The Giant and the Butcher
He takes stock of the situation.
In the moment he steadied his breathing, Nam Sangwon had no choice but to admit that his technique simply could not reach Park Woochan. In a pure contest of strength, he could have crushed the man flat in an instant — but Park Woochan's superb craft gave him no opening to force it into a wrestling match at all.
Worse, the man's eye for reading rhythm was exceptional as well. His defense was solid enough that no mere jab could break it, and the moment Nam Sangwon tried to follow up with a hook or a straight, Park Woochan would slip inside and collapse his stance. In effect, he was methodically strangling every option Nam Sangwon had available.
And yet the man did not retreat. No — he couldn't retreat. He understood perfectly that having fought this far not for some noble ideal but for his own stubborn conviction, backing down now would leave him with nothing at all.
Park Woochan, by contrast, was quietly gauging his own full strength. After all, this was his first time facing a half-blood head-on.
Against a half-blood, his mana sensitivity read at roughly S-rank. Beyond that, the senses sharpened further in proportion to the sheer scale of the power the opponent wielded.
The amplification factor, however, was only about half of what an actual monster would produce. In other words — half-blood, in the most literal sense.
Knowing that much was enough.
The important thing wasn't the amplification factor itself, but calibrating the gap between his own assumptions and what his senses actually reported.
The opponent was a half-blood. If he went in assuming the amplification was about half of normal and got knocked flat for it, there'd be no escaping the verdict of fool. So he'd needed to verify exactly how far prediction diverged from reality.
And.
The verification was complete.
Unlike with that damned demon, he'd had ample time to do his homework in advance. With a means of taking the man down already prepared, an S-rank half-giant was more than catchable.
Two different trains of thought — one identical conclusion.
The next instant, the giant and the hunter charged each other.
The giant's chosen move was almost laughably simple. In the breath he'd bought himself, he released every ounce of power he'd coiled into his fist. A force violent enough to shatter even a giant's iron bones detonated from his grip.
A hook? A straight?
It didn't matter which. Even if he fell back on defense a second time, he could never absorb the giant's full strength. The weight class separating a giant from a hunter whose abilities weren't built around physical reinforcement was simply that overwhelming.
Naturally, Park Woochan knew this too.
Which was why he'd never intended to lean on defense in the first place.
From Park Woochan's perspective, the tricky thing wasn't the smash with its opening to exploit — it was the short, snapping jab that closed distance before you could breathe. He could deflect it, sure, but if there were no gaps to punish, he could never seize the initiative.
That was exactly why he'd fortified his guard the moment the fight began. Bait out the jab, and shut it down himself. Unlike Park Woochan, who'd had time to analyze Nam Sangwon after hearing the situation from Jihee, the man's plan had been simply to avoid engaging Park Woochan and reclaim the hunters. He'd probably done some light homework as a contingency, but that much was never going to be enough.
From there, all he had to do was treat Park Woochan — who had perfectly shut down his flurry — with the wariness he deserved.
How many people in this whole wide world could throw a flawless jab while staring down a counterattack that seemed to pry open your every gap by force?
If you could predict that far, the next move was obvious.
A punch with every last drop of power wrung out of it — maximum force.
Having read that much, it made no difference whether the incoming blow was a hook or a straight.
Facing the giant's fist, Park Woochan tore off his glove and hurled it away.
Nam Sangwon didn't react to the gesture — it looked for all the world like a challenge to a duel — and simply drove a hard step forward.
Was it meant to blind him? Or were there steel plates sewn into the glove? Either way, with a giant's body, it was easy enough to ignore.
'Nine times out of ten, that's what he's thinking.'
Park Woochan had predicted as much of himself, too.
And precisely because of that, Nam Sangwon's next strike cut through empty air.
The legs that had been planted so firmly on the earth only a heartbeat before buckled beneath him, giving out entirely.
Because of the glove Park Woochan had thrown, of course.
At a glance it looked like an ordinary glove, but it was one of the pieces of equipment Park Woochan had once used.
From back when he'd truly had no choice but to use his bare fists to exterminate a giant.
There's a certain belief in this world: that a sword steeped in a dragon's blood can slice through even another dragon's scales like tofu, that a whip made from a demon's hide can bind the demon itself.
