The Butcher's Nine-Hour Inspection
Up until the First Great Cataclysm, gates had been regarded as nothing more than a species of natural disaster.
Back then, humanity was too busy scrambling to respond to gate occurrences and the monsters that poured out of them to even dream of explaining them.
But twenty years of accumulated trial and error had made even those capricious gates subject to a consistent set of standards. The system of classifying gates, monsters, and the hunters who faced them under the framework of ranks was born in that era.
Above all, the American scholars who had established the field of so-called mana engineering were, if anything, several strides ahead of the rest of the world.
Thanks to their efforts, even the conditions under which gates occurred had been more or less explained by now.
What a gate required was mana concentrated to an excessive degree. To put it more precisely, a gate was the hole punched through dimensions when mana densely packed into a single location detonated.
Dimensions, mana theory — for a born fighter like me who used mana without ever caring how it worked, it was all so much noise.
And yet.
One thing was certain.
The more densely populated a location, the more likely a gate was to occur. That was what the American scholars said. According to their argument, the collapse of the world's great cities during the Second Great Cataclysm could be traced back to exactly that.
And that was only the beginning — these days, the mana spewed out by gates was said to have dissolved into the atmosphere itself. In other words, humanity now lived in constant contact with mana, whether it liked it or not. The Association had even concluded that plants absorbed and expelled mana through photosynthesis.
And then there was this: through contact with mana, living organisms formed mana-processing organs within their bodies. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say their internal organs acquired the ability to operate mana. Which meant that most creatures alive on this planet now expelled mana simply by breathing.
Hunter or not, it made no difference. If anything, hunters — who could actually control the stuff — often expelled less of it than ordinary people.
The announcement that the world's population had spread out into a relatively even distribution since the Second Great Cataclysm was surely a product of that same research. So was the reason so many nations kept gates open under the banner of "management."
Granted, managing a gate instead of sealing it outright had its obvious perks. But there was a real reason behind shouldering the risk of additional monster spawns and the political burden of keeping a gate open.
Think of it like a balloon. If excessively dense mana was what birthed a gate, then you could siphon that mana out in advance through the hole the gate provided. In other words, you could deliberately suppress gate occurrences — and the modest profits from the harvested mana were a bonus on top.
This Hunter Academy was no different. Considering when it was founded, it would be more accurate to say the Academy was built on top of an existing gate rather than that it managed one. But the essence remained the same: a site where hunter-trained personnel stood on permanent standby, no extra staffing required. Any politician who couldn't see the appeal of those conditions deserved to be stripped of his office on the spot.
Of course, the Academy had its own reasons too. Producing proper hunters ultimately required real combat experience against monsters. These were times when it was hardly rare to hear of a hunter who'd aced every theory exam only to freeze up the moment he came face to face with the real thing.
Which was why the Hunter Academy — entangled in profits and interests from the day it opened its doors — intended to use the gate beneath the building as a kind of training ground. And the place I was currently inspecting was exactly that.
Whewww……
Crazy bastard. Nine hours inspecting a gate this small?
Better to do it now than after some accident happens later, I suppose. A born teacher, through and through.
The one swallowing those words with a grin was Choi Seungjun, the Academy's chairman. Naturally, he was accompanying me on this inspection.
Truth be told, there was no need to fuss over a gate this size for hours. But for me, it was different. To put it bluntly, my constitution was the problem.
My sense had a nasty habit of reacting all the more violently the stronger the monster in front of me was — call it presence, call it aura, it sharpened right along with the threat. Which meant that when I killed a high-rank monster, the satisfaction far exceeded anything a common one could give me.
But this gate was barely D-Rank. Add the Academy's rigorous management on top, and its effective difficulty was E-Rank. Naturally, I found it profoundly unsatisfying.
In a word: I'd dragged myself out here hoping to butcher some monsters for the first time in ages, and nine hours had already slipped by. Not because there was any real reason to spend nine hours on maintenance.
I hadn't known until I became a teacher, but the Academy had practical training sessions — literal live-combat drills using the gates allocated to the school.
'When I first heard about it, I assumed they'd be practicing against illusions or something.'
Of course, since they'd be fighting genuine monsters, the danger went without saying. Instructors including the S-Rank hunter Choi Seungjun stood by as a precaution, but real combat was real combat — anything could happen. So with the upcoming practicals in mind, the gate interior needed to be checked and cleared out in advance.
