The Justice I Seek
The small monsters encircling the walls had all been cleared without a single casualty.
"That's the last of them!"
The instant word went out that the final small monster had fallen, every hunter in the party dropped to the ground where they stood.
"Man, I'm wiped."
"It's gonna be even worse inside those walls, right? I'm already dreading it."
They weren't wrong. Things on the other side would only be uglier. The monsters had hit them right when everyone was already worn thin from the march. Nobody had died, but the drain on their stamina was going to cost them.
"We'll camp here for the night and move out again tomorrow."
That was why Krevan, their commander, called for rest. The hunters agreed without a single complaint and settled in to recover.
"Hey, Junior. Over here."
I'd been about to rest on my own when Ilekdra waved me over. We shared the same master. At this point I was already tangled up with the delinquents whether I liked it or not, and ignoring them now wouldn't get me anywhere.
"That's Haren, right?"
"Tsk tsk. Kid's gotten mixed up with those delinquents."
The rumors had already spread that far. There was no point worrying about it now. Besides, when had I ever gone around caring what other people thought? I just needed to ignore it.
"Tattooed pig! Hurry up and get the camp ready!"
"Nag, nag, nag. That's exactly why your boyfriend ran off."
"Why the hell are you bringing up my ex? You wanna die?"
While Ilekdra and Jeina launched into another fight, I quietly set about making camp. For all the bickering, their hands never stopped moving — proof enough that they were used to this.
"Junior."
That was when Ban came over and sat beside me. He'd been watching me closely during the fight. I tensed a little, not knowing what he might say.
"You used Fa Jin back there. Where did you learn it?"
What?
I nearly asked him what he was talking about. But Ban only narrowed his eyes at my reaction.
"Don't tell me you've been using it without even realizing?"
I was perfectly aware of what I was doing. I just knew it wasn't some special technique called Fa Jin. Dreygan had never mentioned anything like this. It seemed to be something only Ban knew about.
"You don't even know what Fa Jin is, do you?"
"No, I don't."
"...A genius, then."
Unfortunately, this body of mine had always been the dullest of the dull. This was the first time in my life anyone had called me a genius.
"Fa Jin, put simply, is a secret art passed down in the country I came from. It's a technique that lets you strike through the outside of a target and damage what's inside. Even if someone's wearing armor, you can still hurt them underneath it."
"There's a technique like that?"
"There is. And what you've been using on instinct is Fa Jin."
I felt bad for Ban, but the power I used had nothing to do with Fa Jin at all. It was magic, plain and simple — there was a reason I'd named it Instant Death Magic. To someone who already knew Fa Jin, though, that was apparently what it looked like.
"Medium-class monsters have thick hides and strong regeneration as a baseline. That's why hunts drag on, and why you need a lot of people. Seeing you use Fa Jin, I finally understand how you've been hunting medium-class monsters on your own all this time."
Just like that, he'd found an explanation that satisfied him. Ban's face said he'd already settled on that conclusion. I didn't need to explain Instant Death Magic, so maybe this was for the best. If anything, leaning into his story and calling it Fa Jin from now on would make it easier for people to accept the way I fought.
"What was your country like, Senior Ban?"
"It was a prosperous place. A good place, until I became an orphan."
"Did something happen to your parents?"
My own parents had been killed by a mage and a monster. I asked because I wondered if Ban's story was the same. His face changed color.
"A mage wiped the entire country off the map."
A mage. The moment that word left his mouth, a quiet killing intent began to seethe across Ban's face.
"I don't know why. All I know is that our country never accepted a mage's help. Not once."
So that was how it had been. As a child, Ban had lost his parents and his country and crossed into a foreign land. He'd wandered without a destination until he met Dreygan and became his disciple. That was Ban's life. He, too, was someone who had walked a hard road.
"Do you want revenge on that mage?"
"I used to."
Ban looked down at his sword and smiled, a little bitter.
"But at Master's side, I saw mages with my own eyes more than once. I couldn't imagine my blade reaching a single one of them."
Mages were a different breed of existence from ordinary people. No matter how finely you honed your sword, there was nothing you could do when fire-wrought stone rained from the sky. You'd just be buried under it and die. On top of that, mages always wrapped themselves in something like a barrier. Swing a sword at that and you'd only be cutting air.
"You only have to look at Master. He's already surpassed a realm most people can't even see."
"Yeah. I noticed."
When I sparred with Dreygan, I could never find a path to beating him. He, too, was a being from a plane entirely apart.
"And Master himself said even he couldn't do anything against a mage. I haven't even surpassed Master yet. I'm still a complete greenhorn."
Whenever Dreygan thought of mages, a bitterness would cross his face. That same bitterness had passed down to Ban.
"They say mages have no lifespan. They live for hundreds of years, even thousands, never dying, doing nothing but researching magic."
A human's few decades of effort could never reach beings like that. Even a genius couldn't close a gap that wide. And mages didn't even die of old age. They kept their bodies at their peak, always.
