The Butcher's Craft
Humanity's strongest hunter, Lee Joongoo, had said it: Park Woochan was stronger than he was.
The world's greatest talent, Choi Seungjun, had said it too: when it came to catching monsters, Park Woochan was probably the better man for the job.
So then — objectively speaking, where did Park Woochan's true strength actually stand? Was he really stronger than humanity's strongest hunter, superior to the world's greatest talent, just as they claimed?
As it happened, no.
By the raw numbers, Park Woochan's power sat at the level of an A+ Rank hunter under the Association's standards. The very top of that tier, granted — but nowhere near enough to be called S-Rank.
Truthfully, that was only to be expected. Just as Lee Joongoo, a man who had lived his whole life with electricity frying his heart, awakened lightning powers, a hunter's ability tended to split along the lines of his own disposition. Which meant the power awakened by Park Woochan — a man whose eyes rolled back at the mere sight of a monster — was much the same.
Mana Sensitivity.
Exactly what it sounded like: the ability to sense mana and manipulate it. Versatile, certainly, but hardly explosive. One need only look at how most hunters who awakened this ability threw themselves into the mage's trade — careers, in other words, built on wielding all manner of powers through mana interference.
And Park Woochan wasn't even a mage. Not out of any particular attachment to the front line — he simply couldn't wrap his head around the formulas the mages used. Tragically, the man had never made it past middle school.
His physical abilities weren't bad either, but that was as far as they went. Matching the specs of an A+ Rank body-enhancement hunter without a single supporting ability was impressive, admittedly — but it didn't put him shoulder to shoulder with an S-Rank.
So what had Lee Joongoo and Choi Seungjun meant by those words? A courtesy flourish for an old friend, after a long-awaited reunion?
If so, it would mean the stiff-necked Lee Joongoo had finally learned to talk like a politician — but as it happened, that wasn't it either.
The answer was simpler.
They were not warriors.
They were, above all else, monster-hunting Hunters.
And the battle unfolding inside the gate at this very moment was exactly that.
The first move belonged to the demon. Wings that had been twitching mere moments before snapped wide open, and with a roar it charged. As the monster tore across the earth, the air inside the gate detonated.
A thunderclap burst out of nowhere. A monster standing well over ten meters tall broke the sound barrier in a single bound, and the air it shoved aside compressed into a wall of atmosphere that collapsed beneath the savage beast's claws, spitting thunder like a dying gasp.
This was what it meant to face an A+ Rank or higher monster: every single one of its actions bordered on natural disaster.
And what of Park Woochan, standing against it?
Moments ago his hands had held nothing but bare fists — now they were locked firmly around a greatsword so massive that "huge" didn't begin to describe it. Through a tool imbued with spatial manipulation, he had drawn his beloved weapon out of thin air.
It looked like something forged by a craftsman who had never once laid eyes on a Swiss Army knife, built entirely from a blind man's description.
The sheer size alone said as much — the blade alone comfortably exceeded two meters. But what truly overwhelmed was the swarm of auxiliary armaments layered over the edge.
The coarse, rasped flat of the blade was surely for grinding down rough surfaces like sandpaper; the heavy lump at the pommel, kept on hand for whenever a hammer or other blunt instrument was called for. The great nails sprouting like feathers along the spine were doubtless meant to pin monster joints shut, and the strangely contoured edge existed to leave wounds of every different shape.
And on top of all that, it even carried auxiliary grips for manhandling so enormous an armament...
Less a sword than a slab of iron; less a weapon than a set of tools.
Sword, saw, chisel, file, plumb, plane. This beloved weapon — describable in no other terms — was one of the reasons he was called by the grim name of the Butcher.
Against monsters so unspeakably horrific, what could humanity possibly do?
This was the answer, offered with a blacksmith's whole soul to that very question.
A tool for physically 'dismantling' monsters.
And so the way Park Woochan wielded it was closer to dissection than swordsmanship.
At the same time, the technique already deserved, without reservation, to be called the art of dragon-slaying.
The demon that had swung its foreleg at him seemed unable to grasp what on earth had happened. That was how fast Park Woochan's last movement had been — and, more than that, how utterly free of waste.
