How About a Drink After Work?
Roughly an hour after the successive waves of bombardment-like attacks had begun, the hunters looked out over a landscape of ruin.
Hundreds of Abyss corpses lay strewn before them. And amid that hellscape, only a few dozen remained—still somehow clinging to life, clawing their way up the hillside in a last, desperate bid to survive.
"Out of ammo!"
"We're empty over here too!"
Every last incendiary round prepared under the adjutant's prior orders had been spent. All that remained was to snuff out the final thrashing of those creatures still barely drawing breath in the hellfire.
"Switch to standard rounds. Wipe out the remaining stragglers."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Mass slaughter on the previous scale was no longer possible—but with roughly ninety percent of the enemy already annihilated, it hardly mattered. If anything, loosing incendiary rounds against the ones pressed close to the hillside risked catching friendly forces in the blast. And the Abysses clustered pitch-black at their feet made aiming almost unnecessary.
"Fire!"
Are's order fell once more. Flame erupted from the rifles in the hunters' hands, and finished off those creatures that—even as they melted under the earlier incendiary barrage—had still been making their final, frantic thrash.
The moment the last Abyss in sight collapsed—
"W-we won!"
"We did it!"
"Wooooah!!!"
At that instant the joy of victory finally hit them, and the hunters began shouting and cheering. Before them, the corpses of hundreds of Abysses were piled high like a mountain. The blood they had spilled had turned the valley stream black as if ink had been poured into it. In the aftermath of hundreds of lives snuffed out, the entire area was blanketed in black—Abyss corpses and rocks scorched by the incendiary rounds.
And yet…
Even amid this slaughterhouse of a battlefield, the hunters had suffered zero casualties. They felt only a mild fatigue from the fighting. Among them, not a single death—most were completely unharmed, save for a few lightly singed by the heat of the incendiary rounds.
Even accounting for the hunters' superior combat power over ordinary Abysses, this went beyond one-sided. It was a perfect victory, pure and simple. And not a single hunter present had ever experienced a battle that delivered such an overwhelming exchange rate in so short a time.
As that fact sank in, the image of the man who had designed and executed it all was etched clearly into their minds—their new adjutant, Lee Jinhyun.
This guy is seriously insane… I thought something was off from the briefing, when he rattled off Abyss habits like he had them memorized.
When he told us to stock that many incendiary rounds, I figured it wouldn't be an ordinary fight… but I never imagined he'd lure the Abysses in and burn them all at once like this.
The Abyss battles they had known until now—especially in complex terrain like mountains—were nothing like this. Mention mountain combat from their guild days, and most hunters automatically scowled.
It typically meant full combat gear, and any Abysses encountered on the march had to be hunted quickly and quietly, hearts racing at the thought they might escape. That kind of fight was the better scenario. In extreme cases, they spent days camping out, standing all-night watch against Abysses that could burst from the forest at any moment. If they were lucky enough to find a nest hidden in a cave, they had to squeeze into that cramped, pitch-dark, miserable hole and somehow kill every Abyss inside before the operation was considered complete. Fail that, and after all that suffering, the last resort was simply to blow up the entire forest.
Given all that, mountain combat ranked among the absolute worst missions for hunters—like crawling through an antlion's pit. Even setting operational planning aside, there was a reason the government paid Black Hunters good money for this kind of work.
By contrast, today's operation…
Honestly, when they first took the commission, they had braced themselves for days of hell. But the battle had ended in overwhelming victory in less than half a day. It left an indelible impression on every hunter who took part.
A mission finished in mere hours—no full gear, no camping required. From exploiting the Abysses' extreme aggression to draw them onto favorable terrain, to dumping incendiary rounds into the open valley and sweeping them away—it was a style of combat they had never even imagined. It would have been impossible without a complete grasp of Abyss behavior and meticulous advance scouting of the battlefield.
Depending on one's perspective, it could be called a vicious method—torturing the enemy, digging traps, and carrying out a massacre. But such moral considerations applied only to combat between humans. Against monsters, fretting over cruelty or underhandedness was not merely a luxury—it was the pointless nitpicking of fools. Even now, the emotion the hunters felt after finishing a fight against monsters was not guilt or bitterness, but exhilaration, joy, and the pure thrill of victory.
Having tasted for the first time the fruit of an adjutant's near-perfect command—one that pursued efficiency and safety to the extreme—the doubts they had held about Lee Jinhyun had all but vanished, replaced by trust in their commander and a deep sense of anticipation for what lay ahead.
The Dreamouth hunters returned to the company after the mission. Looking at the women lined up before me, I began to feel an unexpected weight of pressure.
How do I put this… for just wrapping up a single B-class commission, their reaction is a bit… dramatic?
Their eyes were shining so brightly you could tell at a glance. Apparently the way this commission had gone had really hit the mark for them—which was, to some extent, the effect I'd been aiming for.
One of the most important things for an adjutant directing combat was earning the trust of those under him. If the soldiers couldn't trust their commander, control became impossible, and that led straight to the collapse of the chain of command. Especially when handling work far harder and more complex than a simple commission like today's, trust between commander and troops was absolutely essential.
In that sense, earning the hunters' trust through this was a good thing for me—but their reaction being more dramatic than expected was laying a fairly heavy burden on my shoulders.
This reminds me of the reaction when we came back from an S-class mission at the Hunter Guild… no, the A- and B-class hunters were roughly similar, but even then Sena and Yujin gave me hell for commanding that way…
But right now, not a single face before me showed any sign of dissatisfaction. Not just the B-class hunters—even the A-class hunters Gwon-sun and Glass were looking at me as if they'd reassessed me entirely. And when I glanced toward Are, she was even flushing red, openly delighted by the situation.
After taking in the hunters' reactions for a moment, I looked at the women before me and delivered my final words as their commander.
"Today's operation—everyone, well done. Thanks to your efforts, we completed this mission perfectly with zero casualties. Thank you once again for following my inadequate command, and I hope we can continue to achieve great results together going forward."
I declared the mission a success and closed it out in a tone vaguely reminiscent of a principal's morning address. Right after, the hunters—led by Are—snapped to attention and saluted as one.
"We look forward to working with you. Thank you for your outstanding command, Adjutant."
"Thank you, Adjutant!"
After declaring the mission complete, the hunters began to disperse. Feeling a mild fatigue myself, I was about to head straight back to the dormitory.
That was when—
"Um. Jinhyun… just a moment."
"Yes? What is it?"
Are's voice calling from behind me. I stopped and turned around. There stood Are along with the other A-class hunters—three of them in all—every one of them looking at me.
"Well… we were thinking of going for an after-party. If it's all right with you, would you like to join us?"
"Honestly, we've been crazy busy with the adjustment period and mission prep. We wrapped the first mission successfully, so come on—let's go together."
"An after-party without the protagoniste simply won't do. We'd be delighted if you'd join us, Aide."
I was a bit tired, but with them going this far, turning them down felt awkward. More than that, as they said—we'd just succeeded on our first commission. Enjoying ourselves a little didn't sound so bad.
"All right. Let's do that."