Chapter 50
A thunderous crack burst from Baek Do-woon’s hand.
People flinched at the sound, so sharp it seemed like a missile had just been launched.
“Good heavens!” some of them cried as they dropped to the ground, while others yelped, “Eek!” and jumped back in alarm.
Kim Mu-yeon’s reaction was no different.
He stared in shock at the giant wooden sword that had appeared in Do-woon’s hand.
It was worse because the thing was already flying at him at frightening speed.
“You lunatic!”
He cursed at Do-woon and dodged.
Arca sailed past him and stopped right in front of the crowd.
The man who had nearly taken the wooden blade to the nose went weak in the knees and sat down hard.
Kim Mu-yeon glared at Do-woon after watching the sword fly past him.
“You coward. You launched a sneak attack out of nowhere!”
“Whew, you startled me, little sprout.”
But Do-woon wasn’t even looking at Kim Mu-yeon.
That complete lack of interest unsettled the crowd all over again.
“Hey, he just clicked his tongue. Are you seriously going through puberty?”
He ignored everyone’s stares and kept looking down at his smartphone.
And as he did, he kept muttering under his breath; most of it was impossible to make sense of.
“You keep this up and big brother’s gonna get mad, okay?”
“No, not scolding you.”
“You’re going to sulk? What, all of a sudden?”
That sort of thing went on and on.
As they listened to the muttering, the onlookers exchanged glances.
They were silently asking each other if anyone understood what he was talking about.
Everyone who got that wordless question just shook their heads.
They couldn’t even begin to guess.
“The hell, is he insane?”
Someone muttered the thought that had flashed through his head, unfiltered.
The others could only agree.
Then,
“Huh!”
“The sword, the sword!”
“Swordsmanship?”
“You idiot! What kind of martial-arts novel are you imagining? It’s obviously magic!”
Arca, which had been hovering in midair, began to move slowly.
As naturally as a video played in reverse, it returned to Do-woon’s hand.
He slung it over his shoulder and apologized to Kim Mu-yeon.
“Ah, sorry. Sorry. I’m not exactly used to pulling this thing out.”
“You—!”
“You’ll understand, right?”
He grinned.
If Kim Mu-yeon hadn’t dodged the wooden sword, he might have been badly hurt.
If it had gone just a little farther, someone really could have been injured.
And yet Do-woon acted as if it were no big deal at all.
The sheer shamelessness of it left the crowd speechless.
“Baek Do-woon….”
Kim Mu-yeon muttered Do-woon’s name and glared at him.
His expression was vicious enough to suggest he wanted to kill him, but it didn’t last long.
He felt the crowd watching, so he quickly reined himself in.
After letting out a long, deep breath, he said in a calm voice, “…Fine. It doesn’t matter. I already knew you were a clumsy fool.”
“That’s a disgustingly irritating way to talk.”
“……”
At the brutal retort, Kim Mu-yeon shut his mouth.
Did this bastard not care at all what people thought?
That thought in mind, he looked back at Do-woon.
Do-woon was looking only at him.
As if the rest of the crowd meant nothing at all.
Then Do-woon held out the wooden sword he had been carrying on his shoulder.
“Here.”
“...Mm.”
He let out an impressed breath at the sight of the wooden sword held out to him.
It might have looked like nothing more than a big wooden blade, but in itself it was a perfect weapon.
No one else could tell, but he could.
Kim Mu-yeon possessed the skill Song of the Sword.
The skill let him feel whether a sword was good or bad at a glance, and even told him how to swing it.
With the skill’s enhancement, he could wield a sword regardless of its size or weight.
That was why Kim Mu-yeon reached out with complete confidence.
“Once you try to hold it, you’ll see who the real unworthy weakling is. Go on and be embarrassed in front of everyone.”
As he stretched out his hand, Yu Jae-i’s words came back to him.
He snorted and shook his head.
This was the sword wielded by Baek Do-woon, a B-class hunter.
He had no doubt at all that he would be able to take hold of it.
He dismissed Yu Jae-i’s warning as nothing more than a jab from someone who simply disliked him.
But then,
Thud!
The moment he took Arca from Do-woon, he lurched forward and nearly toppled to the ground.
As soon as Do-woon let go, Arca dropped to the earth, and Kim Mu-yeon, still gripping it with all his strength, was dragged along naturally with it.