And I had volunteered for the cleanup duty. The other teachers apparently assumed that I, a career-less ex-hunter, had done it to curry favor with them. Honestly, if they wanted to think that, it suited me fine. I was practically bursting with the hope they'd keep dumping gate inspections on me from now on.
No, seriously, I was shocked. At least the you I knew wasn't the type.
But to Choi Seungjun, apparently, I didn't look the part.
What's that supposed to mean?
Exactly what it sounds like. Ability aside, I didn't take you for the type to do this kind of work.
Really? Hand me this kind of job and I'll do the hell out of it. I want to do it tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that too.
Instead of saying that, I kept my silence and shrugged. Old survival instincts from my hunter days.
Separately, I did want to ask what exactly those people took me for. Though the answer was obvious anyway.
Is it because of the students?
Because of what? What "because"?
No, I just wondered if you'd already gotten attached. The butcher, of all people.
Hey, can't you just call me by my name?
A nickname that made my blood boil every time I heard it in earnest. Dammit, why does Lee Joongoo get "Thunder God" and that guy gets something dignified, while I'm stuck sounding like the owner of a slaughterhouse?
But even with the playful tone, the man seemed sincere.
'Well, I mean……'
It was true I'd barely socialized with other hunters during my active years, but that was by my own choice, not circumstance. If he'd actually expected me to pull some weird stunt on the kids, that was a bit of a shock.
Anything inconvenient about the teaching life?
Hm? Well, first off, do something about the class assignments. It's genuinely infuriating.
Can't be helped. For now, everything has to go through trial and error. Besides, that's just how the desk-jockeys think.
Sorting students by rank rather than by tactics or ability traits — that's it, isn't it?
Choi Seungjun nodded along to my words, and I couldn't help letting out a groan.
'Is this a good thing or a bad thing, I wonder.'
Looking on the bright side, it wasn't bad. After all, my class had Jung Pilyeon and Lee Yeeun in it. In other words, by raw ability, the best class of the bunch. Which, for someone like me who'd parachuted in without a single credential, meant a certain convenience when it came time to submit results.
And the downside?
Well, he'd assume some talentless hack was riding the students' coattails and puffing himself up.
Frankly, from where I stood, raising the weaker students was the more comfortable path anyway. It was hard to expect my reputation in the Association to climb at this point no matter what I did, and if I'd be cursed out regardless, docile students beat prideful middling ones. Besides, I was confident I could bring anyone up to at least B-Rank — which made it all the more true.
Perhaps my expression betrayed those thoughts, because Choi Seungjun promptly burst into a hearty laugh.
Truth be told, I pulled some strings. To make sure you got that class.
Unbelievable bastard.
I needed to make sure your abilities weren't buried, that's all. Have a little understanding.
Or perhaps Choi Seungjun had simply been clearing his throat, because the next moment he drove another verbal spear into me.
That girl's little sister — a bit much to handle, isn't she?
……And where exactly did that rumor come crawling from?
Can't lock people's mouths, can you? So, what actually happened?
Apparently he'd caught wind, however roughly, of what had passed between me and Lee Yeeun that day. Fair enough — the teachers' lounge was one thing, but other teachers had been present when Lee Yeeun marched into the faculty office. And while it felt crude to say this about a high school girl, Lee Yeeun storming off with a face twisted like some vengeful demon was bound to catch even more eyes.
She was Lee Joongoo's little sister, of all people. The attention was inevitable.
On top of that, perhaps because she hated being a burden to a brother hailed as a hero, a girl who normally played the perfect young lady had stomped off with all the grace of a brawler. Honestly.
What happened, exactly?
Well……
I hedged a little, but truthfully I wanted to vent about it just as much.
Outside the gate.
As I perched myself on a chair set up in the basement of the school building, Choi Seungjun's eyes gleamed and he stuck close beside me.
'Was this guy always this much like a nosy aunt?'
Maybe playing chairman was beneath his station, or maybe he was simply curious about everything from every angle. Perhaps, as Academy chairman, he had his own reasons for minding public opinion. Either way, it worked out nicely for me.
Dammit, my mouth's been itching to talk — perfect timing. Apparently, in her eyes, Lee Joongoo is some kind of colossal genius.
