Chapter 103. This Guy Is Weird?
Chapter 103. This Guy Is Weird?
Center of the arena.
Kim Do-hyun's fists rained down furiously.
He seemed infuriated by her words.
[LOL he's so tilted]
[Tilted af lmaoooo]
[Of course he's tilted when she's openly roasting him in front of the whole country]
Each punch packed considerable power.
Even a single clean hit would deal serious damage.
But Lee Chae-hyun twisted her body to evade his attacks.
"Wow, Hunter Lee Chae-hyun! Incredible! She's dodging the relentless barrage of punches without flinching, calm and collected!!!"
"Who on earth would think this hunter is an E-rank!?"
"Meanwhile, Hunter Kim Do-hyun seems rather agitated, doesn't he?"
The commentators continued their broadcast.
And simultaneously, laughter erupted from the audience.
"You fucking bitch...!"
"I was nervous because they said you were C-rank, but you're nothing special, are you?"
His face flushed with anger, and he poured strength into every muscle of his body once more.
With his reinforced physique, he charged forward with overwhelming weight.
— Bang!
"Die!!!"
His feet cracked the arena floor as he ran.
But Lee Chae-hyun nimbly sidestepped his telegraphed attacks and evaded him.
Then she drove her knee into his thigh.
— Smack!
"Ugh...!?"
Kim Do-hyun's lower body lost strength in an instant, and he toppled straight forward.
He skidded head-first across the floor and came to a brief halt.
"Maybe you've been skipping leg day a bit too often?"
Her taunt made the audience erupt.
"Wahahaha!!!"
"Hey!! If you're gonna fight like that, just hand over your C-rank hunter license!!!"
[She's literally just toying with him lololol]
[Just playing with a baby lol]
Kim Do-hyun's emotional volatility was his downfall.
He should have relied on his superior durability compared to Lee Chae-hyun, absorbed her attacks, and responded calmly.
'If he had done that, the match would have just ended with him pounding away at Lee Chae-hyun's defense.'
He got up, rubbing his face.
There were minor scrapes, but his pride had taken a far deeper scar.
"You... are you just going to keep running away? What are you trying to do?"
Veins bulging on his forehead, he charged at her relentlessly.
But she dodged, and sometimes she even closed in directly and covered his eyes with her palm.
"Just once... the moment I catch you even once, I'll slam you straight into the floor..."
---
The arena was still heated.
The roar of the crowd, the commentators' voices, the pounding footsteps of Kim Do-hyun.
— Bang! Bang! Bang!
His fists flew toward Lee Chae-hyun again and again.
Yet not a single one landed properly.
'If even one actually hits, it'll be really bad...'
While evading his heavy punches, she steadily accumulated attacks of her own.
Fingertips, toes, and thrusts carrying concise weight shifts.
What she always targeted was Kim Do-hyun's right arm, the joint below the elbow.
And the back of his knee, the popliteal fossa.
'In a straight-up power fight, I'll definitely lose...!'
— Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
"How can you not land a single hit?"
She kept provoking him to prevent him from regaining his composure.
Kim Do-hyun didn't register that the attacks kept striking the same spots.
All he could think was 'I keep getting hit.'
And the only emotion that thought summoned was rage.
"Stay still, you slippery little bitch!"
He clenched his fist.
He poured mana into it and swung with the single-minded determination to land a hit no matter what.
But then...
"Huh...?"
A strange sensation hit him in that instant.
The moment he pulled his elbow back and swung forward, his muscles went slack and something felt oddly wobbly.
He tilted his head, unable to comprehend it himself.
"What was that just now...?"
The fist he had clenched was trembling slightly without him realizing it.
It was sufficiently reinforced with mana, yet somewhere it felt loose.
"What's wrong? Already tired?"
Lee Chae-hyun didn't stop provoking him.
And as if to flaunt it, she retreated to the edge of the arena.
There, she smirked and waggled her finger.
"If you're tired, why not forfeit right now?"
At that taunt, Kim Do-hyun's face twisted.
And then he smiled a sinister grin.
He realized she had backed herself into a corner.
"Now you've got nowhere left to run!"
— Bang!
He kicked off and charged at full power.
But in that moment—
— Stumble...
His leg buckled.
As if his balance was off, his left leg briefly stepped on empty air.
"Huh? What's this...?"
Lee Chae-hyun's eyes flashed.
She took a quick deep breath.
"Hoo..."
She didn't miss the opening.
Putting her full weight behind it, she aimed at his swaying shin.
With all her strength, with all her body weight, she kicked.
— Crunch!
"Agh! Damn, he's tough...!"
It was her own shin that broke.
Pain surged in like a storm.
Through her dimming vision, she was certain.
'Still, it definitely landed.'
At the moment of impact, she had heard the sound of a crack coming from Kim Do-hyun's leg too.
Already wobbling, he lost his balance and his body tilted.
"Ugh...!"
Right at that moment.
