A Sore Loser's Promise
When I came back after beating Maria, I spotted Dreygan in the distance. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching me.
"So you beat Maria."
"It was a one-time trick. It won't work on her again."
Judging by the way Maria moved, she would never let another hit land. With that greatsword and those lightning-fast feet, she wouldn't even let me close the distance. That really had been my last shot at winning.
"Hrm. That thing you used just now — is that what you use when you take down monsters?"
I wondered how it had looked through Dreygan's eyes. I hadn't shown him the true power of Instant Death Magic. Instant Death Magic was terrifying because it killed on the spot. What I'd done just now — cutting the flow of her body — wasn't nearly so dangerous a technique.
"Yes, that's right."
"Picked up some peculiar tricks, I see."
Dreygan didn't press any further.
"Still, I get why you were so hung up on fighting barehanded. When we sparred, you wanted to use that on me too, didn't you?"
Our first spar. He was talking about the moment my hand had touched his ankle. I hadn't been able to use it the way I could now, but the intent had been the same.
"Something like that."
"Good enough. Follow me. We're going to have to rethink how we train you from here."
In other words, he was going to work me into the ground. Which was exactly what I wanted.
"Before that — there's something you don't know. I'll tell you now."
"Sir?"
"Maria is a sore loser."
What was that supposed to mean? Maria, a sore loser? I blinked at him, but Dreygan offered nothing more. Instead, he made sure I got a particularly generous helping of training that day.
A few days later, I understood why he'd said it.
After the fight, Maria didn't show her face for a while. Then one day she reappeared — and starting with my spars against Wolfgar, she began watching me from behind a tree for the entire duration of training.
Did she honestly think a tree that small could hide someone that tall?
I tried approaching her a few times about the bizarre behavior, but she vanished like a shot every time.
"Ugh. Feels like I'm being watched by some forest ghost."
Wolfgar shuddered all over, declaring that ghosts were the one thing he couldn't stand.
While I was still baffled by Maria's antics, Dreygan wandered over.
"Heh heh. Didn't I tell you? Maria's a sore loser."
"She just watches. She won't even talk to me."
"She might never talk to you for the rest of her life."
That would be its own kind of problem. Sparring with Maria had taught me a great deal. Even if I couldn't win next time, I wanted to challenge her again.
"She's my granddaughter, but that girl has never lost to anyone in her entire life. She'll be like this for a while. Just leave her be."
If Dreygan said so, I'd let it go for now. Besides, Maria only acted this way inside the training grounds. Compared to that strange woman who'd latched onto me before, this was nothing.
"More importantly, the news coming in lately hasn't been good."
"You mean Jefran."
"That's right. The number of people flowing in from that direction keeps growing."
Jefran, a city rotting away under the rampage of corrupt officials. The refugees and bandits spilling out of it were starting to hurt neighboring Laoren as well.
I thought of the valuables I carried loosely in my coat — the gold plaque that bandit had been carrying when I'd run into him.
"If a large-class monster shows up in that city, the whole place will go under."
"We'll have to hope that doesn't happen."
They had monster hunters over there too. All we could do was hope they held the line.
"Dreygan, sir."
Just then, one of the instructors walked over.
"The Delinquent Trio are coming back soon."
"Already? The training center's about to be in an uproar again."
The Delinquent Trio. I'd heard of them too.
"Ah, right. Haren — watch yourself. Those three will take an interest in you."
That was the last thing I needed. People I had no desire to get mixed up with. I'd have to make a point of staying out of their way.
I finished the day's training and walked outside. The sun was already sinking, painting the sky in fading gold.
I'd gotten used to life at the training center. My body had been forged, and I could say with confidence that I'd gotten a lot stronger.
But even so.
Whenever I thought of the mages, a wall rose up in front of me. They were beings who had surpassed humanity.
Compared to mages who lived forever, an ordinary life was nothing but a moment passing through.
I was about to start walking with that thought still lingering when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned my head. Maria was standing there.
"U-um, Haren."
