The Mini Catapult
There was a mini catapult in the Colosseum.
Even I hadn't known it was there the first time I visited the Colosseum in the game. I'd just fought monsters until I was half-dead, and only later, when I finally checked the gimmicks properly, did I find the catapult tucked away in a corner.
Cannons were far too heavy and difficult to fire or reload alone, but a mini catapult was something you could manage by yourself without much trouble. Against strong monsters it only inflicted a brief stagger and barely registered, but against weak ones like a Pienos, it was more than enough to put them on the ground.
So I put that experience to work and headed straight for the catapult the moment the exam began. I wound the fully loosened rope as hard as I could and set one of the prepared stones on top.
I'd thought about firing once before the fight even started, just to give the newbies a hand… then it hit me. This was reality. What if a rock I launched by accident killed everyone?
Pull the lever carelessly and a disaster could break out right in the middle of the hunter exam. That thought left me stuck in limbo, unable to pull the lever and unable to do anything else either. Shouting would only draw the Pienos's aggro, so I stayed quiet. If the aggro swung to me, I'd have to fight — and the newbies deserved a chance to enjoy themselves.
So I settled in and simply watched them work.
Their coordination wasn't half bad. Watching them flounder against a single Pienos brought back old memories. I'd been like that once, too. As wounds carved themselves into a body one by one, a person grew harder for it — in reality and in games alike.
I was lost in nostalgia when my eyes met Yor's. He was staring at me with a dazed look.
This was my chance. A chance to fling the rock and join the fight. If I kept standing around, that Colosseum hunter might smack me upside the head. Failing the exam was a real possibility, so it was about time I made myself useful.
They were too busy fighting the Pienos to hear anything, so I explained with rough gestures and mouth shapes. I'll drop a rock in the center — lure it properly.
Fortunately, Yor caught my meaning right away.
"Everyone, get clear!"
Yor shouted to Ethan and Sophie and scrambled into position. Without a second's hesitation he charged the Pienos and smashed his shield into its face. I couldn't help but admire an attack that reckless. The Pienos's aggro locked onto him in an instant. I couldn't let that trust go to waste — all I had to do was pull the lever.
A game of tag between the Pienos and Yor began. A Pienos charged the moment its target got beyond a certain range, so the correct approach was usually to close the distance and fight up close. That same habit, though, made it easy to kite — exactly what Yor was doing now.
Time to throw the rock into that.
My gut told me to pull now. I yanked the lever and lifted my head. The catapult swung. The massive stone perched on top spun through the air. Everyone had cleared the radius.
The stone rose high, then fell — and cracked the Pienos across the skull before it could reach Yor.
KRAAANG—!
"Kyaa!"
"Wh-what was that?!"
————GRRAAaaaaa!!
The signal flare of a counterattack. The boulder shattered and the Pienos's body crumpled. A roar thick with pain tore through the air. It stung my ears a little, but that was fine. I wouldn't be hearing that roar again.
"Ohh…"
The Colosseum hunter couldn't hide his excitement as he watched the Pienos topple under that sudden giant stone throw. His expression, still chewing on a strip of jerky, was oddly animated.
To think she'd run straight for the catapult. She might have been the fastest of anyone who'd come through recently.
The Colosseum hunter had been watching everything, and Alice in particular. In his judgment, she was the one most likely to refuse cooperation. Before the fight had even started, she'd broken formation alone and sprinted for the catapult — not a single hesitant step, only strides full of certainty.
Had she known in advance? Even if she had, it wasn't cheating. Securing information early was part of a hunter's job. But even knowing a catapult existed in this Colosseum, dropping a stone without hitting your own teammates was hard. If her judgment had been off and a companion got hurt, the Colosseum hunter had been fully prepared to fail her on the spot. Even monsters didn't turn on their own kind. The grounds for failure would have been more than enough.
But the timing of that catapult shot had been perfect. They'd trusted each other — that was why she could pull the lever. Flawless.
The catapult wasn't everything, though. It dealt serious damage, but not enough to kill a Pienos. They needed to seize the opening while it was down. Now it was Alice's turn to join in.
"Hah… hah…!"
Yor's heart hammered as if it would burst. A fraction later and the Pienos would have crushed him to pulp; a fraction earlier and he would have been hit by the stone along with it. Perfect control. But this was no time for admiration.
