Holy Arrow
Good. Now that I'd thoroughly sated my lust, it was time to deal with more practical matters. Setting aside the business of bedding Sujin, my greatest goal right now was becoming a Dungeon Hunter. The reasons were simple enough. It had been a childhood dream of mine, the pay was excellent, and the work was free.
A Dungeon Hunter was a freelancer. Barring special circumstances, you worked when you wanted to work and rested when you wanted to rest. It sat at the opposite pole from being a writer, a job that demanded a fixed quota of words every single day. Some people liked to think of writers as freewheeling freelancers, but a writer was a creature forever hounded by deadlines.
A Dungeon Hunter's income dwarfed a writer's beyond any meaningful comparison. To out-earn one, you'd have to publish a globally famous bestseller — and even then, you still wouldn't touch the earnings of a high-ranking Dungeon Hunter.
On top of that, most countries permitted Dungeon Hunters to practice polygamy. Korea included. And that, more than anything, was the real reason I dreamed of becoming one. Polygamy. Multiple wives. Female Dungeon Hunters could do the same, which meant that in hunter society, both polygyny and polyandry were on the table.
Originally, the institution had been rolled out in an era when everyone still believed Abilities were hereditary, as a way to swell the hunter population. These days, statistical and biological evidence had more or less debunked the idea that Abilities could be inherited — but the law itself had never been rewritten. The Dungeon Hunters were the vested interest here; they had no reason to change it. And it wasn't as if any politician with the spine to defy the majority opinion of the hunter class was waiting in the wings.
Of course, polygamy was legal on paper, but the actual rate sat below twenty percent. High or low, depending on how you looked at it. And the overwhelming majority of those arrangements were polygynous. In most marriages, the extra spouses were ordinary civilians; Dungeon Hunters who took multiple hunter spouses could be counted on one hand worldwide. Once you were a hunter yourself, there was no reason to bow your head and marry into someone else's household.
Dungeon Hunters made a fortune, lived free, and looked damn good doing it. There was no reason not to choose the profession. Of course, those advantages came with a fatal drawback: the mortality rate. By any measure of safety, it was the worst job on earth. Not stability — safety. A profession that quite literally put your life on the line. But with the power of the Unix Cube in my hands, I figured I could cover that angle somehow. It wasn't baseless confidence.
"Just the skills and Abilities I've unlocked through the Cube so far should be enough to keep me from dying under ordinary circumstances."
I was going to become a Dungeon Hunter. Letting this power rot unused would be a crime against common sense. The Elemental Mastery I already possessed was the equivalent of six Abilities all by itself. Letting something like that go to waste was not a thing a human being ought to do.
What I needed to do now was find out exactly how far my current abilities actually went. If they turned out as useless in a real fight as Time Acceleration, I'd be in genuine trouble. The Root Skill was SSS-Rank, so that seemed unlikely — but each Branch Skill was only B-Rank, so you never knew.
That said, skills like Light Control and Darkness Control being a mere B-Rank? Were these even the same Abilities other hunters used? Come to think of it, the Unix Cube system drew a distinction between Abilities and skills. Given that purchasing an Ability was considerably more involved than purchasing a skill, the hypothesis that Abilities were a higher order of power than skills had some weight behind it. And yet I had acquired things like Water Control and Light Control — powers the world knew as Abilities — in the form of skills. That was a little strange.
The possibilities I could reason out were as follows.
First: the Water Control and Light Control I had obtained as skills were completely different powers that merely shared a name with the Abilities actual hunters used. In truth, names like Water Control and Light Control were just convenient labels scholars had coined for classification. It was entirely possible that the skill names defined by the Unix Cube and the Ability names defined by people happened to coincide.
Second: the Unix Cube's skills and actual Abilities were the same thing, and what we called Abilities in this world actually belonged to the domain of skills. In other words, Abilities like Water Control and Light Control weren't Abilities at all — they were skills. Even I, the Cube's master, didn't fully grasp the difference between the two. But I had a rough sense that they were distinct forms of power. If this second theory held, then the skills I possessed would be identical to a hunter's Abilities.
