A Mountain That Walks
What a pain in the ass…….
At that very moment, that was exactly what Hwang Yoonha was thinking.
Maybe the problem was that, with zero enthusiasm, she'd planned to wrap things up half-heartedly and get some sleep. Ever since the answer she'd scribbled down just to avoid trouble later started fitting reality a little too well, some vague sense of dread had been creeping up on her. Before she knew it, Yoonha let out a sigh.
Truth be told, while the guide was explaining the afternoon schedule, her head had been somewhere else entirely. No — call it her usual worries. Either way, thanks to that, Yoonha had gone and posted the top score of the afternoon without giving it a second thought.
Who knew the reward would turn out to be this.
Beyond the gaze she cast with that thought, a dense thicket of trees waved at her with a rustling whoosh. The edge of the Taebaek Mountains. This was the special training ground provided by the Gangwon branch.
In other words, the tail end of the afternoon schedule.
Of course, even if it was a makeshift dungeon, its true nature was nothing more than a training camp. No way they'd shove a bunch of cadets into a real dungeon without so much as a word of warning.
The problem was that her partner — the very person involved — had swallowed the adults' scaremongering hook, line, and sinker.
"Y-Yoonha, are you gonna be okay? This is a dungeon, you know……."
"Yeah, sure it is."
There was no way she could tell her, right here and now, that it was actually a lie. She had no proof to convince her with to begin with. And Yoonha herself was running on nothing but a hunch.
More than anything else—
This is a hassle.
Even if she clumsily worked up the courage again, it would only end up being a bother. When she got that far in her thinking, Yoonha burst out laughing before she could stop herself.
A hassle. Even to her own ears, those were not words she should have been saying.
Under normal circumstances, even if she'd realized this was fake, she would have thrown herself into the exploration even harder. The fact that this place wasn't a genuine dungeon but a mere training ground meant, in other words, that it was safe. Thinking ahead to the day she'd strike out on her own as a hunter, she'd have figured the more active she was now, the better.
……Yeah. That was exactly where the problem lay.
A hunter.
Unlike everything that had come before, she had no certainty that she would actually become a hunter going forward — and that was why everything felt like a pointless chore. It might all just be a waste of time. In short, her own wishy-washiness was the problem. If she was truly going to quit, it would have been better to hand her spot over to another team.
As far as Yoonha could see, her life had always gone this way.
Of all the eras to be born into, she'd been born into this one. Somehow or other, she'd awakened as a hunter. It seemed like a way to make money, so she'd decided to become a hunter, and she'd sent in an application to the Academy that just happened to be opening its doors. And then—
A hunter's path launched on nothing more than that flimsy resolve had ended before she even crossed the starting line.
Of course, that much was only natural. A dream for the future she'd voiced without a shred of mental preparation was bound to shatter to pieces against the wall of reality.
Yoonha let out another low sigh.
Maybe I should just go back.
Yeah. She should go back, and this time actually submit her withdrawal papers. Dragging things out while tripping up the kids who were working hard would be nothing but a burden on everyone. The moment she settled on that conclusion with some firmness, she felt a little lighter.
Really?
Shut up. Hush.
She snapped back at the stirring in her own chest, and the noisy second-guessing fell silent. A familiar routine.
……Whew!
Refreshed as could be, she stretched with a long exhale. Now then. What to do from here? Her partner seemed just as eager to get down the mountain, so there'd be no need for a separate persuasion campaign. Which meant—
Was this kid's ability stealth, again?
She swept her surroundings with that thought. If this place really was the training ground inside the Taebaek Mountains like her partner assumed, there would be hunters nearby monitoring the area.
Ah. There.
Her gaze suddenly landed on the figure of a person moving in the distance. There it was, just as expected. She was nodding at her own sharp judgment when Yoonha turned back to her partner, who was still trembling like a leaf, and spoke.
"Wait here. I'm gonna go tell the teachers."
"Huh?"
Leaving the girl gaping behind her, Yoonha strode off with long, determined steps. And before long, she regretted it. Because the hunter she'd gone to such lengths to find had started climbing the mountain at a pace faster than her own.
No, damn it!
There was no helping the curse that escaped her lips. The hunter marched on and on without so much as a glance back no matter how many times she called out, and in the end Yoonha found herself in a slapdash chase under a sky that looked ready to dump rain at any moment.
Damn it. Do Minjun, Do Joojin, whatever the hell your name is — just you wait till I catch you.
The rest of the schedule proceeded as planned. Granted, judging by how slowly the other teams were cracking their problems, a second shot at the dungeon experience looked like a long way off.
"Agh, damn it. I wonder how Yoonha's doing."
I let out a yawn I barely bothered to hide. Whether they were guarding against cheating or what, there was no way to check on Yoonha's team from where I was standing. Not that the lead teacher could just leave his post. And in the first place, this was all happening while the students had been told, point blank, that it was a real dungeon.
Cheating or no cheating, the result probably would've been the same.
"Hey, Seoa. Did Master ever tell you to get yourself a crystal orb back in the day, or not?"
"Master isn't buying it for you, so why are you butting in? Honestly. You're out here earning money too, and you're still whining at me to buy you things? What do you take your ever-so-divine Master for?"
In that sense, the only person who could actually check on Yoonha from this spot was Seoa. Her ability was Clairvoyance. Clairvoyance in name only, really — it was the sum total of her eyesight, which grew more potent with every ability boost, dragging along things like X-ray vision and dynamic visual acuity in its wake. And a crystal orb was a tool that could project the scenery on the far side of that clairvoyance. In other words, I'd just asked Seoa to turn on the TV because I was bored, and she'd told me there was no remote.
