thinking she's too young for a name that's spread that far, are you?"
"Yes."
He snickered at the honest answer.
"Figured as much. My granddaughter's been wrecking rookies like that since she was about thirteen."
Thirteen.
A child who should have been growing up under her parents' protection. At that age, Maria had been breaking rookies whose names were just starting to rise.
I couldn't quite believe it—except Dreygan was the one saying it. He wasn't a man who would inflate a reputation just because it belonged to his granddaughter.
"That's impressive."
"Ah... hah."
Maybe it was because I'd praised her so openly. Maria covered her face, embarrassed. She looked like a tall young lady, but her mannerisms still had a childish quality.
"So, granddaughter. What's your read on this rookie?"
Maria had appeared in front of me for exactly the reason her epithet suggested. She'd come to slaughter a rookie.
I tensed a little. She peeked at me through the gaps in the fingers covering her face.
"...He's weak."
The strength drained right out of me. I felt more deflated than I had after the entire day's training.
"...But strangely, he's also strong."
A little of it came back. It felt like I'd been acknowledged.
"Your tail droops, then shoots right back up. What a performance."
Dreygan gave me a look of utter disbelief, but what was I supposed to do? I'd spent my whole life being dismissed. I was finally living a life where I got a little praise. There was a reason they said praise could make even a whale dance.
"Three months."
Maria stared at me as if she meant to bore a hole straight through me with both eyes.
"In three months, I think he'll make a good opponent."
Three months. In that much time, I'd grow in my own way, surely.
"Oof."
"He's done for."
From behind us, the instructors who'd been watching in secret let out a string of pained noises. Why that reaction?
"She's my granddaughter, but I'll say it—she's got a rotten hobby."
Dreygan clicked his tongue.
"Don't look so pleased. Maria's marked you. Branded you with a countdown."
"T-terminally ill?!"
Maria protested, but Dreygan only clicked his tongue harder. He didn't pull punches even with his own granddaughter.
A countdown, though.
Well. I actually am terminally ill.
Mana Stone Sclerosis was still an ongoing problem, after all.
"Ah. Come to think of it, you actually are terminally ill, aren't you?"
Dreygan said it as if the fact had only just come back to him.
"H-he's actually t-terminally ill...?"
Maria, on the other hand, went white as a sheet. She looked panicked, the face of someone who'd just realized she'd put her foot in it in the worst possible way. So she hadn't known what kind of condition I was in.
"He looks so healthy, I forgot."
"I have no intention of dying from Mana Stone Sclerosis."
"Good. Don't die. Cling on and live."
Dreygan dug at his ear with a pinky as he said it, the words tossed off like an afterthought. If I left Maria alone any longer, though, she looked like she might actually stop breathing.
"Maria. So we'll be facing each other in three months?"
"Hah— a-ah, y-yes, ye-es... I-I'd like that, if that's alright..."
She spoke with a face full of nerves. I nodded.
"Understood. We'll fight in three months."
Maria, the one they called the Rookie Slayer. I wanted to know how she fought, too. Even if I couldn't win, I'd pile up good combat data. I wanted to fight her. I had to.
Resolve filled my eyes. Maria raised a hand as if the attention was too much and looked away.
"Heh. This kid. Those eyes of his are the real deal. They've got a quiet fire turning in them. You won't be the type to break just because of our Rookie Slayer."
I thought so too.
The ones who crumbled before the Rookie Slayer were rookies who lived for the taste of their own spreading names. Rookies who'd shrugged their shoulders like they owned the sky. They looked up, saw the wall sitting above the clouds, and collapsed on the spot.
I didn't care about any of that.
I'd spent my whole life crawling through the dirt. Was I going to fall apart just because I saw a wall in the sky?
Unfortunately for the wall, I was a man who wanted to reach the mages sitting even higher than that.
My path had always been a wall.
Walls were never obstacles to me. They were the road I had to grab onto and climb.
For the next three months, I would grow stronger. Desperately.
Time moved fast.
Monster hunting to stall the Mana Stone Sclerosis and raise my physical efficiency, with Dreygan's stamina drills stacked on top. I trained myself half to death, day after day, and the result was a body that had become something else entirely.
