Gray Wolf Leather Top
Team Leader Kim Jinhyeop had replayed the footage from that day more times than he could count—the recording from the training room, capturing the appearance of Korea's first, the world's first, and the world's only SSS+ Rank Hunter, and the first hunter whose shield that man had shattered.
The judgment was Kim Jinhyeop's to make, of course, but a report still had to go upstairs, so the spar had been filmed. That recording held, intact, the helplessness of a moment he himself hadn't even registered at the time.
Even the camera hadn't caught it cleanly.
"This... is that teleportation?"
The first time Kim Jinhyeop watched it, and again when the staff watched with him, everyone reacted the same way.
At normal speed, the fight simply began. Kim Suhyun vanished, then reappeared in front of Kim Jinhyeop's shield already mid-swing.
Was it even possible to move like that—no tell, no windup, nothing? The sword itself couldn't be tracked at normal speed either. They had to slow the footage to a tenth.
A world dragged into slow motion. Inside that slowed world, Kim Suhyun swung five times in a single second, and sheathed the blade again before the second was done.
"..."
"..."
Is that possible?
The thought struck everyone watching the footage. Was it possible? It was. It had to be—they were looking at the proof with their own eyes. And could a thing like that actually be realized? The answer, again, was yes.
A skill was a supernatural force. Just as science still couldn't explain why dungeons appeared at all, the prevailing view was that so long as mana existed, any phenomenon written into a skill's effect could be made real.
But understanding that something was possible and accepting it in your chest were two different things.
What if someone stood in front of you and swung five attacks you couldn't even see? An ally like that would be the most reassuring thing in the world. An enemy? You could die in that instant without ever knowing you were dead. That was why Kim Jinhyeop's face, standing there in the footage, had gone rigid from the watching alone.
At the time he'd been too dazed to grasp what had happened. He'd written it off—he'd dropped his guard and gotten dropped in a single hit, that was all. Going through the footage pixel by pixel, the truth was far more shocking. They even caught it: after the first swing, for the barest splinter of a moment, Kim Suhyun hesitated.
"Why's he doing that?"
"We don't know."
The analysts ran it dozens of times. Hundreds. It wasn't a long clip. One second. Looping that single instant over and over didn't take long at all. They analyzed and analyzed, and in the end they offered a guess through inference. It wasn't the truth, of course. Only the man himself knew what he'd been thinking when he swung.
"I think... he was feeling us out?"
"Feeling us out?"
"If you look, the first strike is a little dull. Slower. That means he was holding his strength back. The moment the blade touches the shield he hesitates, and from there he swings four more times without restraint and pulls back. And this part—I don't know what it is—but at the same time, five additional hits land on the shield."
"...What is that?"
"Hard to say. It's as if something invisible is helping the attack. There's a mark left on the shield, but it's so faint you wouldn't notice unless you looked closely. We barely found it."
"Hah..."
So, to sum it up: he'd thrown the first strike as if he were going easy, then followed with four more—and the result was ten hits. In a single second. All in the exact same spot.
The team watched the footage together and looked at their leader.
The team leader had been a shield. A wall. Send him into a B-rank dungeon or an A-rank dungeon and he might be pushed back, but Kim Jinhyeop's shield had never once been pierced or broken. And it wasn't an A-rank monster that broke it, or even an S-rank monster. One hunter. A single attack.
"What's his rank?"
"..."
Obviously, aside from the clerk who issued hunter licenses and Team Leader Kim Jinhyeop himself, the other hunters had no way of knowing Kim Suhyun's rank. If he joined the team they'd share ranks as teammates, but for now he couldn't go telling his people some ordinary hunter's grade.
"Don't tell me he's S-rank or higher?"
"If he joins the team, I'll tell you."
"You already scouted him?"
"Of course I did."
Even so, Kim Jinhyeop felt reassured. To his eye, Kim Suhyun was a naive sort of person. A perfectly typical young man in his mid-twenties—wary enough, with standards of his own, sharp around the edges, but someone who knew how to cooperate and how to weigh profit against loss.
Most people with an SSS+ Rank ability would wall themselves off, treat the entire world as an enemy, and hide. And why shouldn't they? The world was full of people who envied anyone who had something. But he'd shown his status window without a fuss and even asked about the contract terms first. A man who knew how to meet reality halfway.
