Encounter with the Owlbear (1)
-Pwoooosh!
Kehek?!
"…Phew."
The hunting grounds in the aftermath of a pitched battle with a goblin pack. Han Sora let out a quiet sigh of relief as she looked down at the corpses of two goblins sprawled at her feet.
That makes nine. One more, and this exam is done.
The practical exam, officially billed as live monster suppression, had begun with the exam proctor handing out a material pouch and a pocket knife right before they entered the gate. No further instructions had been given, but true to her top marks on the written exam, Han Sora had quickly deduced how the test was meant to work.
A single goblin yielded three key materials: the heart, the brain, and the ears. In other words, each student was expected to take down three or four goblins apiece. Ruin a material while butchering the thing, and you simply had to work that much harder for it.
I heard the exam wasn't like this last year… It's definitely gotten harder.
Perhaps because of the massive gate that had abruptly emerged in Sokcho just a few months ago. Unexplained large-scale gates had been springing up all over the world lately, and she could sense the academy's determination to sift and select hunter talent accordingly.
Admit students already capable of performing in the field, then rapidly forge them into functional hunters. The reasoning was perfectly understandable. That didn't exactly make the grind any more welcome, though.
If she wanted a high score on the practical exam, she would need materials from something stronger than goblins.
Anyone who wants to take down a stronger monster is probably supposed to head deeper into that forest…
Frankly, she didn't have the confidence. The confidence to safely hunt down a monster tougher than a goblin, that is.
…To put it precisely, the confidence to go orc hunting with that idiot as her partner.
-Pwaaak!
"Guhk!"
Kehehek!
That absolute idiot.
Fine, he was just an applicant, but the boy was supposedly from the Swordsmanship Department — how could he still be this incapable of taking down a single goblin? She'd assumed his skills as a vanguard would at least be passable, even if a little rough. They weren't. Seo Woojin's swordsmanship amounted to nothing more than wheezing his way through a desperate standoff with one goblin.
…If she had the right conditions in place, she could have taken down orcs — or something even stronger — without any trouble at all.
…Well, I suppose he'll improve gradually once he's actually enrolled.
Maybe she was simply expecting too much from a childhood friend who was barely at applicant level.
Han Sora fired her bow with a practiced air of composure, but inside she was rattled. Her arrow accuracy was, to put it mildly, nothing to brag about.
Out of ten shots, maybe three found a monster's body. Precise sniping against a moving target was hard, sure — but even accounting for that, a thirty-percent hit rate was a fatal flaw for a self-respecting archer like her.
Why does my awakened ability of all things have to be so infuriatingly half-baked…
Piercing Arrow. That was the ability she'd awakened.
Her fundamental archery talent was excellent — she could loose devastatingly powerful shots with minimal strength — but her awakened ability only helped her up to that point. Reading the wind, fixing her focus on the target, and landing the shot: all of that rested on her shoulders alone.
Thanks to the steady effort she'd put in since discovering her ability, back when she was still a child, she rarely missed a stationary target anymore. The problem, as ever, was using it against live monsters in the field.
Holding her aim on a monster darting this way and that, steadying her breath, and releasing the string within a narrow window of time — for a trainee like her, it was still brutally difficult.
If only a vanguard could draw the monster's attention and buy her time, she could somehow manage a proper killing shot…
-Pwoooosh!
Kkehehek…
"Haah… I, I won…!!"
"……."
With a vanguard locked in a life-or-death struggle against a single goblin, there was nothing she could do, no matter what she wanted to try. She just had to dodge and attack on her own skill alone and pray her arrows landed. It was essentially hunting solo, and she couldn't help feeling that way.
Right, the exam's almost over anyway. Nothing I say now will do anything but make us both crankier.
So Han Sora let it slide, out of the small affection she held for the boy who'd grown up next door to her.
…Even if he looked hopelessly green now, she nursed a quiet hope that someday, once he became a real hunter, he'd pull his weight when it truly mattered.
"So, Sora? Can you help me with the goblin dissection again…?"
"I showed you how earlier. Why do you keep asking?"
"B-but I popped a heart earlier and it scared me. C-can't you just dissect it for me, Sora?"
"Hey, Seo Woojin. I've been dying of frustration this whole time, and the only reason I haven't said anything is because I was holding it in. It took you ten solid minutes just to kill one goblin while I had to handle two at once, and you want to keep annoying me on top of that?"
"Fine, fine…. If you don't want to, just say so. Why the attitude…"
"……."
Whew.
How on earth had she ended up partnered with this guy?
She hadn't formed a party just because he was her childhood friend and happened to pass the written exam with her. She should have picked a partner with more of a sense of responsibility for the practical.
…Come to think of it, I wonder how those two are doing.
Cha Eunju and Lee Seonho, was it? Magic Department and Support Department, respectively.
A combination with no vanguard was worrying, but most of the monsters out here were goblins anyway. As long as they picked off the weak ones, they wouldn't be in any real danger.
From what I saw, the Magic Department girl, Cha Eunju, looked like she was leaning on Lee Seonho from the Support Department.
Shouldn't it normally be the other way around — the combat-incapable Support Department student relying on whoever had the fighting ability? And that Cha Eunju girl… mana had been leaking off her down to the tips of her hair, so I'd assumed she was pretty strong. Was she actually mediocre?
