I Want to Be a Hunter
The hunter's profession always came with danger.
And yet people still became hunters — romantic notions aside — because the pay and the sense of accomplishment made it worth the risk.
Noah felt much the same. She wasn't driven by any particular sense of duty. Five years in, hunting was simply a job to her.
This commission had been just another part of that job. Whatever ambitions she'd once held had long since faded, leaving only a hunter worn down by reality.
Not that she could simply switch careers. She had already sunk too deep into the hunter's world.
This job had been a failure. The commission had been for a capture, so killing the One-Eyed Luga-lac meant they received no payment.
The research director in Antico had been deeply disappointed by the news, but he hadn't gotten angry. If anything, he'd been relieved they'd made it back alive, and simply asked them to succeed next time.
With that, the report was done. All four of them had returned safely, so there was nothing else that needed handling.
Noah looked at Alice.
Alice was glancing around with bright, curious eyes, as if everything she saw was fascinating.
Alice wanted to become a hunter. Whatever her reasons, Noah thought the profession would suit her perfectly.
Strategically speaking, it would be a loss if Alice didn't become one.
But Alice needed common sense. Common sense about hunters. Common sense about monsters. That swinging a weapon wasn't everything. That a hunter was not a warrior, but a hunter. And then a thought struck her.
Am I even qualified to teach that girl?
Noah might have been a five-year veteran, but if she asked herself what she actually had over Alice, the answer didn't come easily. Experience, and little else. In her own eyes, she was nothing special.
Watching Alice shine so brilliantly against a monster, feeling small had been only natural.
She and I were never on the same level to begin with.
She wanted to teach Alice something, but when she thought about it, she had no idea where to even start. She felt herself shrinking into nothing.
"…Alice."
"Yeah."
"You want to be a hunter, right?"
"Absolutely."
But looking into those sparkling eyes, Noah realized how foolish her thoughts had been.
She had simply been rotting in her own inferiority complex. Alice wasn't feeling anything of the sort — Noah was the only one stewing in resentment. The moment she understood that, the shame was almost unbearable.
Alice had only just broken out of her shell. Noah was the one who had brought her here from a forest where human hands barely reached, her memories gone.
Alice needed Noah.
Not the Noah who swallowed her inferiority alone, but the Noah who would become her teacher.
"Then let's go see the reception clerk."
Noah smiled. She stopped second-guessing herself.
Because she had found her answer. Instead of fretting over what she could or couldn't do, she would simply give it everything she had.
What did it take to become a hunter?
Honestly, I had no idea. In the game, players skipped the entire process of becoming a hunter and started already registered as one. There was no way for me to know.
My best guess was that you probably had to take some kind of exam.
An exam… ugh.
That didn't sound great.
But you couldn't just let anyone become a hunter, could you?
There were rules, and monsters were incredibly dangerous.
If you let every random person who wanted to be a hunter just walk in, the casualty count would only climb.
So they screened people with a proper test, and then sorted them into ranks from there.
Even in the game, hunters had a ranking system.
It was this game's substitute for levels. Completing commissions raised your rank.
Unlike other games, leveling up didn't raise your stats.
Everything came down to gear performance and player control.
So what was rank, then? Nothing more than a number representing experience.
That was why some commissions were locked behind a certain rank.
It was a gatekeeping measure — keeping low-experience hunters away from dangerous work.
But a high rank didn't automatically mean you were skilled, and a low rank didn't automatically mean you were a beginner. It was a measure of experience, not strength.
Still, entrusting dangerous work to people with experience was just how the world worked, wasn't it? Companies wanted experienced new hires for the same reason.
Which meant that even if I became a hunter, I wouldn't be taking down ridiculously strong monsters right from the start.
Bunny Princess's hunter life, starting from zero.
I'd have to work my way up step by step, beginning with easy, weak monsters. The thought of grinding ranks all over again from the bottom was almost enough to make me gag. But right now, it just felt fun.
Of course, I wasn't a hunter yet.
"Noah."
"Yeah?"
"What do I need to do to become a hunter?"
The first-floor counter was packed, so we were waiting our turn.
I figured I'd use the time to ask Noah everything I'd been curious about.
"Well, first you'd need to take the exam, right?"
"An exam…"
Called it. An exam, of all things.
I'd already killed a monster, and they still wanted me to take a hunter exam. It felt almost insulting.
But if there was a written portion, I was completely screwed.
"Do I have to write anything?"
"…Huh? No, nothing written. You're fine."
Thank god. I'd almost gotten gatekept at the entrance.
How was I supposed to know the fine details of Hunter Land's lore? That was for setting nerds, not Bunny Princess.
I'd been too busy ranking up and clearing challenge quests. I never had time to dig deep into the lore.
The hunters I knew were, put simply, glorified odd-jobbers.
You took a commission and then ran around doing every kind of busywork imaginable.
