A Lesson in the Spaces Between
We took Do Joojin up on his offer and moved to a new location.
Not that we had any reason or pretext to refuse.
It was a training hall inside the Gangwon Branch, and honestly, the facility itself wasn't all that different from the academy's practice gym. Maybe the materials were a little different, but still — this place sat practically nose-to-nose with an active dungeon.
No need to paper the tiles with mana crystals charged up with illusion magic, that's for sure.
If anything, the vacancy meant I could see the floor covered in some specially treated sealing compound instead.
"A room built from special materials. It should hold up even if an A+ rank hunter cut loose at full power."
"Oh, is that so?"
"...Honestly? If you ask me, I'd say even that might not be enough."
"Aw, that's plenty. Stop worrying about it."
I turned my head as I said it, and there was Do Joojin, frowning.
Ah, oops.
For all his gentle looks, he turned out to have a rather touchy pride. Though really, what hunter in this entire world doesn't?
'It's not like you're monsters, folks~'
I'll say this up front: I wasn't trying to provoke anyone.
In any case, given the situation, going all out would be difficult for me. If that claim about the room withstanding a rampaging A+ rank hunter was true, it was more than enough for what I had planned.
'Not that I intend to lose.'
With that thought, I opened the storage locker.
The weapon I'd be using was, as always, my brutish greatsword. Absolutely useless for human-on-human combat, but the weapon most familiar to my hands.
"Are you sure that weapon is all right, though?"
"Huh? It's fine, totally fine. Picking some other weapon now and fumbling with my grip later would be the bigger problem."
Same reason I use such a bizarre weapon in the first place, really.
Not a greatsword but a monstrosity of a blade — every related function crammed in up to the limit. A weapon designed from the ground up to handle whatever monster came its way.
Sure, there are weapons that are more efficient against specific monsters... but for me, rather than shoulder the risk of wielding something unfamiliar, I'd decided to drill deep into one well instead.
The thing was originally commissioned after I racked my brain over how to put the techniques I'd learned at the dismantling plant to use. Learning some new weapon art now would be nothing but a waste of time.
Add the various auxiliary tools on top of that.
It was my own homegrown tactical doctrine.
"Impressive. So it's a style built to deliver consistent performance in any situation. Very sound."
"Thanks for the compliment. Though speaking of which, your weapon's pretty unusual too."
"It's the one I know best."
Funny thing was, Do Joojin — the very man saying it — was also holding a rather distinctive weapon.
Call it a glaive? A poleaxe? Considering the cultural tradition, wol-do — the Korean crescent blade — might be the more accurate term.
Beneath his decent, unremarkable looks lurked a truly sinister weapon.
Not a bad choice, though.
The crescent blade's greatest strength was first its reach as a long weapon. And unlike halberds and the like, it traded adaptability across many situations for a structure specialized in exploiting centrifugal force.
The cold weapon capable of delivering the most devastating output in melee combat.
Given Do Joojin's style, I could confidently call it the optimal armament.
That's A+ rank for you — not a single gap in their tactical theory. At the very least, it was obvious he'd thought long and hard about what combat style suited him best.
"Master!! Wreck him!!"
"Heh, do your best out there~?"
Cheering from the corner of the training hall. I let it slide past one ear and out the other, thinking it over at my own pace.
'Let's see here.'
If there'd been a camera, staging a dramatic loss after a flashy exchange would've made for good footage. But this wasn't that kind of situation.
So — how to play it?
I stole a glance at Do Joojin across from me, and reached my conclusion.
"Shall we?"
"Yes. Come at me whenever you're ready!"
He took the question — thrown out to confirm things — as straightforwardly as that.
And with that, he planted his feet, gripping the pole of his crescent blade firmly in both hands, holding rock-steady.
Waiting for me to make the first move.
Was it courtesy toward a hunter he admired, or a technique drilled into his body? The former wasn't entirely wrong, but the latter was closer to the truth.
Against a monster the size of a house, it's hard to leverage a long weapon's chief advantage — its reach.
Because of that, the combat style of hunters who use long weapons is, nine times out of ten, dodge the incoming attack, then land the counter. Counter-focused, you could say.
In that sense, the crescent blade is a reasonably suitable weapon for monster hunting.
Full-body slashes. Destruction exceeding the wielder's own muscle power through centrifugal force. Either way, ideal for countering.
In fact, the thrust — which the crescent blade sacrifices — is nearly useless against monsters anyway. A thrust is the fastest attack a long weapon can deliver, but by its very nature it's hard to stop midway or recover the weapon afterward.
In other words, it's built for ambushes and openings, not retaliation. And considering a monster's sheer mass, all the more so.
A human the size of a grain of rice can only deal damage to a tiny fraction of a monster's anatomy. Which is precisely why hunters who favor long weapons are, for the most part, unaccustomed to first-strike techniques like the thrust.
Ironically enough.
The exact opposite of human combat.
In a duel between people, the first priority of a long weapon is its range — and exploiting that with thrusts and probing attacks is the core of it.
