The Broken Spear

Baek Dohee's office was more spartan than one would expect of a branch head's.

A desk, a sofa, filing cabinets crammed along the wall — and, propped in one corner, a single broken spear. That was everything.

They call her the Thunder Spear. So this is what they meant.

The longer he looked at the broken spear, the more Yoo Kangmin found himself thinking of his own sword, shattered at the Valley of No Return.

I never thought I'd miss it. And yet here I am, oddly hollow with no blade at my side.

Not that there was anything to be done about it. Even had he tucked the broken sword into his coat, he had no certainty it would have crossed the gate and returned to this world along with him.

"Please, have a seat."

"I will."

While he had been lost in thought, Baek Dohee had made her way slowly across the room, leaning on her cane, and settled onto the sofa. Yoo Kangmin took the one across from her. Whether it was because this was the kind of sofa that furnished an association branch head's office, he couldn't say, but it was remarkably plush.

"Do you prefer tea? Or shall I make coffee?"

"Tea."

Baek Dohee didn't strike him as a coffee drinker anyway. The fragrance that hung so serenely in this office was not coffee — it was tea.

The Abbot...

Why did that surface now, of all moments? Yoo Kangmin found himself thinking of the abbot's chamber of Master Hyegwang of Shaolin — a man he had killed. A man he had been left with no choice but to kill. Perhaps it was because the air here carried a scent reminiscent of that place where Hyegwang had brewed tea for him with his own hands. He couldn't say.

Tea murmured into the cup in a thin, unbroken stream. Baek Dohee poured it herself. The hand that set the cup down was composed, but her gaze was razor-sharp.

"I'll ask you once more."

"About what?"

"How did you know there was something wrong with my mana circuit?"

"I told you already. I saw it."

"Do you possess some skill that allows you to see through a person's body?"

"I have no such skill."

Baek Dohee's eyes narrowed. From the moment he had entered the association, every report had said that not a trace of mana could be sensed from Yoo Kangmin's body. Of course, not everyone who awakened an ability became a hunter. Some slid down the path of crime and became villains; others simply didn't work as hunters, operating as vigilantes instead. One of the Hunter Association's principal duties was, after all, winning over such people — or responding to their crimes.

And yet this man...

Yoo Kangmin belonged to none of those categories.

A genuine non-awakened? And this non-awakened man subdued a D-rank tank with raw strength? No — more than that, he saw straight through my shattered mana circuit?

Writing it all off as luck demanded a leap of disbelief far too great to make.

"How am I supposed to believe that?"

"Ha. Why should I have to explain myself?"

"Because this is a serious matter. Depending on how this goes, I may have no choice but to place you under arrest."

"Sure. I suppose you might."

Yoo Kangmin wasn't the least bit displeased. If he thought of the Hunter Association as the Murim Alliance, the Supremacy Alliance, or the Demonic Cult, then how they would treat an anomaly like himself was obvious before he even asked.

If I were still the man I was back then...

In Murim, he had been — to put it crudely — somehow out of step with the world. Obsessed solely with growing stronger, driven by a single-minded resolve to return home, he had never once stopped to consider the eyes with which others watched him.

Drip. Drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip.

The result had been the blood calamity of the Valley of No Return. Even now, the sight of that valley choked with blood and corpses remained vivid in Yoo Kangmin's mind.

I will not repeat the mistakes of that time.

And to keep that vow, he would first have to lay to rest the suspicions of the woman sitting across from him.

"Give me your hand."

"My... hand?"

"If you can't bring yourself to trust me, I'll let you confirm it yourself."

Baek Dohee hesitated a moment before extending her right hand.

"If you try anything strange—"

"Then kill me. Boil me and eat me, if you like. Your call."

"..."

Yoo Kangmin took hold of Baek Dohee's wrist.

Her shoulder flinched. A thread-thin energy was flowing in from the tips of his fingers.

What is this energy?

It was clearly nothing like mana. Its source seemed almost similar, and yet — where the mana she knew was something cold and dark, the energy flowing in from his fingertips was soft and warm.

It's warm...

The energy passed her wrist and traveled up along her arm and shoulder. The moment it drew near her heart—

Thud!

Baek Dohee's heart slammed once, violently.

"Ugh!"

Her face drained white. The pain that had been sleeping inside her had awakened. It felt as though a steel skewer heated in a fire had been driven through her heart and was now churning its way down into her right leg.

Seeing her reaction, Yoo Kangmin released her hand at once.

"It really is worse than I expected."

"Haah... haah..."

Baek Dohee dragged in ragged breaths.

"What... what did you just do to me?"

"Checked the road."

"Road?"

"The channel your mana travels through."