Didn't you just fit two mutually exclusive words into a single sentence?
I think so too~
For Lee Yeeun herself, it couldn't have been an easy thing to admit. She'd believed it her whole life, after all. To me and Choi Seungjun, it only drew a hollow laugh.
So? What happened?
What do you mean, what happened. She's a student. I can't exactly brawl with her, can I?
In the end, no proper conclusion had been reached at all.
Then how do I earn your acknowledgment, Teacher?
Far from debating, Lee Yeeun had held her silence with a sullen face, and then — leaving me with only those words — she'd stormed off like a tempest.
Apparently, to her, her brother was "in any case a great man" — or rather, a man who had to be great. So if she lost a sparring match, the fault was entirely her own; and being denied acknowledgment for it had simply made her sulk. What a child like that was thinking was as plain as day.
Therefore, I decided to make a kind of wager with her.
Ah.
Choi Seungjun seemed to have guessed it too. With a crisp snap of his fingers, he voiced my thoughts before I could.
The practicals, then.
Exactly.
Two weeks from now. Exactly one month since the Hunter Academy opened its doors.
At the practical held at the end of every month, she would achieve a brilliant result. She — who had copied, wholesale, the tactics her brother had used to climb to S-Rank — had been defeated not by some hunter, but by a classmate she'd never once lost to in her life. The teacher she'd gone to for advice had, despite knowing it was her hero brother's technique, denied its effectiveness. To deny it, she needed to produce results worthy of that denial. So she would produce results that left no room for protest. And then she'd shore up her own shortcomings and overturn every judgment passed on her in one stroke……
It was obvious Lee Yeeun would think exactly that, which was why I had laid out the counter-terms for her.
Get a good evaluation at this month's practical. And if I judge that the tactic works for you too, I won't stop you. No — I might even train you intensively in what the technique requires……
I had no idea what she'd been thinking as she weighed it. But after agonizing over it from every angle, she had nodded. Perhaps because I'd invoked Lee Joongoo's name — she seemed to have judged that, simple bluffing aside, I was more worth trusting than the other teachers. For my part, I just felt like I'd been dragged into someone else's family drama.
'No, it's not a feeling — it's a fact.'
……Well, either way.
She must have decided that to seek advice from a teacher who'd said such things, she had no choice but to produce some kind of result. At the very least, so that I could never hand down that kind of "unfair" evaluation again.
Still.
If you asked me whether a good result at a practical truly proved the tactic optimal for her, I could only express doubt. Yes, every practical feels monumental to a student. But "it worked in a practical" or "I passed my own chosen standard" doesn't guarantee legitimacy. She's not some subculture game character, and "the winner is always right" is a matter best left to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh.
So what will you do?
Hard to say.
Maybe she really did have a talent for martial technique. I couldn't exactly force-rip apart her style while telling her it was all wrong. If Lee Yeeun sincerely wanted to become a hunter who fought that way, well — I'd have no choice but to help her.
But.
If she didn't actually want to be that kind of hunter — if she merely wanted to imitate her brother……
At the very least, I should make her think it through.
Lee Joongoo had forged that technique because of his own limits, plain and simple. Out of the desire to surpass them, he had crafted that signature — so that he would never arrive too late for the people who needed him. Literally as living lightning, to reach those who needed him. That was why he was humanity's strongest hunter. And at the same time, something more: humanity's fastest.
Which raised the question — what about Lee Yeeun?
Did her current approach reflect any such vision? If I asked it honestly, I could only answer no.
So.
If Lee Yeeun truly wanted to use that style of fighting, she needed to think it through properly — not just mindlessly copy it. How did she intend to use her ability, and what did she want to achieve through it? And fundamentally, if you asked whether such a half-baked technique would hold up against genuine monsters, the answer was still a shake of the head.
Circumstance had turned it into a tight schedule, but I had no intention of wasting time now. As the saying goes, strike while the iron is hot.
You're a nasty piece of work.
That was Choi Seungjun's verdict on me.
Certainly, from where I stood, this was a fight with no losing factors anywhere I looked. Two weeks remained. Rather than hoping Lee Yeeun would realize something on her own in that span, it would be far more fruitful to spend the time thinking about what I should teach her.