Abilities had no levels. Skills did. The existence of levels meant skills had room to grow. And real-world Abilities grew too. For a hunter, the growth of an Ability was a virtue of the highest order.
"I don't have enough information to know for sure. Then again, whether it's a skill or an Ability doesn't matter. What matters is whether the power is actually useful."
Exactly. The finer points were irrelevant. Skill or Ability, as long as I could use it, that was enough. No sense getting hung up on narrow distinctions. I'd figure it out in due time.
I couldn't test skills in a cramped one-room apartment. I decided to head somewhere open, left the house at once, and made for the park nearby.
The Neighborhood Park near our villa. Being the weekend, a few children were playing on the playground, and their mothers had clustered on the benches in little knots of gossip. There were people around, but that hardly mattered.
I wasn't a Demonic, and I intended to register with the Hunter Association anyway, so there was no need to hide my power. Testing a whole variety of abilities in public, though, would be pushing it. Conventional wisdom held that a single person wielded a single Ability. Not being able to show off the full spread of my skills was a bit of a shame.
I currently possessed four Root Skills in total: Time Mastery, Mentality, Elemental Mastery, and Sex Mastery. The Ability I would present to the world was Light Control, a Branch Skill of Elemental Mastery.
From experience, I more or less understood how to activate a skill. There was no need to shout the name. All I had to do was will it into being with enough force. I raised both hands and wished for Light Control to answer.
A low, rumbling hum — like a car engine turning over — spread outward from my heart. Along with that tremor, I felt stamina and mana drain away. Ever since acquiring Abilities and skills, I had been able to sense that mana was a real thing, and that it constituted my body.
In truth, mana existed in every living creature, but humans without the makings of a hunter could barely feel their own. The quantity was simply too negligible.
Like fuel burning in an engine, the resources that composed my flesh were consumed to bring the skill into being. It wasn't the soul-sucking sensation I'd felt when I activated Time Acceleration, but it was a deeply strange and unfamiliar feeling all the same. As if a tiny feather were tickling every inch of my body. At this rate of consumption, I could use the skill quite a few times.
"Huh!? Look at that mister! There's a firefly on his hand!"
"Dummy! That's not a firefly! That's called an Ability!"
"Abi…? What? What's that?"
"I don't actually know! Anyway, what that guy's using is an Ability! I saw it on YouTube!"
A small light gathered in a circle above my palm. The luminosity was considerable — like looking at a fluorescent bulb the moment after you'd replaced it. I felt a profound warmth radiating from the brilliant light I had created. It wasn't simply the warmth of brightness. The gentle pulse of mana the light gave off soothed my mind on an unconscious level.
So that was why Light Control was treated as something precious. I realized the ability wasn't merely a matter of manipulating physical light. Light Control was a technique for handling light together with a positive, warming energy. Whether my skill was identical to the real Ability, of course, I still couldn't say.
"Woooow! That's so cool! I want one! Should I go ask him for it!?"
"No way! Hunters are super scary grown-ups. Mom said never to bother hunter uncles and aunties! And that's nothing, anyway. The guys on YouTube who use that stuff make arrows out of it and shoot them into the sky. It's so awesome!"
"Arrows!?"
The children's chatter carried all the way over to me. They seemed fascinated by the orb of light I'd made. I wasn't generally the type kids took a shine to, but the power of Light Control really was something else.
Was this enough to conclude that the real-world Ability called Light Control and the Unix Cube skill of the same name were one and the same?
An arrow of light, though. I was fairly sure I'd heard of that. Strictly speaking, it wasn't exclusive to Light Control — it was a fundamental technique of Natural-type Abilities. For the record, a "technique" to a hunter meant an applied skill built on top of an Ability.
An arrow, huh. Maybe I should give it a try.
Just making a pretty light like this wouldn't be of any use in a fight. If I was going to do it, I was going to do it properly. I pictured an arrow in my mind with as much force as I could muster. The round orb of light resting on my palm would become an arrow. And that arrow would be loosed into the sky above me.
