How Can I Fight Like You?
While I was off in the back having the time of my life rolling around, the midterm exams drew to a triumphant close.
Thanks in no small part to facilities built with frankly obscene piles of money, and to exam content that put every last bit of them to good use. Next-generation hunters unshaken by any situation—and, at the same time, a curriculum that actually gave a thought to the students' mental health. That was the fruit of the flaws we faculty, myself included, had hunted down with bloodshot eyes, and of the engineers who'd pulled all-nighters reworking the facilities the moment they heard our reports.
Honestly, even by my standards, this exam had come together remarkably well. Setting aside the bias I felt for it—given how neatly it meshed with my own teaching philosophy—it was genuinely excellent. Perfectly calibrated difficulty, plus environments tailored to each individual examinee!
I could only shudder at the engineers who'd addressed every last complaint from dozens of teachers in a mere two weeks, and at Choi Seungjun's deep pockets, which made such breakneck efficiency possible in the first place.
Not that I got to watch any of it in person.
Fortunately, though, the training hall came equipped with surveillance cameras that recorded the students' every move. Thanks to those, I could grade their practical exams from the footage.
And the first one to catch my eye, naturally, was Jung Pilyeon.
Pilyeon had turned in an exceptional performance yet again. Every monster that spawned went down in a single stroke, and on the rare occasion one managed to endure his blade, he'd falter for a heartbeat—then finish it for good with his second strike. His scores sat comfortably in the top tier, too. The other teachers, in fact, had praised him until their mouths ran dry.
Except.
He was up to something rather interesting.
At my remark, Pilyeon himself only pulled a somewhat sheepish face. He seemed to have a fair idea of why he'd been summoned.
Musing on that, I switched on the TV in the counseling office. The screen felt bigger than the house we lived in now—never mind the TV we'd had back home—and after some clumsy prodding at the remote, up came footage of Jung Pilyeon locked in fierce combat inside the training hall.
'So that's what an A+ rank is worth.'
'Guess pricey really does mean better.'
I marveled silently to myself. The TV was impressive, sure—but what really stunned me was how crisp the recorded footage was. An illusion that could reach into machinery and even bleed into recordings had to be at least A-rank, no?
Thanks to that, the Pilyeon on screen swinging his blade looked to be fighting a battle so ferocious you'd never guess he was actually flailing around alone in an empty training hall.
He cut down the monsters swarming in from every direction, then cut down more. The illusions—faithful down to the monsters' natural instincts—threw themselves at him as if they'd been born for the sole purpose of tearing him apart, trampling the corpses of their own kind in their frenzy. For illusions, the choreography was a touch over the top, but that wasn't the point, so rather than nitpick, I skipped the footage further ahead.
And then, for the very first time, one of Pilyeon's strikes—the same strikes that had been clearing monsters in a single blow—was knocked away.
A crustacean monster. The kind that had come up as material a few times in that job I'd referred Yunha to a while back. On-screen, Pilyeon's face stiffened for a moment at the sight of it; then, at last, he reset his stance.
He drew the sword in his hand back in and planted his feet wide. Awkward-looking, maybe, but it was a stance built for swinging a heavy blade.
Pilyeon kept this up again and again after that. Against quick monsters, he'd loosen his grip on the sword; against ones with heavy attacks, he'd deepen his footing so he could deflect their offense.
Granted, I was overstating it—hunters who adapt their approach to the monster in front of them aren't exactly rare.
But I could see it.
The whole point of this exam was how a student confronted a situation designed to overwhelm them—and by what means they broke through. In other words, it measured adaptability.
That was precisely why Ha-yeon—whose raw ability as a hunter still couldn't touch Pilyeon's or Lee Yeeun's—had outscored them both. For a girl who'd faced down multiple high-rank monsters in recent months, illusions fitted with safety limiters were hardly a threat at all.
But Pilyeon's relative slump wasn't solely down to that.
Here was an exam meant to measure adaptability, and he was killing the monsters before he ever truly engaged them. Done that way, it wasn't testing adaptability—it was just a contest of who could slash fastest. Call it forcing the issue. His monster-slaying was flawless, so a high score was guaranteed, but the reason he'd landed below Ha-yeon was deductions in exactly those areas.
And then there were those awkward, half-baked stances of his.
"You weren't taking the exam at all, were you? You were running tests of your own."
"I'm sorry."
At the remark I'd let slip with a snort, Pilyeon answered without a moment's hesitation.
So that was it, then. Those awkward stances. They were nothing like the forms Pilyeon had drilled into his body all this time. The lack of polish was plain—and you could practically see him thinking, okay, let's try it this way next, only after he'd gotten a look at the monster.
In other words, Pilyeon had set his own private criteria and sat the midterm by them, entirely apart from the exam itself.
"No, what are you apologizing for? Treating the exam like live combat? You think your teacher hates that sort of thing?"
"If anything, I rather liked it."
For the students it might matter, but from where I stood, this exam was nothing more than a single line on a high school report card. Good grades never hurt anyone, but it wasn't as if universities were the thriving institutions they'd been before the Cataclysm...
He had three years ahead of him and a dozen exams in all; botching one of them wouldn't cause any real harm. All the more so if, in exchange for one throwaway grade, he stood to gain something far greater.
"So—what's this about?"
But why had Pilyeon done it?
The behavior itself wasn't bad—but surely something had prompted the decision. Maybe he'd hit a wall all of a sudden. Or maybe he'd found himself a rival.
At my question, Pilyeon scrubbed a hand down his face. Adolescent angst, perhaps? I was still musing on that when he opened his mouth at last and gave me his answer.
