The Ant and the Grasshopper (2)
A measured distance.
Watching the ants charge in, Lee Jun took half a step back.
A hiss—the Giant Ant's foreleg sliced through the air inches from his face.
"After the forelegs come the mandibles."
The creatures had exactly two attack patterns: swiping and biting. The bite was overwhelmingly the more dangerous of the two, but the sweeping forelegs weren't something to be dismissed, either. A Giant Ant's mandibles could tear through steel plate like paper, and its forelegs struck with the force of a truck ramming into something at full speed. Blocking them at any ordinary level of strength was simply impossible.
Which was why fighting them with evasion-first footwork, the way Lee Jun did, was the textbook approach.
"Dodge the bite to the side, and it immediately swings its mandibles in a horizontal arc—so here, stepping back is the right call."
Crang—the moment the words left his mouth, the Giant Ant's mandibles snapped shut on empty air. The sound was like two pieces of metal colliding. If you got caught in those jaws, what would happen next was easy to imagine.
"If the bite fails, it swings its forelegs again—once to each side. And after that, the charge."
Lee Jun slipped past the Giant Ant's attacks as though he could see every one of them coming, and he still had leisure enough to walk Seo Yoon through it as he went.
"Timing is everything on the counterattack. Always be careful with it."
And just as he'd said, when the Giant Ant's charge grazed past him—Lee Jun's eyes flashed, and he raised his right hand, dagger reversed in his grip.
"There's one weakness that these insect-type monsters all share."
And that was—
"The joints."
Thuck.
Lee Jun drove his reversed dagger straight into the joint of a foreleg—the part that, on a human, would be called the knee. An ant had two joints per leg, and it was the flexing of those joints that gave the leg its function. Which meant, in a word, that severing one collapsed the creature's balance on the spot.
"Kieeeek!"
One of them crumpled, unable to overcome its own momentum, and skidded backward across the ground. Lee Jun casually pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the back of the head of the one sweeping past him.
Bang—bang—
Lacking penetration power, the rounds needed two apiece. An automatic pistol had a smaller caliber than a revolver; nothing to be done about that.
"Whew."
He steadied his breathing. Not the slightest movement stirred from the Giant Ant sprawled on the ground. It was over, just like that. Less than a minute had passed since the engagement began, and one of the twenty was already dead.
But this was only the beginning. Nineteen remained.
Lee Jun immediately adjusted his grip on the dagger in his right hand and spoke.
"Twenty inches."
{Yes, yes~}
Along with Silhouette's drawling voice, the blade stretched to precisely that length—and not as a straight edge, but with a slight curve. It was a sword that reproduced, exactly as he'd just pictured it in his head, the shape of a common cutlass or sabre, only shorter. He'd merely specified the length of the blade, and it had manifested down to the very form.
Having their thoughts linked really was undeniably useful.
{Heh heh heh.}
He didn't care for the preening, but with usefulness like this… he supposed he could forgive the reaction.
Shk—
He cut down a charging ant.
"Whew."
And then the next. And the next. One at a time, precisely. Lee Jun carved off only one foreleg and one mid-leg from each ant that swept past him.
"Kieeeek!"
"Kyaak! Kiyaaak!"
With their balance destroyed, the ants couldn't arrest their charging momentum and slammed face-first into the dirt. With two legs lopped off one side, they toppled in that direction. Even downed, they flailed their remaining legs, but they couldn't get up. Of course they couldn't—he'd only cut the one side.
"……"
There was something about the sight of them rolling on the ground, kicking up clouds of dust, that was pitiable past the point of being funny. But Lee Jun's compassion wasn't overflowing enough to be handed out to monsters. Ignoring the ones rendered combat-incapable, he kept pressing forward, cutting down the oncoming ants by the same method again and again. One, three, seven, ten. Gradually the ants pinned to the ground multiplied, and a sticky film of Giant Ant blood built up on his blade—a translucent blood with a faint bluish sheen, though its viscous consistency made it look far less refreshing than its color suggested.
{Uuu… it's all sticky…}
Silhouette seemed grossed out by the blood clinging to the blade. Though I'd love to know how far you can actually feel that sensation. You're the one doing the cutting and stabbing with it—is that not gross?
In any case, at some point the entire vanguard of Giant Ants that had first swarmed him lay flat on the ground. Nineteen crippled ants, and one corpse. Lee Jun dismissed the sword he'd been holding, readjusted his grip on the pistol in his right hand, and muttered.
"They respawn at midnight. Lucky them—we don't get that privilege."
Bang—bang—
Lee Jun punched bullet holes into the heads of the ants sprawled across the ground. Two rounds each. With every shot that rang out, another Giant Ant stopped its feeble thrashing. Twenty in total. Finishing them all off took roughly fifteen minutes.
Seo Yoon watched the whole thing in silence, as though determined to etch every one of Lee Jun's movements into her memory.
"……"
And yet she couldn't be certain. She had committed the motions to mind—but could she actually replicate them? What he'd shown her was neither overwhelming raw power nor flashy technique. And still, she couldn't even fathom following it. The restrained movements born of an act perfected through countless repetitions—she might imitate them after seeing them once, but she doubted she could ever reproduce them flawlessly.
"Seo Yoon?"
"Yes."
Seo Yoon tightened her grip on the dagger in her hand. Seeing this, Lee Jun smiled to himself. It seemed her fighting spirit had been stoked.
"Did you catch the core of what I've been showing you so far?"
"Cutting the joints between the vulnerable legs first to rob them of their mobility—that seemed to be the most important thing."
"And why did you think that was important?"
"It looks simple, but I judged it a countermeasure that would be impossible without knowing exactly how to fight that particular monster."
