The Girl with Androphobia (1)
“Haa, haa, haa….”
Somewhere in a forest inside a dungeon. The practical exam at Cheonmu Hunter Academy.
A girl was running for her life, desperately gasping for breath.
‘Kereuk, kehek!’
‘Kkeheek!’
‘Kek, kereuk!’
And hot on her heels came a pack of three goblins.
Assuming a candidate could keep their head around monsters, the average hunter academy applicant was more than capable of handling two goblins at once.
The problem was that the girl being chased right now was not an average candidate.
Kim Isabel, her face wrapped in a veil as she fled from the monster pack, had applied to the Recovery Department — meaning she couldn't guarantee victory against even a single goblin.
That was why she'd deliberately teamed up with combat-track students of an appropriate level for the practical exam. But a cruel stroke of 'accident' had made her lose her partner's hand right before entering the dungeon. Unable to fight monsters on her own, running from the things hunting her was the only choice she'd had from the moment she stepped inside.
‘Keheek!’
“Haa, haa, haaa….”
Kim Isabel's breathing had grown so ragged that even through the veil, her exhaustion showed.
She'd burned a fair amount of holy power restoring her stamina, but the mental fatigue steadily piling up was beyond her ability to fix.
-Thud!
“Ah…!”
Because of it, her foot — too tired to watch the ground — caught on an old tree root, and at the same moment Kim Isabel's body pitched forward.
-Splat!
“Aaghk!”
She didn't even have the presence of mind to think about her pure white habit being smeared with dirt. If she didn't get back up this very instant, the goblin pack would be upon her.
Being a hunter meant putting your life on the line against monsters, sure — but dying in the middle of the academy's practical exam was not something she wanted, not for anything.
-Twist.
“Ahhk!”
But her body refused to hurry, and she collapsed to the ground a second time.
She must have twisted her ankle in the fall over the tree, because there was no way she could get up and run like this.
‘O-Omnipotent Asclepius, grant me the miracle of healing….’
In her desperation, Kim Isabel channeled holy power into her own ankle to treat the sprain.
True to someone skilled enough to carry the title of Saint Candidate, she managed to heal the injury within seconds — but those few seconds it took to fall and heal herself were more than enough time to spell doom for Isabel, who had been dodging her pursuers by the thinnest of margins.
‘Keruuuk!!’
“Kyaaaaak!!”
Just as Kim Isabel, faced with a goblin brandishing a club as thick as her own arm, screamed and scrambled away across the ground on hands and knees—
“…Shadow Ball!”
‘Kkehek!!’
The goblin lunging down right on top of her was struck by a dark spell hurtling in from somewhere and sent flying.
“……Huh?”
For a moment, unable to process what had just happened, Kim Isabel could only wear a baffled expression.
-Wham!
‘Kkeuk!’
-BAM!
‘…Gek!’
Right after that, two more bolts of dark magic came streaking in, and she found herself staring blankly as the remaining goblins were picked off one by one.
“…….”
‘……Kek.’
‘…….’
Three goblins — either dead, or twitching violently on the edge of death before going limp.
The relief of escaping death's jaws lasted only a moment. Cautiously turning her head to see who the mage who'd saved her was, she discovered a man and a woman standing a fair distance apart in height.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“…….”
A tall, slightly lean man extending a hand down to her as she lay fallen, asking after her wellbeing.
And behind him, peeking out warily to look at her — a short woman with a large chest and purple hair.
At the tips of those violet locks, the black mana peculiar to dark magic was still shimmering, so it wasn't hard to guess that she was, at the very least, the mage who had saved her.
“It looked like you were being attacked by monsters, so I helped. I didn't do anything unnecessary, did I?”
-Shake, shake.
Absolutely not. If anything, he was closer to a savior of her life, having rescued her from nearly dying to those goblins.
Her life had been saved, so as a human being she naturally owed him her thanks. And so she opened her mouth to express her gratitude to the man before her, but—
“Th-th-th… th-tha… nk… you….”
Her mind knew she had to say thank you, but the words simply refused to come out.
…Because this 'man' standing before her with his hand extended was, to Kim Isabel, an object of terror every bit as much as the monsters.
“Ah, sorry. The monsters must have shaken you up pretty badly. Take a moment and calm down.”
“…….”
-…Nod.
Despite her decidedly rude response to the person who'd saved her, the man acted as if it were nothing, kindly stepping back to give her space.
The only way she could respond to such kindness was to give a careful, tentative nod.
“…….”
She felt ashamed of herself — unable to even properly thank the person she owed her life to.
If not for them, the one lying collapsed on this ground right now might not have been those monsters, but her.
Though her life was saved, she was wallowing in a fresh wave of self-loathing when the purple-haired woman who had been standing behind the man approached her carefully.
“Um, why are you alone…?”
“…There was an accident before we entered the maze, and I got separated from my partner.”
“Ah, I see…. Judging by your outfit, you're a Recovery Department applicant, right…?”
“…Yes. I'm Kim Isabel, from the Recovery Department.”
“O-oh, I see…. I-I'm Cha Eunju, from the M-Magic Department, and….”
“…….”
“…….”
When Cha Eunju, who had sounded as if the conversation might continue, failed to pick the thread back up, the exchange between the two of them naturally dissolved into silence.
The only sound in the air was the man's knife at work a little ways off, field-dressing the corpses of the fallen goblins with his pocket blade.
Still, the person in front of her was a woman, so Kim Isabel cautiously opened her mouth to offer her thanks.
“Thank you… for saving me earlier.”
“Uh, yeah…?”
“If it weren't for your magic, Eunju, there's no doubt I would have collapsed without being able to withstand the goblins' assault. Someone like me, with nothing but healing ability, could never have beaten them.”