Muscle stood out in sharp definition across my whole frame. Springy legs. Exceptional flexibility. After the physical training, Dreygan had forced me through flexibility work, and my range of motion had opened up considerably.
"Flexibility is the recovery and elasticity of bone. A body packed with nothing but muscle grows sluggish, and the reflexes dull. Strength isn't everything in this world."
I turned that over in my mind and kept at every kind of conditioning I could. The result: I could run with sandbags hanging off me like ornaments and barely feel them.
"Your growth rate's not normal. You doing something with that Mana Stone Sclerosis you mentioned?"
Dreygan inspected my body every day, so of course he'd noticed something off about how fast I was growing. He didn't press any further, though. He wasn't the type to be picky about methods, so long as they made you stronger.
"Remember one thing, though. The faster you can run now, the more suddenly you can slow down later."
I took Dreygan's advice to heart. I couldn't treat this pace as a given and grow complacent. I'd been slower than everyone else. Now I was finally, just barely, running properly.
Thud—
I finished off another mid-grade monster today and turned in the corpse. Meryl, behind the counter, passed me the payment without delay.
"Haren, letters have been piling up for you lately."
"...Letters? Personal commissions?"
"I don't think that's what they are. These weren't written by monster hunters."
She handed me a letter as if I should see for myself. Pretty stationery, put together with considerable care. I tore it open, skimmed it, and handed it back to Meryl.
"You don't need to pass this kind along anymore."
"But I can't know what's in them without opening them."
"I trust your eye, Meryl."
She gave a wry smile.
"These people are going to be heartbroken."
"I'm not particularly good at sympathizing with the sadness of people I don't even know."
The contents were mostly all the same. I had no interest.
"Must be nice, being so popular."
Meryl laughed, teasing. I had no idea what the guild's resident beauty thought she was talking about.
I exchanged farewells with her, pocketed the money, and turned to leave. Maybe it was because this had become a familiar sight among the monster hunters by now. Nobody paid me any particular attention.
"No question about it now—he's a mid-grade hunter. Won't be long before he sheds that rookie label."
"Uncanny bastard. How does he keep bringing in mid-grade monsters all by himself?"
"Come to think of it, where's that Trenba guy who got wrecked by him? Hasn't shown his face in ages."
"Who knows. Heard he turned up in the back alleys once."
"Hmm. There's been some weird talk from that side lately. Something dangerous making the rounds."
"And a fair number of people have gone missing, for some reason."
Pointless talk was just part of a monster hunter's daily routine.
The back alleys, though. After I lost my parents, I'd drifted through those same streets as a child. The whole village had burned. At that age, it was the only way I had to make money.
Has something new been flowing in lately?
That bandit gang I'd run into last time, and now this. Public order was looking grim. A nearby city was in bad shape, and the rot was spreading to everything around it.
Best not to get involved with the back alleys.
Things on that side were tangled up in each other, all of it messy. Pull on one thread and a chain of new problems came with it. The smartest move was never to get involved in the first place.
I was thinking that as I headed for the training center when a voice caught my ear.
"Hey. You."
I turned my head, and there stood a man about my age. Two spears slung across his back, loose trousers, a wide coat—an outfit I'd never seen around here.
"You're that rookie everyone's talking about. The one who keeps beating mid-grade monsters into the dirt."
A grin split his face, flashing a set of perfectly even, startlingly white teeth. The man had exceptionally regular teeth.
"Is there something I can do for you?"
"Plenty. I am the successor of Golden Coral!"
Golden Coral. A monster-hunter team that used to operate here in Laoren before heading to the capital. Golden Coral wasn't even dead, so "successor" was a strange way to put it.
Meanwhile, he thrust a finger at me with complete confidence.
"I heard you received a scouting offer from Golden Coral."
I had received something like that. If I ever came to the capital, I was supposed to look them up. That counted as a scouting offer, I supposed.
"That offer should have been mine."
"Is that so."
"That's right. So fight me. I'll be taking that scouting offer for myself!"
Ah. This.
I'd gotten tangled up with the annoying kind of person.