He spun his entire body. Not in order to swing the sword — he threw his flesh onto the blade and let it carry him. In a movement that could only be described that way, the leaping Park Woochan hammered his sword down onto the demon's knuckles. The demon's famously durable skin didn't hinder the blow in the slightest.
However tough it was, it was still softer than dragon scale. So what, exactly, was there that couldn't be torn off? As if saying precisely that, Park Woochan — having slammed down its foreleg — used the demon's own grip as a scabbard and wrenched his blade free. Riding the recoil into another spin, the flash of his sword darted out in an instant, raking across the demon's arm, and a gash running all the way up to its shoulder was carved into its body.
The confusion lasted an instant. The pain lasted far longer. The demon paid for its charge-first, think-later recklessness with its own arm.
Wracked with agony, the demon shrieked in fury and its body surged into motion. But before that, Park Woochan's five senses had already caught the change with surgical precision.
'Wings and tail. Textbook.'
In a heartbeat, the creature had read his position behind it. It spread its wings as a feint while lashing out with its tail. Not a bad play compared to honestly turning around — but, just as Park Woochan had called it, a textbook one.
That much was enough.
Shukuchi.
The name made it sound like teleportation. But it was, at its core, a technique. Since the First Great Incursion, the mana spewed out by countless gates had mixed into the atmosphere and begun to flow. Shukuchi was a footwork art that sensed those currents of mana in the air and 'rode' them, making it possible to cross vast distances in a single step.
Naturally, its usefulness varied wildly from person to person. However sharp a hunter's instincts, without mana sensitivity their practical range was limited to what they could see — and even that was nowhere near usable in the middle of desperate combat. Especially against an A+ Rank or higher monster, in a situation where no one could claim a shred of composure.
For Park Woochan, it was different.
The results came fast. 'Stepping' onto the currents of mana rippling through empty air, Park Woochan planted his feet back on the ground. Almost in the same breath, wings burst from the demon's back — but Park Woochan, the very target the demon had aimed for, had already landed.
There was no need to move the tail.
No — to put it more precisely, there was no way to.
Because the greatsword Park Woochan had swung had long since severed the demon's tail.
KRAHAAAAAK!!
The demon, trying to move its tail, realized this too — one beat too late. To the demon, the situation must have been utterly incomprehensible. No — even if other hunters had been standing here, it would have been the same. That was how far beyond common sense Park Woochan's movements ran. However rich the mana inside this gate, to wield Shukuchi that freely? It would have been a struggle even for an S-Rank hunter, let alone an A+.
That was exactly why Lee Joongoo called Park Woochan the strongest, and why Choi Seungjun held him up as a hunter beyond even himself.
Unlike Lee Joongoo, he was no hero. In raw combat power, Park Woochan couldn't come close to matching him.
Unlike Choi Seungjun, he was no genius. In sheer talent, Park Woochan could never stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
And yet.
When it came to slaughtering monsters, Park Woochan stood tiers above them both.
It was true even now. Unlike when he faced humans or the ambient mana of the open air, his ability dominated everything around him. Ordinarily, Park Woochan's mana sensitivity sat at roughly half — or less — that of an S-Rank holder of the same power. He had no inborn gift for it, nor any technique or knowledge to make up the difference.
But.
The sense that normally clamored so insistently for his attention — so loudly that he had no choice but to lean on it — now dragged his ability upward by force. No, more than that: drunk with delight at being able to seize monsters in a way his five senses never could, it began to rampage like it had lost its mind. Honestly, it drove Park Woochan half-mad — but thanks to it, he could predict a monster's movements before it so much as twitched.
Facing a monster, Park Woochan's mana sensitivity was at the very least five times that of an S-Rank holder.
As for the mana inside a monster's body, the stronger the monster, the easier it was to read. It wasn't a question of mana density — the thicker a monster's presence grew, the more wildly his senses thrashed and howled.
And.
Conservatively estimated, Park Woochan's sensitivity at this very moment — an A+ Rank monster dead in front of his eyes — exceeded fifty times that of an S-Rank hunter.
SHRAAAAAK!!
The result was right in front of him. Before the violet blood spraying from the stump of its tail could even reach him, Park Woochan's charge carried the flat of his blade across the monster's left leg. With a sickening crunch, the demon dropped to one knee — the great nails lining his blade, each imbued with its own enchantment, had wedged between the demon's claws and ripped them clean out.