Here, they called it a mana circuit, but to Yoo Kangmin it was an old and familiar concept. The paths along which energy flowed had been called meridians. Mana and internal energy differed in where they gathered and in their very nature, but the principle beneath them was much the same — and so were the roads they ran on.

"More than half the circuit around your heart is destroyed. The channel leading into your right leg is severed outright."

"..."

"The real problem is that even in that state, mana is still pooling around your heart. Energy with nowhere left to escape is gnawing away at everything around it, little by little."

Baek ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Dohee's hand trembled, ever so slightly. It matched, precisely, the diagnosis she had been given by the association's medical staff. No — it was more precise than theirs.

"Very few people know that."

"Is there a reason to hide it?"

"To prevent pointless unrest. Hunters must always be a symbol of hope, you see."

Baek Dohee looked down at her teacup.

Command had ordered Baek Dohee to fall back. She ignored the order. If she withdrew, she could see exactly how it would end: the civilians who hadn't managed to evacuate would be slaughtered to the last.

A crackle of static, and Baek Dohee switched off her radio. Then she blocked the road alone. Twenty minutes until reinforcements arrived — all she had to do was hold out that long. In that sliver of time she fought hundreds of monsters, and at the very end she pushed past her own limits, invoking a skill beyond what her body could bear, and killed the boss.

A wet, hacking cough. Baek Dohee, collapsed and vomiting blood, barely managed to turn her radio back on — and into her ear came voices overflowing with joy.

That was the end of it. The citizens survived. And as the price, Baek Dohee's mana circuit had shattered.

People called her a hero. The broadcasts ran her story all day long, and outside the hospital, flowers and letters praying for her recovery piled up like mountains.

But the praise did not last.

At first, everyone grieved for her. For days her name sat atop the real-time search rankings, and footage of her past raids drew fresh attention.

A month passed.

Three months passed.

Half a year passed.

The articles grew shorter ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and shorter. The voices cheering her on vanished one by one, and in the space they left behind, new gates and the names of new heroes moved in.

At some point, no one was searching for Baek Dohee's name anymore.

And then, three years later—

Her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠name had surfaced in an article for the first time in a long while. But the reactions were nothing like before.

Once, she had been a hero who staked her life to save people. Everyone had prayed for her recovery, cheered her on, begged her to come back. But the moment new heroes appeared, they forgot Baek Dohee with an ease that was almost breathtaking. The world had no time to spare for a hero who had stopped moving.

"..."

Healers from home and abroad had swarmed to her side. She had been dosed with the highest-grade potions and put through surgery after surgery. The conclusion was always the same.

Beyond recovery.

The verdict was that the moment she used mana again, her heart might not survive it. The S-rank candidate once tipped for greatness had become incapable of combat overnight. In recognition of her service, the association had granted her the Sinyeong-dong branch headship — a seat prepared for a hero broken in service to her nation. That was the packaging, at least. In truth, it was little more than a post to keep Baek Dohee, retired from the battlefield, tethered to the association.

"So."

Yoo Kangmin set down his teacup.

"Did you give up?"

"On what, if I may ask?"

"On fighting again."

Baek Dohee's expression hardened.

"You said it yourself just now. That I'm lucky to be alive."

"That's not an answer."

"I can protect people without standing on a battlefield."

She had spent all this time convincing herself of exactly that — that she could protect people even off the battlefield. She had accepted the hollow branch headship for the same reason: because she had believed there would be something here she could do. And in truth, since her appointment, the rate of incidents in the districts under the Sinyeong-dong branch's watch had dropped meaningfully. But none of it had ever filled the emptiness in Baek Dohee's chest.

"Is that so? Then why do you still keep that broken spear?"

"That's..."

"If you had no lingering attachment, you'd have thrown it out long ago."

"It's just a broken spear."

"Save that excuse for yourself."

Baek Dohee's fingers curled slowly inward. Her clenched fist trembled, faintly.

"Did you give up?"

"No. I have not given up. No — I cannot give up."

Even after the verdict of incurability, she had kept searching for a cure. She had contacted therapists overseas herself, clung even to treatments no one had verified.

"And none of it changed anything. My body was already ruined."

"'Ruined' seems a strong word for damage at that level."

"'Ruined'? You have no idea what I have suffered."

"I've brought back a man whose meridians were severed and whose dantian had shattered."

"..."

"I've made a man whose limb meridians were sliced to ribbons walk again."

Yoo Kangmin said it as if it were nothing. But to Baek Dohee, every word of it sounded like fantasy.

"Are you mocking me right now?"

"Why would I?"

"The finest healers in the entire world called it impossible."

"Just because they couldn't doesn't mean I can't."

"Th-that's— what are you—!"

Baek Dohee's breath caught. A hope she had never dared to entertain raised its head — and as if to crush it before it could speak, her hand clamped down hard around her cane.

"Can you fix it?"