A One-Man Stage for the Hunt

The key was to grow a body pushed past its limits by leaps and bounds.

That was supposed to be my clear priority, but I was, after all, the kind of creature most ruled by emotion, and worry kept getting ahead of everything else.

And so, as I kept mulling over the words I would need to master and distill going forward, I found myself burning through paper at an absurd rate.

Not to convey my intentions to anyone else — endlessly, endlessly, for the sake of drafting plans.

Still, it wasn't as though I was making no progress.

I had dredged up my memories of my past life and thrashed about desperately enough for that.

To start with, I decided the word Jack of All Trades (八方美人) was the one to apply to myself.

Heaven-Sewn, Flawless had stored action-related words in its category and been driven to its extreme.

Which meant that with Jack of All Trades, the only talent left for me to acquire was the kind that involved using one's head.

Jack of All Trades was, first and foremost, a word that granted talents I did not possess.

Which meant that the effects of Leaps and Bounds were bound to come along with it as well.

Blooming a talent ahead of its season would require a great deal more education, but that was no concern of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mine.

"Jack of All Trades."

...So I was, apparently, an even more talentless person than I'd imagined.

That not a single talent I tried to grant met any resistance meant that, where using one's head was concerned, the very best I could ever have been was ordinary.

So even as I felt the joy of my shortcomings being filled in, the flip side was that I realized just how pathetic I was, and self-loathing came flooding in alongside it.

And with the granting of talents complete, Jack of All Trades vanished from my word list.

It was a shock in its own way... but that'll do.

All that remained was to ask Father to increase the amount of education I received.

Before that, though, there was something I needed to verify, and so I set my steps toward the imperial family's private estate — the forest that hosted the hunting tournament.

Entering this place unaccompanied by anyone was forbidden, but a light deception through Refracted Reflections let me slip in without trouble.

If I remember right... the deeper into this forest you go, the better the environment becomes for the beasts living there.

To repeat the point, that meant the very innermost depths would be claimed by a beast reigning at the top of the food chain.

A target of no small suitability.

"Reinforce."

I applied the reinforcement to the dagger that carried quite a bit of history with me.

An ordinary black leether blade was long; setting aside its weight, it was still a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weapon poorly suited to a child like me.

Tap.

Suppressing my breath, I advanced slowly into the forest's depths.

I wasn't going there to throw away a life I had to spare.

Nor was I testing the effects of Escape from Death yet again.

I simply wanted to experience in actual combat the means by which I could seize the greatest possible advantage in a one-on-one situation.

At first, I had intended to master the compound word Indestructible (破損不可) and apply it to objects — to play it out, in game terms, through sheer gear advantage.

But the word cannot (不可) proved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠impossible to combine, and I'd had no choice but to pivot.

How Unidirectional would apply to me was something I had already asked the System about.

Unidirectional meant designating a set interval and advancing in only one direction.

To put it in terms of an arrow: once Unidirectional was applied to an arrow and it was loosed, neither wind conditions nor any external interference could affect that arrow.

And if I could layer Sure Strike (必中) on top of that, it would make for nothing short of a decisive blow.

Well... if I'm going to maximize the benefit, Hundred Strikes, Hundred Hits (百發百中) would serve better than Sure Strike.

When that small musing ended and I reached the forest's depths, the rustling sounds of small animals moving through the underbrush fell utterly silent.

Only a hushed stillness had settled over this place.

Proof that predators reigned at the top of the food chain.

To claim I wasn't afraid would be a lie.

But the Demon King I would one day face, and the beings under his command, would clearly be existences on an entirely different order from the beasts here.

If the theory now established in my head didn't hold against even these beasts, then it was, in truth, nothing but an armchair argument.

Since the theory showed no flaws...

All that remained was proving it in actual combat.

Gulp.

I swallowed.

Turning my head toward the sound that reached me, I found a bear standing at its full, massive height, savoring the carcass of its hunted prey — and staring silently at me.

Thud.

Watching the bear drop its prey — which bore the faint shape of a deer — from its paw and ready itself to hunt me instead, my legs began to tremble of their own accord, but I forced my breathing calm.

"Clear Mirror, Still Water."