In Park Woochan's eyes, that was exactly where the half-bloods' weakness lay. A giant half-blood wielding power beyond even hunters with physical reinforcement. A nightmare half-blood capable of interfering with other minds and shrugging off physical damage. And yet all of them shared the same fatal flaw — they could not defy the nature of the species they belonged to.
The glove he'd just thrown was the same. The thing he'd once used to beat a giant to death carried a power that forced instinctive terror and revulsion into the heart of any giant. Confronted with it face to face, the giant's strength holding Nam Sangwon's body upright had withered in an instant.
His knee gave with a clatter, and he sank down onto one leg without meaning to. What met Nam Sangwon's eyes then was Park Woochan, already kicking the tip of his blade up into his hand.
Naturally, Park Woochan had no particular desire to kill Nam Sangwon. There was the matter of gate access restrictions, for one — and with Choi Seungjun in the picture, keeping the man alive might somehow prove useful.
Above all, Jihee had asked him to. No matter how you sliced it, if he killed Nam Sangwon here, living face to face with Jihee afterward would get very awkward indeed.
In other words?
If he could recall considerations like these right up to the killing blow, then he might just manage to slow his hand in time.
For Park Woochan, must not kill meant exactly that much and nothing more.
Depending on the situation, and if he had the leisure, it was a fact he might consider once.
Which was why the greatsword descending on the crown of Nam Sangwon's head in the next instant carried killing intent to spare.
He'd never fought a half-blood before. He'd never gone out of his way to hunt one down, either.
But if something cockroach-adjacent was scuttling around right in front of you, wanting to stomp it dead was only human nature, wasn't it?
Kuuuuuung!!
A blow carrying monstrous force.
The crushing impact slammed Nam Sangwon down in a single beat.
It didn't take his head. Nam Sangwon had barely managed to thrust out an arm and catch the attack — barely.
But this was a different story from the first strike, which had ended with nothing more than a scratched cheek.
The blade groaned. Steel sunk deep enough to show bone rumbled and howled. The giant's hide, which until moments ago hadn't let a single blade bite, had been torn open carelessly by the sap of a sacred tree.
If not for a giant's iron bones, he might have lost the arm in one stroke. No — even having barely saved it, one small mistake now would see the whole limb sheared away.
Rather than think any deeper, Nam Sangwon swung his leg and kicked Park Woochan's weapon away outright.
A fearsome shockwave rang out. As expected, simple brute strength could not stand against Nam Sangwon, who wielded a giant's power. Park Woochan, flung back in an instant, found his brow knitting without his permission. Even though he'd thrown his body backward in time with the counter, the numbness still crawled through him.
And yet, ironically, the one who took the greater damage was Nam Sangwon.
Not just the slashed arm — the leg he'd kicked the weapon with, too.
A pain like something gnawing at his nerves wrung a groan out of even Nam Sangwon. It was the sap slathered thick over the weapon.
Just as Park Woochan had predicted, the effect was superb. It even refused to regenerate properly. The arm, cut to the bone, hung there ugly and limp.
A sensation he had never once felt in all the time since gaining a giant's power. The certainty that he might not be able to use this arm for the rest of the fight brushed faintly down the back of the man's neck.
Of course, Park Woochan wasn't about to wait for him.
Chwaaaaararak!!
A chain came flying at the exposed, bone-bared arm — the same iron chain that normally wound round and round the grip of Park Woochan's weapon.
Naturally, he had no intention whatsoever of matching strength with a giant at this point. So Park Woochan's attack was already finished the moment the chain bound the arm.
The chain, wrapped seamlessly in sap, bored into the wound in an instant.
In the end, Nam Sangwon had no choice but to decide.
He gritted his teeth. At the same time, he reached out and seized the chain. Ignoring the searing pain of his palm burning, he hauled on it. Dragging the halfheartedly resisting Park Woochan forcibly toward him, Nam Sangwon — instead of watching the outcome — bolted forward on pure reflex.
As the distance between them lurched, the chain slackened further. But he'd already written the arm off as unusable. Rather than waste time tearing it free now, Nam Sangwon resolved to use the chain in reverse — to pinpoint Park Woochan's position on the other end.
And so, beyond the field of vision that had followed the chain's path —
he saw the weapon, drifting masterless through the air.