In that sense, he was certain the Hunter Association's offer would look extremely attractive to Kim Suhyun. The kid would probably brood on it a while, make the rounds of a few top-ranked guilds, and come back.
"Just a little longer."
New blood, coming into the Hunter Association. A hunter stronger than himself joining didn't make him tense, or wary. The Association's teams weren't rivals competing against one another. They were colleagues who pushed through hard, ugly work side by side. When a dungeon break hit—especially a difficult A-rank or S-rank—the only things you could trust were yourself and the people beside you. If one of those people was an SSS+ Rank Hunter, how solid would that feel all on its own?
The waiting held through the next day. Through the day after that. When the third day stayed silent, the calm curdled into anxiety.
"..."
Kim Jinhyeop was a very gentle man. He was also a persistent one. It wasn't so much that he'd decided he absolutely had to land this. He was curious.
Why?
Just in case, he went to the staffer in charge of contracts.
"The contract terms are classified. I can't tell you..."
"Just tell me whether they were better than mine."
"Of course they were better than yours, Team Leader. We made the offer according to rank."
"Exemption from military service. Exemption from reserve duty. You mentioned all of that, right?"
"Those are benefits already provided to every hunter of S-rank and above..."
"What about a safe house? A housekeeper, things like that."
"We mentioned all of it."
"Then why hasn't he called?"
"...I don't think he was very interested."
"Don't tell me another country already found out and made contact?"
Around then, one of his team members brought him word of an auction.
"Oh, right, Team Leader. An A-rank leather armor's going up for auction tomorrow. Did you hear?"
"Ah! That was tomorrow?"
"Yes. Are you going?"
"Of course I'm going. A-rank leather armor? I have to buy it."
"They say the bidding's going to be brutal."
"It will be... Do you know where the auction is?"
"Gwangjin Distribution. Want me to send you the address?"
"Yeah. Thanks. Wait. Gwangjin Distribution? I've heard that somewhere."
And then it came to him. He'd seen the name while looking through Kim Suhyun's hunter registration file. The money that had gone to Kim Suhyun had come out of Gwangjin Distribution and passed through it on the way.
This time too? Something smelled off.
Kim Jinhyeop wasn't the sort of man whose work was digging into things like that. Still, he had a feeling that if he went to Gwangjin Distribution, he might see Kim Suhyun.
I have to go.
The A-rank armor was armor, but rarer than any armor was an SSS+ Rank Hunter, and he knew perfectly well that simply waiting around on the assumption the man would show up was an extremely stupid thing to do.
They said a top made from gray wolf leather was finished, so I went with Dad to where the blacksmith worked.
It was a fairly large workshop. Inside, several blacksmiths were cutting leather and making armor, and farther in was a separate workroom belonging to a blacksmith who was an acquaintance of Dad's friend. Amid the hides and materials strewn everywhere, a single top sat on the workbench.
"Oh. Welcome."
I'd expected a kindly middle-aged man. She was, unexpectedly, a woman of considerable years. Mid-fifties, if I had to guess. She came over beaming and offered her hand.
"Thank you. Thanks to you, I got to work with some excellent leather."
"Ah. Yes. I'm the one who should be grateful. You did it for free."
Getting the leather was work enough, but finding a blacksmith who could properly dress it was work too. Depending on the blacksmith, and on what rank of skill they used to make the armor, a hide's effects could double—or fail to draw out even a hundred percent of what they should. That was why a blacksmith's fee ran high. It was the high-rank ones whose fees were truly expensive, but the woman in front of me was said to be one of fewer than five artisans in the country whose Armor Crafting skill sat at A+ rank.
Was everyone Dad knew like this? Still, Dad's friend's blacksmithing skill was high, so it wasn't strange that people at that level knew one another.
"Just making this piece of armor raised me two levels. If anything, I ought to be paying you. The other hides are in such good condition I think I'll gain a lot of experience from them too. Ah! That's not the important part. Hoho. Look at the armor first. It came out well."
The leather top was an extremely refined piece of design. At a glance it looked like a thin long-sleeve—not thick at all, more the feel of a light cotton tee. It didn't look as if it would have any of leather's usual rasp against the skin, and if it hadn't been made from gray wolf leather, I might have glanced past it thinking, isn't this just a cotton shirt?
"A bit plain, isn't it? That's the trend these days. People want something simple, something that feels like everyday clothes."
Simple. The item options were anything but.