"Ghh… my leg…"
The problem was Yor's leg. He'd run too hard, and a cramp seized his calf. His leg trembled violently. He clutched it and groaned. There was no time for this. He had to get up and finish the Pienos. But the leg showed no sign of recovering, and panic only sharpened.
"What on earth was that rock…"
"Wh-what just happened…?"
The other two could only stare at the thrashing Pienos. The catapult stone had slammed into its head and put it in a groggy state. It wouldn't be able to move properly for a short while.
"Attack it now!"
Yor shouted. He couldn't move, so at least those two had to go. They needed to deal whatever damage they could before the thing got back up. He gritted his teeth. Move, leg. Move, damn you.
They'd dealt heavy damage, so it was time to run the plan again. They could whittle it down. Ethan and Sophie as one team, Alice and himself as the other — use its charging habit, throw four bombs at one spot, then pile on more damage…
"Back to the plan…"
"It's fine."
Yor turned his head. Alice was looking down at him with indifferent eyes.
"You're hurt."
She was right. He couldn't move for the moment. A little time and he'd be fine — but a monster was never going to give him that time.
"Sorry."
Her peach-pink eyes regarded him without expression, then she said,
"You all did well."
She glanced at Ethan and Sophie, then turned toward the Pienos. Their delayed response had burned through the groggy window. Aside from the catapult hit, the creature had taken almost no real damage — but it had been more than enough to make it furious.
An abrupt fight, followed by a sudden rain of stone. Even a person would have been enraged. When monsters got angry, they lost their reason for a while and their field of vision narrowed. They saw nothing but the target.
————Grrrr!!
The Pienos shoved the rubble aside with open irritation. Its wildly rolling eyes made it clear that reason had already fled. Alice stepped in front of it.
The moment their eyes met, she calmly reached over her head. Her hand found the greatsword on her back. She gripped the hilt tight, put power into it, and stomped the ground hard once — a stomp so heavy it almost felt like the earth itself rang.
She poured everything into a single downward strike.
KRAANG—.
A clean True Charged Slash. Still not enough damage. Alice slipped the Pienos's counter and the corner of her mouth lifted.
Right. It wouldn't be any fun if it went down on the first hit.
She reset her stance. Watching the newbies fight had set her heart pounding so hard she could barely stand it — and now that her turn had come, her heart felt ready to explode. That was a hunter's instinct. The hunger for a challenge.
She was a challenger. Someone who resisted the natural order standing right in front of her. Someone who overturned the relationship between prey and predator through nothing but skill.
The dance of the greatsword began.
Ethan and Sophie tried to help her a beat too late, but the urge simply wouldn't come. Nothing about the fight looked dangerous. There wasn't even any tension in the way she fought. She parried every one of the Pienos's attacks by rolling or angling the flat of her greatsword, and landed every one of her own with surgical precision — a selfish style of combat. And yet anyone watching could see it was perfect.
Alice's pure white hair gradually turned a deep, bloody red. None of it was hers. Every drop had come from the Pienos. Smeared in the monster's sticky blood, she kept charging in to kill the thing in front of her.
The Pienos grew more frantic as none of its attacks landed. The rage never left, but as the damage piled up, its mind began to clear. The flame of its life was guttering. With exhausted eyes, the Pienos looked at Alice.
Which one of us is the monster?
To the Pienos, Alice was the monster.
Blood streamed from a face shattered by successive blows. It could not die like this.
————!!
The Pienos raised a foreleg high and brought it down with its full weight — a final thrash. Alice didn't move. Watching that desperate strike, she stepped into it instead.
"A-Alice!"
Yor cried out. The cry never reached her. Or rather — there had been no need to shout at all.
Alice watched the Pienos's limb with absolute certainty in her eyes. She stepped forward and stamped the ground hard. Using that planted foot as a pivot, she spun her body, gave the dangling greatsword's hilt a slight twist, and swept it upward.
It resembled a Full Moon Slash, but it was something else entirely. She hadn't taken a charging stance. And what she used was not the blade of the greatsword, but the flat.
The Pienos's foreleg met the face of the greatsword —
CLANG—!
— and rebounded with a clean, ringing sound.
"That is…!"
Pressed right up against the iron bars, the Colosseum hunter's eyes flew wide as he gripped the fence.
A life-gambling feat possible only if you read the enemy's attack perfectly and matched the timing. A technique so dangerous the Association didn't recommend it at all.
Flowing Water
That technique had been recreated in Alice's hands.
