5. What's So Hard About That?
“……That was true as of yesterday, though.”
Nobody answered right away after my words fell into the silence.
The smell of the Ironhorn Boar's blood still hung thick inside the cave, and small pebbles trickled down now and then from the ceiling that had caved in just moments ago. Tap-tap-rattle. In the quiet, that sound was the only thing that seemed oddly loud.
Seoah spent a long while looking back and forth between me and the boar's head lying on the floor. Then she spoke, slowly.
“Doyun.”
“Yes.”
“You're joking, right?”
“I'm not really in a joking mood either.”
As I said it, I pressed a hand against my side. A little blood came away on my palm. Right up until a moment ago, I'd been too busy staying alive to feel anything, but now that the tension had drained out of me, pain started rising from every corner of my body at once.
My side especially.
“Hsss……”
It hurt. Quite a lot, actually.
Seoah saw it and came straight over.
“Let me take a look.”
“I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine.”
“I'm not dead, am I?”
She gave me a look of pure incredulity.
“By that standard, just about any injury would count as fine.”
She had a point. I had no argument left, so I shut my mouth.
Meanwhile, the others were coming back to their senses one by one. Some were still staring blankly at the boar's severed neck; others rushed over to the D-rank hunter who'd been slammed into the wall.
“Somebody help over here!”
The atmosphere began to move again.
Seoah ran off toward the injured, and only then did I finally look down at the sword in my hand.
The cheap longsword I'd bought yesterday. Until a few minutes ago it had looked like nothing more than a toothpick to me. And yet now there was only a faint smear of blood on the blade — not broken, not bent.
I looked at the Ironhorn Boar again. The head lay rolled a few steps away from the body, and the cut surface was smooth to the point of being unsettling.
Not torn. Not crushed.
It was just — simply —
cut.
“……”
I'd done it myself, and I still couldn't understand it. I'd only copied the motion the Sword Saint had shown me. And even then, without any sense that I'd copied it perfectly.
I stared back and forth between the sword and the boar for a while, then finally shoved the blade back into its sheath. Staring at it longer didn't seem likely to produce an answer.
About fifteen minutes after we called for rescue, Association personnel arrived. The emergency medical team came in first, followed in a line by the monster recovery crew and the field verification staff. The quiet cave was suddenly packed with people.
The wounded hunters were carried out first on stretchers, and I received basic first aid on the spot.
“The wound itself isn't deep,” the medic said, dabbing antiseptic at my side. “But you took a pretty hard impact, so get yourself to a hospital today. Cracked ribs or muscle damage don't always show up right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
I gave a suitably vague answer. That was when someone called my name from deeper inside the cave.
“Hunter Han Doyun?”
I turned. A middle-aged man in an Association vest stood there, a tablet in one hand.
“I need to confirm a few things.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
Not a great feeling. But I couldn't exactly play dumb, so I followed him.
He stopped in front of the Ironhorn Boar's corpse. Up close, it was even bigger. In the middle of the fight I hadn't had the presence of mind to notice, but now that the thing was dead, the very fact that I'd swung a sword at that made no sense to me either.
The middle-aged man pointed at the boar's neck.
“This cut.”
Then he looked at me.
“Was it you, Hunter Han Doyun?”
“……Yes.”
This time I just admitted it. Five people had witnessed it firsthand; denying it would've been pointless.
Another staff member standing beside him pulled on a glove and examined the cut surface. Shone a flashlight on it. Pressed a small measuring device against it.
Beep. Beep.
After checking a few readings, the staffer frowned.
“Team Leader.”
“What?”
“Something's off.”
The middle-aged man walked over.
“Off how?”
“The cut surface is too clean.”
Even I could tell that much.
The staffer pressed the device against it a second time.
Beep.
“Almost no mana residue either.”
“Sword-qi techniques?”
“Nothing picked up on that either.”
The two of them looked down at the cut surface in unison.
I stood quietly to the side. For some reason, I was starting to feel like a man who'd done something he really shouldn't have.
The middle-aged man turned his head.
“What skill did you use?”
“Skill?”
“Yes. Sword-type, enhancement-type, anything.”
I paused. Basic Swordsmanship. Should I say it? I was a little curious what expression this man would make if I told him the sword art that cleaves mountain peaks is called Basic Swordsmanship.
In the end, I gave the safest possible answer.
“I didn't exactly use a skill.”
“Then what?”
“I just cut it.”
“……Just cut it?”
“Yes.”
The man stared at my face for a long moment, like he was checking whether I was messing with him. Unfortunately, I was dead serious. He looked back down at his tablet.
“Current rank, F.”
“Yes.”
“Innate trait, appraisal-type.”
“Correct.”
“No registered swordsmanship abilities or related skills on record.”
“Also correct.”
The man's fingers stopped. A short silence passed. Then he turned, slowly, toward the Ironhorn Boar's corpse.
“And yet you severed a B-rank monster's neck in a single strike.”
Hearing it out of someone else's mouth made it sound strange to me too.
“……I suppose that's what happened.”
Just then I heard footsteps behind us. It was Seoah.
“I saw it.”
The Association staff turned around.
“You witnessed it?”
“Yes. Start to finish.”
She glanced briefly at the boar's corpse, then continued.
“At first, his sword bounced off.”
I looked away for no good reason. Did she really have to include that part?
“Couldn't even cut through the boar's fur.”
“……”
“Then on the next charge, he took the hit and got slammed into the wall.”
Why is this person so detailed?
The Association staffer, on the other hand, was listening even more intently now.
“And then?”
“Maybe around the third exchange……”
Seoah paused, thinking. Then she looked at me.
“His movements suddenly changed.”
The middle-aged man's eyes narrowed.
