I'll Hold Them Off
Yoon Seoha was surrounded by goblins. That much was certain. And yet the fight ended with almost disappointing ease.
"Pivot on your right foot."
"Ignore the one in front of you."
"Duck your head, drop your stance, and go in. Then pierce the heart."
She did nothing but follow Yu Gangmin's words, and still the goblins were falling under her blade as if they had never been a threat at all. Yoon Seoha knew perfectly well that, on her own, she could barely handle two of them. Even as she cut down the fifth, she could not quite believe what was happening.
"Your body's gone stiff! You concentrating or not?"
"Hah—!"
The fight was not over. The goblins were still pouring toward her, murder rolling off them in waves.
"Fall back, then—"
Yu Gangmin stopped mid-command. For some reason, he had the distinct sense that Yoon Seoha would move correctly even without hearing the rest.
He was right. She could already feel, faintly, how she needed to move to slip the next attack.
Well now. She's already absorbed a piece of my teaching?
A blade hissed past her. Yoon Seoha evaded the goblin's strike by a hair, drove straight in, and split its chest open. She dragged in a ragged breath. Three kills, and she had not used a skill for any of them. She stared down at her sword as if it belonged to someone else.
"Hah— hah—"
Breath tearing in her throat, she looked for the next opponent by instinct.
The goblins flinched. Feeling that gaze on them, they lost the ferocity they had started with and edged backward.
A chime rang out. A translucent window bloomed in front of Yoon Seoha's eyes.
Applies the Daunted status to enemies with lower willpower than your own.
"I… acquired a skill?"
Yoon Seoha's eyes went wide. Gaining a new skill after Awakening was anything but common. She had drifted through countless Awakened Academies and come away with nothing but Power Strike. And now, just by following Yu Gangmin's instructions and putting down a handful of goblins, a new skill had appeared. She could hardly be blamed for staring.
That it was a passive skill — the kind everyone said was even harder to obtain — only deepened her shock. The effect was immediate. The goblins let out frightened, whimpering cries and shuffled another step back.
"What are you standing around for?"
"I— I just got a new skill—"
"A skill? Marvel later. This isn't over yet."
"R-right!"
The words had barely left him when a heavy tread rolled out from inside the Gate.
Thud.
Thud.
The goblins, still crushed under Intimidation, parted to either side. A massive shape shouldered through the Gate's black film and stepped into the store.
A body twice the size of an ordinary goblin. Thick hide armor. In one hand, an axe as thick as a man's torso.
A Hobgoblin.
The moment it appeared, the cowed goblins erupted in cheering howls. The color drained from Yoon Seoha's face.
"D-rank…"
A Hobgoblin was not a monster an F-rank Hunter could fight. It was classified as D-rank, but it sat uncomfortably close to C-rank — a boss, by designation, because it commanded the rest of the goblins.
The thing looked down at her.
Target's willpower is too high.
Intimidation has been resisted.
The Hobgoblin's mouth stretched into a long, ugly grin, as if laughing at the F-rank Hunter who had dared to threaten it.
Cornered, Yoon Seoha bit down hard on her lip. Yu Gangmin was a complete unknown. She still had no idea why following his words had made goblins so easy to kill. One thing, however, was perfectly clear: he was not a Hunter.
Which meant—
I have to protect him.
Her hands shook as she raised her sword. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her to run. She did not step back.
Yu Gangmin's eyes changed.
It was not long after he had fallen into Murim. He had not even learned martial arts yet, and bandits were running him down, when a Buddhist nun pulled him out of their path. She had never seen his face before in her life. She put him behind her anyway, raised her sword, and stood against them.
He had not understood it then — why anyone would stake their life for a stranger. It was the first mercy he ever met in Murim.
Yoon Seoha's back overlapped with that nun's.
The foolishness of being unable to look away. The heart that would protect someone weaker than herself.
The nuns of the Emei Sect were the same.
Gangmin clicked his tongue under his breath.
The Hobgoblin roared and charged. Yoon Seoha brought her sword up. The axe came down at her skull. She heaved her blade to meet it—
A shriek of metal. The longsword snapped. Her body was hurled backward and smashed into a display rack. Snack bags and bottles cascaded down over her.
"Kh—"
The arm that had taken the impact would not answer her. Blood ran between her fingers. The Hobgoblin came on, raising that enormous axe again. Yoon Seoha tried to get up and found she could not move. Even then, she turned her face toward Gangmin and shouted.
"What are you doing?!"
She clenched her teeth.
"Run!"
Yu Gangmin let out a short sigh.
The Hobgoblin's axe fell.
In that instant, Gangmin vanished.
A grip. Two fingers closed on the axe-blade.
Yoon Seoha's eyes flew wide. Yu Gangmin was already standing in front of her, catching the Hobgoblin's axe bare-handed. The monster's muscles swelled with explosive force — and the axe did not move so much as a hair.
