The Cost-Effectiveness of Slaughter

Ugh, shit.

The words burst out of me before I could stop them, into a thick cloud of choking dust. Crack, crack — a sickening sound echoed up from the back of my neck, and I felt my brow furrow all on its own.

This is exactly why giants are such a pain in the ass to fight. Even a single mistake carries an insane amount of risk. And this was the result despite the battle going more or less exactly as planned.

As I trashed the backup plans I'd prepared for contingencies and started walking toward the heart of the dust cloud, I spotted Nam Sangwon sprawled out on the ground, in even worse shape than I was.

'Ha, shit. My damage calculations were insane, weren't they~'

'He actually kept himself alive through all that? Woochan's skill is genuinely legendary...'

I was in the middle of patting myself on the back when Nam Sangwon suddenly let out a hollow laugh. Along with it, I could see the sand and dust caked around his mouth stirring as it rose.

It's over, then.

His voice was almost relieved.

Of course, there was no way he was actually at peace with it. Raising both hands as far as they would go, Nam Sangwon pressed his palms against his eyes, wincing at his own battered body.

"It's really over."

"I— told you to surrender while you had the chance."

It didn't feel like the right moment to say I told you so, so I decided to keep quiet instead.

Besides, it wasn't my call to decide what happened to the Honinhoe lot — that was Choi Seungjun's business. The academy they'd attacked was, after all, the one where he served as chairman, and frankly, I couldn't be bothered to weigh in on matters like that in the first place.

It's not as if we were close enough for me to go sticking my tongue out on his behalf.

I was awkwardly scratching the back of my neck when a distant murmur reached my ears. Reporters, most likely, swarming in at the sound of the fight.

I'd intended to keep things measured and careful, but at some point the battlefield had crept all the way out to the athletic field. And I'd just gone and slammed Nam Sangwon into one corner of it, so even I had to admit that expecting no one to notice was pushing it a bit.

Well, staying here any longer would only draw more eyes. From the warehouse I'd retrieved a rope imbued with an automatic binding ability — made of some special material, more than capable of restraining even a B-rank monster. Under normal circumstances, Nam Sangwon could have snapped it without breaking a sweat. But instead of making a scene, he had quietly submitted to my custody.

Still.

"May I ask just one thing?"

He'd gone ahead and asked anyway.

'Christ, we don't exactly have time for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this.' I clicked my tongue without meaning to — then, figuring that answering a few questions might make him more cooperative and my own life easier, I shut my mouth and let him talk.

Taking my silence as a yes, Nam Sangwon spoke slowly.

"You said you've never killed a half-blood. Isn't that right?"

"That's right."

"Is that the truth?"

"Why the hell would I lie to you? What are we to each other?"

At my incredulous retort, Nam Sangwon gave a light shrug of his shoulders.

"Fair enough. Then, my question—"

'Damn it, that's not one question. Can't you count?'

"Think of it as an old man's grumbling, if you like, and humor me."

"Fine. Go ahead."

"Why?"

A short question.

But the weight behind it was anything but light.

"It's awkward to say, but I know a fair amount about you as well. I've looked into your history, and I'd heard about you long before this."

"Yeah, I did end up saddled with a pretty humiliating nickname."

"I have. Which is why I'm curious. The Butcher, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠death of monsters. A man called that — our consensus was that if anything, you'd have butchered half-bloods by the hundreds."

"Huh."

"To be clear, that's not merely the Honinhoe's view. It's the consensus of just about everyone. Though I suppose it's rather rich coming from me, who blindly charged in trusting that very consensus."

"So?"

"I wanted to ask. If what you say is truly the truth — why?"

Why did a man who hated monsters — who despised them past the point of hatred — never once turn his sword on the half-bloods?

Nam Sangwon's question was transparently fishing for a particular answer.

Unfortunately for him, there was no elegant reason why I hadn't butchered the half-bloods. Nothing of the sort.

I didn't believe, the way the Honinhoe claimed, that half-bloods were beings no different from humans — nor did I consider them the same as monsters. If anything, I'd have to say I had zero interest in that whole identity debate. Just as Nam Sangwon had said, whether half-bloods counted as people or monsters was, frankly, none of my concern.

That's just the era we live in.

A world too harsh to go sticking your neck into other people's business — so harsh that even keeping your own life intact was a luxury. It had come to that.

And yet people had staged this whole incident precisely so that even those kinds of people could spare a thought for the tragedy of the half-bloods. Or so they said.

Which meant that try as I might to spin it otherwise, there was only one reason I'd never gone around slicing up half-bloods.

"Well — you lot are half monsters too, aren't you?"

At my answer, Nam Sangwon said nothing. He did, however, make a slightly wounded face.

'Christ, a man in his forties making that pathetic a look. Really.'

"If that's not the answer you were hoping for, then I'm sorry, but what can I say? When I call something a monster, there's no academic criterion involved. It just means it pissed me off when I looked at it. And if it didn't, it's a person."

And by my standard, half-bloods pissed me off roughly halfway.

"Which means killing one only gets you half the enjoyment."

"...Enjoyment?"

"That's right."

"And besides."

He sniffed, rubbing at his eyes with a sheepish look on his face.

"Half a monster also means half a person, doesn't it?"

"......."

"Uh — yeah, when you put it that way, I guess that's what I'm saying."

No, it wasn't some sweet little story about sparing them because they were half human.

This was a world where a single human life was worth far too little to begin with. The reason I'd just given was enough justification to kill a man — never enough to justify not killing one.

Therefore, my conclusion was as follows:

I never killed the half-bloods because, right up until the end of the Second Incursion, there were simply more monsters than half-bloods.

