Tutorial (3)

It was back in my kendo days. I was young, so I mostly cut straw bundles — but I stood out so sharply that they moved me on to bamboo in no time.

"Jae-ha. Want to try this one, too?"

"Yes!"

The moment came back to me. After nothing but straw, the first time I ever cut bamboo.

"Whoa."

Hard wood catching along the blade. A pleasant recoil kicking up through the wrist. A finish closer to a strike than a cut.

The estoc punched into the orc's neck, and the memory came with it.

"Kraaaak!"

For a full month I had cut down the golems Hunter Ji In-hwi made, and cut them down again. The real thing was still different.

Muscle fiber that not even a bullet had pierced. When the estoc tore through it, the sound was a rope snapping. The awl-like point would not sink cleanly — it caught, and caught again — and I had to force it in. But back then, I had cut the bamboo on the very first exchange. Today, too, I believed this attack would kill the orc.

"Kak!"

The orc's eyes went bloodshot as it raised its left hand. That brutal grip trembled, and still it meant to smash my head. A tactic I had never met in any bout. Riding a body past human limits, it counterattacked even with its neck run through. I had clearly taken the point, and yet the right of attack still belonged to the thing. A sickening state of affairs.

The fist came. I was certain a graze alone would break bone. But I had spent my life in matches where so much as a touch cost you the point.

"Ha."

Fist or opposing blade, the one rule was the same. It must not touch me. I took a sidestep with the estoc still buried in its neck.

Time seemed to slow. The knobby bones jutting from the orc's fist, the neck pouring blood, Lee Hae-il screaming behind me, the motion of my own body as I launched — all of it felt like slow motion from a high-speed camera. The orc's fist grazed past my cheek by a hair.

A sharp crack. The diamond-shaped blade lodged in the orc's neck turned with me and widened the wound. Hot blood fountained out.

"Gyaaak!"

The orc screamed nothing like before and dropped its heavy blade. The fist that had been about to crush my skull trembled in empty air, then went slack. At last the light left its eyes. Once again, the winner of this contest of life and death was me.

I drew the estoc free.

A long, thin hiss.

"Whoa."

In the same instant I felt some formless power flow into me.

The solid satisfaction of a good meal crossed with the thrill of winning a bout. This had to be the phenomenon I had heard about at the moment of awakening. Kill a magical beast, and an Awakener absorbs a portion of its mana and goes through something like a level-up in a game. Maybe I felt it so clearly because it was the first time. My body was unmistakably lighter. I turned my eyes on the goblins.

"Kiiik, kiik!"

"The warrior's dead!"

"Kiiiik!?"

The eyes of the goblins, so fierce a moment ago, wavered.

"Catch them! Eat!"

But when it came to fighting spirit, they were monsters that wouldn't lose to any athlete I had ever faced. Yellow, pointed teeth bared, they came swinging daggers.

Four of them rushed me at once. I drew a breath, ready to unleash a continuous attack.

I read the goblins' positions and the line the estoc would travel. Four of them. I would need at least four consecutive strikes to drop them all, and even that was a brutal tempo. The human body is built to spend its full strength on a movement only once in a single breath. Most fencers can pour out five attacks in one breath at the most, and even I had never gone past ten. My raw physical ability was better than it had been then, but the fact that my legs were out of balance threw a question mark at me. I had never once run from that question mark.

I set my eyes and loaded power into my right leg. In the instant I meant to unfold a four-beat Attaque composée—

"Hyung-nim! Look out!"

Lee Hae-il swung her cavalry sabre and crashed in at my side.

A clean hiss. Coup de taille. The horizontal cut of sabre fencing I had drilled into her over the past two weeks landed beautifully.

"Kaaak!"

"Kiik!?"

One goblin took a deep cut to the arm, another to the torso, and both went down. She had not killed them in a single stroke, but she had turned opponents who could fight into opponents who could not. Between those two things lay the difference between heaven and earth.

I put one thrust each into the brow and the neck of the two goblins rushing my left, and sank them. Hardly worth calling a compound attack.

"You didn't run."

I stepped back, set my shoulder beside Lee Hae-il's, and leveled my blade at the goblins still waiting behind them.

"Where the fuck would I go and leave you, Hyung-nim?!"

She answered soaked through with cold sweat.

"......"

Honestly, I had not expected it. I would not have been disappointed if she had fled. I was used to the tension of a match, and used to fighting with a blade, and I wanted that status-window ring. I had more than one reason I could not run, so I stood and fought. Running is what people usually do. Lee Hae-il had not.

"Thank you."

Whatever her reasons, whatever she had done in the past, this deserved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠praise.

