Bared Claws
A few days before the opening ceremony.
Waaaaaah!
A roar erupted from the open-air theater beyond the windows and carried all the way to the faculty wing.
It was the sound of the martial arts tournament preliminaries in full swing.
But Kang Hyun paid it no mind whatsoever. His brush kept dancing across the paper.
"Um, Professor?"
Unable to bear the silence any longer, Lee Se-ah glanced toward the window and spoke up.
"Are you really not going to go watch? The prelims should be at their peak right about now."
"They're going to advance anyway. Am I supposed to go clap for them?"
Kang Hyun didn't even lift his eyes as he answered.
"Once you're on that stage, you're alone. Me watching doesn't make a wooden sword any sharper."
"That's not what I mean."
Lee Se-ah pouted, clearly frustrated.
"Just making it through the prelims means finishing in the top sixteen. I heard that's insanely hard… If even one of them slips up, you're getting dismissed on the spot."
The midterm martial arts tournament's main bracket began at the round of sixteen.
Out of hundreds of cadets, only sixteen who clawed their way through the brutal preliminaries would set foot on the main stage—and the moment they advanced, a top-sixteen ranking for the semester was locked in.
The main bracket was a straight tournament: round of sixteen, quarterfinals, semifinals.
The unusual part was that there were no ranking matches for third or fourth place. Instead, the full professors evaluated the day's sparring content themselves and assigned the finer placements.
In other words, if the Five didn't reach the semifinals, they would drop to eighth. Fail to clear the quarterfinals, and they would be shoved down to sixteenth.
The full professors who already treated them like thorns in their sides were never going to hand out generous scores.
"You know this. If they want to hit the top five without giving anyone ammunition, all five of them have to make the semis."
"Then I'll just go for the quarterfinals, won't I?"
"Excuse me?"
"Stop talking nonsense and grind the ink properly."
Lee Se-ah had no idea.
She didn't know what kind of training those kids had endured over the past two months.
Every dawn they had climbed and descended sheer cliff faces. Through agony they had listened to the formulas and forced open their meridians.
They had swallowed two-hundred-million-won Clear Treasure Pills and thrown themselves into personal training until they coughed blood.
Those kids, dropping out in the prelims?
It was as absurd as a grown adult getting beaten up by a toddler and coming home in tears.
If anything, their preliminary rankings matter more than simply making it through.
The bracket would be drawn based on those results.
Squeak through with mediocre scores and they might end up facing each other in the round of sixteen.
That would be unfortunate—but Kang Hyun considered even that a matter of skill.
I set the standard.
Getting past that standard by any means necessary was the cadets' job.
"Ah, right. What should I translate next?"
"Next?"
"After Gale Step."
"Ah!"
Lee Se-ah, who had already done her research, answered at once.
"I think Cheongsimgong—the Clear Heart Method—would be good."
"Clear Heart Method?"
"If Gale Step is the people's footwork, Clear Heart Method is the people's mind method. The market demand might even be bigger than Gale Step. Even non-hunters learn it."
"Good. We'll go with that."
The corner of Kang Hyun's mouth curled up.
"Work hard. Your five percent is stacking up in real time."
"Ahhh…"
Lee Se-ah cupped both cheeks with her hands.
"Is this what it feels like watching a pension accumulate?"
"If you want that pension to turn you into a chaebol, you'd better move those hands faster."
"Yes, sir! I am a human blender!"
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch!
Lee Se-ah began grinding ink with such ferocity it looked like the inkstone might wear away to nothing.
At the front of the sparring grounds, in the VIP seats with the best view, the full professors sat in a row.
The preliminaries were an endless stretch of tedious matches, countless bouts fought solely to weed out the sixteen who would advance.
"Haaah, honestly."
One of the professors clicked his tongue.
"Professor Kang Hyun never did show his face, did he."
"Isn't that only natural?"
Professor Park Kwang-woo chimed in with a sneer in his voice.
