Tutorial (2)

"Off! Off! Everybody off!"

We pulled into a lot screened off with barriers like a construction site and stepped down off the bus.

"Trainees who are ready, move in!"

Ahead of us an oval Gate hung open, as if someone had torn a rough hole through the air.

The Status Window Ring gave a faint buzz, like a phone, and threw a hologram up into my vision.

"Th-that's a real Gate."

"We're not gonna die the second we walk in, are we?"

"Who's moving with us?"

The Awakeners glanced around, taking one another's measure. I rested a hand on the hilt of my estoc and looked at the Gate.

"Finally."

Real orcs, real goblins, real Jack-o'-Lanterns waited in there. A sliver of fear, and all the rest of me packed tight with thrill—my heart hammered out of any control I had over it. As an athlete I had taken pride in fencing as a sport, in a blade swung inside the lines. But Kim Kang-oh had not burned all of it out of me. The hunger to swing my strength without holding anything back was still in there.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Trainee 213, Jeong Jae-ha. I'm going in."

I drew the estoc and started toward the Gate.

"I-I'm going in too! Hyung-nim! Please take me with you!"

Lee Hae-il scrambled up beside me in a rush.

"You want to come along?"

I looked down at those curly bangs and thought back over the last two weeks of him.

"…"

He kept plenty of secrets I didn't know. Even so, Lee Hae-il was a diligent, passionate hand with a blade.

"Then put the safety on that gun, sling it across your back, and draw your cavalry saber."

"Huh?"

"I'll watch the front. You just keep a good eye on the flanks."

"No, Hyung-nim. Until the Jack-o'-Lanterns show up, we're allowed to shoot, aren't we?"

"Want to go separately?"

"Should I dump the gun right here, then?"

If he wanted a share of both my danger and my glory, he had earned the right to walk with me.

"Athlete Jeong's going in."

"Do we have to go too?"

"Hey, damn it. We go now. We've gotta go anyway, and beside Mr. Jeong is better."

The other trainees came piling in behind us in a clatter.

"I won't turn away anyone who joins. I do have one condition. Until I say otherwise, nobody so much as touches a gun."

I made the warning plain, and then I took them all. I loved the sword. I did not love danger. Being boxed in by dozens of orcs and goblins was a pleasure I would happily decline.

"Let's go."

I stepped through the Gate. The world drowned in black, and in the same instant the Status Window Ring buzzed.

A string of holograms surged up along one side of my vision.

"That's a lot of windows."

"A minimap? Oh! There's a map!"

The Awakeners turned their heads this way and that, reading the holographic messages down the line.

I looked at the square window floating in the upper right of my sight. It was the map Hong Si-yu had shown me earlier—split like a cross, the ground divided into green, yellow, and red, my position marked in blue. By the time I could make that position out—

"Whoa!"

We were standing inside the Pumpkin Forest. A cool wood, brimful of dim fog. On the map, we sat in the green belt at the outermost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠edge of Sector 1.

"Oh!"

"It's a real Gate."

"This is incredible."

"Let's hurry! If we're slow, somebody might snatch ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠every sapling!"

"The orc bastards aren't gonna pour out in a swarm, right?"

Awakeners came spilling in behind us by twos and threes. A gun or a blade in every hand, eyes glittering with fear and wariness, the packs started toward the yellow zone.

"I'll say it one more time."

I moved at once. One look at all those drawn guns told me there was nothing to gain by lingering near the entrance.

"Firearms, especially. Do not touch them without my permission."

Hong Si-yu had expected roughly thirty percent of the model-prisoner Awakeners to die in this tutorial.

Gangsters. The likes of them.

People liked to imagine that criminals would fight ferociously in a war, but history had already proved that penal units scraped the bottom for efficiency.

I never liked this system to begin with. No matter how desperate we are for Hunters, handing awakening agents to trash like that is a waste. Someone like Athlete Jeong, maybe. Who even drafted this policy?

The ones who truly fought well were ordinary people who trained in earnest and worked with their partners—not thugs who did whatever they pleased.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

"Aaaaaagh!"

"Gyaaah!"

"Mom!"

Ten minutes had passed since the tutorial began.

"Tsk."

Hong Si-yu found she needed to revise her estimate.

Not thirty percent. Half of them are going to die.