Even the crescent blade, structurally ill-suited to thrusting, is no exception. If anything, the sweeping motion the wol-do can unleash one-handed boasts the finest coverage of any long weapon in existence.
Which means—
'As I thought.'
Do Joojin isn't accustomed to fighting people. Or rather, he's probably never even touched sword-and-blade technique proper.
His footwork alone gave it away.
Naturally so. For hunters, the true enemy has always been monsters. Unless you count the rare occasions hunters fight each other, there's no reason to hone weapon technique in the first place.
Most situations can be solved with a hunter's signature superhuman strength. So hunters, in turn, naturally neglect the blade.
Setting aside oddballs like me who keep their hand in just in case — Do Joojin would be the same.
His technique earned him the nickname Butcher entirely on its own merits. Factor in his hatred of monsters on top of that, and there's no way he'd ever bothered learning weapon arts.
We are, in the end, Hunters. What we fight is, always and only, monsters — not people.
'Which, for the record, I agree with~'
Setting that aside, though, it's better to learn at least the fundamentals of weapon technique.
It lets you audit your own body — what movements you can and can't make.
It's true hunters possess superhuman power, but their skeletal structure isn't all that different. Short of a body-transmutation ability, you don't suddenly grow taller or sprout longer limbs.
In other words, in theory, the range of motion available to a hunter isn't so far removed from an ordinary person's.
Which is to say—
To me, someone who'd picked up weapon technique even at a dilettante's depth, Do Joojin's stance looked riddled with holes.
No — the strategy itself wasn't bad.
'Yeah, let's go with that.'
Well. Roughly decided.
For now, I win. That'd be useful for this friend of his who calls himself my fan, too. With the great incursion over, there's breathing room now — if he feels like learning something, everyone wins.
Thock. I kicked the tip of the greatsword off the ground.
The single most important motion in wielding a greatsword: the movement that loads it with centrifugal force.
And at the same moment—
"Guh—?!"
WHOOOM!!
Do Joojin caught the greatsword as it closed the distance and came crashing down.
Purely reflexive, but the result wasn't bad. Of course, even blocking it, the block was far from clean.
It was a downward slash loaded with centrifugal force, after all. Nowhere near light enough to stop with a mere pair of arms.
I pressed force into both hands without pause — a motion that seemed to bear down on the crescent blade's pole — and naturally, tension flooded Do Joojin's entire body.
That was exactly what I'd intended.
"Wha—?!"
Whiiiish — around the fulcrum of the crescent blade, my body took flight.
With the leap, the force dispersed along the strange, twisting arc drawn by the blade, and my body went soaring upward — head to the earth, feet to the sky.
Completely inverted, I sailed clean over Do Joojin, and my attack bared its teeth at the back of his skull.
"Khh!"
Naturally, Do Joojin was no fool. He twisted his stance instantly and swept the attack aside with the blade's pole.
But the clash didn't end at one.
Tak-tak, tak-tak, tak-tak, tak-tak!!
Driven onto the back foot before he knew it, color drained into Do Joojin's face — the flush of trouble.
An attack speed impossible for a greatsword.
And of course it was. Because what I was wielding right now wasn't the greatsword's edge at all.
I seized the auxiliary grip mounted on the blade's spine and flipped the greatsword into a reverse hold.
The result: a staff completed, its pommel-weight serving as the head.
A thunderous thrust.
Not greatsword range, not crescent-blade range — zero distance. A weapon far too alien to be called a greatsword ruled the gap.
Well, it'd be a stretch to call it a true staff, I'll admit. The balance point alone is wrong, for one thing.
With a hunter's freakish strength, that much was nothing to worry about — the problem was that my opponent was also a hunter. Differences invisible to any ordinary person become glaring, naked openings in front of one.
Technique exists to make up for exactly that.
Instead, I exploited the blade's weight — pressed the blade-side down hard.
And like a seesaw, the pommel-weight at the other end came rocketing up with force beyond any ordinary thrust.
"Hah—!"
Do Joojin tilted his chin back and barely evaded the offensive. On his face sat an uncharacteristic bewilderment.
Well, I understood why.
It wasn't as if my strength or speed was overwhelming. Having hunted countless monsters as a hunter, Do Joojin knew that better than anyone. Compared to monsters, I might actually be the slower one.
And yet.
Even so, he couldn't keep up—
No, that much was obvious. What I was using right now was pure technique — territory completely foreign to Do Joojin the monster hunter.
...They say martial arts are, in the end, a contest of weight classes. That no technique means anything in the face of an overwhelming size gap.
Not exactly wrong, but there are a few hidden premises.
First, the gap has to be so vast it's practically a different species. Second, the other party has to have trained some degree of martial arts themselves.
In other words, it's an assumption that only holds when the technique involved is roughly even. Could sheer size really render every technique useless? In practice, when a small-framed expert who's trained meets a big ordinary Joe, the expert wins nine times out of ten.
And "similar technique" is itself a fiction — factor in individual aptitude and perfectly equal cases can't exist at all. That's why upsets between evenly matched technicians happen all the time, too.