Park Woochan hadn't dropped it. His opponent was Nam Sangwon; against a large monster he could hardly bring every function to bear, but even so, this was just about the only advantage Park Woochan held over him.
Therefore, it wasn't long before Nam Sangwon found him.
Overhead.
Being dragged in by the weapon, Park Woochan had instead surrendered his body to the giant's own pull and flung himself into the empty air.
Like an acrobat at work, Park Woochan — swinging upside down from the grip as if it were a high bar — bent his arms, then snapped them straight.
Twwoong — lightly launching himself, he rotated a full vertical revolution.
At the same instant, his heel exploded into acceleration.
A somersault kick riding the Shukuchi.
Using the mana strewn through the air as a foothold, he kicked off — and a clean, shrinking-step strike slammed into the sword's grip.
Shwaaaaaaaak!!
With a thunderclap like a bolt of lightning, Park Woochan's heel cracked down onto Nam Sangwon's opposite shoulder.
With a hideous crunch, the arm screamed.
Damn it all.
At the same time, the staggering Nam Sangwon saw it —
Park Woochan reaching out, hand extended toward his own weapon.
He thought he could guess why Jihee had said what she did. In a situation like this, there was nothing to do except mutter in dumbfounded disbelief.
Teodeok.
And so, having caught the sword's grip, Park Woochan hung himself off Nam Sangwon's torso.
The sacred sap devoured the wound. Nam Sangwon, too, had no choice but to wring out a groan through gritted teeth.
But this was an opportunity as well. For the first time, the grimacing Nam Sangwon had Park Woochan's body fully in his grasp.
Kuuung!!
The giant's fist drove into his side. The force was so ferocious — inconceivable as something wrung out of an injured shoulder — that his vision flashed white. If the arm had been whole, the fight might have ended in a single blow. It was that brutal.
Even taken through the layers of his suit, the bone snapped at once. In the ragged breath that escaped him unbidden, Park Woochan, too, clenched his teeth.
'Fuck, this is why giant bastards——!'
He'd assumed he could take two or three of those. He realized now how absurdly loose that estimate had been.
But Nam Sangwon wasn't the only one who saw this as his chance.
As if playing a woodwind instrument, Park Woochan's fingers began a complex dance of grips across the handle.
Flashy, certainly — but this attack would end it. Recalling every strange trick Park Woochan had shown him so far, Nam Sangwon poured power into his fist.
Get off!!
And so —
his ability to react to Park Woochan's roar was almost purely reflexive.
Twwoong!!
A kick detonated at the last possible instant, sweeping away Park Woochan's forearm. The blow cracked across his forearms — and even with the suit's defensive properties, it was nothing he could take head-on.
At the same time, Nam Sangwon felt a flicker of puzzlement.
'A kick?'
Why a kick, and not a punch? If he meant to knock the arm away, a hand strike would have been far more certain.
But in the next instant, as the scenery swept past before his eyes, Nam Sangwon understood what had just happened.
Park Woochan's response had been instantaneous. Using his own weight and a masterful shift of his center of gravity, he had flung Nam Sangwon's body — still skewered on the blade-tip — clean over himself.
On leverage so extravagant it bordered on absurd, Nam Sangwon's body soared into the sky.
And at the half-blood rising into the air, Park Woochan leapt.
A single step.
Treading the air whipped into fury by their battle, Park Woochan closed the distance in one breath.
At him, Nam Sangwon braced his legs in a clumsy, half-formed stance.
Their attacks collided.
There was no footing. Even so, for Nam Sangwon, wielder of a giant's power, this much was no penalty at all.
Naturally, Park Woochan had anticipated that too. The advantage of solid ground. A weapon that let him put his whole body into every strike. Even with all of it, he could not match a giant in raw strength.
So he didn't try.
Ping-gureureu.
Treading on mana itself, Park Woochan let the giant's kick slide past him.
And in the same motion — a full-body spinning slash.
The blade cracked down into Nam Sangwon's wide-open torso.
Kgh — haah!!
And then —
like a falling meteor, Park Woochan hammered Nam Sangwon from the sky down toward the earth.
With a sound like a mountain settling, the half-blood's body — already clear of the underground — slammed into the corner of the training field.
And so, the fight was decided.