The A-Grade's Debut Fight After Abandoning the Status Window (2)
A week passed.
In that time, my two disciples managed to gather a fair number of pebbles.
Yu Seoa caught four out of five with her eyes covered, and Jin Seojun managed to snatch one out of two.
It was barely more than toddler-level progress, but it still meant something: it was their first step without the System.
Jin Seojun’s changes were especially fun to watch.
The prodigy who used to stay up all night turning mutant data into tables was gone, replaced by a man who now stumbled blindfolded through the Association corridors on his way to and from work.
Even when his coworkers muttered that he’d gone crazy, he didn’t care.
That’s how people act when their senses open for the first time.
They’re so amazed that a whole new world has opened up to them that they fumble around without sleeping.
Once, during a Baekho Guild meeting, he suddenly closed his eyes and snatched a colleague’s pen out of the air from the seat beside him, they said.
The conference room had erupted in an uproar, and after that, rumors spread through Baekho that Jin Seojun had joined a cult.
Yu Seoa’s side was quieter.
Only, starting one day, the ice crystals she formed whenever she used her mana were no longer neat and perfect.
Instead of the smooth hexagons the System had always polished for her, rough, ugly crystals began to form more solidly and hold their shape.
She had started making them with her own hands.
"Teacher. I caught four pebbles today."
"Good. Nicely done. Now get lost."
I sipped my Mocha Gold and waved him off.
It wasn’t that I was stingy with praise. It was just that using energy to praise people was annoying.
The peaceful week might have gone on like that.
At least, until Docheol showed up again.
"Baekjeong. Got work for you."
"I’m not taking it."
"What if it’s your disciple’s debut match?"
I set down my Mocha Gold.
Docheol had a real gift for finding a person’s weak spot.
"Im Taejun of the Gaon Guild. The idiot booked a live-streamed raid to restore his honor. A C-grade Gate. But a mutant slipped in."
"What’s that got to do with me?"
"Right now, Gaon’s elite team is trapped inside and being killed off one by one. The Association asked Baekho for support, and I’m planning to send your disciple."
Docheol dragged his prosthetic leg forward as he came closer.
"Jin Seojun. Don’t you want to see whether he can survive against a mutant with just one week of training under his belt?"
I did want to know.
What irritated me was that this was clearly Docheol’s trap.
"Why should Baekho clean up Gaon’s mess? Aren’t you on bad terms?"
"We are. That’s exactly why it’ll make such a good picture."
Docheol grinned with shameless satisfaction.
"If a Baekho rookie clears what Gaon’s ace couldn’t, Baekho’s voice inside the Association gets stronger. And I need that."
"You old man, always scheming."
"This is a world where you have to play politics if you want to survive. I’m not you, hiding in the civil complaints office and brewing coffee all day."
I didn’t answer. I just grabbed the box of Mocha Gold.
In the end, I was going.
Because, honestly, I wanted to see how much Jin Seojun had grown in a single week.
The scene in front of the Gate was chaos.
Dozens of live-stream drones from the Gaon Guild hovered in the air, filming hunters crawling out of the Gate entrance while blood streamed down their faces.
Even without looking at the chat, I knew it had to be exploding.
The Gaon hunters who had crawled out all looked like their souls had left their bodies.
They weren’t badly injured. Their expressions were the problem.
Like people possessed by something, they all stared blankly at a single point in space.
"We didn’t see it... It said it was safe, but then suddenly from behind..."
One hunter just kept muttering the same words over and over.
While the System had been shouting that everything was safe, they’d watched a teammate get torn apart. For them, it was the first time in their lives.
"Is Im Taejun still inside?"
When I asked, the Association staff member guarding the entrance nodded with a face gone pale and blue.
"Yes. Maybe it’s the last scrap of his pride, but he says he won’t come out until the end... But what’s happening in there is strange. The System hasn’t issued a single warning. It keeps saying everything’s fine, but people are getting hurt."
Jin Seojun swallowed dryly as he glared into the Gate.
His fingertips were trembling faintly.
This was the tension of testing a week’s worth of training for the first time against a real mutant.