"That coup de taille was good, too. Next time, take a little of the force out of your wrist."

"Oh, come on — you can see that even now!?"

The goblins the orc had led in numbered roughly thirty. Gunfire had dropped about ten, and Lee Hae-il and I had cut four more, so barely half were left.

"Huh? We might actually manage this."

"Hardly any of those bastards left!"

"Clear the tutorial and we're off to a major guild!"

"Drop the guns! The guns! Didn't you hear what Jeong said?"

"Says the one who shot the most!?"

However stunned the Awakeners had been, every one of them had spent the last month training against golems built to look exactly like magical beasts. Once I killed the orc and Lee Hae-il joined the fight, a good number of them found their nerve again. The fastest to close in were the ones carrying two-handed weapons — guandao, naginata, and the like.

Slash. Slaaash. An Awakener's guandao had more than enough power to split a goblin in half at a stroke.

"We can do this!"

"Group up! Group up and stab!"

The remaining goblins thinned fast.

"Clear the jam!"

"Got it! Shit! They're all dead!"

Then the Awakeners who had hung back came forward, regripping their guns. The showy flick of their hands as they slapped magazines home was an ill omen all by itself.

"Don't shoot!"

I turned and shouted.

"It's useless! You were taught this! Were you asleep when they showed the footage!?"

"This is revenge for Jin-woo!"

They pulled the triggers. I could not tell whether they had failed to hear or simply refused to. People in a panic during a fire, they say, cannot even pull the pin on an extinguisher. They flail, then throw the extinguisher itself into the flames. This might have been something like that.

Click. Clack. Of course, all that answered was the hollow sound of a bolt on an empty chamber.

"Again?"

One of them — a man who seemed to have learned nothing from the gangster Awakener's death — knit his brow.

"I'm telling you, you're just charging that thing's energy!"

That was the face I wanted to make.

Flame flared. Behind the goblins, the jack-o'-lantern's bright light spread into the fog-bound forest. That muted orange, scattered through the droplets hanging in the air, looked as if it would be visible from a very long way off.

The jack-o'-lantern gaped its mouth wide.

The status window flashed its warning.

"Down!"

"Hyung-nim?"

I seized Lee Hae-il and threw us both to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ground.

A thunderous blast. An instant later, burning fragments erupted from the jack-o'-lantern's maw. Like a blast from an oversized shotgun, they swept the Awakeners in a wide fan through the air — heat energy absorbed from firearms, released all at once. The Pumpkin Shot that had mowed down the hunters of the Iron Blood Guild.

"Kraaaak!"

"It's hot!"

"My leg!"

The Awakeners rolled across the ground with burning fragments driven into them from head to foot.

"Kiiik!"

The goblins swarmed in and drove their daggers home.

"Hae-il. Save only the ones you can."

"What are you going to do, Hyung-nim?"

"I'm taking that pumpkin bastard down!"

I hauled Lee Hae-il to her feet and ran forward. I had to finish this before those Awakeners fired again. The light had thinned; the jack-o'-lantern probably could not loose Pumpkin Shot without limit.

The jack-o'-lantern turned its maw toward me.

The mouth full of angular teeth yawned open again, ready to spew dazzling fragments. The spread was so wide I did not think I could dodge it. So I had to end this before the thing fired.

I drove both legs to their limit. A spring I had never felt before arrived together with the sharp fear that I would not be able to hold it for long. I kicked off with my right leg, which ached from the inside out. It felt as if the leg might give way at any moment — and yet that perfect sensation, the one that comes perhaps once in a thousand times, found me again.

I shot forward like an arrow leaving the string.

The jack-o'-lantern's thorn-vine whips dropped for my head, swept for my legs, slammed for my shoulder. I did not dodge, and I did not block. I only accelerated harder and left them behind.

A wet slice. Inside the open maw I could see the blazing fragments glinting. I drove my blade into that mouth and blew past the thing.

The head my sword had pierced jerked skyward.

Pumpkin Shot roared up into the sky like fireworks applauding what I had done. The blast tore out through the side of the face my edge had split, and a third of its head blew away.

"Hoo — ha!"

The jack-o'-lantern reeled its huge body and thrashed like a wounded beast, and the goblins that had been guarding it came rushing in a pack. I turned toward them and opened my eyes wide. One of them would leap for my face, or drop low and go for my ankle.

"Kiiik!"

The one in front chose the leap over the crawl. I met the timing and drove the estoc into its brow.

A crack. It had, in effect, headbutted my blade with everything it had. Hard bone shattered like ice against the point, and at last laughter broke out of me.

"Ha — hahahaha!"