"He must feel guilty himself. His cadets are going to wash out of the prelims one after another—why sit here and invite humiliation? Better to hide."
"Haha, well, he'll be packing his bags after today anyway. Probably tidying up his office in advance."
Subtle mockery rippled among the professors.
Seated in the center, Dean Seo Il-hyun simply kept his eyes fixed on the sparring grounds in silence.
Truthfully, even the dean was uneasy inside.
He knew Kang Hyun's martial prowess was absolute—but elevating cadets to the absolute top of their year in a mere two months was an entirely different matter.
Professor Kang… are you truly that confident?
That was when it happened.
KWAANG!
Amid the sea of matches, a thunderous impact rang out and someone went flying off the platform.
"Gyaaaaah!"
The cadet who had been launched into the air tumbled hard across the floor, then clutched his wrist and screamed.
The professors' gazes snapped toward the sound.
"Winner! Twentieth batch, Seo Hae-in! Three points!"
At the same time, a teaching assistant sprinted toward the fallen cadet and shouted urgently.
"Injury! Fracture! Medical team! Professor Hwang Ye-rim!"
The waiting medical team and Professor Hwang Ye-rim bolted out in alarm.
The professors' expressions turned strange.
That one…
Cadet Seo Hae-in?
Wasn't she the perpetual last place in practicals?
Up on the platform, Seo Hae-in stood holding her wooden sword with an indifferent look on her face.
The flustered professors tried hard to look away from the sight.
"…Her opponent must have let his guard down."
Park Kwang-woo cleared his throat and muttered.
"We're only at the very start of the prelims. No need to be shocked over one lucky win…"
But Park Kwang-woo never finished the sentence.
KWAJIK!
"Winner! Twenty-first batch, Han Tae-ho! Three points!"
From another platform, another dull, crushing impact exploded.
Before anyone could even turn their head toward the sound—
KANG!
"Keuhak!"
"Winner! Twentieth batch, Yoon Hyun-jong! Three points!"
This time it was the sound of a wooden sword snapping clean in two.
With a single thrust, Yoon Hyun-jong had punched straight through his opponent's flashy flurry of strikes.
For reference, ending a match within one minute of the start counted as a crushing victory and awarded three points.
Stacking those points to climb into the top sixteen was the condition for advancing to the main bracket.
Meanwhile—
"Draw! Eighteenth batch, Kwak Do-jin! Nineteenth batch, Cha Yu-sik! One point each!"
As a repeater, Kwak Do-jin had been matched against the nineteenth batch. The moment he faced Cha Yu-sik on the platform, the two of them lightly exchanged forms for five minutes each and came down with a draw.
A shrewd, strategic decision to avoid wasting stamina on something pointless.
"…"
Conversation among the professors died completely.
On the electronic board in front of them, the live rankings were updating—and every one of Kang Hyun's Five was sitting comfortably inside the safe zone.
"Heh… heheh…"
Park Kwang-woo let out a hollow laugh of pure disbelief.
Everything else aside… Seo Hae-in…!
Wasn't she the cadet they had clicked their tongues at and treated like garbage?!
And those kids right now…
Every single one of them was using only the Samjae Geombeop—the Three Talents Sword Style.
Strike down. Guard. Thrust.
Techniques even neighborhood kids could perform—and with them, they were blasting the Academy's proudest cadets clean off the stage.
The full professors felt cold sweat run down their spines.
From the preliminaries onward, something had gone very, very wrong.
Public opinion that had been half-doubtful was now drowning in shock.
And the next morning.
The main gate of the National Hunter Academy was already a madhouse of people who had flocked there since early dawn.
The Academy's midterm practical evaluations took a different form every semester.
The first-semester midterm was one-on-one combat—the so-called martial arts tournament.
The second-semester midterm was a live dungeon raid.