How long had it been since she'd spoken to me first?
I looked back at her, a little surprised, and found her biting down hard on her lip. Resentment still burned in both her eyes.
Ah. That was it. Maria was eighteen. Still very much a child. She'd made a name for herself as the Rookie Slayer, but losing still stung. Opening her mouth first couldn't have been easy.
I could take the first step here.
"Want to spar again sometime?"
I asked, offering her a small smile. Maria's lips parted and closed. Then, slowly, she nodded. Too much the proper young lady to answer out loud.
"B-before. You asked me about my dream."
Maria, who hadn't had any particular dream. That genius looked at me now with the face of someone who had finally found one.
Terrifying. Even now, if you took Instant Death Magic out of the equation, I couldn't see a way to beat her. If she got even stronger from here... how far would she go? I couldn't even begin to guess.
Was that a warning not to let her catch up? Or an invitation to follow? I was too old to understand the heart of a teenage girl, but I nodded anyway.
"I will."
"Ah — goodbye."
With that, Maria said her farewell and bolted.
After Wolfgar, I'd gained yet another terrifying rival. And yet, somehow, I was smiling. Maybe it was because this was the first time anyone had ever seen me as a rival. My chest felt strangely light.
I'm still a kid myself, aren't I.
It felt like I'd stumbled across the child still hiding somewhere deep inside me.
I need to get stronger. Relentlessly.
Strong enough to live up to Maria's expectations. Strong enough that, someday, I could surpass even Dreygan.
With that firm resolution, I arrived at the inn. After a full day of being put through the wringer, I planned to grab my things and head to the nearby bathhouse.
I was just sliding the key in to open the door when—
Click.
The lock fastened shut instead.
My eyes drifted slowly to the doorknob. I'd locked that door when I left this morning. Why would it lock again?
I didn't need long to figure out why.
Click.
I unlocked the door. An empty room stared back at me.
"Ha."
A stunned breath slipped from my mouth. My room had nothing in it. Not my gear, not anything. Completely stripped.
Yeah. Goddamn it.
I'd been robbed.
And here I'd thought my luck had been strangely good lately.
Even with the door locked, a thief had gotten in. The fact was bitter, but it wasn't something I'd never considered. A lock, after all, can always be picked if someone wants it badly enough.
I stood in the empty room and let out a sigh. Why I'd been targeted wasn't hard to figure out.
My reputation had exploded recently. That kind of rumor wouldn't have stayed among monster hunters — it would've reached their acquaintances too.
Two rumors had spread about me. One: I was a solo mid-class monster hunter. Two: I was in debt for stealing a mana stone.
Lately I'd been bringing in mid-class monsters like clockwork, but I never brought back the mana stones. People had built their own theories about that. Mid-class monster mana stones were expensive, so I must be using every last one to pay down my debt. Which meant I was hiding the stones somewhere and only collecting the commission fees.
That seemed to be the rumor going around. It was a reasonable enough theory. If I were looking at myself from the outside, I'd probably have come to the same conclusion.
The problem was that the rumor had attracted a thief. A pile of mana stones, supposedly sitting in an inn room. The thief would've torn the place apart looking for them, and of course found nothing. Then, out of spite, they'd grabbed everything I owned and run.
"...There's a reason monster hunters who actually make money stay at decent inns."
The inn I was staying at was a cheap place even a monster corpse cleaner could afford. For a thief, there was no easier target.
I asked the innkeeper, just to check. He said a few first-time guests had come through today. But I doubted that sliver of information would be enough to find anyone.
All that was left in the room were some worn clothes and underwear. Everything else — all my equipment — was gone. I especially mourned the custom-made boots. I'd commissioned those from a blacksmith, and the bastard had snatched them right up.
Fortunately, the small savings I usually carried were still in my pocket. So were the valuables I'd recovered from those bandits. Staying at a place like this had trained me to keep my money on me. The only thing in the room had been a handful of loose change, so the thief must've been pretty disappointed too. No mana stones — just a bunch of grimy gear.
