The Elementary School Hunter Spars
“Puppies! Operation start!”
“Grrr?”
“Charge at that scary-looking big sister over there!”
The cubs of Wolfgell, who had been waiting inside my backpack before bursting out and circling around me, sprang forward in perfect unison the moment they heard my command.
“Yeonwoo, fighting!”
“You can do it! You can do it!”
“Teach that mean big sister a lesson!”
Before I knew it, the hunters who had come to watch the spar had started gathering behind us, their voices rising one after another in support of me.
“Uh, we’re filming right now, so if you could just keep it down a little….”
Sungah noona looked a bit troubled as she tried to quiet them, but in any case, that wasn’t where I needed to be focusing.
“……”
The only thing that mattered was the woman in the hoodie pocketing her hands and staring at me without blinking—Chaerin noona.
Chaerin noona’s ability, as far as I know, is specialized for hand-to-hand combat.
From what I’d secretly researched, Yu Chaerin’s specialties were an astonishing level of durability, strength to match, and self-regeneration.
They were the sort of perfectly balanced skills plenty of hunters had in some form or another. Which, in other words, meant she was a full set of six-out-of-six stats—nothing fancy, but nothing weak either, and no situation or matchup could really throw her off.
Even so, compared to Sungah noona or Hayun, she fell short in sheer firepower and finishing moves, but Chaerin covered that with her passive self-regeneration.
Once a fight dragged on, she became the kind of hunter whose stubborn life force and stamina even S-class hunters would click their tongues over.
That was why, whether villains ran wild or magic beasts went on a rampage, when Chaerin was dispatched she always pulled more than her weight.
And that was also why she was so highly regarded even among the upper ranks of A-class hunters.
Unlike Sungah noona, who was a little weaker against nonhuman opponents, or Hayun, who had trouble controlling her power when facing human enemies, Chaerin could adapt to whatever the situation demanded.
“Hup.”
So then, how was I planning to deal with the queen of the underdogs?
[The Gunslinger of Neo Joseon, the Lone Survivor, and the Queen of Nothingness have all proposed abilities!
[Suggested abilities: Invisibility Ampule (S+), Erase Presence (A+), Strength Enhancement (A)]
With a special Do Yeonwoo-made beast combo attack, of course—by combining the beginner bonus and the ridiculously broken skill I’d bought recently.
[Would you like to activate the gift of the Star of Heavenly Love?]
[Y/N]
If I just powered myself up and fought from the front, then later on, if I ever ran short on points, it might become a weakness instead.
“Heehee!”
But what if, instead, I made the beasts I controlled stronger and had them fight for me?
“You’d better be ready!”
My revenge on that irritating hunter in front of me... no, in any case, I’d definitely have a good chance of beating Chaerin noona too!
*****
So I’m supposed to lose to that little brat?
Yu Chaerin had been letting out a dull sigh until just moments ago, watching the baby magic beasts sprint toward her in perfect formation after Yeonwoo’s command.
That kid’s going to get spoiled if I keep letting him get away with this. Should I just beat him up?
She had considered that for a second, but then remembered she didn’t have the courage to see Yeonwoo again afterward, eyes brimming with tears as he shouted, I hate big sister! In the end, she clicked her tongue and prepared to let him have this one.
“Huh?”
But the next instant, the three baby magic beasts charging at her vanished right before her eyes, and Chaerin’s eyes went wide.
“Kraaang!”
“Kkht…!”
Then came the blunt teeth of a baby beast, slashing past her side by a hair’s breadth.
Relying on the instincts honed through years of brutal real combat experience, Chaerin barely dodged those teeth and then looked around in confusion.
They’re gone?
The baby beasts that had been racing straight toward her were nowhere to be seen.
No, they’re definitely around here somewhere.
And yet her instincts kept warning her that the baby beasts were still circling her, hunting for an opening.
“Ohhh.”
Right then, something returned to life in Chaerin’s dead-looking eyes.
“This is fun, kid…?”
The fighting spirit from her days as the Mad Dog, the one who used to challenge senior hunters to rank matches without discrimination, was flaring back to life at the bottom of her heart.
Fwoosh…!
The next moment, Chaerin’s figure blurred with a sly curl at the corner of her mouth—and then she vanished from the sparring arena.
“Ah!”
At the same time, a few hunters with sharp eyes let out gasps as they watched the scene, swallowing hard.
“I don’t know what trick you used, but I’ll admit your beast-taming ability is real.”
Chaerin, who had disappeared in an instant, was already right in front of Yeonwoo.
“But… kid, you’re weak, aren’t you?”
And then, before Yeonwoo could even react, Chaerin’s hand shot out toward him.
-Kikikikik…!
But just as Chaerin reached for Yeonwoo’s nape to haul him up, something suddenly grabbed hold of her sleeve, and she blinked in surprise.
“Huh?”
Mechanical arms had shot out from the backpack Yeonwoo was wearing, clamping onto her arm.
-User attack detected.
-Initiating automatic response protocol.
And then came a bright, cheerful voice spilling out of Yeonwoo’s backpack.
“Ow, hot! What the hell did Han Yeoul give Yeonwoo?!”