The pleasure you could wring out of killing a half-blood was, at best, less than half of what a monster gave you. And on top of that, there was just enough human scent mixed in to ruin it.

So I couldn't help but think it: a half-blood, compared to a monster, wasn't all that enjoyable to kill. And what about after the rush of the slaughter wore off?

Would I really be able to look at the half-bloods I'd cut down and feel nothing — not a shred of the guilt of a man who had killed people?

Having thought that far, I decided, rather than agonizing over it and reaching some grand conclusion, to just go on killing monsters instead.

If that situation ever actually arose, I couldn't say how I'd react.

But was there really any need to go out of my way hunting half-bloods — targets that offered half the pleasure, were hard to even find, and might carry side effects on top of it all?

The way I saw it, it was a pointless exercise to the point of absurdity.

All the more so back then, when the gates hadn't even properly closed yet.

Every ounce of effort spent tracking down a half-blood was three more monsters I could have killed in that time.

Well, speaking as a hunter, knowing your own limits matters too.

In other words, to put it in a single line—

"Half-bloods just aren't cost-effective."

That was my conclusion.

"Unless, of course, I'm right on the edge of losing my mind, like the other day. Then who knows."

At my answer, Nam Sangwon made the blankest face I'd ever seen on him.

"H-haha. Hahahaha, cost-effective? Haha. Hahahahaha!!"

And then he burst out laughing, as though he simply couldn't help himself.

What that man — a man who had willingly done all this, for his purpose, for the Honinhoe — felt upon hearing my answer, I couldn't begin to guess.

But.

The Honinhoe's untimely midterm exam had, one way or another, come to a close.

After that.

Surprisingly, Choi Seungjun did not make the incident public.

Frankly, it caught me off guard. Unlike me — who, after hearing the Honinhoe's circumstances, had come to feel a certain sympathy for them, thinking well, they had their reasons — Choi Seungjun had maintained a cold, detached expression throughout.

Then again, he was the party standing to take damage the instant the attack on the academy went public, so I suppose it was only natural.

If the Honinhoe's assault had caused actual material damage, there'd have been no helping it — but thankfully, we'd managed to suppress the whole thing early enough.

And there was Jihee's ambiguous double-dealing to consider as well.

She'd changed her mind partway through, yes — but the moment she tipped us off about the attack in advance, she'd earned more than enough credit to let the whole affair end without ever going on the record.

So why, then, had Choi Seungjun — the man with everything to lose — made the call he did?

The answer revealed itself before long.

The media war.

That was what those bastards had been after all along.

Headlines plastered across the front pages of every news outlet in the blink of an eye.

As the titles made clear, the real target of the attacks was me.

Or to put it more precisely — that a member of the Hunter Academy's teaching staff had a hunting record that was completely untraceable. Some of the articles even went so far as to write that until recently, I had been an illegal hunter.

Illegal hunter? Call me an unlicensed hunter, thanks. The way they put it, I sound like a common criminal.

Not that I imagine that was anything other than the intended effect.

It was genuinely hard to believe a lone journalist could have dug all this up on their own. There was no doubt in my mind that whoever was behind it meant to use it as ammunition against the academy — or against me.

Some of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the papers even ran shots of Nam Sangwon's and my backs as we left the athletic field that day, splashed across every site on the internet.

The Honinhoe, fighting for half-blood rights and academy admission, staging a protest timed to the exam period. And the former illegal hunter Park Woochan, who crushed it without mercy.

Yeah. That was the flavor ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of it.

If you had to pick a headline, something like that.

It barely has anything to do with me being an unlicensed hunter, though.

That was my personal take on it — but the people reading the articles began to convince themselves that an illegal hunter, one long ago expelled from the Association for savagely butchering monsters, had callously dismissed the Honinhoe's demands.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword — and every word of that old saying is true.

Not that I had much choice but to grumble through it, because this was exactly the trap Choi Seungjun had laid.

Barely a few days after those articles started circulating, pieces like these began to appear.

And then the follow-up strike landed on top of it.

In a word, Choi Seungjun had cut a deal with the Honinhoe.

In exchange for scrubbing the Honinhoe's name entirely from every word a hunter might breathe to the press, he'd pulled the organization over to our side.

And the Honinhoe — already beaten, with their backs against the wall and nowhere left to run — had had no choice but to accept.

It was a bargain that came closer to extortion than negotiation, but for the Honinhoe, whose position had always been barely a step above subcontractors anyway, they were apparently in a position to welcome it with open arms.

And just like that — a counterpunch that thinned the enemy's numbers while padding our own hand.

With this, the Honinhoe had effectively joined our camp, staking their own credibility as collateral.

A clean, satisfying reversal in every sense of the word.

We'd absorbed their attack, then taken one more step forward to land our first proper counterstrike of the whole affair.

And so.

In less than three days, the scheme aimed at the academy came to an end.

The media outlets that had been clamoring about the rift between the Honinhoe and the academy went silent practically overnight, and in turn, the academy under Choi Seungjun publicly declared its welcome to half-blood applicants — pulling off a public relations coup on top of everything else.

By nailing down their stance on half-bloods in front of the cameras, they also won over the hearts of the Honinhoe, who might otherwise have been branded a parasite in the lion's belly at the slightest misstep.

Best of all, it even contributed to achieving the original objective — the one that had nearly been buried under all the gossip.

Really, there's no keeping up with that man when it comes to schemes like this.

The day the midterm exams ended.

While I was clicking my tongue at him like that, the fight between our academy and those bastards came, more or less, to its rough conclusion.