The World's Most Awkward Duel
An awkward silence settled over the two of them.
Liar. That was the first word that sprang to Nam Sangwon's mind. But just before it could leave his lips, the man barely managed to rein himself in. Park Woochan had no reason to lie in this situation, and even if he were lying, there wasn't a single way to prove it.
At best, it would devolve into a pointless argument that went nowhere. And the longer things dragged on, the more the advantage tilted toward his opponent.
So Nam Sangwon tried looking at it from the other side. If those words were true, would anything actually change?
He slowly shook his head. He couldn't deny that the atmosphere had grown uncomfortable, but even if it were true, there was no backing out now.
...Not that he could tuck tail and run, either.
"No, you could always just surrender, y'know."
At those words, Park Woochan caught himself grumbling before he knew it. Not that he meant it. As he'd said in his first conversation with Nam Sangwon, he was just casting out a line to see if anything bit.
But Nam Sangwon, for his part, felt as though his lungs had frozen solid.
And the truth was, it wasn't wrong. Even now, if he surrendered, the situation could probably be smoothed over. Whether the Academy had the heart for that was another question entirely, but at the very least it was far more hopeful than barreling ahead like this.
And yet, Nam Sangwon could not give up the fight.
For what?
The greater cause had evaporated. If Park Woochan's words were true, then the Honinhoe — the very group crying out for an end to prejudice against half-bloods — had become a group that judged others on prejudice alone. No, worse than that: they were kicking away even the chance to correct the wrong they had done the man standing before them.
Strip away the wrapping paper of noble purpose, and all that remained was desire, scraped raw down to the bottom.
The desire that, having led the Honinhoe this far, he had to accomplish something — anything. The desire that the children might find happiness, unlike himself. And the ugliest desire of all, so vilely tenacious it could dress itself up in the name of a greater cause: the desire to turn his eyes away from the blood that would flow for it.
Feeling as though he were staring at his own unmasked face, Nam Sangwon clenched his fist.
"Well then — here I come."
"Ah, yes. Well, by all means — come right in."
And so.
Thus began the most awkward fight in the world.
Of course, that didn't mean their approach to the fight itself had gone soft.
Nam Sangwon dropped his stance and charged like a bolt of lightning. Unlike his exchange with Ryu Jihee, this time the situation demanded he push in to within the greatsword's reach. But the bedrock of Nam Sangwon's strength was, as ever, the power of a giant. Even with his style changed, he would unfailingly drag this into a grappling match—
Park Woochan, by contrast, was markedly different from usual. Instead of putting spin on the blade, he gripped the auxiliary handle mounted on the flat of the sword. The fine details differed, but it roughly resembled a stance built on the ricasso of a Western longsword.
Nam Sangwon, who had inherited a giant's strength, did not possess the sheer mass unique to giant-type monsters. But in a fight against a person, that was less a flaw and more a boon. To answer a giant's muscular power wielded through a human frame, this was the best means available to him right now.
Unlike their last fight, throwing away his weapon wasn't an option. That was exactly how he'd ended up getting buffeted this way and that by the giant's physical prowess. Even for Park Woochan, facing a giant bare-handed was an idea too reckless for words.
Before that, there was also the small matter of not wanting to touch the man.
The slab of iron planted squarely before his eyes. To deal with it, Nam Sangwon chose short, rapid flurries.
With both arms tucked against his sides, he lashed his fists out like a whip — a motion close to what boxing calls a jab.
Of course, even a jab carried a giant's strength behind it. Not enough to shatter the weapon in front of him at a stroke, but by the same token, nothing to be shrugged off lightly either.
Which meant what deserved admiration wasn't Nam Sangwon's probing, but Park Woochan's craft. One hand on the sword's grip, the other on the auxiliary handle fixed to the flat. In a blink, he reversed the weapon he'd been holding like a spear and raised it up like a shield — and at the same time, he minutely deflected the giant's flurry, blows that would have numbed his hands just to block head-on.
It was like hammering on a mountain. Against a massive blade so unwieldy indoors, Nam Sangwon swung the giant's strength without reserve. As Park Woochan had predicted, it was better than closing in bare-handed, but hardly a situation where the weapon's strengths could shine.
