A Quiet Final Exam
There was one thing that set this final exam apart from the midterms.
The location of the test itself.
Not the training hall — the gate.
Fine, no point in hiding it. The gate that had been temporarily sealed after the incident during that practical class had been reopened.
Thanks, of course, to another freshly air-dropped shipment of the Elixir of Truth.
Meanwhile, Tiamat, who had been handling the class's monster instruction, was away from the gate at the moment. Naturally, that meant Choi Seungjun had to escort her personally.
And thanks to that, the gate could be safely opened again.
It had been nearly half a year since the monster incursion. With no real progress on the investigation since then, it was only inevitable.
Well, considering the methods those bastards used to smuggle monsters in, there was no way the gate itself would suddenly turn out to be the problem at this late stage.
The real issue, if anything, was the sheer lack of practical training time. Classes had effectively been suspended, after all.
Which, admittedly, made writing the exam easy.
The event for this final was simple: a straightforward gate expedition. Since no student had been given equal practical hours, the logic went that even an ordinary expedition would constitute a fair test.
All the more so under current circumstances.
The club lessons — started under the banner of providing diverse instruction — had, this time around, become a ball and chain instead.
Obviously. That's just how techniques work.
If you don't ingrain them into your body over a long stretch of time, you can't wield them properly. For students who'd only just picked up new techniques recently, it must have felt like a pile of useless extra options.
Skill, in the end, is the measure of how well you choose which techniques and tactics to use and deploy them appropriately.
In that sense, the club lessons were actually balancing out what would otherwise have been a rather dull final exam.
Not an intentional effect, mind you.
Next year, club lessons will begin from the start of the term, and barring anything unusual, the gate shouldn't have to close either. Either way, it evens out.
Still.
What a mess this has been.
Being the first time through, some chaos was unavoidable — but I was hardly holding the academic schedule together myself, if I was being honest. That said, there were a few standouts worthy of the title.
First, Jung Pilyeon.
Maybe it was because he'd more or less reconciled with his father through the club lessons, but at some point a subtle harmony had settled into the boy's swordsmanship.
Back when he enrolled, he'd been ranting about how swordsmanship was useless against monsters, but it seemed he'd revised his thinking.
Kids, honestly.
As his homeroom teacher, I hadn't actually done anything for him, yet here he was, growing all on his own. An eye-opening marvel, as they say.
Clean swordwork. Competent handling of monster attacks. Neither had any particular flash or showiness to it.
But it was solid. So solid, in fact, that you could sense a veteran's composure in it — entirely unbecoming of a teenage hunter living on talent and recklessness.
A genuinely excellent achievement.
Next, as always, was Lee Yeeun.
After cleanly discarding a tactical style that didn't suit her, Yeeun's skill had begun improving by leaps and bounds.
It still didn't quite sit in her hands yet, but that would come with time.
Frankly speaking, I'd had a hand in that too. Not that I originally intended to, mind you~
The problem was that everything I'd actually done amounted to nothing more than telling her I didn't like her current style and that she should tear it apart and rebuild it. Not that I considered myself wrong — but from her perspective, she'd been forced to throw away a style she'd spent years practicing.
Which meant I had no choice but to help her prepare her new one. Ideally, she would've built it up herself — after diligent foundational training and a long, agonizing period of personal reflection…
Well, hers is a somewhat unusual case.
Beyond that, there were no other students in my class worth singling out. If I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel, Yoonha was clinging to monsters through sheer knowledge, somehow making it work.
Well, my class is unglamorous by design. That's only natural.
Jihee, for her part, was in a situation where she had to hide her abilities.
The real problem, as ever, was Hayeon.
Her growth was, to put it bluntly, starting to hit a wall. There was nothing wrong with her ability itself — the fatal flaw was her lack of experience as a hunter. In other words, her foundation was unstable.
Granted, the Academy's curriculum was designed around students exactly like Hayeon. But the impression of falling behind her peers was unavoidable.
Above all — her physical technique wasn't lacking. Her ability was still on an upward curve. But the absence of raw attacking power was beyond remedy.
She'd only been seriously training her body for about half a year, and her ability wasn't the explosive type. Meaning: the stronger the monster got, the longer it took her to bring it down.
And time spent killing is time you can't spend killing something else. Those delays piled up one on top of another, and her records naturally slid further and further behind.
She didn't seem bothered by it so far — but what was going on inside?
I just hope she doesn't get too anxious about it.
In any case, my class isn't the type to produce immediate, visible results.
Hmm. What to do, then.
Truthfully, the solution to Hayeon's troubles was dead simple. Whatever the circumstances, all she needed was a proper means of attack.
And as it happened, I had a concept in mind for her style. No — I'd actually seen it with my own eyes, which was better than a concept.
