2. I Cut a Mountain and You Call It Basic?

I couldn't sleep.

Or more precisely.

Sleep had simply stopped being a thing that existed for me.

On the phone screen, the man swung his sword again.

A mountain was cut in half.

Rewound.

Again.

He swung the sword.

The mountain was cut.

Again.

"...I'm losing my mind."

I had no idea how many times it had been by now.

At first, all I could see was the mountain. A single swing of the sword, and a mountain split in two — of course my eyes went there first. But the longer I watched, the less the mountain mattered.

It was the way the man moved.

That was the strange part.

His foot came down. His knee bent slightly. His waist rotated. That power traveled up through his torso and carried all the way into the blade. The motion itself was simple — simple enough that I felt like I could imitate it if I tried.

And yet every time I watched, I saw something new.

I paused the video and looked down at my right hand, flexing my fingers open and shut a few times.

It was strange. This wasn't just an intellectual understanding. How the body was supposed to move — I could vaguely feel it in my muscles, not just my head.

Of course.

"I'm not cutting any mountains with this."

That would just be delusional. My ability was analysis, not copying. I had no idea what kind of power that man had used to split a mountain. All I'd managed to extract was a piece of his movement.

And yet the question kept nagging at me. What would actually happen if I tried it?

I pressed play again.

Once. Twice. Five times.

Then a message appeared.

"...Experience?"

So in other words, go try it yourself.

I checked the clock. 2:47 a.m.

I hesitated for a moment.

Then I put the phone down. No matter how curious I was, if I went wandering around at three in the morning with a sword, the first thing I'd be experiencing wouldn't be swordsmanship — it'd be the police.

Sleep first. I closed my eyes.

A little while later, I opened them again and watched the video exactly one more time.

I slept about four hours. The moment I woke up, I searched for hunter training grounds near my house. Several came up. I sorted by price.

"...Ouch."

Yesterday's daily wage had been 83,400 won. One hour of training would eat 12,000 of it.

I paid anyway.

Today only. If it turned out to be nothing, then it was just a 12,000-won lesson. If it turned out to be real — well, I'd worry about what came after when it was real.

"Do you have a membership card?"

"Will my hunter's license work?"

"Yes."

I held out my license at the counter. The clerk tapped it against the terminal. Beep.

The clerk's eyes flicked up from the screen for a moment. A familiar reaction by now.

"One hour in the basic training room, please."

"Physical conditioning?"

"Weapons."

"What's your primary weapon?"

"Don't have one."

"...Sorry?"

"I'm planning to pick one today."

The clerk went quiet for a second. Saying it out loud, I realized I sounded a little strange too.

"Do you rent out swords?"

"We can, though for first-time users we'd recommend a practice model."

"That one, then."

I paid the deposit and received a training longsword — an ordinary blade with a dulled edge. I took hold of the grip.

"...Huh?"

Something felt off.

I'd never properly been taught how to hold a sword. But the instant it landed in my hand, last night's endlessly rewound video started playing in my head.

The Sword Saint's hand. The position of his fingers. The angle of his wrist.

Without thinking, I adjusted my grip. The weight that had felt awkward moments ago settled into my palm with an odd, natural comfort.

My footsteps stopped. I hadn't even done anything yet.

"...It's real."

No. I didn't know that yet. I had to try it myself first.

I shut the door of the private training room behind me. Walls. A mirror. A striking target. Lines were painted across the floor to mark your stance.

I stood in front of the mirror and recalled the video.

Feet. Knees. Waist. Shoulders. Wrists. Sword. I exhaled and swung.

Whoosh.

That was it.

"......"

Nothing happened. The wall was fine. The training room was fine. Naturally.

"Right."

If watching a mountain-cutting technique on video a few times was all it took to use it, the world would have gone insane by now.

I reset my stance.

Second swing. Whoosh. Third. Whoosh. Fourth. My arm was starting to ache a little.

"...It's exactly the same."

Had I gotten my hopes up for nothing? Maybe all my ability had analyzed was that man's posture. Watching a pro baseball pitcher's form in slow motion didn't mean you could throw a 160-kilometer-per-hour fastball.

That was when it happened.

"...Huh?"

A message had appeared right in front of my eyes.

I raised the sword again. Lower body. Power transfer.

This time I didn't start from the arm. I pushed off the floor with the soles of my feet. Knees. Waist. Torso. Sword.

FWOOSH!

The sound was different.

"...Huh?"

