A Blade Tempered for Monsters
In Vincenzo's estimation, Alice was a woman without a single opening.
Having casually dismantled Adelaide's blockade at the entrance and walked straight in, Alice was far thinner than Vincenzo had expected.
She wore a fine-grained leather pair of trousers and a gray shirt. Her thighs were no thicker than his own arms, and her head looked small enough that he could cover it completely with one palm. The ankles peeking between her legs and her boots were so slender it was a wonder they could support her body at all.
Part of that was Vincenzo's own hulking build, of course — but Alice's frame was genuinely thinner than most. Even so, she did not look fragile.
A cold expression that suited the approaching winter. Eyes that gave nothing away. Nestled in the cherry-blossom light of those irises, something frigid lay sleeping. If a master craftsman had poured decades of his life into a single blade, it would have felt exactly like this.
Vincenzo found himself recalling the rumors about Alice. He had heard them from the branch manager, and from other hunters the same words tended to surface. The stories had naturally hardened into accepted fact: that beneath her cold exterior, this hunter named Alice walked upon the thick blood of monsters and rotting corpses.
The Slaughterer, they called her. A rather grand nickname for a hunter — and yet, somehow, the atmosphere around her made it fit.
Alice was a blade tempered for one purpose alone: killing monsters. That a hunter like her had appeared in this world was, Vincenzo thought, perhaps inevitable. To resolve the anomalies threatening humanity, a merciless hunter like Alice had been called forth.
When their eyes met, Alice was the first to offer a greeting — and despite Vincenzo being her superior in both appearance and rank, she used no honorifics at all.
"Hey."
That brazenness rather pleased him.
"So you're Alli…sa?"
"Association President. It's Alice."
"Right, Alice. Just as I'd heard — you don't bother with formalities. Good to meet you."
Remembering names was another matter entirely. Age played a part, but the greater culprit was how recklessly he had treated his body in his youth. In his younger days he had thrown himself into hunter work with such ferocity that head injuries had been common. Now, in his old age, he had a tendency to forget things — people's names especially. It was the price of his younger sins, but Vincenzo regretted none of it. Thanks to those years, he now sat in a seat like this one, free to watch hunters shine with brilliant light.
He extended a hand.
"I'm Vincenzo. Nothing special, but I happen to be the head of the Hunter Association."
"Yeah. Nice to meet you."
Alice took his hand. It was not soft — far rougher than most. Feeling the traces of years packed into that small hand, Vincenzo roughly sized her up.
"How long have you been a hunter?"
"Seven months now."
So this was a seven-month hand. He could not even laugh. Hands like these normally took years to develop. Vincenzo concluded that the stories about Alice, at least, were no lies. Had she been a man, he might have squeezed hard to test her strength — but she was a woman, and looking at her felt a bit like looking at a young child of his own. He simply could not bring himself to do it.
Now it was time to hear what he wanted to hear. Settling into his seat, Vincenzo spoke.
"Our most important guest has arrived, so I suppose we can get to talking."
What Vincenzo pursued most in the profession of hunting was adventure and challenge. Adventure — stepping without hesitation toward the unknown. Challenge — walking the threshold between life and death, facing monsters stronger than oneself. What a hunter gained in that process was knowledge that only experience could teach, and glorious scars. The indescribable sense of accomplishment was, of course, inseparable from being a hunter as well.
Age had made such adventures and challenges difficult for him now, but simply watching other hunters accomplish them felt like watching his own younger self — and that made him happy.
Alice, now seated, swatted away the princess's approaching hand and said,
"So what's this about?"
"Why, I intend to appoint you Master Hunter, of course."
"Hmm."
Vincenzo found Alice's unexpectedly flat reaction curious. The rank of Master Hunter was a position every hunter dreamed of at least once. Wealth and renown came with it, of course, along with priority rights on commission contracts and opportunities to work hand-in-hand with the Association. It was a position anyone would covet — and yet Alice's face showed neither joy nor displeasure.
Curious, Vincenzo asked,
"Not happy about it? Becoming a Master Hunter is a difficult, demanding thing."
"More or less."
Meaning that on the path of the hunter Alice pursued, Master Hunter was not the goal. Vincenzo nodded to himself. In his eyes, Alice seemed to resent even this moment as a waste of time. Did she truly want nothing but to kill monsters?
But rest, too, was part of the hunt. Just as a blade dulled by long hunting needed the whetstone, a person who hunted for too long needed rest. The human body was like a blade — after heavy use, rest tempered it and made it stronger still. Hunting was well and good, but taking a breath and talking awhile was not a bad thing either. Adelaide had come all this way because she wanted to see Alice's face — was Alice not being a little too cold?
Vincenzo opened the conversation first.
"Before that, though, I'd like to hear about the subjugation. Listening to someone who was actually there is always more vivid than reading a report."
"Sure."
Only then did Alice begin laying out the process of the subjugation, step by careful step.
"The first ones to find Disastro were another party."
The branch manager nodded.
"Yes — Hunter Noah discovered it, as I understand."
"Right. At the time I was… exploring the wasteland, and I ran into Noah."
"Hunter Alice is already acquainted with Hunter Noah, then?"
Alice nodded at the branch manager's question.
"Noah and I go way back. Yeah. So I heard it from her. That a giant worm — Disastro — was out there."
Adelaide echoed Alice's words.
"A worm, is it."
Disastro was a monster so vast that the name "worm" barely did it justice. Calling it a mere worm was, if anything, extraordinary in its own right.
"So I thought about it. How could I kill Disastro?"