Bone and metal groaned. Gangmin tightened his fingers, and the axe, unable to bear it, shattered into fragments.
"Gr—ghrrk?!"
The Hobgoblin stumbled back. Yu Gangmin took the broken sword from Yoon Seoha's hand.
"I'll borrow this a moment."
"What?"
Sword-shard in hand, he took one step toward the terrified Hobgoblin and swung.
He used no form. He loaded the cut with no inner energy. He simply held a sword and cut.
A heavy, final sound. The Hobgoblin's body hit the floor in two pieces.
"Kiiirk?"
"Kiik!"
The remaining goblins panicked and bolted for the Gate they had crawled out of. Yu Gangmin had no intention of letting them go. He swept the broken blade sideways. A single thread of wind unspooled out through the convenience store and beyond it. Thin red lines opened across the goblins' throats.
They collapsed as one. Silence settled over the wreckage.
Yoon Seoha sat on the floor and stared up at him.
"You…"
Yu Gangmin looked down at the hilt left in his hand.
"Standard-issue, is it? Or privately bought?"
"S-standard-issue."
"Good. Then I needn't compensate you."
"Just what…"
Yoon Seoha looked at him.
"Who are you?"
Yu Gangmin did not answer. He spotted a canned coffee that had rolled onto the floor, picked it up, checked it for dents, and started for the convenience store door.
"Wait! The Association will be here any minute!"
"That's why I'm leaving."
"Please — at least tell me your name!"
He did not answer. He stepped out of the convenience store and was gone. Sixty years had passed since he left the house that morning. He had no desire to waste any more time here.
The automatic door gave a thin, broken whine. Not long after Yu Gangmin vanished, several vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the store. Armed Hunters poured in through the shattered entrance.
"Hunter Association!"
"Check the civilians first!"
"Where's the Gate?"
"Hold on."
"What the hell is this?"
The Hunter in the lead stopped dead at the sight of the floor. Goblin corpses. A shattered axe. And a Hobgoblin mashed beyond any recognizable shape.
"This is… a Hobgoblin?"
"Situation contained?"
The Hunters who had come in with him had nothing to say.
"Who did this?"
Yoon Seoha looked at the open doorway. Yu Gangmin was already gone without a trace.
"I…"
She looked at the pulp that had been a Hobgoblin.
"I don't know."
"You really don't?"
"No."
She gave the same answer again.
"I met him for the first time today."
The Hunter Association field lead studied her with open suspicion.
"A man you'd never seen before started giving orders in the middle of combat, and Hunter Yoon Seoha simply followed them. That's your statement?"
"Yes."
"And as a result, you killed five goblins by yourself."
"That's right. Once I moved the way he told me to, I could do it."
The lead's expression grew stranger still. He had already confirmed on her registration that she was an F-rank Hunter. The only combat skill on record was Power Strike. Her previous clear logs showed she had never once handled more than two goblins alone. And now that same Hunter had killed five of them without even using a skill. It was not a story anyone would swallow easily.
"I acquired a new skill, too."
"A new skill?"
Yoon Seoha opened her status window.
The skill had not existed until minutes ago. The acquisition timestamp matched the moment the Gate had opened.
"I obtained it while following that man's instructions."
The field lead was silent for a long time.
"We'll do it this way. The Gate that opened here will be recorded as cleared by Hunter Yoon Seoha. We'll credit you with the Hobgoblin kill as well."
"B-but—"
"If an outsider really did intervene, as you say — and if that person is not a Hunter — it could create problems. For him."
Yoon Seoha said nothing.
"I assume that isn't what you want."
"Nnh…"
She could not accept it. But the thought that trouble might find Yu Gangmin left her no choice but to go along.
"You can collect your compensation from the Association after this. The investigation ends here. Have your injuries treated at an Association-designated hospital."
"That's it?"
"Yes. You've done well."
The field lead dipped his head briefly and moved off toward the other staff. Association personnel worked the scene with practiced hands. Numbered tags went onto goblin corpses. Mana stones and materials were separated out. The damage to the wrecked convenience store was tallied in minutes. The fight Yoon Seoha had staked her life on was being compressed, almost as she watched, into a few lines of record.
It all felt like a dream. Even now she could not quite believe she had been the one to cut those goblins down. She looked at her hands, which were still trembling — and a translucent window appeared over them.
It had not been a dream. The new skill was sitting in her status window, plain as day.
"Who… was he?"
Curiosity about Yu Gangmin took root and would not leave.
"If I'd known it would go like this, I would have at least asked his name."
She did not even know what to call him. And yet, because of that man, it felt as if her entire life had been turned inside out.
Perhaps that was why another thought rose in her.
"What if."
If — just if — she could receive proper instruction from him.
Could I become stronger too?
In the place where the hollowness had settled, a small, stubborn hope lifted its head. Yoon Seoha looked at the doorway he had vanished through.
She would have to find him. The man whose name she did not even know.