“Y-you should thank Seonho for that…. If it weren't for Seonho, I probably wouldn't have even noticed you running….”
“…Ah, 'Kim' is my family name. 'Isabel' is my given name.”
“Ahh, s-sorry…. I, I thought Kim-i was a two-character family name….”
Watching Cha Eunju press her hands to her face in embarrassment, Kim Isabel found her a little cute.
She also got the sense that this girl possessed a heart far too soft for someone who owned the magic that had downed three goblins in an instant.
“That man over there… the person over there — is his name Seonho?”
“Yeah. Honestly, the reason I can even use magic like this at all is thanks to Seonho…. If, if it weren't for him, I probably never would have even thought about entering the practical exam….”
“…I see.”
Just from the dark magic Cha Eunju had displayed moments ago, she seemed to be quite a formidable mage in her own right — so how strong must the person even she relied upon be?
For a girl already terrified of men, a 'strong man' was that much more dangerous a existence. And with that thought, Kim Isabel's wariness of Lee Seonho climbed another notch in her mind.
“Could you pass along my thanks to him as well? I'd like to tell him myself if I could, but I'm… n-not, um, not very comfortable around people who aren't women.”
“Ah, yeah…. B-but we're the same age, aren't we…? Why have you been speaking formally this whole time…?”
“I'm sorry. I grew up in a church orphanage from a young age, so it became habit. Does it bother you…?”
“N-no, it's not that, so you don't have to apologize….”
This Cha Eunju person — she was probably a good person.
That must be why she'd cast her magic without a moment's hesitation to save a stranger in danger.
‘If possible… I'd like to get closer to her.’
…For someone who'd already had to give up on the practical exam, it was probably a slightly extravagant desire.
At the thought that all of this time she'd spent — nearly dying in the process — might amount to nothing, she grew heavy-hearted all over again.
…No way. Of all people, the one being chased was Kim Isabel.
When I spotted something white flitting past beyond the trees, I hurried to check — I never imagined it would actually be her.
In the original story, Kim Isabel appeared near the very end of the practical exam, and the thing chasing her wasn't a pack of goblins like these — it was a single, massive Owlbear.
‘There was a scene like this in the original too — was it skipped? Or has the story gone a little off the rails?’
It might be that the timing of my and Cha Eunju's dungeon entry differed from the original, setting a small snowball rolling.
Since this was a transfer-type dungeon, a change in entry time or order made it entirely possible to be transferred somewhere different from the original. I'd have to call this an unavoidable variable. Even for me, there was no way to perfectly control every random element of Surviving the Hunter Academy.
‘The problem is, if this keeps up, the event where Kim Isabel meets Han Sora might get thrown off a bit.’
In the original, Kim Isabel — unable to do anything against the Owlbear — fled and ran straight into Han Sora and Seo Woojin.
Faced with the enormous monster, Han Sora's focus shattered and she couldn't land a proper strike, while Seo Woojin dropped his sword the moment he saw it and hurriedly ran off alone.
But immediately after, Seo Woojin steeled himself and returned to hold the Owlbear at bay — and thanks to Han Sora and Kim Isabel momentarily feeling a rational attraction at the sight of him, they barely managed to win the battle. That was the original's plotline.
So the plan had been: before Seo Woojin ran off and came crawling back, me, Cha Eunju, and Han Sora would take down the Owlbear ourselves and make that cowardly bastard look like the pathetic wretch he was….
‘Given the variables, I should account for the possibility that things won't go entirely according to the original.’
She might fail to meet the protagonist at all, or end up running into a completely different set of examinees instead.
In that case, Cha Eunju would effectively have to face the Owlbear alone, which makes things a little dangerous at this point in time. The only person capable of landing effective hits on an Owlbear was Han Sora, whose physical attacks — not magic — could actually hurt it.
If it came to that, we'd have no choice but to flee at full power. I had no intention of sticking to the original plan at the cost of throwing my woman into mortal danger.
‘Even if things have drifted from the original, the Owlbear will probably still show up properly.’
After all, the Owlbear's appearance wasn't the academy's doing — it was something orchestrated by the hidden hand targeting Kim Isabel.
Well, since we'd run into her like this, I'd keep her with us until the practical exam ended. With her androphobia, direct conversation was impossible, so I could just relay anything through Cha Eunju.
True, this put me and Cha Eunju in potential danger — but abandoning Kim Isabel and casting her aside again was obviously out of the question.
Leaving a recovery-type hunter isolated and alone was morally indefensible to begin with, and Kim Isabel was, after all, one of the women I had my sights set on.
There was one more problem that had cropped up, though — the disposal of the three goblin corpses I was currently butchering.
‘Three is going to make the material distribution a bit awkward.’
If there had been exactly two, Cha Eunju and I could have split the hearts one each and prepared to hunt the final monster. With three, one of us would have to fill both of the remaining pouch slots.
Throwing away a fresh kill would be senseless, and stuffing them into Cha Eunju's pouch would leave no room for the Owlbear materials at the end. These pouches were issued by the academy — you could put things in freely, but once something went in, it couldn't be taken back out.
And shamelessly stuffing the spoils of her hunt into my pouch would look a little off, visually speaking. Cha Eunju probably wouldn't mind at all, but maintaining this kind of small, thoughtful gesture was how you kept trust from cracking.
For now, one apiece. And as for the last one….
“…S-so anyway, you can relax. Seonho may be a boy, but he's kind, and, um, pure too….”
“Eunju. Could you come here for a second?”
“…Ah, yeah!”
I'd just pretend to consult with Cha Eunju and then suggest putting it into Kim Isabel's pouch.
After all, she wasn't likely to turn down an offer of free points.