Correct. Everything Seo Yoon had said was true. And yet she'd missed the most important part.
"What matters more is that, with the exception of my very first Giant Ant, I only cut the legs and dealt with them later."
"Is that… the most important point?"
"Because the heart of it is constantly shifting your priorities."
What had Lee Jun prioritized above all else against the Giant Ants? Severing their leg joints to strip away their mobility. Even within that, he had found the most efficient approach—no more, no less than exactly two legs on one side.
"Now, which legs to cut, and how much—that's know-how accumulated through repeated live combat. But everything else, you're more than capable of doing, Seo Yoon. Starting from the very next fight."
The legs Lee Jun had cut were the foreleg and mid-leg on one side. Sever just those two, and a Giant Ant lost its mobility entirely—its whole body tipped over and slammed into the ground. That was because a Giant Ant's forelegs did most of the work, leaving the hind legs comparatively weak.
"That's why I cut only the foreleg and mid-leg to immobilize them, then pushed them right off my priority list."
A monster with no ranged attacks that couldn't even move was no threat at all. So he'd raised the priority of the other ants still charging at him above the ones with severed legs.
"This is the foundation of combat. A hunter who's overwhelmingly strong can sweep monsters away without a second thought, on pure instinct. But hunters in our ambiguous middle tier have to keep this in mind at all times."
Hunters like Yelena or Yoon Seol had no need whatsoever to think about priorities like these. They could simply unleash a large-scale spell and grind everything to paste in one go. But most hunters weren't like that. Naturally so.
"The first priority for a hunter, in the end, is knowing your own level. Too many people die because they fail at exactly that."
Courage was a fine thing. But keeping it from curdling into recklessness mattered far more. This was something Lee Jun had felt bone-deep, through his own bitter experience—after all, his death in his previous life could be called a consequence of exactly that.
"Now then, let's go back to the situation from a moment ago."
Lee Jun gestured at the fallen Giant Ants once more.
"I was able to take these ones down cleanly because I've piled up a great deal of experience. I knew where to strike first, and what they'd do next."
But a situation like that one was rare in actual combat. Even knowing the proper countermeasures, a battle never unfolds exactly the way you picture it. Which was why a hunter also had to know how to adapt their responses to match the situation as it changed.
"Beyond what I just showed you, there are plenty of other ways to vary things here. And once you do that, you have to watch each situation as it comes and push some priorities down, pull others up."
What if no opening appeared to cut the forelegs? Or what if he couldn't manage to take off two legs on the same side?
"Sever a Giant Ant's two forelegs, and its entire arsenal is neutralized. The forelegs are gone, and its head is so heavy it face-plants into the ground."
But it could still move. And when that happened, the creature would throw itself into a desperate full-body tackle. To counter it, he could either sever the legs the instant it hit the ground, or bait out the body slam and turn it to his own purposes.
"And if you leave one side with only the foreleg, its mobility drops—not as much as leaving only the hind legs, but it drops."
Because with both forelegs intact, it would crawl forward even if it had to drag itself. And like that, it would cling on however it could and shove its mandibles at you. In that state—with both movement and attacks still live—you had to confirm the kill before moving on to the next one.
"So what if you went for the head from the start? Or the torso? Or, failing that, I suppose you could blast off all the legs in one blow."
But that one… he didn't need to explain. It went without saying that neither Lee Jun nor Seo Yoon had methods like that at their disposal.
"So the most important thing is this."
Grasping, precisely, the level of both your opponent and yourself. Through that—what you could and couldn't do, what the enemy could and couldn't do, and how far it could respond to your actions. Calculating all of it and setting your priorities accordingly—that, in the end, was what truly mattered in combat.
"You have to read the situation and make the judgment yourself. Manuals that make combat easier obviously exist, but if you bury yourself in them, you end up locking yourself inside a sealed room of your own making."
What Lee Jun had told her could, frankly, be called elementary. And who couldn't say such things? This was advice any stranger on the street could give. But precisely because it was so important, so obvious, so universally known—there were far, far too many who never truly learned it.
Every month, hunters died inside Gates, steady as clockwork. And even among those who never set foot in a Gate, a considerable number died while hunting in dungeons. Was it lack of skill that killed them? Certainly, that happened too. But the vast majority of those deaths came from letting their guard down.
"Carelessness really isn't anything special, you know. It's knowing the danger—and getting hit anyway. That's what I consider carelessness."
"I don't want you dying or getting hurt that way, Seo Yoon."
"……"
Lee Jun's career spanned three years. Added to the years before his regression, thirteen. Toss in the time spent inside the Reproduction Gate, and roughly twenty-five years had passed in all. Over that long span, he had witnessed far too many deaths.
Which was why he could offer this advice.
"The words you've given me, sir… I understand them clearly now."
Perhaps his heart had gotten through. Seo Yoon's expression was as composed as ever, but something more tangled seemed to have settled beneath it. At that reaction, Lee Jun nodded with evident satisfaction.
And then he said:
"Well then—time for the real thing."
"……?"
He smiled and pointed out across the field. North, east. Southeast, south, southwest, west, and back around to north. With his pointing finger still extended, he swept it slowly across every direction.
"Roughly… I can count a hundred of them with my eyes alone. There might be more."
A tide of ants pouring in from all sides. Their numbers were, just as Lee Jun had said, easily a hundred or more.
"Let's take it slow, one at a time."
That was a word to himself as much as anyone. The road ahead was long. But there were plenty of steps left to walk. Wasn't that true of everything under heaven? Go slowly enough, and someday you would reach what you wished for.
And so that it would be so—Lee Jun would make certain of it.