"Lately I've been experimenting, in all sorts of ways, with how I ought to fight."
"Uh-huh. And?"
"Honestly? Not much progress. I wondered if it was because some part of me kept treating it as practice."
In other words, he'd deliberately shackled himself mid-exam—burning his own boats so he couldn't retreat into "practice."
Good grief. Was that diligence, or what? No—it was ambition, and there was nothing wrong with that.
Except.
"But why all of a sudden? It feels a bit wrong to say this in front of you, but with your skills, you're already the best of the students, no?"
"Among the students, sure."
Why had he suddenly started doubting his own approach? With that question folded into my words, I asked him outright—and this was his answer.
"Teacher."
"Huh? What?"
"How do I fight like you, Teacher?"
"Huh?"
As I babbled out that dim-witted reply, Pilyeon himself just let his gaze slide off to the side. On his face I could read it half and half: regret for having brought it up at all, and relief at finally getting it off his chest.
Hold on, though—what exactly had I done? I didn't recall ever showing him me hunting anything...
As I stared at him, half incredulous, the kid started talking again.
"You remember the entrance ceremony?"
"Of course. You and I sparred, didn't we? How could I forget."
"Honestly? It shocked me."
"Huh? What did?"
"Your skill, Teacher."
"Mm?"
"Of course I know better now. Even against a retired hunter, my skills would struggle to keep up, right?"
"Well, yeah."
"But I didn't see it that way back then. No—if I'd lost because your power or ability simply overwhelmed me, I'd probably still believe that even now."
Listening to him answer with that awkward little smile, I could see his point. He had a case. Short of an ecosystem-wrecking anomaly like Choi Seungjun, a former hunter rarely ended up sprawled embarrassingly at the feet of some promising rookie.
But what I'd used against Pilyeon back then was, purely and simply, finesse. Technique, in a word.
"Besides, at my age, wouldn't it be sadder to brute-force my way through young bloods like you with raw stats..."
"Still, for me it felt like the scales fell from my eyes."
I wondered if he was laying it on a bit thick, and it made me a little awkward—but put that way, what could I say?
Well, I could pretty much predict the rest. And sure enough, what came out of his mouth didn't stray far from my expectations.
So Pilyeon, defeated by technique for the first time in his life, had apparently racked his brain every which way trying to figure out how to wield a sword the way I did. Never mind that what I'd actually wielded back then wasn't a sword but a switch—the kid had apparently, instinctively, picked up on how close my movements were to swordsmanship.
Confronted with the first technique in his life he couldn't understand, Pilyeon had begun his investigation in earnest.
But.
For someone who'd muscled through nearly every obstacle in his path on talent alone, Pilyeon found, to his bewilderment, no clear way forward.
Well, of course. The ones who can sprint that far on raw talent alone number only a precious few—Choi Seungjun among them. Pilyeon's talent was nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn't Choi Seungjun-tier. And honestly, he wasn't built that way to begin with.
Unfortunately, Pilyeon himself didn't seem to see it that way.
And so, suspecting the problem was that he'd been treating it all as mere practice, he went so far as to shove himself into the crucible of an actual exam.
'Huh.'
Hearing all that, even I started to feel a little guilty.
I mean, in a martial arts novel, wouldn't this be qi deviation or something?
I could also roughly guess why he'd chosen now to bare his heart. After all, from where he stood, he likely had nothing to show for it. It was obvious from watching him on that screen. He'd probably come to me grasping at straws.
"But seriously, Pilyeon—what kind of breakthrough could you possibly make in a lousy two months? If you managed that, it wouldn't be skill. It'd be dumb luck. Pure luck."
"Maybe you're right."
And that was exactly the problem.
Two lousy months.
Let's be blunt: even boxing to lose weight won't show results in that span. Swordsmanship? All the more so.
To this, Pilyeon nodded along with surprising meekness. Truthfully, he'd probably known it all along, deep down.
But what he said next, even I couldn't easily brush aside.
"I guess I've gotten impatient lately."
He said it with a bitter smile.
Of course, I had my suspicions. Pilyeon had been the undisputed top of his peer group right up until he entered the Academy—so why the sudden restlessness now, of all times?
The answer was simple: the Academy didn't currently offer weapon-arts instruction. More precisely, weapon-arts classes wouldn't begin until next year. The consensus of the entire faculty—Chairman Choi Seungjun included—was that this stage called for nothing but rigorous foundational conditioning.
A weapon is, first and foremost, an extension of the body. That's why every martial discipline teaches weapons only after the body has been thoroughly trained. Hand a weapon to a novice on day one, and all you get is more kids getting hurt by their own clumsy blades.
Which was, of course, exactly what I'd intended as well...
'Man, that's rough.'
From his perspective, though, accepting that reasoning clearly hadn't been easy. Seen through his eyes, his classmates were all sharpening their abilities while he alone stood still.
Pilyeon's ability was Armament Formation. And within that, it specialized in the sword he gripped and wielded. Denied weapon-arts training, it was only natural he'd feel he was going nowhere.
Sure, everyone knew that building a general foundation before serious weapons training produced better results than diving straight in—but how many people can be talked into accepting that on the spot?
In the end, I raised the white flag too.
"If you were struggling with something like that, you should've come to your teacher first."
"Sorry—what?"
"Honestly, where in the whole wide world would you find a teacher who hates after-class questions?"
Home visits.
Or after-school lessons.
Let me drop by your place for a bit, Pilyeon.
I'd originally taken the Academy teaching post because I'd had no real choice in the matter. But it seemed this teaching gig—never part of my life's plan—was going to keep going for a while yet.