The Zaraqueen Hunt
The western outskirts of the village. A brutal stretch of land, dense with trees, where patches of frozen snow still clung to the earth even though spring had already come. A cold wind swept through, coiling through my insides before it passed on, and that alone was enough to set a body shivering. Before I knew it, the people had thinned away to almost nothing.
To be honest, I had never once come out this far. I was the infamous weakling of the monster hunter guild. That was me. And that same me had come here to hunt a mid-sized monster.
There was no thrill in it. If anything, my mind had gone still and heavy. I ran my fingers along the grappling hook at my waist. Hunting a mid-sized monster was an extraordinarily dangerous thing — a sheet of ice so thin that one small mistake took your head clean off. And even that was when you came with a group. Coming out alone to hunt a monster was something I had never done in my entire life. A prickling numbness crept into my toes. I would rather face Trenba ten more times than take on a mid-sized monster by myself.
But I had decided to put my faith in Instant Death Magic. If I couldn't kill a mid-sized monster here, I had no future.
Grass crunched under my boot. It came up to my knees — proof that no human foot had passed this way in a long time. A place people didn't come was a place given over entirely to the wild, and the ground around me was nothing but weeds and overgrowth. Here and there, ruins of an older style of building showed through the greenery. People had lived here once. Then the monsters started appearing more often, and the land fit for human life shrank with them.
I pushed through a cloud of insects that kept blotting out my vision, and before long I had reached the spot I'd marked. A chill crawled up my spine, the kind that had nothing to do with the wind.
Five years as a monster hunter. They'd called me a weakling the whole time, but I had a sense for these things.
There's a monster nearby.
I held my breath, and far ahead, something hung from a tree. It looked like an enormous cocoon. A single deer's leg jutted out from between the silk — the remains of some animal that had been wandering too close and gotten itself eaten. A larder, from the look of it. I stayed where I was, breathing as quietly as I could. The carcass hadn't started to rot.
The monster won't be far.
I climbed the tree at once and settled in among the branches to wait. Time crawled. This was a battle of patience. I had no idea where the thing would show itself, so I killed every scrap of presence I could, and the fatigue that came with it pressed down hard — but I held on.
I had been waiting a long while when it came.
A dry, scritching rustle, like an insect crawling around inside my ear. My gaze drifted slowly toward the sound, and the scene beyond it slid into view.
A spider the size of a house. Webbing hung from its body in swollen, boil-like clusters, and its face was the face of an old man — every last hair gone from his scalp. A monster whose appearance was, by any measure, impossibly far from anything that belonged in this world.
Just looking at it set my fingertips trembling. It had the enormous bulk you'd expect from a mid-sized monster — the kind of size that, had it shown up inside the village, would have had them calling for a mage on the spot. And it had already eaten more than a few hunters.
One of the reasons the mid-sized monsters out here on the outskirts were left alone was that they had already adapted to the land. Walking into their territory as a hunter was walking into their front yard. Outskirts hunts were far harder than ordinary ones for exactly that reason.
I read the briefing. I did.
I just hadn't imagined it would be this big. I could see why so many hunters had gone down to it.
I clenched my fist, then opened it. Could I do this? The doubt lasted only a moment. It wasn't a question of whether I could.
I had to.
I raised my wrist and took aim at Zaraqueen. A wet, splitting sound, and then an eyelid opened on my wrist. Inside it, Zaraqueen was reflected.
Show me. Please, just show me.
I stared until my eyes burned — and then I saw it. Deep inside Zaraqueen, a dark violet flame was burning. The creature's life force, caught clear and sharp in my sight. A vast purple blaze, huge and rich. It was almost painfully beautiful. Almost painfully tempting.
But I knew it by instinct. To put that life out, I would have to put my hand on its body.
From that moment, what I was going to do was already decided. The instant I saw the flame, something in me snapped. A craving rose up that I had to have it — no matter what.
Zaraqueen turned its back, reaching for the deer carcass. The moment it started to pull the body apart, I threw myself from the tree without a shred of hesitation and hurled the grappling hook in the same breath.
A weightless rush wrapped around my whole body as Zaraqueen's massive carapace rushed up to meet me.
The hook caught on the edge of its shell. I landed on its back and reached for the flame without a second's pause, and that searing heat closed in my hand.