I parked the wheelchair in front of the entrance and looked up at Jin Seojun.
"Go in."
"...Alone?"
"Seoa’s not using hers today. If I take an S-grade in there, she’ll just smash everything with brute force. That’s not a test."
I tapped him lightly on the back with my back scratcher.
"You’re A-grade. The same A-grade as Im Taejun. Show me how two hunters of the same rank end up differently when one keeps the System on and the other turns it off in front of the same mutant."
Jin Seojun’s gaze wavered.
Fear and resolve, split right down the middle.
"How am I supposed to fight in there? I have no information at all."
"The fact that there’s no information is the information. If the System isn’t throwing up warnings, that means the thing moves outside the System’s sightline."
I took a sip of coffee.
"It moves only in the instant the sensor updates you. It slips through that gap. So don’t look at the System. Read it with your skin, the way you do in tag, before the ambush comes."
"Im Taejun’s team is elite. If they couldn’t hold out, how am I supposed to..."
"They went in with the System on. They got taken down waiting for the warning to appear."
I tapped his shin with the back scratcher.
"You spent a week learning how to live without warnings. You avoided Seoa’s hands while blindfolded, didn’t you? That mutant and Seoa are the same in one respect: they both strike from where you can’t see them."
Slowly, Jin Seojun closed his eyes and opened them again.
Then he shut off the blue System window hanging in front of his vision himself.
And walked into the Gate.
I turned my eyes to the relay monitor installed at the entrance.
Inside the Gate was a mist-choked abandoned mine.
Deep within it, Im Taejun was standing with two of his subordinates behind him, brandishing his sword and scanning the surroundings.
His face was twisted with fear.
"Where is it! Where the hell is it coming from!"
Im Taejun shouted at empty air.
A System window floated cleanly in front of him.
Threats nearby: none.
Safety rating: C.
It was a lie.
Swish.
Something moved in the mist.
The System still didn’t raise a warning.
The moment the System window around Im Taejun screamed that everything was safe, a black shadow rose silently behind him.
"Im Taejun! Behind you!"
A subordinate’s scream came a beat too late.
The shadow’s claws tore deep into Im Taejun’s shoulder.
With a shriek, he stumbled and rolled across the ground.
He hacked wildly with his sword, but by then the shadow had already vanished back into the mist.
The System window still displayed only those cold words: Threats nearby: none.
"What the hell is this! Why isn’t the warning coming up? Why can’t I see it!"
Im Taejun screamed.
For a man who had spent his whole life walking only where the System drew the path, having that path vanish into darkness was hell itself.
And then Jin Seojun pushed through the mist and stepped into the clearing.
Im Taejun shouted at him as if he’d seen a savior.
"Baekho! You’re Jin Seojun from Baekho, right? Hurry up and take this monster down! It’s not showing up on the System! It’s unmeasurable!"
Jin Seojun didn’t answer.
He didn’t even go to Im Taejun’s side.
He simply stopped in the middle of the clearing and slowly closed his eyes.
Im Taejun shouted in disbelief.
"Why are you closing your eyes? Are you insane? That monster’s coming again!"
"Please be quiet."
Jin Seojun said softly.
"Your breathing is too loud. I can’t hear."
Im Taejun’s mouth fell open.
Jin Seojun had turned off the System.
So his world was pitch-black.
But the darker it got, the more he began to see.
The flow of the mist.
The rhythm of the droplets falling from the abandoned mine’s ceiling.
And the minute push of air that broke that rhythm as something approached.
At first, it must have felt hopeless.
Everywhere would have been the same black darkness.
But he had rolled around in that darkness for a week.
He had smashed his forehead into walls, been caught by Yu Seoa within five seconds, and finally learned how to read the air through his skin.
Three meters to the left rear.
Goosebumps rose over Jin Seojun’s skin.
The exact same sensation he’d felt on the last day of tag, just before Yu Seoa’s hand brushed his collar.
The shadow launched itself forward.
Keeping his eyes closed, Jin Seojun slid half a step to the side on the spot.
The claws sliced through the empty space he’d just occupied.
For the first time, the shadow’s ambush missed.
"...Got you."