Yet not a single one of Nam Sangwon's punches broke through Park Woochan's defense.
At the farcical sight, Nam Sangwon involuntarily drew a wasted breath. Without slowing his offensive, he began racking his brain for a way to crack that wall.
A hook? A straight?
Unfortunately, in this situation, either answer was wrong.
As if to prove the point, Park Woochan moved the next moment. Shoving in as if driving a shield forward, he stepped in off his shoulder. At the sight of the man apparently attempting a contest of strength with a giant, Nam Sangwon could only swallow his bewilderment — and at length, he too began pouring power into his arms.
At the same moment, Park Woochan went slack.
Total release.
Naturally, he had no intention whatsoever of actually matching strength with a giant. Even diving into the instant of panic would buy him a single step at best. So rather than cling to a contest of strength he'd written off from the start, Park Woochan used it to bait out Nam Sangwon's reaction.
That much went without saying, too.
Park Woochan was no hero. He was a hunter — a Hunter — through and through.
A trial of strength against a giant? Leave that to the tradesmen who made their living off their arm power.
One breath pried from a Nam Sangwon rattled by the unexpected. Building on it, Park Woochan charged as if to lock strength with him, rode the giant's offensive clean past his shoulder, and carved out an opening.
And then.
Park Woochan's sword tore through the gap he had forcibly pried open.
The draw-cut.
Using the left arm clutching the auxiliary handle as its sheath, he slashed upward in a flash.
But Nam Sangwon was no pushover either. He tipped back nothing but his upper body, evading the blade as it soared from the earth toward the sky — sacrificing a few strands of bangs to break Park Woochan's ambush head-on.
It wasn't as though Nam Sangwon was dim-witted, charging in like a wild boar. There was exactly one reason he hurled himself forward heedless of everything despite wielding a giant's power: this method — the one that lived off his thick hide and regeneration — was the most efficient tactic a giant could ask for.
A giant's durability that let the vast majority of attacks bounce off without so much as sinking a tooth. On top of that, a recovery rate that regrew any blow that did land before long.
And beyond even that, a giant's raw strength, capable of flipping the board in a single blow.
Give what must be given; take what can be taken.
Ever since he'd taken up the giant's power, this was the way of fighting Nam Sangwon had refined into his own.
But.
The next instant, the blade went whirling.
Because Park Woochan, instead of wrestling the wildly swung blade back under control, had let go of it entirely.
He had no intention of abandoning his sword, of course.
Whirling free, the greatsword spun on its own momentum — and Park Woochan's right hand, having deftly shepherded the rotation, seized the grip once more.
The blade's orientation, at some point, had reversed.
From the earth to the heavens — and now from the heavens back down to the earth.
Like a fang, the spinning greatsword slammed down in a vertical strike.
Faced with a technique he doubted he could manage so easily even with a dagger, let alone a greatsword, Nam Sangwon clicked his tongue and raised the arm he'd been swinging at Park Woochan to receive it.
KAGAGAGAK!!
A sound rang out that no one could have mistaken for the clash of hide and greatsword. The giant's skin — the kind that wouldn't so much as take a bite from an ordinary blade — had glanced the greatsword's point of impact aside.
However.
The next moment, it wasn't Park Woochan — the one whose attack had failed — who put distance between them. It was Nam Sangwon.
"Wh-what the—?!"
Because despite having perfectly stopped the greatsword's improvised barrage, a chill had crawled up his spine instead.
Something glittering flew at Nam Sangwon as he widened the gap with a giant's stride. Simultaneous with his retreat, Park Woochan — who had touched his warehouse through a tool imbued with spatial ability — hurled out the chemicals stored inside it.
Sealed in the glass vials was pure element.
Flame and frost — and lightning.
KRRRROOOM!!
The liberated power of nature crashed down upon Nam Sangwon.
He hadn't expected it to actually hurt, of course. Just as Park Woochan had said back in his fight with that infamous 'people-slaying hunter' — where he'd neutralized a deadly poison on the spot — consumables like these couldn't exert much influence in a battle between top-tier hunters unless wielded with rare skill.