It was hot. And it was fierce. The flame was as enormous as the mid-sized monster that held it. I poured every ounce of strength I had into my grip and crushed it down.
Zaraqueen noticed me a beat too late, and its body locked up solid. Then it started to thrash, whipping itself from side to side, trying to fling me off its back. I clamped down and held on for everything I was worth, wedging my feet into the gaps in its hide and keeping my body as low as I could.
The flame did not go out easily. But little by little, the blaze was shrinking. Of course it was taking time. A soul that vast and magnificent was never going to die in a hurry.
Then Zaraqueen leapt. It swung its back toward the trees, trying to crush me against the trunks along with everything else on its shell. I grabbed the line on the hook and threw myself clear by a hair. My body lifted into the air as the creature smashed through several trees with its back. If I had still been sitting there, I would have been pulp, same as the wood.
Falling wasn't an option either. Hit the ground and Zaraqueen would stamp me to death. I hauled myself back up the line by whatever means I could, climbed on again, and reached for the flame.
It shrank, bit by bit. Zaraqueen bucked and fought a few more times, but the smaller the flame grew, the less its body moved. Sweat poured down my face. A sharp ache ran through the hand gripping the line, the muscles swelling taut. If I hadn't absorbed that small-sized monster and the mana stone beforehand, I wouldn't have lasted. I would have been thrown off.
A wet, choking rattle came from Zaraqueen — a ragged, dying gasp, as if the air itself were leaving it. Then the strength went out of its legs, and that enormous body came down. The birds in the surrounding trees startled and fled.
Zaraqueen went completely still. Rest settled over it like a shroud.
I stood on its carapace, dragging air into my lungs. There was no movement left in it at all. An invincible mid-sized monster I had been sure I could never kill, no matter what I did — and it was dead.
And that wasn't all. Zaraqueen's flame passed out of its body and into mine. The crimson fire I already carried burned harder than before, and a rush of vitality swept through every inch of me. My vision widened. My muscle mass climbed again. The growth wasn't even in the same world as what I'd gotten from the small-sized monster.
My fist closed. I had killed a mid-sized monster with my own hands. An outskirts mid-sized monster. That fact sent a thrill through me I had no words for.
"Ha. Haha."
A hollow laugh kept slipping out of me, and I couldn't have said why.
The day the village burned. From that day on, monsters had been the symbol of everything I feared. That was why I became a hunter. I thought if I became one, I might forget the fear, even a little. But the fear never left. I was weak, and the monsters were terrifying. The mages always ruled from the sky, and the other hunters laughed at me as a matter of course. Haren the weakling, a man whose life wasn't worth a damn. That was who I was, and that was who I would have stayed.
Not anymore.
Monsters could not frighten me. Not so long as I had Instant Death Magic. I didn't care if this power had come from a parasitic monster. The day my parents died, I would have taken a gift from the devil himself. I had begged for anything — anything at all.
My parents were killed by a mage and a monster. My father had been a righteous man. My mother had been a gentle one. A monster tearing the village apart — and a mage who ignored it, who smiled as he murdered the people begging him for help. My father stood up to that horror the way a just man does, and he died for it. My mother was eaten in our place, trying to protect the village children, myself among them.
I had watched that village burn from a hill, and I had wished. For the power to kill monsters. For the power to kill the wicked, mage or otherwise. For the power to cry out for justice the way my father had. For the power to save someone the way my mother had. I had wished for that power with everything in me, and I had worked for it.
And what had I been, all this time? No matter how hard I tried, this wretched body of mine never got any stronger. I had fallen ill as a child, been born frail, and a cleaner's work was the most I could manage. So my justice faded with it. I pretended not to hear Trenba's mockery. I bowed my head to a mage who had killed a child. A justice so pathetic it had lost all its color.
Not anymore. Monster's power, magic, the devil — I didn't care. If I had power, that was enough. I would not fear monsters any longer. I would not fear mages any longer. The shackles I had worn since I was a child had finally come off, and that fact sent a tremor through me I could not stop. Hot tears welled in both eyes and spilled down my face.
Even so.
