A Tree Branch
Cha Seorin was furious.
Three whole years. Three years of dragging herself out of bed at five in the morning just to trudge down to Basement Level 3. Three years of swinging a wooden sword a thousand times a day in the shadows where nobody cared to look. Three years of returning home only to be greeted with the same tired, pitying scoff: "You're still wasting your time with that?"
And now, this man claimed he could take on those three grueling years with nothing more than a tree branch.
"...Fine," Seorin muttered, tightening her grip around the hilt of her wooden sword. "Don't regret this."
Crack!
She kicked off the concrete floor.
Even an E-rank was still an awakened hunter; to an ordinary civilian, her burst of acceleration was like a bullet fired from a barrel. She closed the eight-meter gap in just three strides. Her wooden sword plummeted from high to low. Her shoulder lagged behind by half a beat, yet the arc still carried the sheer weight of three years of relentless repetition. A strike like this hurt. If an E-rank caught an A-rank hunter off-guard with a blow like this, even the elite would let out an involuntary grunt.
So—
Tap.
The wooden sword halted dead in its tracks.
Seorin's eyes went wide.
...What?
A twig. Just a single tree branch. It was lightly rested against the flank of her blade. He hadn't shoved it away, nor had he braced himself to block it. It had merely grazed her weapon, yet the trajectory of her full-power swing had been gently steered off course.
Reflexively springing back, Seorin slashed horizontally.
Tap.
Stopped again.
A straight thrust.
Tap.
An upward diagonal cut.
Tap.
Seorin unleashed twenty strikes in rapid succession, and all twenty were intercepted. More accurately, they hadn't even been blocked. The man hadn't budged an inch. His feet remained planted in the exact spot where he had started, and the only part of his body moving was his right wrist. Not once did his breathing waver. In fact, he had yawned twice during the flurry.
"Hey."
"...Haa, haa."
"Watch your wrist."
"...!"
Tap.
The wooden sword flew cleanly out of her grip. Before Seorin could even process what she had done wrong, her weapon was already soaring toward the ceiling. With a sharp clatter, it struck the overhead beams and tumbled across the concrete floor.
Silence fell over the training hall. Seorin stood empty-handed, gasping for air, her legs trembling beneath her.
Across from her, the man casually yawned, twig still twirling in his fingers.
"...What are you?"
"Hm?"
"...Just who the hell are you?"
Yuhan scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. "Told you. I'm unemployed."
"You said you were an F-rank!"
"Yeah. F-rank."
"How does that make any sense?!"
"Doesn't make a lick of sense, does it?" Yuhan chuckled. "Not much I can do about it, though. That's what the bureau's measuring device said."
Seorin clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. Mortification burned hot in her chest. She was used to losing—she had lost every single day for three years. But this wasn't losing. She hadn't even qualified as an opponent.
"...Am I really that pathetic?"
"Nope."
"Then why—"
"You didn't do anything wrong." Yuhan idly spun the branch between his fingertips. "It's not that you're lacking. It's just that what you were taught is completely wrong."
"...What is?"
"You're channeling mana into your sword, right?"
Seorin flinched. "...Of course I am. That's how everyone is taught. You have to infuse the weapon with mana to increase its striking power—"
"And that's where you're wrong." Yuhan lifted the branch for her to inspect. Two lonely green leaves still dangled limply from its tip. "Look. This is just a stick."
"...Right."
"What do you think happens if I pump mana into it?"
"...It snaps."
"Exactly." Yuhan nodded in approval. "Yet I deflected you twenty times with this flimsy little thing."
"...."
"Why do you think that is?"
Seorin couldn't find an answer.
Yuhan brought the branch level with his eyes. Then, deliberate and measured, he spoke.
Seorin couldn't comprehend the words. How could she? Every single manual, academy textbook, and instructor on Earth taught the exact opposite.
"...I don't understand what you mean."
"I figured."
Yuhan turned around. On the far side of the training ground, roughly forty meters away, stood an old reinforced concrete partition.
A faded plaque hung bolted to its surface. Gazing at the wall, Yuhan let the branch dangle loosely by his side.
"Words won't do much good if you can't picture it."
"...Pardon?"
"I'll show you just once."
He drew in a breath.