The corners of my mouth curled, and my cheeks pulled until they ached. A feeling I had never known in any match. I don't mean I had wanted to break someone's bones. It was simply that the fencing world no longer had an opponent for me. It was not a question of strength or skill. It was a question of whether a thing could be predicted. Even if I were someday pushed off the champion's seat, it would not be because a fencer appeared using a technique I had never expected. It would be because a fencer appeared who used techniques I already knew plainly — only faster, only more cleanly. Until such a fencer came, I would have gone on stacking obvious victories. A horribly tedious business.

"Good thing I took the awakening serum."

Hunter work, though, seemed different. Magical beasts carried techniques and tactics nothing like a person's, and I would have to answer them with a knack nothing like the one I used on people. Goblins were so small they came in with their bodies dropped low, almost crawling — or turned that read against you and leapt. So I had to spare my motion, thrust fast, recover fast, and string the attacks together. An orc was tough enough that I had to circle and hunt for a weak point, and a jack-o'-lantern had to have its head broken while I slipped its thorned tentacles. Armed with the one thing I did best, I was learning a world I knew nothing about. Nothing had ever been as much fun as that. If this was what it meant to be a hunter, I could do it for the rest of my life.

"The fun just doesn't stop."

Crack. Crack. Crack. I dropped the goblins one after another, pivoted on my left foot, and put several more thrusts into the jack-o'-lantern's neck. Before long a joy greater than the one I had felt killing the orc came over me.

The situation room outside the gate.

"213 turned on a dime."

"He looked so gentle. Didn't see that coming, nya."

"No way that's a persona, doong. Idiots who try to hold a persona in a real fight all drop dead in a second, doong."

The scouters seated around the long table clicked their tongues at the screens.

Jeong Jae-ha had just cut the goblins down and finished the jack-o'-lantern. Blood and the creature's fluids were splattered hideously across a face that looked as if it had been carved with a blade.

Just as I thought.

Hong Si-yu let a thin, private scoff slip free and asked in a theatrical voice.

"Well? Do you still think everyone in this cohort is weak and cowardly?"

The answer was already decided. All they had to do was give it. Anyone working in the industry in this era had no choice but to fall for a rookie like that.

"Team Leader Su Seong-min."

The chief of administration for the National Police Agency's Supernatural Special Forces spoke first.

"The average level has certainly dropped. Awakener 213 warned them about the firearms two times, three times, and they didn't so much as pretend to listen."

"No—"

"I can see why you'd give up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on filling the rookie ranks, Team Leader. There's no moving Chairman Ban Hae-jin's heart like this. So we'll simply take him."

"Hold on. That's — I mean—"

"The National Police Agency will designate Awakener 213 as our first-priority special recruitment target."

They handed Su Seong-min's own words from a dozen minutes ago straight back to her.

"There are exceptions everywh—"

Su Seong-min's face flushed scarlet.

"Samjeong JY will also extend a special scout offer to Awakener 213, independent of the composite score."

"The Murim Guild will likewise place Awakener 213 as our first-priority scout. Swordwork that deals an orc a mortal wound in a single blow, in his first real fight. A charge that slips Pumpkin Shot. There isn't a single thing to fault."

"The Iron Blood Guild will not require an internship of Awakener 213. The swordsmanship is swordsmanship, but the judgment itself is already at a professional level. We will offer the same salary and incentives as our established hunters from day one, and we will provide a dormitory."

Scouters from the other guilds and firms went on in the language of business.

"These bastards, I swear—!"

Su Seong-min shook where she stood, glaring at the rest of them.

The top guild must ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have been the one to stick its neck out. Hong Si-yu could guess well enough what had passed among the scouters. Criminals, all of them — so they meant to beat the price of their lives down. She could see what was happening now, too. I show them a single remarkable trainee, and they straighten their attitudes on the spot.

They had pushed Su Seong-min out in front, and the moment Jeong Jae-ha appeared, every one of them played innocent together. Hong Si-yu let out another quiet laugh.

"......Fine. For a rookie, he handles a sword well enough."

Su Seong-min nodded, as if this much she could not bring herself to deny.

"Well enough?"

"He must have held a few dan certificates. But isn't it still early to talk him up like that?"

She ground her teeth and lifted her chin again.

"An Awakener hunter will be moving alongside unawakened hunters. We have to look at things like leadership, too."

She said it as if there were still room left.

"Just now, 213 told them two and three times not to fire those guns carelessly, and the other Awakeners still blasted away without a second thought."

"They did."

"Let's see how 213 answers that. We already keep plenty of social misfits who are only good at fighting, don't we?"