The reality was that I still couldn't afford to get careless against a monster. My Instant Death Magic could stop the heart of a creature this size in a single moment — but the risk was that I had to touch it. To solve that, I needed to move faster, and more precisely. Fortunately, even among hunters, I had always been quick on my feet. They used to mock me for it — fast legs on a weakling, what a joke. Right now, I was grateful for those legs.
I had to get stronger. Stronger than this. Much stronger. Strong enough that my justice would never fade again. The resolve settled through my whole body, and it became another kind of strength.
I let out a long breath. Waiting for the monster in that state of tension had wrung me dry. I drew the sword at my waist. I needed proof that I had hunted Zaraqueen.
I couldn't take the mana stone, though. As far as I could tell, a monster's life force was its mana stone. The moment I stole that life, the stone would have crumbled to powder, same as before.
"Would've been worth a fortune, too."
I muttered it to myself, tasting the regret. A monster this size would have been carrying a mana stone of considerable value. A shame that killing them meant destroying the stone. The debts could be paid down in time. At least the request fee would come through just for taking the thing down. I'd have to settle what I owed a little at a time, with that.
That was enough for today. I'd take the proof of the kill and head back. And with that, I started in on the cleaning and butchering I had spent so long training for.
The road home, with proof that I had brought down Zaraqueen in my pack. My steps were almost weightless, and my chest was light. I could kill the monsters I had wanted dead for so long — kill them in a single instant. How was I supposed to keep my feet from dancing?
My body felt light. I had spent the entire day waiting in a tree; I should have been wrung out to nothing. And yet I seemed to be running faster than before. I felt that clean, that clear. Absorbing the mid-sized monster — Zaraqueen — had done this.
Maybe I should go back to the monster hunter training camp I gave up on.
If I hunted a few more, I might even put up a decent showing there. I had always wanted to get stronger. Suddenly I had more to do than I knew what to do with. At last, a little sunlight had found its way into my life.
Of course, I still had no idea where Instant Death Magic had come from. There was every chance it carried some danger nobody knew about yet.
But not using what's already in my hand would be the stupider thing.
I would use it for as long as I could. That was the kind of man I was.
I passed the entrance to the outskirts and came into the city. Evening had crept up on me. Smoke was curling from chimneys here and there, and a warmth hung in the air. Everyone was in the middle of supper. Food could wait. My feet took me straight to the Laoren Guild.
I shoved open the door on the same bright light as always, and the racket inside dipped a notch. In its place, every eye in the room found me.
"Oh, it's the guy who wrecked the troublemaker."
"The troublemaker? Wait — so it's actually true? Haren crippled Trenba?"
"Come on. No way that guy pulled that off. Nothing going for him but his face."
"Hey, hey, never mind that — you hear why Trenba was riding him so hard? Lost a girl to him, apparently."
"Pffhahaha! I'll give Trenba this — that face of his is the real deal. A walking chastity belt all on its own."
It was night already, and they were still on this. Monster hunters lived like mayflies. Lives that short made for rough talk, and it flew back and forth without a filter. Trenba was going to get chewed to pieces at this rate. Judging by the way they were talking, he hadn't shown up today. Maybe this would be the thing that made him turn over a new leaf and stop going around tormenting people.
"Haren!"
A voice I knew. Oble.
"Is it true you took Trenba down?"
Oble had tried to stop Trenba that day and gotten punched for it — sent flying. He hadn't seen how it ended, so he'd come to confirm it himself.
"Ask Trenba."
"That bastard hasn't shown his face since yesterday. And he's the type who shows up here every single day."
What wonderful news.
"Anyway. I've got business with a request."
I left Oble where he was and walked up to the staff counter.
"Ah, Haren."
Five years at a guild and the staff remember you. Meryl beamed and greeted me like an old friend. She was the guild's resident beauty, and a dozen grimy men were staring daggers at my back for it. I ignored them.
"Proof of completion. Outskirts monster request — Zaraqueen."
"I— I'm sorry?"
I unfastened my pack and set the contents down in front of her. Zaraqueen's head.
"Eek!"
Meryl startled and cried out. Fair enough — Zaraqueen's head looked almost human. But the eyes she turned on me after that were wider still, and the hunters packed in behind me were no different. Every last one of them was staring as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
For the first time in my life, I decided to let myself feel a little proud. A hard life. And this — this was the first taste of superiority I had ever known, all of it from Instant Death Magic I had gained by chance.