Lee Chae-hyun held firm on her broken leg and raised her other leg.
And she kicked him while his back was exposed and defenseless.
— Smack!!
His massive body lifted slightly into the air, then, having lost balance, tumbled out of the arena.
At that sight, the referee blew his whistle and shouted.
"Out-of-Bounds!!!"
A moment of silence fell over the arena, and then an explosive roar erupted.
And having realized she had won, she clutched her shin and lay flat on the floor.
"Ugh, shit... hurts like hell..."
---
The cheers in the arena didn't stop.
Not just the audience, but even the commentators rose from their seats in excitement.
"Wow, this was truly a strategy that completely overturned all expectations!"
"She's an E-rank hunter? And she pulled off a win like that? Unbelievable!"
Another commentator nodded along with their back-and-forth.
"In a head-on fight, she never would have won. She clouded her opponent's judgment with provocations, steadily accumulated damage to the same areas, and then... she precisely targeted the moment a gap appeared and forced an Out-of-Bounds."
Yet another commentator let out an admiring sigh and clapped.
"The fact that she even sacrificed her own leg to pull that off is astonishing. That kind of resolve and judgment — an ordinary rookie could never imitate it. Most likely... all the other participants who saw this scene will be watching her closely now. I'm truly looking forward to what kind of strategy she'll show in the next match."
Just as the commentators were excited, the public hadn't predicted her victory either.
On certain illegal sites, Lee Chae-hyun's victory odds had gone as high as 64 to 1.
To that extent, no one had expected her to win.
---
Laila and I headed backstage as soon as the match ended.
We saw Lee Chae-hyun resting on a cot.
"Good work."
Laila, who had followed me in, asked the emergency personnel for their understanding.
Then she immediately placed her hand on Lee Chae-hyun's leg.
"Ms. Chae-hyun, well done."
Mana flowed in quietly, and a warm light slowly spread from the broken shin.
Lee Chae-hyun answered with a comfortable smile.
"It's all thanks to the training you and the Director gave me, Big Sis."
"Our manager was seriously amazing."
Saying that, I showed her the phone screen.
Her face was displayed on it, and viewers' chats floated up.
[That was insane]
[Her judgment was absolutely nuts lol]
[Chae-hyun I trusted you and went full all-in, thank you T_T]
[Let's seriously go all the way to the finals!!! Please!!!]
There were some weird chats mixed in, but...
It was a good day, so I let them slide.
---
Time passed, and the main tournament proceeded carefully match by match.
Lee Chae-hyun barely scraped through each match with desperate struggle.
After every match, she was always torn up like a rag and carried away on a stretcher.
But whether it was heaven-sent luck or coincidence.
Every single time, her opponent was a D-rank hunter.
In the stands, sneers about her luck mixed with genuine cheers.
And then...
At last, the big match everyone had been waiting for was set.
"It's finally here!!!"
The commentator's voice rose to its peak.
"The son of the Black Faction Guild Master, Jang Yun-jae! And the rising rookie the Baekho Guild has poured their hearts into raising, Kang Ha-jin!"
"Exactly! It's no exaggeration to say this is practically the finals of this tournament!!!"
The atmosphere in the audience was boiling over.
This match, where two prodigies clashed, had already generated enough buzz to stir countless communities.
"Now! It finally begins!!!"
---
...However, the anticipation didn't last long.
The arena had grown cold and hushed.
All the spectators were speechless.
Jaws dropped, they were quite literally frozen in place.
"Wh-what on earth..."
Even the commentators couldn't bring themselves to say anything.
They had anticipated an incredible battle, but the match ended far too anticlimactically.
It ended in mere seconds, with Jang Yun-jae victorious.
Kang Ha-jin's attacks never properly connected even once.
Jang twisted his body to deflect them, closed in half a beat faster, and mercilessly drove his fists home.
"Cough..."
Kang Ha-jin was thrown around by the absurd weight of the blows, bouncing and tumbling.
He convulsed in an unconscious state.
"...He's won. Jang Yun-jae is the winner...!"
The commentator was silent for a long while before finally managing a single sentence.
"I-if that's the case... the opponent who will face Hunter Lee Chae-hyun is..."
A horrifying image surfaced in everyone's mind.
Lee Chae-hyun being pummeled by Jang Yun-jae and rolling across the arena.
---
And our expressions, as we watched that scene unfold on the live broadcast, had also gone cold and stiff.
"That bastard was hiding this level of skill...?"
At my muttering, Lee Chae-hyun shook her head vigorously.
"But he looked so genuinely agitated back then...!"
Jang Yun-jae's expression as he chased Lee Chae-hyun down while she taunted him—
That had definitely been genuine.
'Was even that an act...?'
I felt like I'd only know if I saw the bastard in person, not through a broadcast.
"Hey, isn't this kid a bit weird?"
Then a strange thought suddenly crossed my mind.
"Don't tell me... drugs?"