The ripples in my heart — where I had hurled away the boulder called fear — began, little by little, to still.

The moment I turned my back here, the bear would judge me to pose not the slightest threat and come charging at once.

"Substitution."

Physical Immunity was, in a sense, a word that stood on the borderline between Absolute and Invincible.

But true to its name, Physical Immunity was, in the end, nothing more than Physical Immunity.

It would fail to block this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world's magic or any special ability.

It must have been precisely because such a flaw existed that I'd been able to master it at all.

In fact, the first thing I'd conceived of was Damage Immunity, but that had proven impossible to combine.

"───!"

After its long observation, the bear apparently judged me to be prey without a shred of danger, for it came crashing through the obstructing brush at a run.

With an ordinary human body, fleeing was never an option to begin with.

"Physical Immunity."

Crack!

KUUUNG!

The bear, which had covered the last few paces in an instant, gouged the ground and swung at me full force.

By rights, that should have been the point where my body burst apart and left me soaked in blood — but thanks to Physical Immunity, I took no wound at all.

Merely from the residual momentum of the delivered force, I was flung backward, struck a tree, and crumpled to the ground.

With this...

The target that had struck me was, a moment ago, that bear — and so Physical Immunity's effect would persist until the battle ended.

This much matches the theory.

I pushed my sprawled body upright and gripped the dagger.

Perhaps finding it strange that I was still alive after taking a blow from its forepaw, the bear did not charge again at once.

"Swift Battle, Swift Victory."

The clearer proof began now.

"Heaven-Sewn, Flawless."

I called swordsmanship forth from Heaven-Sewn, Flawless's category.

At once, my body holding the dagger corrected itself, naturally, into the most optimized stance.

"Equivalence."

Then I used Equivalence to bring my body and the bear's to the same physical level.

True, I had trained hard on a limit-broken body enjoying the effects of Leaps and Bounds — but its returns were still modest at this stage, so this was to my benefit.

And then, one step further...

"Vital Point Designation."

I forcibly designated the part of the bear I could most easily strike as its vital point.

Let's go.

Breaking the drawn-out standoff, the one to charge first was me.

Naturally, the bear moved to meet me — but it was slow.

Synchronized as it was with my current physical state, that much was only to be expected.

This was precisely the scenario in which I was guaranteed the advantage, so long as it was a one-on-one situation.

"Unidirectional."

Since my height was, relatively speaking, overwhelmingly smaller, I had designated the easiest target — the bear's lower body, its broad left thigh — as the vital point.

The bear reached out its paw to parry the dagger driving toward that spot, but Unidirectional's power forcibly batted it aside.

This strike of mine bowed to no law, no external interference of any kind.

Sshhk!

On my own strength alone, piercing the bear's dense muscle and the tough hide over it would have been difficult.

But it was synchronized with my current physical state, and so the dagger I thrust sank into the bear's thigh without resistance.

What's more, it was a designated vital point — the bear convulsed as though its heart had been stabbed and collapsed to the ground in torment.

Nothing in this world is more ferocious than a beast on the verge of death, yet perhaps because its body was synchronized with mine, it looked to me like nothing so much as pitiful begging.

And since all restrictions on words had been lifted for those fifteen seconds, I used Unidirectional one more time and pierced the bear between the eyes, granting it a clean death.

Twitch.

Twitch...!

After a faint convulsion, the bear met its end and moved no more.

This was my first time directly taking a life, yet thanks to Clear Mirror, Still Water, it didn't touch me at all.

This is well worth having mastered.

Even with a synchronized body, even with Physical Immunity, special abilities remained outside the scope of my protection.

If the fight just now had been against the Demon King descended upon the Demonic Tree in full bloom, I had planned to offset those out-of-scope abilities with words of overwhelming power — something like One Man, a Thousand Cavalry (一騎當千).

And even against attacks from a realm beyond my capacity to react, so long as Escape from Death held, for fifteen seconds I could evade not nine but far more than that.

Perfect.

With the verification complete, there could be no flaw in mastering them.

Reinforce, I intended to include among the words to be initialized later.

Setting Reinforce aside, then, counting only the words related to today's battle gave me seven.

With twenty-three slots remaining, I could call my situation comfortable.