Hell, people would even ask you to go fetch some rare flower. Like money meant you'd do anything.
And you did have to do everything. That was what being a hunter meant.
From the clients' perspective, it was probably something like, These guys get all hyped up when you call them cool hunters, so they'll do whatever you tell them.
Delivering goods, mining ore, escorting merchant caravans, surveying local ecosystems — there was a lot more to it than just hunting.
Of course, you couldn't forget that Hunter Land was an action game. Hunting commissions made up the biggest share by far.
Still, with a bit of real-world adjustment, the distribution of commissions was probably different here.
"The exam is just killing a Pienos, so it might be easy for you, Alice. Oh — do you know what a Pienos is?"
"I know."
"So you know your monsters."
Crawling Dragon Pienos.
It was just an idiot. Official game materials called it an idiot, and the community called it an idiot — a genuine, certified idiot.
Not that it was actually stupid. It was just curious and terrible at containing that curiosity.
It rarely attacked first, preferring to intimidate instead.
A Pienos was a reptilian monster that crawled along the ground on four legs, with no wings.
When it puffed out its chin and moved around, it left a trail like a giant snake had swept across the ground — hence "Crawling Dragon." There were two reasons it inflated its chin.
To look bigger and threaten an enemy, or to attack.
On top of that, if it ran into something that looked stronger than itself, it would suck its chin in until it was practically concave. Playing the part of a sickly old Pienos, advertising that it wouldn't even taste good if you ate it.
A bedroom tough guy, basically. Against the weak it became Lü Bu; against the strong it became Diaochan — a selective punk.
To hunters, of course, it was a sandbag filled with air. An airbag, really. A pitiful monster that always got the stuffing beaten out of it.
And I was supposed to fight one of those…
"Free win."
"Huh?"
"Ah, nothing."
This exam was going to be a freebie for me.
In the game, the Pienos was the tutorial monster. A teacher that sacrificed its own body so players could get comfortable with the world of Hunter Land.
Coming to this world hadn't changed much. The Pienos was still the first step toward becoming a hunter.
Poor thing. Go die as paste under my greatsword.
Applying for the hunter exam turned out to be simpler than expected.
All you had to do was tell the reception clerk at the association counter. Applications were open to anyone. Becoming a hunter meant the chance to handle premium materials that sold for serious money. And yet hunters were far from common.
Anyone who knew even a little about monsters understood just how dangerous the work was.
The clerk thought back on all the people who had come seeking to become hunters.
Those who applied without knowing anything ran away.
Those drunk on their own strength learned the limits of being human.
Those who insisted only on their own opinions discovered how powerless an individual could be.
Even if they never became hunters, they left with a valuable experience.
People like that, even if they did become hunters, never hunted monsters. They just chased easy, comfortable commissions and scraped by.
But those who refused to stop there — who used defeat as a foothold and challenged themselves again — those people became hunters.
A hunter could not break. No matter how massive the wall in front of them, they tempered their blade and looked toward the next fight.
The clerk loved watching that. Their challenges were something sacred that no one had the right to criticize. Simply witnessing those challenges up close was a joy in itself.
And now a new challenger stood before her.
"May I have your name?"
"Alice."
Someone the clerk had never seen before in all her time on the job.
A little blunt, a face that barely shifted expression.
Hair like freshly fallen snow and eyes like cherry blossoms set against pale skin — for all the cold atmosphere, there was a strange warmth to her.
What mysterious colors, the clerk thought.
"You'd like to become a hunter, correct?"
"Yeah."
Alice was wearing clothes a full size too big, hanging loose on her frame.
The clerk found her adorable — until she noticed the greatsword strapped to the girl's back, and realized this wasn't someone you could dismiss as merely cute.
A greatsword…
The greatsword was a weapon even beginner hunters could pick up easily, but mastering it was genuinely difficult.
That was why many started with a greatsword and then switched to something else. The techniques unique to the greatsword were, frankly, a high-wire act.
A niche weapon that only really favored complete beginners.
The clerk smiled and pulled a form from behind the counter. New hunters were always welcome.
"Wonderful. Let's fill out the details, then."
The clerk had met countless people, countless hunters.
Watching their challenges was a joy, but watching them crumble at the end was always sad.
Many had died in her memory, or vanished with wounds that would never heal. Irreversible things, now nothing more than hollow recollections.
The clerk looked at Alice again. Those cherry-blossom eyes shone with a keen light. They weren't eyes clouded by melancholy, nor eyes blinded by greed for money.
Working this job long enough taught you to read a person from their eyes alone.
Alice's eyes were the kind you rarely saw these days. Simply the eyes of someone who wanted to be a hunter. Eyes free of greed, filled only with curiosity toward the unknown.
Most of the Master Hunters she knew had eyes like that.
…Heh. Look at me.
Getting her hopes up this high for someone who wasn't even a hunter yet.
She could only hope this girl's challenge would bear good fruit. That was all she wished for.