To put it bluntly: I'd found a tactical approach perfectly suited to Hayeon's style.
An ability with no explosive power. Decent-but-not-great physical technique. And a rather delicate frame that, against opponents already wracking their brains over how to deal with her curse ability, would naturally limit their options.
Hunters and monsters who crossed paths with Hayeon would, nine times out of ten, try to subdue her directly. And in that close-quarters situation she'd baited them into — one clean strike.
In other words…
That bastard Kim Minchul, for all his insanity, built one hell of a tactic.
Yes — the strategy best suited to Hayeon was a minor copy of Kim Minchul's. Using her ability to force close combat, then countering with a quarterstaff. With the right materials, the staff could even serve as a catalyst to amplify her curse.
The problem was that the very idea made me sick.
No, seriously.
People tend to call that a trivial concern, but as Yeeun's case proved, personal preference matters more than you'd think. Unless a student was willing to ruin herself over it like Yeeun, I couldn't exactly force someone to use a technique just because they said they didn't feel like it.
But teaching a girl the techniques of the man who kidnapped her?
Just hearing it out loud was nauseating.
Which was why, for now, all I could do was quietly watch and wait. Whatever else was true, I couldn't teach her some half-baked alternative style when I'd already identified the optimal tactic.
God… damn it.
What exactly is this job supposed to be, teaching?
Do the teacher-training colleges also cover a unit on how to instruct your own student in the methods of her kidnapper?
Just as I was spiraling into that escapist little thought—
"Er, nothing's actually happening, is it?"
Someone interrupted me out of nowhere.
I glared at the man in front of me on reflex, then forced my gaze back down. In this setting, I was attending not as some informant but under the name of parent conference, after all. It wasn't a private room — anyone could walk into this lounge at any moment, so this was not the time for friendly looks.
Or so I sternly reminded myself, turning my eyes away from the man.
…He actually seemed more nervous than I was. And his eye management was utterly awkward.
The orphanage. The orphanage director I'd once approached while digging into Hayeon's past was now sitting in front of me.
As I said — the official pretext was a parent conference. I'd summoned him under the excuse of Hayeon's recent absence from school.
Well, it's not like I could announce to the world that Hayeon was living in my house, so the paperwork still listed the man in front of me as her legal guardian.
Of course, I hadn't actually called him here for counseling. My real objective was, as ever, verification of that group — it had come up during club hours, after all. And more than anything, there were things I wanted to discuss about Hayeon's state of mind.
"So, uh… can I go home now?"
"No."
"Thought as much, huh?"
"Yep. Thought as much."
The problem was that this man was utterly useless.
No, I'm dead serious. Look, it's this day and age, I get it. I'd hate to think orphanage directors imagined themselves as saints straight out of the Bible, but nine times out of ten, most of them couldn't care less about the kids.
And this director was no exception. No — if anything, it seemed like he'd deliberately kept his distance.
Because of that group, no doubt. He'd evidently worked tirelessly to avoid paying any mind to Hayeon in particular. Granted, with them making requests of him, he must have at least checked on her safety now and then.
And in this era, the director knew what he knew: some things are better left uninvestigated.
So I hadn't expected much on the Hayeon front either. Honestly, I'd only asked because — well, you never know.
But the director turned out to be even more devoted to his convictions than I'd given him credit for. From the moment I started asking about Hayeon, the entirety of what this gentleman had to offer was a string of half-hearted noises of agreement.
"Oh, yes. She does have that side to her, doesn't she…"
Your neighborhood auntie could manage that much.
And right now, it was more of the same.
"……Um."
"What."
"This might be a bit much to say, but — surely I'm not wrong about this?"
"No, there's absolutely no way you're wrong, sir!"
"But look, more than half the exam's already over, isn't it?"
"Mm."
Three months since the Academy's founding.
More precisely: the first week of June, when the final exams began.
And yet — contrary to my expectations, absolutely nothing had happened in the faculty room since the tests started.
What the hell was this?
Weren't villain attacks supposed to be mandatory during Academy exam season?!
Son of a—
No, what is this? I'd even gone out of my way to tell Lee Joongoo and Choi Seungjun that, statistically, they'd be attacked too…!!
"Er, this is the last row now."
"Shut it."
"Ay-yes sir."
Leaving the director to fold quietly into himself, I pressed a hand to my forehead.
Certainly, he'd said the same thing. No orders had come down to him recently.
Could they have caught wind that he was working with me? I briefly considered it, then ruled it out — my fist was a great deal closer than any cell organization in the field.
Conversely, the odds that the other side had discovered his cooperation were also nearly nonexistent. If our untouchability — never once having our tail stepped on — was the cell network's strength, then this was precisely its weakness: the inability to control each individual cell in a timely fashion.