"Son of a bitch."
Still. Those were things I'd put real care into. Getting them stolen made my blood boil, but there was nothing I could do. If I reported it to the town watch, they'd say they'd look into it and promptly forget. I'd never seen those guys do their jobs properly.
I locked the now-useless door and headed downstairs, where a familiar face was waiting.
"Yo, Haren."
Oble. One of the few monster hunters I was actually close with had, for some reason, come all the way to the inn. He hadn't shown his face in a while. It really had been a long time.
"Oble. What's the occasion?"
"Figured we could grab a drink. My treat. What do you say?"
No reason to refuse. I needed something to shake off this foul mood.
"Where are we drinking?"
"There's that roast chicken place right out front. Let's go there."
What did he want to talk about, coming all this way?
I followed Oble into the nearby roast chicken shop, and a waitress recognized us.
"Oh, hey there, handsome."
This waitress called every man older than her some flavor of that.
"It's been a while, hasn't it? You should come by more often just to see me."
"As you can see, I'm broke."
Today I really had been cleaned out.
"Heheh. I'll take extra good care of you, so drop by more often. You look even more handsome than last time."
She winked and showed us to a table. Once we sat down, Oble glanced toward the waitress and said,
"I don't know about anything else, but eating with you is the best, Haren. The whole world turns kind."
"Would be nice if monster hunters were kind too."
Would be nice if the world in general were a little kinder, while we were at it.
"Monster hunters are a tough crowd. The place is crawling with nothing but men."
A regrettable reality. In all my years, I'd only ever seen maybe one female monster hunter. Mages, on the other hand, came in every age and gender. For monster hunters, it just couldn't be helped.
"I'm quitting monster hunting."
That came out of nowhere. I looked at Oble, and he grinned.
"I was never much of a hunter to begin with, right? I was planning to quit when the time was right, and well — the timing worked out."
"I see."
"Beers over here!"
The waitress brought our drinks. A cold swallow later, I felt a little better.
"I'm going to keep going."
Oble and I had been colleagues for a long time. Recruits together, side by side ever since. I knew better than anyone what kind of hunter Oble had been. Even if he quit, I had no intention of stopping.
"Of course you are. Haren, your stock's gone through the roof lately. Come on, tell me. What the hell did you do?"
"I absorbed a monster mana stone."
"Just say a mage helped you out. If you're gonna lie, at least make it sound believable."
I'd told him the truth and gotten treated like a liar.
"Honestly, more than anything else — my wife and I are having a kid."
So that was the real reason he was quitting.
"Monster hunting's a razor's-edge job, you know? The second I pictured my kid in my wife's belly, I just... I couldn't do it anymore."
The pay was decent, but you never knew when you'd die. If he kept hunting, he might never even see his child's face. So Oble had decided to take a safer path.
"Good call. Congratulations."
"Heh. Time to play dad."
Oble drank like the beer was sweet, gulping it down. But there was a bitterness underneath.
"Sorry, Haren. That promise we made — to see this through as hunters till the end. I can't keep it."
Oble and I had more in common than just being colleagues. We'd both lost our parents to monsters. That old hatred toward monsters — Oble had carried it too. That was why we'd gotten along so well. Why our goals had lined up.
"You've got something more important than monsters now."
Oble wasn't thinking about revenge anymore. The only future left for him was the one he'd live with his wife and child. As far as retiring from monster hunting went, it was the best possible ending.
Oble rubbed a hand under his nose.
"Alright, enough about me. You got any good stories, Haren? You've been on a tear lately. The women around you can't possibly be leaving you alone. Bet it's chaos."
My circle of acquaintances had gotten a little wider, sure. But I had something more entertaining than that.
"Got robbed today. They cleaned out all my gear."
"Oh, for— I told you to get out of that inn!"
The look on Oble's face was so dumbfounded I couldn't help cackling.
An old colleague. A close friend. With his retirement as our excuse to keep the drinks coming, we sat there trading the most pointless stories in the world.