"Wanting revenge under those conditions is arrogance. I need to surpass Master first. Then I can think about it."
Surpassing Dreygan. That alone was a wall most people would never climb. And mages were a wall beyond even that.
"Sounds like a long revenge."
"A long revenge."
Ban repeated the words under his breath, then gave a short laugh.
"Yeah. I suppose it is."
In every way that mattered, Ban was a stubborn man.
"What, Ban? Telling another one of your boring stories?"
"As if anything would be interesting to you."
Ilekdra dropped down beside us with a water flask, laughing under his breath. He drained the entire thing in one go. Given the size of him, I supposed the amount he drank shouldn't have been surprising either.
"Anyway, that's Ban. What about you, Junior? What's your goal?"
So he'd been listening the whole time, pretending not to.
"People get stronger when they have a goal, you know."
A goal. My life right now was about survival. If I didn't hunt monsters, the mana stone would kill me — so I had to hunt. If a life like that could have a goal...
"I want to live justly. A justice that never bows its head, no matter what kind of villain stands in front of me. And I don't want that to be my story alone."
I closed my hand around Oble's shield. Crying out for justice in front of a villain. I had spent my whole life learning how hard that really was.
The justice I was chasing had taken on a clearer shape than before. It wasn't just my own private story anymore. I wanted the whole world to become a place like that — the way my father had cried out in front of a mage.
"That's a hard road you're picking."
This world had too many villains in it. A world where a flick of the wrist could kill a person. That was why the weak had to hide, and stay silent. I had lived that way myself, and I hated it.
Ilekdra clapped me on the shoulder.
"Give it everything you've got. Nothing even starts until you've got something you believe in."
For someone who looked the way he did, Ilekdra was a surprisingly careful man.
"Hey, tattooed pig. Quit the pretty speeches, balloon-muscles, and help me with the food."
"Oh, look at you. Stacking the nicknames now, are we?"
Ilekdra got up at Jeina's scolding. For all the fighting, those two seemed closer than anyone.
My eyes drifted to the walls. Someday, I hoped, the grand things I said would sound like the truth. That was all I quietly wished for.
The next morning, the hunters finished tearing down the camp. The mood among them was nothing like the day before. Yesterday's small monsters had been a taste. What waited inside those walls would put them to shame, and every hunter there had adjusted their mindset accordingly.
"Listen up. I'm going to go over the team assignments for when we face medium-class monsters. Open your ears."
Krevan had gathered the more respected hunters the day before and put the teams together. The groups had been built around people who already knew how to work with each other, so nobody raised a fuss.
"Team Eight. Ilekdra, Jeina, Ban, Haren."
And just like that, I was on the delinquents' team. Ilekdra grinned at me from the side. From the look of it, he'd pushed hard to get me assigned with them. I'd always worked alone. But with a melee like this one coming, teams were mandatory. I could handle a single medium-class monster, but if a pack of them came at me I'd be dead. At least when it came to fighting monsters, the delinquents were people I could trust.
"What about the large monsters?"
One of the hunters asked the right question. Three large monsters had appeared in the city this time. A single one of those things could flatten a city on its own. With three of them, there was no plan that made sense.
"Word came down that the capital hunters will handle the large monsters. Our job is to clear out the medium-class and small ones so they can do theirs."
In other words, we were the cleanup crew for the capital hunters.
"Damn it. So we're just the cleanup crew."
"Those capital bastards and their swagger."
Nobody actually argued with Krevan, though. Large monsters were beyond what ordinary hunters could handle. If we all rushed one, we'd just die in a heap.
"Have you ever fought a large monster yourself, Senior Ilekdra?"
In Laoren, a mage almost always stepped in when a large monster appeared. There was one stationed in the city year-round. I asked because I wondered if Ilekdra had ever had the chance. He nodded.
"I have. But you're better off not fighting those things if you can help it."
"They're so huge that dealing any real physical damage is almost impossible."
Jeina agreed with him. It was like a person spending all day digging at a mountain with a shovel — you'd never even see a dent.
"Are the capital hunters different, then?"
Mages took down large monsters like it was nothing. I couldn't imagine how a hunter was supposed to do the same.
"They're not that different from us, honestly. If I had to name one thing, it's the weapons."
"The weapons?"
"They use special weapons forged from mana stones. I heard some mage in the capital mass-produces them."
"So in the end it's the tools doing the work, not the hunter."
The thought left a bitter taste. People, then large monsters, and mages sitting above them both.
"No. There are some who don't rely on tools like that."
Ban cut in, correcting me.
"Monsters who can cut down even a large monster. People like that do exist."
"Well, Master's in that category, for one. Back in his day he took down so many large monsters you couldn't even count them."
Ilekdra laughed in agreement. Dreygan. That monster of a man. I was going to have to treat him with even more respect from now on.
"Hunters of the Laoren branch — we move!"
At Krevan's shout, the hunters surged forward as one. At last, we were entering the Jefran barony.