Some Dungeon Hunter had said it on television: the core of any technique was imagination. The more specifically you visualized it, the more refined the technique became. I summoned the most concrete image of a light-arrow I was capable of. The orb of light, however, did not so much as twitch.
"Nngh… not as easy as I thought."
The moment my concentration slipped, the light I'd so carefully gathered vanished like smoke. Using a skill wasn't as simple as I'd hoped. That said, it wasn't terribly difficult either. If I had to use it in a real fight, I was confident I could.
The arrow of light, though — that was another matter. For a writer, my imagination was apparently lacking. But I had a lifeline.
I pulled my smartphone from my pocket. Any human living in the modern world ought to know how to take advantage of civilization's gifts.
I opened YouTube and typed Light Control into the search bar. A cascade of outrageously flashy technique videos unspooled from the top of the results. Looking at this alone, you'd never guess Light Control was supposed to be rare. Information age, indeed.
"There's even a video uploaded by a Rank 4 Hunter. I guess it really is the YouTube era."
I searched for the video with the most views. The arrow of light wasn't called a Light Arrow — it was called a Holy Arrow. Given the sacred energy of the light I had created, the name made perfect sense.
The man in the video was of no interest to me whatsoever; I didn't care what his face looked like. He gave a straightforward explanation of the Holy Arrow's properties.
"If you handle a Natural-type Ability, this is a basic technique every one of you should be able to use. And precisely because it's basic, it's a technique you will use constantly. Think of it as the jab of boxing. Mastering it properly is more important than anything else."
I didn't skip the man's tedious explanation. I listened all the way through.
"Compared to the Arrow techniques of other Natural-type Abilities, the Holy Arrow's defining trait is its range. Fire Arrow, which has the shortest reach, packs tremendous offensive power — but that same short range severely limits its use in actual combat. Wind Arrow has the longest range, but its damage drops off sharply in proportion to the distance from the target, so it isn't a technique often used for sniping distant enemies. By contrast, the Holy Arrow's range is only a fraction shorter than the Wind Arrow's, and it suffers almost no damage falloff over distance. That's why, in practice, it's used far more frequently than the Arrow techniques of other Abilities. Now, watch the form."
What I focused on was the shape of the arrow the hunter in the video had created. A sharp arrowhead, a sleek shaft, and streamlined fletching.
With the form of a real hunter's Holy Arrow fully committed to memory, I activated Light Control once more. A round haze of light gathered in my hand. Only the second time I'd used it, and already the skill sat comfortably in my grip.
"From here, into the shape of an arrow… like this, then?"
Creation was hard, but imitation was easy. Especially for a hack writer like me. We were people who took imitation as our daily bread and from it forged something new.
The light trembled gently and began to take on a new form, the shape growing more defined by the second. I knew, instinctively, that I had succeeded in using the technique.
You have acquired the B-Rank Branch Skill Holy Arrow.
"Hm? A new skill?"
Before my eyes, a fully formed arrow of light had come into being. The name "holy arrow" suited it perfectly. One of the kids spotted it and pointed at me, shouting.
"Wow! It's exactly like the one I saw on YouTube!"
I loosed the arrow of light I'd made into the sky. Firing it was almost trivially easy. All I had to do was fix an aim point and will the arrow to fly. I felt a modest drain of stamina and mana, and the arrow punched through the air with real force.
A sharp whistle cut the sky. The arrow of light climbing into the heavens was strikingly beautiful, scattering a glittering tail behind it like a shooting star as it flew far into the distance.
The two kids who'd seen it came running toward me, eyes sparkling. To children, a hunter's Ability was wonder itself. Fortunately, no one else had noticed what I was doing. The mothers were too absorbed in their own conversations. Their kids could have been kidnapped and they wouldn't have had a clue.
"Mister! How do you do that!?"
"Are you a YouTuber!?"
I gave the sparkling-eyed interrogation a few perfunctory answers, then headed home.