“Changed how?”
“That's hard for me to explain either.”
She pressed her lips together briefly, then went on.
“For a moment, he looked like a different person entirely.”
At that, I turned to look at her too. A different person. From where I stood, nothing had changed at all. The boar's movements had suddenly become easy to read. The Sword Saint's form had come to mind. And I'd simply followed it. Apparently, from the outside, that's what it looked like.
The middle-aged man started writing something on his tablet.
“The Association will need to run a formal verification, for now.”
There it was. The annoying conversation, right on schedule.
“Verify what, exactly?”
“A re-measurement, to start.”
I'd expected it. Didn't make hearing it any more pleasant.
“Is it really necessary?”
“It's not mandatory.”
I relaxed, just a fraction. Then the man immediately added:
“However, now that there's a record of an F-rank hunter solo-killing a B-rank monster, the Association can't exactly let it pass without confirmation.”
In other words: do it.
“When should I come in?”
“Tomorrow morning, if possible.”
Tomorrow. I swallowed a sigh.
“Understood.”
Better than digging my heels in and making things bigger than they needed to be. The man verified a few more details, then returned to the other staff.
Seoah was still standing beside me.
I spoke first. “What?”
“That was supposed to be my line.”
“Which is what?”
“Doyun, what are you?”
“I'm Han Doyun.”
“Not that.”
Figures.
Seoah pointed at the sword at my waist.
“That swordsmanship from earlier.”
I thought for a moment. Talking about the gallery was still out of the question. Transcendents. Other dimensions. A Sword Saint who cuts mountains. If I let any of that slip now, I might end up undergoing a very different kind of interrogation before the rank re-measurement ever happened.
“I learned it a bit yesterday.”
“Someone who first learned it yesterday cut off a B-rank monster's head?”
“That's why I said it's strange. Me too.”
Seoah looked at me like I was utterly ridiculous.
“Why do you keep talking about your own life like it's someone else's problem?”
“Because I know just as little as you do.”
“……”
She stared at me for a moment, then let out a long sigh.
“Fine.”
She walked a few steps ahead. I moved to follow, and she turned back around.
“By the way, Doyun.”
“Yeah?”
She jerked her chin toward the Ironhorn Boar's corpse.
“From now on, I don't think anyone's going to believe you if you tell them you're F-rank.”
I looked at the boar in silence. She wasn't wrong. That really was the problem.
By the time I got home, the sun had already set completely. Stopping by the hospital took longer than I'd expected. Thankfully, nothing serious. A bruised side. An abrasion on my shoulder. A mild shock to the muscles. A few days of rest, they said.
But the doctor had added one thing: stay out of dungeons for the time being.
I sat on my bed and looked down at the little paper bag of prescribed medication.
“……And who exactly is going to pay my rent.”
It remained a very real problem. However much swordsmanship that could cleave mountains I'd learned, rent didn't just vanish because of it.
I took out my phone. After a brief hesitation, I tapped the familiar icon.
Dimensional Integrated Gallery
When I'd first found it, it had just been a strange app that refused to be deleted. Now it was frightening in a slightly different way.
The moment the app opened, the usual posts greeted me.
Everything was business as usual. I stared at the screen for a moment, then hit the new-post button.
Title:
Post. The comments came fast.
I replied immediately.
End. That was it. I waited a moment. No, that really was it. Talking with this man was exhausting, as always.
This time, the reply was a little different.
I stared at my phone screen. That was a first. This man, typing a question mark.
Soon the rest of the pack came swarming in.
I attached the photos I'd taken in the dungeon — shots of the Ironhorn Boar's corpse, captured before the Association arrived. The body. The head lying a short distance away. And the smoothly severed neck.
After I uploaded them, the comments stopped for a beat. A few seconds later:
What exactly is a waste, you glutinous lizard.
Then the Sword Saint commented again.
The comments went dead. This time the silence lasted longer. And then the Archwitch waded in first.
I thought for a moment. Yesterday was the first time I'd properly held a sword, back in the training yard.
Silence.
Question marks lined up one after another. I looked down at the screen and grew a little uneasy.
Why? What did I do wrong?
A moment later, the Sword Saint commented.
It went quiet again.
Up until now, it had always been the other way around. I was the one who couldn't understand them. Calling the carving of a mountain "basic." Calling a B-rank monster cute. Calling it fodder for gatekeepers. By my standards, every last word out of their mouths had been nonsense. But right now — they were the ones failing to understand me.
A moment later:
A few seconds later:
I blinked without meaning to. I'd never seen that man get jabbed that instantly before.
In an instant, an entirely different fight had broken out. I scrolled down a few lines, then posted another comment.
The Sword Saint reacted immediately.
I typed it out exactly as I remembered it.
A moment later:
A comment came up. It had no content at all.
A moment later, one more.
I frowned. Why is he acting like this? He's the one who taught it.
Was that a compliment? Or not?
For the first time, something sane appeared in the gallery.
I looked down at my phone for a moment. That was the second time today I'd heard that.
But a new notification popped up right above it.
A new attachment has been uploaded.
A post appeared right after it. Author: Sword Saint. No title. No body. A single attachment.
I stared at the screen. Basic Swordsmanship, followed by… Beginner Swordsmanship. I felt a flicker of unease.
No answer for a moment. Then:
I stared at that sentence for a long time. This was a man who had split a mountain in half and called it nothing. Which meant the Sword Saint's "nothing much" was not a scale to be trusted.
I rested my finger over the play button. Hesitated.
“……”
Still. I had to watch it, didn't I.
In the end, I tapped the screen. The video began to play. And the instant I saw the very first frame —
my finger froze solid.
“……This is beginner-level?”