The greatsword flung the impact straight back into the Pienos. Its body flinched and locked up. She did not waste the opening. Without losing her power, Alice twisted the hilt again. The greatsword, edge now fully set, chased the Pienos's body.
A Full Moon Slash flowing straight out of Flowing Water carved cleanly through the Pienos.
KRRAAAAK—!
The greatsword tore through hide and split the creature's jaw. Its body collapsed. Alice gave the greatsword a light swing to fling off the blood, then sheathed it across her back.
The monster was dead. The exam was over. There was no cheering. Only silence.
Everyone was looking at Alice. Even under those stares she kept the same expression she always wore. She looked down at the Pienos, then turned her back on it and walked steadily toward Yor.
Yor watched her approach in a daze. Dripping monster blood from head to toe, she stopped, bent her knees slightly, and looked down at him. Then she reached out and pointed at his leg.
"Your leg. You okay?"
"…Huh?"
That day, Yor felt a strange flutter in his chest.
A Pienos in its enraged state used such honest patterns that it was basically a sandbag. That was why I'd used Flowing Water, one of the greatsword techniques. Similar to a parry, but a step above — a greatsword-only skill. It was closer to reflection: handing the full force of the impact straight back to the monster.
Flowing Water was a technique you absolutely could not use against things like a One-Eyed Luga-lac. Fast, irritating monsters like that never even gave a greatsword user the window to attempt it. Against those, you were better off just shoving them back with a regular parry. Botch Flowing Water and the recovery animation left you stuck, eating the next hit as a penalty. It was a dangerous skill even in the game — use it in a world like this and you might actually die.
So it was basically a trash skill, only worth using on soft targets like a Pienos or certain monsters with big, telegraphed attack animations. Still, the sound of the deflection alone was pure art. Leave it to the greatsword to be full of romance.
I hadn't planned to finish it that fast, but Yor hurting his leg threw me off and I scrambled to take the Pienos down. Then I went straight over to check on him. At first I felt bad, thinking maybe the rock had hit him —
"I-I'm fine! It's just a cramp…"
Yor waved his hands as he said it. So it was just a cramp. Suddenly I didn't feel bad anymore. I'd apologized for nothing and only made myself awkward. The atmosphere felt weirdly cold, too. What was I supposed to do with this mood?
Clank— clunk.
Right on cue, the tightly shut iron gate opened again. The Colosseum hunter beyond it walked in clapping out of nowhere.
"Excellent. Truly excellent."
Had we really looked that good? Well, the teamwork had been solid. Ethan and Sophie held the aggro while I finished loading the catapult, and Yor lured it into the center so I could land the rock… yeah, maybe we'd all just done well together like that.
A Pienos really was an easy monster. I had no doubt the others would have handled it fine even without me. I meant that.
"You all did well. Truly…"
The Colosseum hunter looked at us with genuine admiration.
"You are… fine hunters. You trusted your companions. The coordination was excellent. You didn't use the bombs, but the truth is you never even needed them. Remarkable. Even I… probably couldn't have done it quite like that."
Everyone nodded at his words. Standing still felt weird, so I nodded too.
Man, I wanted to wash up already. My whole body was covered in Pienos blood. My clothes were a mess — and they weren't even mine, just Association issue. They wouldn't make me wash them before returning them, right?
Was Noah waiting at the Association? I wanted to go tell her I'd passed as soon as possible.
"With that, there are no failures. All of you pass. Congratulations! Visit the Association counter again tomorrow to receive your hunter cards!"
"Yes!"
"And return the bombs."
"Uh…"
"Bombs are not souvenirs. They are Association property."
Sophie looked the most disappointed of anyone.
I was finally an official hunter. It didn't feel real yet — more like I'd just done the obvious thing and somehow become a hunter for it. It would probably sink in tomorrow. I started walking out of the Colosseum with my usual calm.
Drip. Drip-drip.
With every step, blood streamed off me, and every swing of my arms sent spatters flying front and back.
"Uwah…"
"Hieeek!"
"Ugh…"
Because of that, the others edged away from me. Sophie in particular looked thoroughly horrified. My heart was breaking. We'd been teammates.
"…You should probably wipe that off."
I had to agree. Before leaving the Colosseum, I wiped off some of the blood with a cloth. It wasn't all gone, but it was better than being soaked.
Even so, the hunter's gaze on me stayed just as intense.
Hey. Stop staring already.