Showing them the Iron Blood Guild's failed clear had been a waste of breath. The trainees were repeating the exact same mistake.

"Young-min hyung!"

"Run! You bastards, run!"

Trainee 125, Joo Young-min, had just come up on the monitor. A former marine, dishonorably discharged for violence inside the unit, then jailed again after another brawl at a Marine alumni gathering.

"Son of a bitch!"

Violence aside, he was skilled with both the dadao and a gun, and they had held a certain expectation for him. Right now he was fleeing like a madman from a pack of goblins and orcs. On contact he had charged in hard and scythed through a dozen goblins like a storm, but against the orc he was losing ground.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

In the end he fired to bring the orc down, and the Jack-o'-Lanterns woke.

"More coming! Four orcs! Goblins—I can't even count them!"

"This won't work. Su-ho!"

"Huh?"

"You hold them off!"

"Agh!"

And so Joo Young-min brought his dadao down on the ankle of the teammate running beside him and dropped the man where he stood.

"Wow. That bastard is completely useless."

"Do we throw him in an underground mine or something?"

"I've decided. I'm not using him on a raid team."

The scouters clicked their tongues.

"What did I tell you? Weak and cowardly."

Soo Sung-min, scouter for Saetbyeol, smiled with oily ease and shrugged.

"Lee Chae-yun, Jeong Ho-min, Yang Hyeok. So they pull a little ahead—so what? They're all the same bastards. If they'd pulled that stunt outside a Gate, that alone would be a crime."

She plucked the mouse out of Hong Si-yu's hand and began clicking through the other feeds on the sixteen-way monitor.

"On what basis are we supposed to take people like that? Even if we're short on bodies, there's still such a thing as a minimum bar."

The other scouters looked from Soo Sung-min to Hong Si-yu and back again.

"Sweeten the deal."

Soo Sung-min grinned.

"Unpaid service—stretch the internship. Give us the right to deploy them to overseas Gates. And let us throw them into Black Gates marked for closure."

Hong Si-yu was certain Soo Sung-min had wanted this from the very start.

That part, I don't care.

What did it matter what became of a few criminal bastards?

It's not as if I transferred here because I wanted to.

Even so, the feeling of being reeled in by Soo Sung-min was foul.

"They're all weak and cowardly?"

"You're not about to tell me I'm wrong."

"Watch it through to the end. Then we'll talk."

Hong Si-yu took the mouse back. She enlarged the monitor trained on Jeong Jae-ha.

We kept moving without a stop.

Hong ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Si-yu had said the beasts of the Pumpkin Forest ran about a dozen to a pack. Clear one before another could join you, keep moving, and the clear would stay stable. We had been walking about ten minutes when it happened.

"Hyung-nim! They're coming!"

Lee Hae-il pointed off to the side.

"Waaaaaah!"

Beasts broke from the flank of our group. Thud. Thud. Thud. A hulk well over two meters tall came charging in, fast as a fencer's flèche.

The status hologram supplied a name and a rank. No string of text could hold the malignancy of the thing as the eye actually saw it. Its gray-green forearms were thick as a bodybuilder's torso. The piggish maw reeked like rotting kitchen waste, and in its hand rode a cleaver whose edge shone a vicious blue.

"Kiiik! Kiik!"

Behind that orc came dozens of goblins, no bigger than grade-schoolers, long-eared and sharp-nosed, daggers in their fists. Orc and goblin, close kin, went by one name together: Greenskin. Along with the Jack-o'-Lantern, they were the most common of demonic beasts. I had cut down dozens of the copies Hunter Ji In-hwi's golems had reproduced, but the real thing was a first. Could I actually enjoy this? Expectation swelled in me like a flame.

"Everyone, stay calm! Hands off your guns!"

I turned, leveling the estoc.

"I'll take the orc, so—"

I meant to drop the orc myself and leave the goblins to the other Awakeners.

"An orc!"

"Aaaaagh!"

"Fuck! Die!"

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

I never got the rest of the sentence out. The Awakeners on our flank pulled their triggers.

"Let's thin the numbers first! You should shoot too, Mr. Jeong, at least until the gun runs dry!"

Jang Young-jun—the one who used to hang around Kim Kang-oh—was shouting at me to fire.

"What?"