Naturally, dungeon raiding carried more weight as a hunter's true calling, but when it came to evaluating an individual hunter's raw capability, nothing matched the martial arts tournament as a stage.
That was why the area around the arena was packed tight with parents and reporters hungry for coverage.
Most eye-catching of all were the scouts from the major guilds, dressed to the nines.
"This year's bracket looks pretty entertaining."
"Kwak Do-jin? Isn't that the cadet who got disciplined and held back last year?"
"They call him the Mad Dog, right?"
"Ohh, Cheonrang's Cha Yu-sik made it too, of course."
To the scouts, today's tournament was a massive showcase.
Depending on the fleeting displays of skill the cadets showed on that stage, the terms that would one day be offered to them would change by orders of magnitude.
While the opening was still being prepared, Kang Hyun settled into a seat right in the middle of the faculty section with Lee Se-ah, a bottle of whiskey in hand.
It was a spot with a decent view of the stage.
The moment he dropped into the chair, the professors nearby suddenly grew very busy.
"Ahem."
"Can't see well from here. Let's move over that way."
The professors, well aware that Kang Hyun was a marked man, quietly shifted their seats.
In an instant, several empty chairs opened up all around him.
"Wow. What is wrong with them?"
Lee Se-ah pouted, looking thoroughly disgusted.
"These are supposed to be professors at the National Academy. Look at them. Even elementary school kids don't pull this kind of crap."
"Why? I actually like it."
Kang Hyun propped his legs up on the seat in front of him and answered lazily.
"Plenty of room to stretch out, no old-man stink, and I don't have to look at their faces up close. The whiskey just tastes better."
Gulp.
Kang Hyun was swallowing a satisfied mouthful of whiskey when—
"Mind if I sit here a moment?"
Someone approached the empty seat right beside him.
Kang Hyun lifted his head. At the end of his gaze stood a woman in a neat formal suit.
Professor Hwang Ye-rim?
What's she doing here?
"As you can see, they're all empty."
Kang Hyun jerked his chin toward the deserted surroundings, and Hwang Ye-rim sat down in the seat directly beside him with a calm expression.
"If it's not too much trouble, may I ask you one thing?"
"Go ahead."
"It's about Cadet Baek Yu-yeon from my department."
A complicated emotion flickered through Hwang Ye-rim's eyes.
"I've heard she's been going to your classes lately. Is that true? She hasn't been attending my major lectures—or any of her other required courses, for that matter."
"Yes. It's true."
A bitter look crossed Hwang Ye-rim's face at the answer.
She had already known. So why?
Hearing it directly made her heart sink even further.
Baek Yu-yeon was the greatest talent she had encountered since taking up teaching.
Hwang Ye-rim had wanted to raise her as her personal disciple and, someday, make her a towering figure in Korea's martial medicine field.
Haa.
But what could she do?
Whatever the girl had seen, she had chosen to go to this man.
"I heard from the Dean."
"Heard what?"
"That you were the one who saved Cadet Yoon Hyun-jong."
"He talks too much."
"So it was true."
That, at least, brought a small measure of relief.
It meant he had basic medical knowledge, if nothing else.
A brief silence settled, and then Hwang Ye-rim spoke bluntly.
"Those professors over there want you dismissed."
"Things in this world rarely go the way people want."
"…What I'm trying to say is that not every professor thinks that way. If half of them went to the Dean's office, that also means half of them didn't. Someone might be watching. Someone else might even be rooting for you."
"And you?"
At Kang Hyun's question about what she thought, Hwang Ye-rim paused for a moment before answering.
"I'm just watching. But for some reason… I think you're going to win."
The corner of Kang Hyun's mouth, still holding whiskey, twitched slightly.
"Why do you think that?"
"Who knows."
Hwang Ye-rim quietly rose from her seat.
In truth, she was supposed to be on standby with the medical team, not in the faculty seats.
"Because a sharp girl like Yu-yeon would never choose someone who just spouts empty words."