As if even the time to swing his sword were too precious to waste, Park Woochan swarmed up the demon's body in an instant — and frowned. It was the shoes. The soles were reasonably thick, but the simple fact of standing on a monster's flesh was deeply unpleasant.
Nothing to be done about it.
To wash this feeling away, he had no choice but to kill the monster as quickly as humanly possible.
For such a petty reason. For such a petty emotion.
For no reason grander than hating monsters, a hunter who had clawed his way to the near-very top of countless hunters made his weapon creak in his hands.
Next was the horn. Kicking off the demon's shoulder, Park Woochan flipped the blade mid-air and brought the saw-toothed section down against it — because judging by the horn's girth and thickness, shearing it off in one stroke looked like a tall order.
Just as he'd expected, the saw blade cut the demon's horn halfway and no further. So Park Woochan stomped down on the greatsword, now all but embedded in the horn, driving it deeper. Faster than the demon could scream its agony, he seized the handle once more and threw his entire weight behind it. Before long, the horn, unable to bear the load, snapped clean off and fell away. Too crude to call a cut; too violent to call a sawing.
But the demon, to its credit, was not simply taking it.
The instant the saw blade bit into its horn, the demon whipped its head in convulsive fury. The horn sheared away — and Park Woochan was flung into the sky. The demon spread its maw toward him. At that posture, for all the world like a cannon taking aim, Park Woochan frowned without meaning to.
Should he use Shukuchi?
Dodging would be easy enough. Against a single-shot attack, that much would suffice.
But the stench grazing the tip of his nose sounded the alarm.
What if the attack was radial? The thought flickered through his mind.
In that case, if he landed carelessly, the girls might well be caught up in it too.
And as it happened, demon spawn possessed exactly that kind of large-scale technique.
Breath.
Like a dragon's, a raging torrent of mana radiated from within its own body — literally, a breath made of living flame.
Unfortunately, Park Woochan had no technique capable of defending against a dragon's breath.
'I'll have to meet it head-on, then.'
However.
Separate from that, there was a way.
The stench leaking from its maw — and with it, he could feel the mana within its body shifting into a form that would conjure flame to strike the spark. Flammable gas, nine times out of ten. A design in which mana was reserved solely for striking the smallest of sparks, precisely so the gas itself couldn't be meddled with by outside mana.
It was a method occasionally seen in higher-tier monsters — but conversely, that very fact bred a weakness of its own.
Park Woochan released his white-knuckled grip on the greatsword. He thrust his hand toward empty air, and with a smooth whoosh it was swallowed up somewhere. The same spatial tool he'd used to draw his sword moments before. He couldn't keep consumables that evaporated like holy water stocked, but to counter attacks of this class, Park Woochan had been hoarding every manner of material and implement inside it since his active days.
From beyond that space he used as a kind of storeroom, Park Woochan pulled something out — and hurled it straight into the demon's open maw.
It, too, was flammable gas.
Except this one exploded obscenely easily.
KABOOOOM!!
With a deeply satisfying roar, the demon's muzzle exploded. The payload worked far faster than the gas the demon itself had been brewing — it met the spark and detonated before the beast could breathe out a single tongue of fire.
The amount of gas itself was trivial, but the crucial point was that the breath it had been about to spew burned up along with it. An explosion potent enough to matter even to an A+ Rank monster had gone off from the inside — its innards were surely well and truly cooked.
'Time to put an end to this.'
He closed both hands around the handle once more. In the same motion, using the mana scattered conveniently about as a springboard, Park Woochan flung his body forward.
The target: the demon's neck — the vital point so vividly bared by the explosion.
Fortunately for it, the demon could anticipate this attack well enough. After all, in its position, he would have gone straight for the nape too.
But.
One arm shattered. A tail severed. Legs that could no longer hold it upright.
There are problems in this world that no amount of foresight can solve.
There was no flashy technique. He didn't pour his ability out against the giant monster the way other hunters did.
Shk.
Just the quiet sound of flesh being sliced away—
Landing.
With a light tap of his feet against the ground, Park Woochan flicked his sword through the empty air. Not a single drop of blood clung to it, thanks to his fastidious temperament — but the motion was pure habit.
And in the same moment, with a heavy, bone-deep thud... the headless body of the demon crumpled to the earth.