At the same time, the mechanical arms holding her limb began to heat up, and Chaerin yanked them away with a look of utter disbelief before putting some distance between herself and Yeonwoo.
“Kid, was this part of your plan too?”
“……W-whoa.”
“Hey, kid? What are you doing?”
She tossed out the question with genuine admiration, but Yeonwoo was too busy standing there with his mouth hanging open, gawking at the mechanical arms that had popped out of the backpack.
This is my chance.
Not wasting a second, Chaerin slid through the mechanical arms’ blind spot and reached for Yeonwoo again.
“Grrr…!”
“GROOO!”
“Gyaaah!”
But right then, the three little beasts that had circled behind her lunged forward and clamped onto the back of her hoodie.
-Pop…!
Still, Yu Chaerin wasn’t called one of the uppermost A-class hunters for nothing.
“This time, I’m really ending it, kid.”
With monstrous reflexes, she tore off the hoodie and ignored the beasts tumbling backward behind her, finally reaching out to snatch at Yeonwoo’s clothes with her hand.
“…Nnngh.”
In that instant, every hair on her body stood on end.
“What was that just now…?”
She quickly pulled her hand back and widened the distance again, then slowly tipped her head up with a dazed expression.
-Grrrrr…
Wolfgell, which had been watching the situation calmly from inside Yeonwoo’s backpack in its shrunken form until now, finally sprang out and revealed its true body.
“W-Wolfgell-nim?”
“Kid, that was dangerous just now.”
“R-really?”
“Tsk tsk. You couldn’t even see it?”
Yeonwoo and Wolfgell exchanged a few words, then Yeonwoo’s eyes suddenly began shining brightly.
“Wolfgell-nim, let’s do that thing! That thing!”
“…Hm?”
“Fusion! Let’s play fusion!”
The next moment, Wolfgell let out a weary sigh, lowered its body, and offered Yeonwoo its back.
“Heeheehee….”
Yeonwoo climbed onto its back with a mischievous grin and spoke up.
“If I do this, you won’t be able to attack me so carelessly, right?”
And after hearing that, Chaerin remained silent for a moment.
“…Kid.”
Her heart began beating harder and harder.
“You really know how to get this big sister’s heart racing after all this time.”
Somewhere along the way, her gaze had returned to the wild, feral look she’d worn in her days as the Mad Dog, challenging everyone and everything to rank matches.
“At this point, I’m going to….”
At the very moment when Chaerin, every muscle in her body tensed, was about to enter full combat stance—
-Chaerin, please, I’m begging you!
-Please! Go easy on him!
-If Yeonwoo gets hurt, the whole team is writing apology reports!
—the desperate voices of the staff crackled through the in-ear monitor in her ear.
“…I was just getting to the good part.”
Only then did Chaerin come back to her senses with a start, letting out a sigh as she released the force she’d been building up.
“But still….”
Even so, feeling her heart still pounding, she looked genuinely disappointed and muttered inwardly.
You're the one who made me take this seriously first, kid.
The next moment, the invisible baby beasts that had been racing up from behind once again swarmed Chaerin all at once.
*****
A few hours later, on the outskirts of the D-Sector.
“Wow, does that even make sense?”
“She absolutely obliterated it again today….”
“There wasn’t even anything for us to do.”
The hunters who had stared in astonishment at the wasteland, now snow-covered in the blink of an eye, all turned their gazes to one girl.
“……”
It was none other than Hunter Seol Hayun, who had single-handedly ended the situation just five minutes after a 2nd-class magic beast alert was issued.
“So the rumor about her surgery was true….”
“At this rate, becoming S-class is just a matter of time.”
“If she keeps going, she might even make top-tier S-class.”
And yet, with no expression at all, simply walking back with a dark face, the other hunters could only marvel at her.
“…Haa.”
Seol Hayun passed through the crowd of hunters without sparing a single glance, letting out a cold sigh as she went.
“Oh, it’s up!”
Just then, one of the hunters who had been keeping his head down looked at his phone and shouted.
“Y-Yu Chaerin Hunter is… underneath.”
“The kid on top of her—wasn’t that the elementary school boy from last time?”
“What is this? Am I seeing things?”
And soon, all around them, hunters began tossing out bewildered comments in every direction.
Even though they were used to all kinds of bizarre and absurd happenings by now, this was still enough to leave them reeling.
Even though the video was only about ten seconds long, its impact was enormous: the proud Yu Chaerin, blank-faced and pinned beneath a little boy, completely subdued.
“Who exactly is this Do Yeonwoo kid…?”
“Maybe he’s some kind of mascot the Association’s pushing?”
“Even so, there’s no way that Yu Chaerin would just agree to film something like this… right?”
So, while the hunters who had come all the way out here and found themselves with nothing to do were naturally drawn into that video as a topic of conversation, a voice suddenly came from behind them.
“Huh?”
“Hm?”
“Ah….”
The hunters who reflexively looked up at that voice felt a chill run down their spines.
“Did you just say Do Yeonwoo?”
It was because the girl who had never really spoken to anyone before was now walking toward them, dark circles hanging beneath her eyes, and asking that question.