Until a second ago, every swing had been a whoosh. This one wasn't. The sound of the blade shoving the air aside lodged itself in my ears. And the tension in my arms had actually decreased.

Again.

Feet. Waist. Shoulders. Arm.

FWOOSH!

"Oh."

The sound escaped my mouth.

It was working. Not in the sense that I could cut mountains — but at the very least, I was genuinely reproducing the motion I'd seen in that video.

Suddenly it became fun.

Again.

I corrected it.

Again.

I slowed it down a touch.

Again.

FWOOSH! One more. FWOOSH!

I swung until I lost track of time. In the beginning it had been nothing more than a single downward cut, but with every repetition something shifted. Where the power born at my feet traveled. Where it leaked away. Little by little, I could feel it.

Only then did I understand.

I hadn't gained the Sword Saint's power. I was taking the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠principle he'd used when he swung his sword — the parts of it my ability could understand — and adapting them to my own body.

I stopped moving and looked around. Off to one side of the training room stood a humanoid striking dummy — one of the reinforced targets hunters used for weapon practice. It wasn't as hard as a monster, obviously, but it wasn't something an F-rank like me should have been able to break, either.

I picked up the sword and stood in front of it.

"...Just once."

It existed to be hit. It'd be fine, surely.

I lined my feet up with the marks on the floor and raised the sword, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠recalling last night's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠video. The man hadn't bothered with any preparatory stance. He simply raised it, looked — and cut.

I did the same.

Feet. Knees. Waist. Shoulders. Elbow. Wrist. Sword. I swung.

CRASH!

"......?"

The sound was nothing like what I'd expected. The target was knocked backward, its anchor bolts half-torn out of the floor, the whole thing toppling over onto its side with a clang!

I froze mid-swing.

"...What the hell."

BEEEEEP!

An alarm shrieked from the ceiling.

I looked at the sword. I looked at the target. I looked at the sword again.

"...Why did it end up like that."

I walked closer. A deep gash was gouged into the dummy's torso where the blade had struck. It wasn't a clean cut. It was the opposite, actually — I'd failed to control the power at all. Less of a slice, more of a smash.

And that smash had ripped the thing out of the floor?

I looked down at my hand.

I was F-rank. Had been for five years. My strength hadn't suddenly gone up. Which meant exactly one thing had changed.

The way I used a sword.

Clack. The door of the training room opened.

"Sir!"

It was the clerk from the counter. Another staff member was behind him.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Any injuries?"

"None."

The clerk's gaze slid past my shoulder. The half-torn-out target. The anchor bolts on the floor. The sword in my hand. His expression turned complicated.

"...What exactly did you just do?"

"Swung a sword."

"I saw that part."

Apparently there were cameras in here.

The clerk approached the dummy and crouched down to examine the mounting. But my mind was on something else.

"Excuse me."

"One moment."

"Do I have to pay for this?"

The clerk turned his head. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Is it expensive?"

"...That's not really the point right now."

"It's very much the point for me."

83,400 won. Twelve thousand for the training room. Plus the sword rental. If they tacked on the cost of a dummy, my day would be in the red before it even started.

"If it was damaged during normal training, we don't bill for it."

"Ah."

What a relief.

"However." The clerk looked back down at the dummy. "We'll need to verify that it was normal training."

"...I just cut once."

"Exactly."

The other staff member checked a tablet. "Hunter Han Doyun."

Her finger stopped scrolling. She looked at me. Then back at the tablet.

"...You're F-rank?"

"Yes."

"When was your last reassessment?"

"Never taken one."

The two staff members looked at each other. I looked down at the sword in my hand.

Until last night, I had never even held one properly.

The moment I got home, I pulled out my phone.

Until yesterday, I'd hesitated a little before tapping that icon. Not today.

I went straight to the Sword Saint's posts. Sure enough, he was in the middle of a brawl with the Archwitch in the comments.

I jumped straight into the comments.

The comments paused for a moment.

What about it? WHAT ABOUT IT?

I nearly put the phone down. Stopped myself. I still had questions.

I left those two to it and posted again.

My fingers stopped.

He didn't even do it properly?

What had happened at the training center today came flooding back. The dummy ripped clean out of its anchors. And I hadn't even properly reproduced the movement from that video — I'd merely imitated the fragments my ability understood, with my own body. And it had still turned out like that.

"...And this is what he calls basic?"

This time the reply didn't come right away.

The comments went dead.

Five seconds. Ten seconds.

"...?"

That was supposed to be my line.

My fingers stopped.

Dimension?

I read the words floating on the screen again. Which dimension.