The Environment Is Not Your Friend
Well, even having become a student teacher, there wasn't all that much I could do right away.
That said, I couldn't exactly just stand by and watch either, so I resolved to figure out some way or another to involve myself in their lessons.
And so, when the next class came around, we headed for the training facility.
Opening the side door attached to the gymnasium and stepping inside, we were greeted by a grove of lush trees — a sight that hardly suited a place calling itself the Hunter Academy.
The stage for this lesson was the forest itself.
To be more precise, a gate with a jungle setting.
Right, then. Today is environmental analysis.
Basic physical conditioning, light sparring, monster dissection to learn their traits, and the midterm exam — all of that was behind us. The groundwork for reading an opponent's abilities and unleashing their own was done.
Which meant.
From here on out, they needed lessons on the variables that enter into combat — in other words, on how to eliminate and exploit every factor working against them: terrain, environment, all of it.
Let me say this up front, though: a glorious victory achieved by masterfully exploiting the environment is all but impossible, so give up on that idea, kids.
Before starting the class, I decided to hammer that point in.
Unsurprisingly, the students wore somewhat awkward expressions. After all, it must have felt strange for the man who'd spent weeks telling them they were hunters, not warriors, to suddenly come out with this.
But there was nothing to be done about it.
In a fight between hunters and monsters, the initiative belongs to the monster nine times out of ten.
The reason is the very existence of gates.
In modern anti-monster tactics, most nations have adopted combat doctrines centered on defensive warfare.
They monitor the gates that erupt sporadically across the land, and work to expel any monster that suddenly appears from within their cities.
Because of that, the initiative for attack inevitably falls to the monster side, nine times out of ten.
The distribution of gates can be predicted, but never perfectly.
Their emergence can be prepared for, but never eliminated in advance.
Unlike monsters, which are free to rampage wherever and whenever they please, the military and hunters bear the duty of maintaining order and protecting people — which means they are, in the end, forced onto the defensive.
If a gate appeared right in front of your eyes, that would be one thing, but the vast majority of them spring up without a single warning sign.
Consequently, the Association's countermeasures have inevitably hardened into something resembling disaster response.
No one can fire a missile at an incoming typhoon to change the wind's direction, after all.
A gate assault, in essence, is nothing more than the act of locking your doors tight before a typhoon arrives.
And that naturally reduces your opportunities to control the environment.
Holding the initiative of attack means holding the right to choose the battlefield, plain and simple.
With a monster suddenly appearing before you, would you really have the leisure to survey the terrain at your convenience?
All the more so when your opponent is the gate itself.
Even supposing you somehow managed to secure information about a gate's interior, your enemies would be monsters born and raised in that very environment.
No matter how thoroughly you prepare, the terrain will always favor the monsters. Not that I literally want it to, mind you.
To put it crudely: no amount of scuba gear will let a human swim like a shark.
And the same held true even when fighting monsters in the middle of a city. Unlike the monsters, hunters had to worry about property damage.
Even an S-rank hunter raking in astronomical sums couldn't survive if every single battle cost them hundreds of millions in collateral.
So don't expect anything flashy from hunters "using the environment" — some brilliant improvised tactic. Nine times out of ten, it's nothing more than a desperate trick to offset the disadvantages handed to their side.
Well, if you drilled this craft to its absolute depths, maybe things would be different.
But that's not something worth learning just yet.
Either way, my job for now was to make these kids capable of fighting even in hostile terrain.
So then, shall we start with a simple test? Say you were dispatched one day to assault a gate. The environment is a forest, just like here — what's the first thing you should prepare?
The pop quiz, launched as casually as if we were heading out for a stroll, had by now become a familiar sight. Sure enough, the students didn't panic; they simply began thinking over their answers.
Before long, a pale white arm shot straight up among them.
"Yes, Lee Yeeun. Go ahead."
"Tools for securing visibility, and camouflage cream, sir."
"Correct."
The true nature of monsters has never been clearly established. But if one thing is certain, it's that those revolting creatures are, at bottom, living organisms.
Mana's influence often grants them absurd, impossible strength — but set that aside, and it means they've built a surprisingly functional ecosystem.
Which means there are two things to watch out for in jungle terrain.
One is obstructed visibility from the towering trees; the other is the toxins carried by all manner of monsters.
"The forest is a genuinely miserable terrain. We can't even secure proper line of sight, while the things that live there—"
"Naturally, unlike us, most of them manage just fine."
"Right. And here's the crucial part: even if we do manage to secure visibility, it doesn't put us at an advantage."
"If anything, it only brings us up to roughly equal footing with the monsters."
"Which is exactly why you need the camouflage cream."
"To hide our presence — and in turn, tighten the noose around theirs."
"Though I hear the creams hunters use these days have all sorts of bizarre ingredients in them."
Apparently they're good for your skin and even block the stingers of micro-monsters. What a convenient world to live in — for everyone except someone like me.
"There are toxic plants as well, so long sleeves would be wise too."
A brief aside.
The Academy uniforms, woven from their own special materials, doubled as armor more than sufficient against low-rank monsters. Designed with practicality above all else, they covered the wearer from neck to wrist in every season, summer or winter alike. In other words, relatively low-priority advice.
Well, no matter what, they'd have to commission proper combat gear after graduating.