"You little brat."
"Tch. Fine."
Well, she'd manage fine on her own, no doubt about it. This was Yoonha we were talking about. Her judgment calls in situations like this were the best of the bunch. The only thing that worried me a little was her attitude… but with nothing I could do about it right now, all I could do was sit on my hands.
In short: this is boring as hell.
It meant there was precious little for me to do at the moment. With a cranky grumble, I flopped down on my back. The open lot set aside on the branch grounds, unlike the lush forest around it, cushioned my body like a pillow — soft enough that I half suspected someone had laid down actual grass. And lying there like that, I got a proper eyeful of every manner of spectacle.
A leaden sky. Beneath it, past a row of tent-like stalls, the faces of students working through their problems. Staff members scurrying this way and that, and a branch coordinator looking down over the whole scene with apparent satisfaction. The homeroom teachers saddled with lead-teacher duty, same as me, were beating their chests in quiet agony at the sight of students without a single companion in sight. A flustered coordinator. Students agonizing over their puzzles. A staffer sprinting off in a hurry. A teacher cheering her students on. A staffer whispering into the coordinator's ear. The coordinator's face hardening all at once——
Hm?
"Huh? Master, what now?"
"No, Seoa. Something feels off around here, doesn't it?"
"…Huh. Now that you mention it?"
Sure enough, at this point even Seoa couldn't help but notice. For a while now, an unusual number of coordinators had been dashing back and forth every which way. Granted, anyone would run around like their hair was on fire when an unscheduled field trip landed in their lap. The problem was that this place was the Hunter Association's Gangwon branch.
In other words, the men currently wearing coordinator jackets were, in reality, hunters belonging to the branch. Was there any reason for hunters of this caliber to be flapping around in a panic?
"Seoa."
"Hey, you. Yeah, you — come here a second."
There was no need for explanations. With that short summons, Seoa, her voice pitched low, singled out one of the hunters loitering nearby and called him over.
"Yes? You mean me, ma'am?"
"That's right. Things have been awfully noisy for a while now. Is something going on?"
"My apologies. But this is internal Gangwon branch business, so……"
"Hah?"
Oof, shit.
Honestly, that gave me a bit of a chill. Seoa scraped her vocal cords like the mere sound of it was unpleasant. It was the kind of voice that sent ice water sliding down your spine — and sure enough, the staffer on the receiving end of Seoa's baptism flinched hard, shoulders jerking.
"Do you even know who I am?"
"Uh, th-that's——"
"Never mind. I'm not interested in bickering. I'm Shin Seoa. Active A+ rank. That'll do."
"Ah—! Understood!"
"Good. Then start talking. So — what's going on?"
Her tone came down like a hammer, but strictly speaking, she wasn't wrong. To keep each branch from getting too cozy with its local powers that be, the Hunter Association as a rule prized transparent operations. Which is to say — the rank insignia was the real muscle. Standing in front of Seoa, a current A+ rank, appeals to internal discipline simply didn't fly. Save for a handful of exceptions like matters of command authority or S-rank incidents.
And whatever was happening here at the Gangwon branch right now, it apparently didn't rise to that level.
"Hunter Do Joojin has gone missing?"
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
That was what the hunter Seoa had summoned reported. According to him, Hunter Do Joojin hadn't been seen since lunch, so they were mobilizing the full roster to search for him.
"Did he go take a dump?"
"Hunter Do Joojin does not take dumps."
This absolute lunatic.
Setting aside the female hunter who answered that with machine-gun precision, it was definitely a strange situation. Solo movement was, in principle, prohibited within this Gangwon branch. The reason was obvious enough — the surrounding conditions. Even said as a joke, this was a branch where even a trip to the bathroom left a paper trail of your every movement. In other words, the current situation meant something was genuinely, seriously wrong.
"No immediate threat, and no one stronger than Hunter Do Joojin is stationed here, so for now it's being kept at this level… but in reality, this is an emergency. Is that it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Understood. Go."
The hunter gave a crisp bow to Seoa as she waved him off and hurried away. The sight of him snapping into full military bearing in the span of a few seconds was honestly a little pitiful.
"She's right, Master."
"Mmhm."
"How'd I do? Pretty good, right?"
"Yeah. You did great. Great, but… kinda scary, honestly."
"Huh? Oh. …Scary…?"
Leaving Seoa muttering to herself like she'd briefly lost the thread, I cast a furtive glance around. Sure enough, that face — impossible to miss this morning, if anything a little too conspicuous — was nowhere to be seen now.
Hmm.
Hearing that did make me a little uneasy. It wasn't nothing — if he'd vanished sometime after lunch, then the last person to see him was none other than me.
Vanished, out of nowhere? Even so — vanished where?
Eh. But I couldn't come up with a single guess either. I didn't know the local geography here to begin with. And the very moment I concluded it was better left to the locally raised hunters—
BOOM!!
The earth groaned under a shockwave that made the very air shudder.
"Huh?"
"What — an earthquake?"
The sudden shaking stirred commotion among the students too, though it died down before long. Because—
ROOOOOOAAAR────!!
There are few people alive who can carry on small talk after watching a second mountain rise to its feet on top of the first one.
……There was simply no other way to describe it. A giant made of trees. Or perhaps, a beast calamity?? wearing the shape of a giant. Something that could only be called that had appeared atop a peak where, mere minutes before, there had been nothing at all.
And at the same moment—
As if answering someone's scream, the trees that had blanketed the mountain in thick layers began to pour over the edge and spill down toward the lowlands.