Which was why Park Woochan had used them for exactly two reasons.
One was simple misdirection. The other was an experiment.
'Fire and frost, fine — but even lightning barely fazed him, huh.'
Ask after the world's most famous giant legends, and Norse mythology would top the list.
And the frost giants of Norse myth — the Jötnar — are weak to thunder and lightning.
He'd wondered whether the power might have come from a giant out of Norse mythology, but judging by that display, apparently not.
Not that this was all he had prepared.
Clack — he flipped the blade over. At the same time, his gaze slid down to check the spine.
Embedded there, packed tight, were the countless nails that had raked across Nam Sangwon's arm moments ago.
Implements for skewering and sealing a monster's joints.
But the power of this all-weather, all-purpose dismantling armament did not end there.
The enormous iron nails, fanned out like wings, each bore a different formula engraved into it. When Park Woochan's mana was fed into them, the great nails became stakes of differing natures, grinding and crushing the opponent's body.
Of course, with each nail holding a different attribute, they made for a poor finishing blow.
'But in moments like this, they earn their keep.'
In that instant of contact, the great nails that had struck Nam Sangwon's forearm numbered sixty-four in all.
In other words, that single exchange was as good as netting him sixty-four rounds of experimental data.
The nails bearing flame, frost, or lightning had shown no notable effect, as expected. The same went for the great nails shaped like spearheads or arrowheads. Worst of all was the nail imbued with the nature of rock — the formula engraved on it had all but gone dead. Which meant the giant who had passed his strength to Nam Sangwon carried legends of dominion over the earth.
His research had turned up nothing concrete, but perhaps this benefactor was an even bigger deal than he'd imagined. The power Nam Sangwon wielded said as much — a giant that exerted overwhelming force against earthen elements like soil and stone was, in most cases, the kind that had shaped the land with its own two hands: splitting canyons, raising mountains.
In other words, a titan whose name endured in local legend.
Or else one of the primordial giants who sculpted the world with their own hands.
If so, that overwhelming strength and durability made sense. And as he thought this, Park Woochan's eye suddenly caught on something.
The thirty-third nail.
At the tip of the great nail engraved with the nature of the sacred tree — wood steeped in holy energy — a bead of blood had welled up.
With a single shake of the greatsword, Park Woochan verified every one of these facts, then stretched his empty hand out to the side. His flung left hand was sucked into the empty air for a breath — and the instant it made contact with the warehouse lurking beyond the warped space, his fingers drew out a fourth flask.
A golden liquid swayed within. Sap extracted directly from the sacred tree — a higher-grade counterpart to the energy etched into that thirty-third nail.
CRASH!!
Without hesitation, Park Woochan smashed it down against the flat of his blade. At the same time, he exercised his ability to the fullest, working the sap he had just shattered. Following his mana as it churned violently, the sacred sap slid along the length of the blade.
As stated, consumables like these couldn't exert much influence in a battle between top-tier hunters unless wielded with rare skill.
Put the other way around — used properly, they could become the killing stroke even in a fight between top-tier hunters.
He still had no idea what manner of giant it was in the end, but one thing was settled: it was weak to the sacred tree. Which meant this sap would become a lethal dagger in his fight against Nam Sangwon. A blade coated in the sacred tree's sap would shave away the giant's hide at the mere brush of contact, and even that vaunted regeneration would fail to muster its strength before the sap.
This was, in effect, his first fight against a half-blood. And Nam Sangwon was quite exceptional even among half-bloods — both in how he had come by his power, and in his own skill. If the rumors were true that an A+ rank had been among the radical-faction hunters who once stormed the early Honinhoe, then Nam Sangwon could fairly be regarded as the equal of an S-rank hunter.
By comparison, his own ability was in poor form today. Better than when facing ordinary hunters, but not raging the way it did against monsters. That in-between feeling, unbalanced past all reason, was inexplicably unpleasant — and Park Woochan caught himself knitting his brows.
Not that he thought he would lose.
With that thought, Park Woochan gripped the greatsword once more.
There — analysis complete. And with that, the preliminaries were over.
Time to bring this to an end.