But if this helps even then, so much the better.
"Right. Get this far, and you can finally stand on the same stage as the monsters. So — what comes next?"
Say you've equipped some impressive gear and secured your visibility.
Say you've used camouflage cream liberally and slipped out of the monsters' sight.
And then?
A gate assault is something you can only *attempt* once you've piled on condition after condition like this.
If you succeed in establishing equal footing, then naturally, whoever seizes the initiative in combat can steer the fight to their advantage.
In other words, what matters is the skill of reading the situation before your opponent does.
Whether to attack — or to simply let it pass by.
Even if you misjudge and make a spectacular mess of things, that's still far better than being attacked one-sidedly.
From there, it's nothing but grinding, tedious practice.
How do the beasts of the forest move? Can their patterns be used to infer a monster's behavior? How does one find a monster's trail? What can be learned from it?
These things belong purely to the realm of knowledge and experience.
And even this is a skill limited to forests alone.
Dealing with volcanic terrain or desert terrain is an entirely different matter.
This stuff is rough~
I do consider it necessary study.
But it's hard to make it interesting.
It's pure memorization, and pure application.
If there were a chance to test what they learned, that would be one thing, but the gates are closed for now.
I briefly considered just cramming it into them by force, but I could already tell they'd forget it all by next week.
This isn't some certification exam you pass by scoring well once. It's a livelihood.
What they need isn't grades but skill, and so my worries naturally deepened.
After all, this isn't the kind of material anyone can memorize after a day or two of study. Even within the same forest, monster behavior shifts depending on whether it's the dry season or the wet.
And I couldn't afford to cut corners, either.
This Academy is an institution for training hunters in preparation for the Third Great Cataclysm.
What if the day came when they had to assault a gate with no reliable intelligence whatsoever?
It would be a blessing if they could at least cram at the last minute — but there are situations where even that luxury doesn't exist.
Mishandle it, and they could end up as nothing more than the groundwork someone else uses to dig out that information.
Which is why I wanted to give them experience enough to handle unfamiliar environments with confidence.
There's no shortcut here — though frankly, I doubt even three years of relentless drilling would be enough.
What a headache.
Well, that's why we'd come down to the training facility.
I forced my thoughts to reset. Then, I added a new condition to the pop quiz from moments ago.
"You're conducting your survey when — of all things — you come face to face with a monster. Distance: under ten meters. Say it's a feline predator type... yes, let's go with a tiger. It's probably looking down at you from a tree right about now. So — what do you do?"
"You shoot it immediately!"
"Fight centered on whoever has ranged attacks, while the close-range fighters hold the monster's attention!"
A textbook answer.
Not bad. In fact, that's exactly how I'd fight.
But.
Before you can set up a textbook play, something has to come first.
Naturally — the thing I'd been emphasizing all along.
"Yes?"
I turned my gaze on the students, chattering away as if they'd finally gotten one right.
And then.
I kicked down one of the trees standing beside us.
A great trunk, easily ten meters tall, tore free at the roots and crashed down among the students.
KWAAANG!!
With a deafening crack, screams tore through the ranks of terrified students.
Roughly five of them were pinned beneath the tree.
How many had even managed to react? One or two, at best.
In a real situation, those five would have suffered at least serious injuries — judged coldly, they'd be casualties.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"Teacher, what was that?!"
Of course, in reality it was nothing more than an illusion.
No one was hurt. Which meant the five who'd flailed their way out of the dissipating phantasm were still able to raise their voices in protest.
And I couldn't help but chuckle.
"What was that? A monster, that's what."
At those words, silence fell.
I wasn't exaggerating. Roughly ten meters, with appropriate weight and speed.
Among monsters, a ten-meter bulk isn't even particularly rare.
In other words, for those who'd failed to react to that attack to go around talking about fighting monsters, engaging monsters — it was pure fantasy.
Faced with a monster that appears without warning, could you truly react in time? Sure, there was a decent distance — but do you really have the luxury of composure against a monster?
In a word: specs.
Just like the Fear I'd mentioned before, monsters arm their entire bodies with roars and displays designed to cow their prey.
So — could rookie hunters, suddenly confronted with an unknown monster, really stand and fight without panicking?
"Honestly? I'd say that's a stretch."
Frankly, I doubt they could manage a proper reaction, let alone a fight.
And so.
This is the teaching method I chose.
Repeated drills, on the premise of fighting monsters, until the students could respond.
Afterward, additional conditions and penalties tailored to each environment.
In the truest sense, hammering knowledge into their bodies.
"Well then, shall we start getting ready?"
Unsurprisingly, the students who'd just had a tree dropped on their heads showed absolutely no enthusiasm for it.
But.
"Hm?"
Their eyes drifted, blank and uncertain, toward Seoa, who stood there unmoving.
Reading the moment, Seoa gave them an encouraging little wave.
And with that, the students rose to their feet with the slow resignation of the condemned.
Convenient.
They must have given up after seeing Seoa's reaction.
Or maybe they'd remembered the rumor that I was the one who trained her.
Two months since the Hunter Academy opened its doors.
The students had never once been taught the flashy combat style they'd imagined hunters lived by.
But the fact that someone who'd endured these very lessons had reached A+ Rank was, for the students, a comfort worth more than they knew.