Vincenzo asked in surprise,
"You thought of that right away?"
"…Yeah. Why?"
"No, no. I just mean — that's remarkable."
To hear that a Supreme-grade monster had appeared and immediately start thinking about hunting it. The more Vincenzo learned about this hunter named Alice, the more astonished he became. All the more so because he himself had once driven off another Supreme-grade monster — the Coiling Dragon Amazara — decades ago.
Back then, Vincenzo had fought to divert Amazara's path as it made for Cartadia. He had failed to kill it and let it escape, but that experience had taught him the full majesty of a Supreme-grade threat. Even the inexperienced would normally shrink back. Alice, however, had not been cowed in the slightest — she had immediately set her mind on killing it.
"So… I stopped exploring and started hunting monsters, carefully, one by one."
What followed was Alice's chronicle of monster hunting. First she had secured proper armor to replace her own inadequate gear. Then she had collected the pointed horns of monsters, needed to pierce a Supreme-grade monster's shell. She had prepared silk pouches that would reinforce the ropes used to pin monsters in place when bound to ballista bolts made from those horns. To breathe inside the sandstorms Disastro dragged with it, she had crafted masks from the hides of desert monsters, and goggles to keep sand out of her eyes so her movements would not be hindered.
And she had needed enough of all of it not just for herself, but for everyone at the outpost and the small contingent of support troops — so killing a few monsters would never have been enough. At least several dozen must have died.
"I killed about thirty out there."
The branch manager and the Association President wore identical looks of shock. Both men were closer to hunters than anyone, and Alice's words hit them hard. Saying something like that was easy. Anyone could boast. Actually doing it was something almost no one could manage. Continuously conducting outdoor expeditions without rest and taking down thirty monsters was grueling even for seasoned veterans. Extreme fatigue was a given; the body creaked and groaned from clashing with monster after monster, and at night the roars and the sound of monster footsteps made proper sleep impossible, leaving the nerves stretched taut.
"That part was pretty rough."
But what came from Alice's mouth was no empty boast — because every single thing she had crafted from those materials had been used in the actual battle. The evidence was solid.
Adelaide touched the corner of her mouth.
"I was not present at the scene, so I have no sense of the scale. Thirty monsters — what does that roughly feel like?"
It was Vincenzo who answered her curiosity.
"An ordinary hunter could never manage it. Tracking a monster, fighting it — under normal circumstances, one a day is about right. If you push yourself, perhaps two."
Adelaide nodded at his words.
"Is that so. Hmm. Alice — then it took a full month at least?"
Alice shook her head, wearing a faintly uncertain expression.
"About ten days."
"…Ten days?"
"Yeah."
By Alice's recollection it had been roughly ten days. She could not remember the exact count, but it had been at least that.
Vincenzo burst out laughing despite himself.
"Haha — thirty in ten days. Does that even make sense?"
Alice shrugged.
"It did for me."
The way she said it — as if asking why it would not — left Vincenzo thoroughly speechless once again.
Alice raised a finger, tracing back through her memory.
"First day, two. Second day, three. I got multi-headed ones fighting each other and slipped into the middle of it…"
The more she spoke, the more Vincenzo could not contain his astonishment. The branch manager was the same. Did any of this make sense? Even hearing it firsthand, the conduct was almost impossible to believe. That such stamina and mental fortitude could come from a body like hers was extraordinary. Becoming a Master Hunter, he thought, might already have been a foregone conclusion.
"On the last day… I killed a Dueratos and a Pantopanto, and came back the next day."
Alice finished recounting everything that had happened over those ten days, then added one last remark.
"…If you really can't believe it, you can ask Melchior. There was so much monster material that the soldiers brought it back themselves."
"…What — Melchior?"
Adelaide shot a piercing look at Alice for addressing the prince so familiarly.
"My hunter — when exactly did you get so close with that rotten man?"
Adelaide was angrier than expected, and Alice stammered slightly in flustered surprise. Had they gotten close? Alice considered her relationship with the prince. In a way, they were… sort of close.
"Uh, well, we worked together, so…"
"So that damned brother of mine is after my people now, too. After dumping all his work on me."
Adelaide looked thoroughly aggrieved. Watching her clench her fists, Alice carefully asked,
"You okay?"
"If you hug me once, this stifling feeling might just go away."
Adelaide cast her a pitiful look. This princess seemed excessively fond of physical affection. Alice simply nodded.
"Fine. Not right now, though."
"Hmph. Truly, nothing ever goes my way."
Of course, Adelaide was in no position to say such a thing. The only reason she could be here at all was that she had left the remaining work to her younger brother Diego.
Sister, it is not too late. Please return at once.
Adelaide ignored the voice of Diego, desperately calling for her from within her own conscience.
Meanwhile, Vincenzo, who had been turning Alice's story over in his mind, nodded and spoke.
"Yes… indeed. Remarkable. Truly remarkable. Different from the root, I suppose."
The branch manager nodded along. Then, with a face full of nostalgia, as though lost in memory, he gazed into empty air.
"Quite so. Truly, it reminds me of my own days as a hunter. I, too, once—"
"I'm rather eager to hear about how you took down Disastro now, yes."
Vincenzo cut him off at once. What he wanted to know right now was not the branch manager's story. The branch manager pressed his lips shut and nodded vigorously once more.
"…Quite so."
The two giants carrying on like that made for a rather intimidating sight. Alice, caught in the middle, felt rather like a granddaughter spinning entertaining tales for a suspiciously muscular grandfather and uncle.