I briefly wondered which was broken, my eyes or their heads. Had I said nothing to them at all? I could have sworn I'd told them not to shoot, two or three times.

"Did you watch that failed-clear footage through your nostrils?!"

What was happening in front of me did not change.

Tat-tat! Tat! The MP5s spat fire. A dozen goblins tumbled across the ground. The orc clapped both arms over its face and howled. Relief washed over the face of the Awakener they said had been a gang officer.

"Huh?"

The relief did not last a second.

Click. Click. The submachine gun that had been spitting fire went silent on a jam, and the rounds squeezed from the other guns failed to travel even ten meters before dropping like BBs.

"What?"

"Why won't it fire?"

"Is it jammed?"

Fwoosh! Far off, orange flame kindled in the eyes, nose, and mouth of a Jack-o'-Lantern hung in the trees.

"Uh... hahahaha!"

With that hideous laugh, the wavering fire raced to feed itself.

Fwoooosh! At last the fully wakened Jack-o'-Lantern descended, peeling itself from the thorn tree. Beneath it, countless thorny vine-tentacles dangled, then knotted together into four arms and two legs, and it stood.

"Ah…"

The ex-gangster's face went white. We had all been taught this, over and over. A Jack-o'-Lantern could drink the heat out of a firearm. From this moment, no gun in the area would fire.

"Krrrr!"

The orc raised its cleaver and charged.

"Fuck!"

The gangster tried to block with the gun in his hands. The orc's cleaver snapped it like a dry stalk and kept going, straight down into his skull.

"Huh?"

Thud! The head split like cordwood, and the cut ran on from crown to crotch. Something red and wet spilled out in a rope, tangled with something white and dry.

"Gyaaah!"

"Wh-what the—!?"

"Fuck! Jin-woo hyung!"

Seconds. That was all, from the moment the orc burst free. The Awakeners broke into panic and milled. More than a few flung down gun and blade alike and ran back the way we had come. Before I could even spend my anger on the idiots who had blown this open, I was shocked, and I was tense. Athlete or not, a person is not meant to watch another human being cut in half.

"Move aside."

Even so, I opened my chest. I shouldered through the panicked Awakeners and stepped out in front of the orc. I was a professional because I could step onto the piste afraid, tense, even terrified, and still find a smile. I was a Hunter because I had learned that turning your back on a beast was the more dangerous choice.

"Hyung-nim! Have you lost your mind!?"

Lee Hae-il called after me, voice thick with worry, and grabbed for my arm.

"Look properly. I taught you this, too."

"Hyung-nim! Fuck— no. Please—"

"Showing your back will be more dangerous."

I slipped him without effort.

"Krrrr!"

The orc warrior turned its head toward me. Those eyes were packed with a barbaric will to kill, and my heart cinched tight. Thump. Thump. I remembered the moment I had walked out for my first tournament.

"Yeah!"

I broke into a laugh, just to shake the tension loose.

"Come at me."

The orc warrior raised its blood-slick cleaver and took a step. I leveled my estoc at it and took one of my own. The moment left no room for a greeting or a salute. There was no referee. No one to ask if I was ready.

"Dodge, please!"

"I-I quit!"

But between the shoulders of the people fleeing toward me, I saw a path. A lane in front of me, two meters wide and fourteen long. A piste. A massive challenger stood at the far end—but waiting at the end of that lane were brilliant victory and noble glory.

"Kaaak!"

The challenger came on in a rush, footsteps seeming to shake the ground, cleaver lifted as if to split me on the diagonal. I could feel the strength in those muscles and tendons, standing out like rope. But only a motion practiced until it could beat raw strength deserved the name of technique.

"Parade Neuvième Riposte."

Ninth guard, covering shoulder and neck, then the counter. I swung the estoc with a hope riding in it: would my technique work on a real monster?

A line of holographic text rose at the edge of my vision.

Shaaaa—

It was the same as when I had thrown the lunge. Drill one motion a hundred times, a thousand, and once or twice a perfect sense of timing visits you. That timing wrapped my body now.

Kkk-crack! I turned the falling cleaver off on a diagonal. Sparks chased my estoc. The spring steel bent as if it would snap, and did not snap. I let the cleaver slide past my shoulder and drove the point at the orc warrior's throat.

Thuk.