In that split second, the air inside the subterranean training ground turned suffocatingly heavy. Without realizing it, Seorin took an involuntary step backward. She didn't know why. Every hair on her body stood on end, prickling with cold dread. Her awakened instincts were screaming in primal terror.
Run.
You can't stay near him.
That thing is—
That isn't human.
Yuhan raised his arm. Not pulling from his shoulder, but initiating the drive from his back, releasing his wrist only at the final moment—exactly as he had instructed Seorin moments before. It was textbook form, an astonishingly pure and simple arc.
Just one swing.
...
Not a single sound followed.
Seorin blinked.
...Huh?
Nothing had happened. No blast of wind, no radiant flash of light. Just a man flicking a small branch through empty air.
...What was that? What is he even—
Creak—crack.
The sound came from the distant barrier.
Seorin snapped her head around. Forty meters away, right down the center of the reinforced concrete wall, a single vertical hairline fracture had appeared. And then, from the high ceiling down to the foundation, that seam began to widen.
BOOOOOOOM—!!
A thunderous roar tore through the hall as a blinding cloud of dust engulfed the training ground. Massive slabs of concrete collapsed under their own severed weight. Thick steel rebar, sliced through like warm taffy, sheared off and crashed onto the floor. A barrier one point two meters thick, built to withstand Grade-A impacts, had been parted as cleanly as a block of soft tofu.
Seorin dropped to her knees, all strength drained from her legs. While the dust billowed around her, her mind went utterly blank.
...S-rank?
No. Even an S-rank couldn't do this.
That was—
Tap.
Something struck the floor nearby. Seorin lowered her gaze.
It was the twig. Forty centimeters long, no thicker than a pinky finger. And at its tip, the two fragile green leaves were still attached, completely unharmed.
Seorin's breath caught in her throat. That single detail was far more terrifying than the sheer destruction before her eyes. While cleaving straight through a fortified barrier, he hadn't even shaken a single leaf loose.
"...Ah."
A muffled groan drifted through the settling dust.
"...Ah, shit."
Yuhan stood there pressing a palm against his forehead.
"...Overdid it."
"...."
"They aren't gonna bill me for that, are they? My monthly subsidy is only 820,000 won..."
Seorin scrambled toward him on all fours. Dragging her knees through the rubble and grime, she lunged forward and seized the hem of his trousers with trembling fingers.
"...Mister."
"Yeah. What?"
"Please teach me."
Yuhan's casual expression instantly froze.
"...What?"
"Please take me as your disciple."
"No."
The refusal came without a heartbeat of hesitation. It was so fast and blunt that Seorin recoiled in shock.
"...Why?"
"Because no."
"Is it because I don't have talent?"
"No."
"Then why?!" Seorin cried out, her voice echoing off the pulverized concrete in the cavernous room. "I can work harder than anyone! I trained here all alone for three years! Whatever you order me to do, I'll—"
"Cha Seorin."
Yuhan spoke her name.
The tone struck her instantly. The playful, slippery demeanor was gone. There wasn't a trace of teasing left in his voice. It was terribly short, quiet, and low.
Seorin clamped her mouth shut.
Yuhan wasn't looking down at her. He was staring at the demolished barrier—or rather, somewhere far beyond the shattered rubble.
"...I don't teach."
"...."
"Never again."
He turned away, brushing the dust from his clothes as he ambled back toward the wooden bench.
"Mister!"
"Yeah."
"Then what was that just now?! Why did you show me that?!"
Yuhan paused in his tracks. He stood motionless for about three seconds. When he finally looked back over his shoulder, his usual voice had returned—nonchalant, light, brushing everything aside as though it carried no weight at all.
"Ah, that?" He gave a careless shrug. "I only give backseat advice."
At nine o'clock that morning, an incident report was officially logged with the Facilities Management Division of the Awakened Administration Bureau.
◈ Location: Basement Level 3, Wing B Training Grounds / Defense Barrier (Total Destruction)
◈ Presumed Cause: Structural Fatigue / Aging Degradation
◈ Estimated Repair Cost: 48,000,000 KRW
The inspector paused, his official seal hovering inches above the approval line. Walls brought down by age and structural fatigue crumble into jagged heaps. This one... had been sliced cleanly in half.
Frowning, he pulled up the security camera archives.
5:17 AM.
The footage began to play.
And right at 5:21:34 AM...
Exactly three seconds of video were missing.