Ugh, what am I even doing worrying about them? I've got my own problems.
Still, they'd seemed like decent kids. Once enrollment actually happened, she wouldn't mind getting to know them better.
Han Sora was mulling this over as she finished dressing her two goblins and steeled herself to reluctantly help Seo Woojin with his — when it happened.
GRROOOOOWWLL!
"……?"
At an inexplicable roar from somewhere in the distance, her gaze snapped toward the depths of the forest.
"Hey, Sora…. If you're done with yours, can't you really just help me a little…?"
"Wait, Seo Woojin. Shut up and listen."
"Now what are you going to nag me about…"
"It's not nagging. Don't you hear something coming from inside the forest?"
"Hear what? You're just making up excuses because you don't want to help me—"
GRROOOOOWWLL!!
"……."
"……Wh-wha?"
…No doubt about it. She hadn't misheard.
The moment something — unmistakably a monster's cry — rolled out from the depths of the forest whose unsettling atmosphere had already kept her from venturing in,
an icy premonition crawled up Han Sora's spine, and she snatched up the material pouch she'd set on the ground and sprang to her feet.
"Hey, Seo Woojin! Get up, now! We don't have time to stand around!"
"B-but I haven't finished dressing mine yet!"
"Something's coming this way and it's wrong! We don't know what it is, so we run first and figure it out after!"
"Y-you've almost got all your materials, so you're fine! Even if I finish dressing this one, I still need five more—"
"Oh, for—!"
She couldn't bring herself to abandon her partner, of all things, so Han Sora reluctantly pitched in to help him hack through the goblin's head.
…Not long after, three people came bursting out of the forest at a dead sprint.
"S-Seonho! Outside — get outside!"
"Hahk, hahk, hahk…"
"Just keep running! We have to get far enough that it can't follow us at all!"
Lee Seonho, sprinting out of the forest with someone cradled in both arms, and Cha Eunju clinging to his chest for dear life.
And… one more — a woman of unknown identity, her face hidden behind a veil.
Before Han Sora could make heads or tails of the scene, Lee Seonho spotted her first, his eyes widening in recognition.
"Huh?! Han Sora?!"
"What are you doing? Why are you all in such a—"
"You can't stay here either — run! If you're here when it arrives, you might all die!"
"D-die?! What are you talking about all of a sudden—"
"Owlbear, hahk… th-the Owlbear's appeared, hah—"
the veiled woman wheezed, forcing the explanation out between ragged breaths.
For a moment Han Sora doubted whether a monster that dangerous could really be closing in — but she would soon learn that the woman had spoken nothing but the truth.
-Crack, crack-crack!
GRROOOOOWWLL!!
"Wh-what the hell is that thing?!"
Because at that very moment, a monstrous silhouette came crashing into view before her eyes, snapping full-grown trees like matchsticks.
Found them.
One way or another, I tracked them down.
I'd even gamed out the worst-case scenario — failing to find Han Sora and being forced to keep running until the academy dispatched a search team. But whether by coincidence or by fate, I'd run straight into Han Sora and Seo Woojin.
With this, I had assembled the bare minimum of fighting power needed to somehow deal with the Owlbear.
GRROOOOOWWLL!!
"Wh-what the hell IS that thing?! Why is something like that in the academy's practical exam dungeon?!"
"No idea! Either way, if that thing catches you, it'll grind you to bone meal, so run as fast as you can!"
"AAAAAAH! WHAT IS IT, SERIOUSLY?!"
Han Sora shouted in sudden irritation as she ran alongside me, matching my pace while I carried Cha Eunju in my arms.
Behind us came Kim Isabel, already winded from the sustained sprint, and Seo Woojin, whose stamina had been hopeless from the start.
The conditions are in place. All that's left is for this to turn into a fight, one way or another.
Ordinarily, the very idea of engaging a three-meter bear-monster in combat was insane. But that was only true so long as everyone could escape safely.
If it became impossible for everyone to run — if we were forced into a fight with no other choice — then Han Sora, even terrified out of her mind, would still stand and fight. That was simply who she was.
-Thud!
"Aaaack!"
Perhaps from running too long through the forest, Kim Isabel's legs finally gave out beneath her.
It was the signal for the real battle to begin — one I remembered from the original novel.
"Isabel!"
"I-Isabel!"
Cha Eunju and I reacted first, halting mid-stride and turning back toward her, and moments later Han Sora caught sight of the fallen girl, her face clouding with worry.
Her personality simply couldn't let someone in danger pass by unaided — she'd try to help however she could. After all, the very fact that she dragged Seo Woojin around in the story's early chapters, when he was nothing but dead weight, was proof of her character.
…Though unlike Han Sora, her dear childhood friend was a selfish bastard who cared about no one but himself.
"Hey, Seo Woojin! Get that lady over there and let's—"
"N-not my problem!"
"What?!"
"I can barely run on my own as it is — what do you want from me! She can figure out how to survive or not!!"
"Hey! Hey, Seo Woojin!! You rotten bastard!!!"
Even Han Sora had a limit, and Seo Woojin's cowardice had just blown straight through it — cursing spilled out of her for the first time.
Yes. Thank you so very much for acting like a pathetic piece of trash.
If you're that scared, go ahead and run to your heart's content, alone.
By the time your regret drags you back, I'll have already finished everything.