Jin Seojun opened his eyes.
In that half-beat where he had slipped away, the shadow’s flank was left completely exposed.
His sword cut through it without hesitation.
The black shadow screamed and revealed its true form in the mist.
It was an ambush-type mutant, something like a bat and a lizard mixed together.
With its side split open, it finally appeared on the System window for the first time.
Threat detected.
Unmeasurable entity.
It was already an outdated warning.
Jin Seojun didn’t even glance at it.
He was already reading the next attack.
The shadow melted back into the mist.
This time, it came from the upper right.
A trajectory that dropped straight down from the ceiling.
It was a blind spot the System would never have caught.
Jin Seojun didn’t even look up.
All it took was the rhythm of the falling drops breaking for an instant, and he read death above his head.
He raised his sword.
The shadow was impaled on it by the force of its own weight.
"How... how is this..."
Im Taejun, sitting collapsed on the floor, muttered in a daze.
The System window before his eyes only reported the threat after Jin Seojun landed the second strike.
Three moves.
In only three moves, the prodigy who had been ramming his forehead into walls while blindfolded just a week ago cut the throat of an ambush-type mutant.
Thud.
The shadow crashed to the floor.
Only then did the System window flash that the target had been eliminated.
As always, the System only gave the answer after everything was already over.
Im Taejun sat on the ground, staring blankly at the scene.
He had dragged an elite team with him and still been toyed with by this mutant for an hour, and yet another hunter of the same A-grade had closed his eyes and killed it in three moves.
"You... how did you do that? It said unmeasurable. How did you kill something that doesn’t even show up on the System?"
Im Taejun’s voice cracked.
It wasn’t anger. It was the emptiness of someone whose entire world had collapsed.
Jin Seojun sheathed his sword and looked down at him.
"Because I didn’t look at the System."
"...What?"
"You trusted it because it said everything was safe. I believed it was lying and trusted my own body instead. That’s the only difference."
Those words came from the mouth of the same young man who, a week ago, would have snorted at the idea of getting any help from some old man in a wheelchair.
Even as I heard it, it still felt a little awkward.
The handful of pebbles I’d tossed him had remade a perfectly decent hunter like that.
Im Taejun couldn’t answer.
Behind his back, the Gaon Guild’s live-stream drone was broadcasting the whole scene to the world.
The camera he’d turned on to restore his reputation was, in the end, preserving his most humiliating moment for everyone to see.
I finished off the now-cold Mocha Gold at the entrance.
Jin Seojun walked slowly out through the mist.
His shoulders were rising and falling as he panted hard, but his eyes were completely different from what they had been a week ago.
"I did it, Teacher."
"I saw. You’ve got about five pebbles now."
"Five pebbles? I just killed a mutant..."
"Killing the mutant is killing the mutant. Pebbles are pebbles. You’ve still got a long way to go."
Jin Seojun stared blankly for a moment, then broke into the brightest smile he’d shown yet.
Under a teacher stingy with praise, he seemed to finally understand the weight of that careless little line.
At that moment, the live chat on the entrance monitor started flying like crazy.
My phone was still quiet.
Though I had a feeling that silence wouldn’t last much longer.
Training one S-grade hunter, people might have been willing to let slide.
But once it became clear that an A-grade too was being taught by the same master, people would start digging seriously into who that master was.
The smell of trouble was already in the air.
It might only be a matter of time before the sealed name was dug up by gallery rats.
That didn’t mean I could just sit by and let my disciples die against mutants, either.
Either way, peace and quiet were out of reach.
No matter how many boxes of Mocha Gold I stacked up, I doubted it would be enough to pay for that kind of peace.
I grabbed the wheel of my chair and said to Jin Seojun, "Let’s go. Seoa’s next, and she’s a bigger headache than you are."
"Hunter Yu Seoa? Isn’t she far ahead of me?"
"Exactly because she’s ahead of you, she’s a bigger headache. When someone’s good at something, you have to give them something even harder. You wouldn’t know how annoying that is."
I rolled my wheelchair away from the Gate.
Behind me, the Gaon Guild’s drones were still circling uselessly around the fallen Im Taejun.
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