Everything in this world carries risk and return, and the cell structure was no exception.
So then — had they truly let go of the rope?
No way in hell…
And yet.
Until the practical exams concluded, an almost miraculous nothing happened.
The Hunter Academy's first final exam. Ended in peace, of all things.
And then —
Among the crowd of reporters swarming the Academy in search of their next headline stood that man.
He'd long since abandoned his pseudonym, and there was no one left alive who'd call him by his old nickname either. And so, those who knew him from the old days called him by his title:
The Cult Leader.
Leader of our very own Monster Worshipping Cult.
I've lost my mind. I've genuinely lost it.
Yes — that very Cult Leader, the head of an evil organization the world called criminals and terrorists, was at this moment thinking exactly that.
Because he hadn't come here because he wanted to.
Kim Minchul, you psychotic little—!!
A few years back, an A+ rank hunter had shown up out of nowhere, begging to join the cult. Had taking him in after seeing his skill been the mistake?
Naturally, the cult stood opposed to the Association by its very ideology. And being an underground organization, there was simply no way its scale could keep pace with the Association.
Obvious, really. Secret societies that play dashing heroes outside the law are nothing but a bedtime story in reality, and there were several reasons why.
For one — no nation on earth would sit still and allow a secret organization whose money trail could be traced. So a secret organization was forced to hide the flow of its assets. And as luck would have it, in modern society, difficulty tracing funds meant proportionally less cash on hand to actually spend.
Under those conditions, it had been only natural for the Cult Leader to welcome Kim Minchul with open arms. And in practice, his performance hadn't been bad at all.
Kim Minchul. The newly inducted man had been a surprisingly pleasant-mannered young fellow — so pleasant, in fact, that the Leader could not for the life of him figure out how someone like that had ended up joining the cult.
That was exactly why the Leader had scraped the cult's coffers to the bone to fund him. The cult's available manpower could never match the Association's — but unlike an organization bound by rigid hierarchy, the cult could push a single individual openly and lavishly, like this.
To keep Kim Minchul, they'd had to promise treatment exceeding what the Association offered its A+ rank hunters. That had been the calculation, and every single executive had signed off on it.
And so Kim Minchul, backed by the cult's support, had grown to rival an S-rank hunter. Just recently, when word came that he'd finally completed his signature ability, everyone in the cult had sung hosannas.
But.
Fuck you, you have got to be kidding me!!
Who could have imagined that Kim Minchul — who'd stormed off saying he was going to propose to his girlfriend in celebration — would just flat-out die?
He'd been floored. Genuinely floored. It wasn't even a traffic accident.
Grinding his teeth down to powder, the Cult Leader compared it to a hobby he'd recently taken up. But the video record provided by the visitors to the cult that day contained, unmistakably, Kim Minchul's death.
Thoughtography — spirit images vividly lifted, in the most literal sense, from the corpse of Kim Minchul, burned down to nothing.
The hunters in the cult had examined it too, and been forced to conclude it wasn't fabricated. Along with the footage, those people had asked after the cult's future allegiance. And naturally, as Cult Leader, he'd been in no position to refuse their soft-spoken demand for submission.
What kind of bullshit is this.
It was enough to remind him of the time, before the Great Incursion, when he'd sunk his entire fortune into a virtual currency and gotten played by some American businessman's silver tongue. The Cult Leader gnashed his teeth again, recalling — once more — the original reason he'd thrown himself into founding the cult.
But no matter how furiously he raged, as he had that day, reality didn't change. Thankfully, the orders handed down to him weren't difficult: use the identity documents they'd provided to scout the facilities inside the Academy. In short, play spy.
He merely sighed, looking around and lamenting that he was apparently the only talent in the cult capable of pulling off such an assignment with any polish.
…Monster worshippers. The Kaiju Worshipping Cult. When people heard those words, they imagined a mastermind pulling every string from the shadows. But here was the reality: the man who could fairly be called the cult's supreme authority, reduced to touring a high school campus at his age.
Sighing at that fact all the while, the Cult Leader executed his assigned instructions flawlessly. The possibility of butting heads with the Association standing behind the Academy was, at this point, a moot concern — he'd accepted far too much operating capital to argue that clashing with the Association outright would be inconvenient.
With money like that, he could probably patch up the cult's diminished standing somewhat, even after everything poured into Kim Minchul.
Suddenly, the Cult Leader let out a sigh.
He'd never cared about monsters in the first place. An investment to make money. Or at most, an insurance policy in case this country got eaten by monsters. That was all it had ever been.
How on earth did it come to this.
A hopelessly bewildered sigh, for a man supposedly commanding a criminal organization's countless criminals.
But that was the nature of shadow wars. Contrary to Park Woochan's imagination, the covert struggle was, at its heart, always this petty and undignified.