Which means—
"GAH—?!"
There is not a single reason on this earth for me to lose to an A+ rank who's never learned a scrap of weapon technique.
Even against a hunter rather than a monster, the same holds. And right now, it was hard to even call his physical specs above mine.
Do Joojin's ability was progressive physical reinforcement — a power that started weak but climbed steadily through combat, feeding on the recoil of his own attacks. At maximum output, it was said to surpass even S-rank physical enhancement users.
A useful ability, no question about it.
But—
At this zero distance? Before his reinforcement had even properly spun up? Raw physical ability alone put me on top.
WHAM!!
The pommel-weight I'd slammed down struck Do Joojin's collarbone.
I heard the grind of clenched teeth — can't be helped there. What my weapon was doing right now was less greatsword and closer to a short staff. And no long weapon on earth could hope to block a short staff fired from this range.
Do Joojin forced strength into his knees as they threatened to buckle on their own. And then, at the corner of his eyes, something kindled.
'Oh?'
And then — Do Joojin's grip changed.
Until a moment ago it had been long-weapon hold; now it was closer to a sword grip. The way he locked his hands tight was closer to blade technique, actually.
'Good — at least he's got eyes.'
The crescent blade's defining trait is that while it carries a long weapon's reach, its essence is that of a saber. In fact, some wol-do forms deploy blade technique at zero distance.
If he could realize that, it was plenty.
Still a clumsy stance, though. He kicked out the crescent blade's pole to open the distance — and a somewhat flustered look crossed Do Joojin's face.
Not because his stance had broken.
A distance that stretched in a single bound, out of blade-technique range — his mind simply couldn't catch up fast enough to decide what stance to take next.
'There it is.'
A long weapon floundering, unable to leverage its reach. And with reactions that sluggish, he couldn't leverage the reach even if he wanted to.
I waited a beat to see, but it seemed wiser to give up on hoping Do Joojin would come to me.
Well then.
'How to play this?'
Thought moves in an instant — and frankly, he wasn't giving me much time to deliberate beyond this anyway.
So then? Only one conclusion left.
Time to teach him with his body.
SHRAAAAANG!!
The next moment, the chain I'd flung out as a feint coiled precisely around Do Joojin's crescent blade.
Reflexively, he clenched the hand gripping his weapon — an act to keep it from being wrested away. And for me, that was the point.
Unlike Do Joojin, I released my strength instead. At the same time, I kicked off the ground and tore forward.
The combined pull of us both closed the gap at a speed far beyond the last exchange.
The crescent blade flew at me—
But.
'One read on the arc and it's done~'
A handle bound in chain. A reflexive grip. Under these conditions, even a blindfolded monk could dodge it.
I slipped easily past the crescent blade skimming my nose. And then—
CLANG!
Metal met metal with an interlocking bite.
At the end of a flashy bit of fumbling, the sagging edge of the crescent blade was caught and locked in the saw-teeth mounted along my greatsword's spine.
'Not what this thing was designed for, but...'
I should really sharpen those teeth sometime.
Thinking that, I met Do Joojin's gaze.
Both of us, weaponless. Normally I'd have thrown a fist right then, but that wouldn't teach him anything.
So instead—
"Hah—?!"
This time, I'd come at him a little differently.
I poured force into the blade pinning his crescent blade down — and stepped forward, shifting my feet from the exact spot where I'd been standing.
A truly trivial change.
And yet.
'It'll be his instincts reacting on their own.'
Weapon arts aside, the instinct that had carried him through countless lines of fire was no empty thing.
Stay here and you die!!
The pressure of my gait compelled Do Joojin to act.
Break away!!
In that sense, his reaction was actually quick. He released his weapon and broke distance — a judgment made in what was practically a blink.
Just.
Not beyond the level I'd predicted, though.
Snick.
I laid my blade against the throat of Do Joojin as he retreated blind.
"Want to keep going?"
...The greatsword I'd swung the instant he let go of his weapon. No matter how far he opened the gap, he couldn't clear the greatsword's range in one burst.
And all the more so since I'd been anticipating that exact move.
At the sight of me, Do Joojin gave a hollow laugh. He seemed to have realized that the action he'd taken just now had, in truth, been one I'd steered him into.
"No. I lose. Thank you for the instruction."
"Mm."
Well. Even an outstanding hunter ends up like this if he's not used to fighting people.
With Do Joojin's declaration of surrender, I lowered my blade as well.
And at the same time—
Do Joojin's eyes drifted slowly across the room.
Just as I'd told him before the match, there wasn't a single decent scar left anywhere on the training floor.
What matters in a duel between people isn't a flashy contest of power — it's technique. If he grasped the importance of that, I'd be glad.
'...No, that's not really mine to say, is it.'
If you're going to hunt monsters your whole life, it's knowledge you'll never need. That it might prove useful once in a blue moon is equally true.
I wondered what he'd actually think.
Swallowing the thought, I — like the man before me who'd idolized a butcher in his own right — slowly let the tension drain from my body.
* * *