“What the hell? What’s with him?”
“Is he failing to lift it?”
“No way, that must be a mistake. Why would an A-class hunter be unable to lift that?”
“But… he does look like he’s struggling.”
The crowd’s whispers reached him, but Kim Mu-yeon didn’t even have time to feel embarrassed.
He couldn’t understand the situation. There was no way he should be unable to lift Arca.
He was the owner of Song of the Sword; there was no reason he wouldn’t be able to draw a blade.
And yet he couldn’t raise it.
He threw all his strength into trying to lift Arca again, but the sword, laid out neatly on the ground, wouldn’t budge an inch.
It was almost as if it had been fused to the earth from the start.
“What in the world….”
In a flustered voice, he looked up.
Baek Do-woon was there, one eyebrow lifted.
Do-woon looked down at him, then let out a faint laugh.
“Looks like the one who isn’t qualified is you, weakling.”
At those words, Kim Mu-yeon’s face went red as a beet.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Seeing that crimson face made me feel better.
I also enjoyed the way the crowd looked at Kim Mu-yeon with open mockery.
As always, people loved watching the fall more than the rise.
He got to his feet, his face still blazing.
I had liked the sight of him kneeling there; it suited him.
“…I admit it.”
“Hm?”
“I wasn’t qualified. I’m the one who ended up embarrassed after making a scene like this.”
“……”
I’d thought he’d lash out according to his mood.
But to my surprise, he didn’t.
He kept his composure to preserve what was left of his image.
He had no choice, of course, but even so, it was a little surprising.
“Baek Do-woon, I acknowledge you as the true master of this sword.”
Saying that, Kim Mu-yeon held out his right hand for a handshake.
Hey, this bastard actually knows how to stage a scene.
Honestly, I was impressed.
He’d taken a huge hit to his image because of this.
He had claimed he was the qualified one and that the other party wasn’t, only for the result to prove the opposite.
The only way to salvage even a little of that ruined image was to apologize and back away cleanly.
If I refused that hand here, the one who’d lose face would be me.
“I appreciate it. It’s not every day that a hunter ranked 47th recognizes me.”
But I’ve got a little showmanship in me too.
It helps when your little sister and your friend are both absurdly impressive.
I took his hand.
That wasn’t the end of it; I pulled him into a hug, too.
I could feel Kim Mu-yeon getting slightly flustered, trying to pull his hand away.
I tightened my hold and whispered into his ear, “You’re talking a lot for a thief claiming my sword as his own.”
“...I don’t know what trick you used, but that sword will be mine soon enough.”
“Big talk for someone who couldn’t even lift it.”
Our whispers were vicious, but because we were embracing each other, the people watching only seemed delighted.
A few of them even gave short, embarrassingly enthusiastic claps.
Kim Mu-yeon kept his smile in place and ground out, “Amazing skill.”
It really was remarkable.
He was grinding his teeth while smiling.
“Remember this, Baek Do-woon. I’ll make you pay for this humiliation.”
“Quit being greedy and get lost, you damn thief.”
I snapped back at him and immediately stepped away.
He looked like he was about to say something, then shut his mouth when he noticed the people around us.
Now that the distance was there, even whispering wouldn’t carry to me.
A man who cared so much about other people’s eyes couldn’t just run his mouth at a time like this.
Kim Mu-yeon, unable to do anything else, only smiled at me.
“……”
“……”
I smiled back.
It was a faint, crooked smile that lifted only one corner of my mouth.
Even if he hated it, there was nothing he could do with so many people watching.
All he could do was leave calmly, coldly, and with as much dignity as he could manage.
Kim Mu-yeon apologized to the police for making a fuss, bowed to the crowd one by one, and left.
He looked so polished, anyone who didn’t know better might have thought he was a celebrity.
Ah, well, a hunter ranked 47th in Korea technically was a celebrity.
Yu Jae-i walked over to my side.
“He’s backing off pretty cleanly, isn’t he?”
“It’s an act.”
“An act?”
“Yeah. He’ll probably come looking to kill me tonight.”
“…Seriously?”
Yu Jae-i asked with a worried expression.
The way those kinds of men moved was obvious.
I knew it too well; I’d seen it more than once.
Men like Kim Mu-yeon, who lived on the pleasure of their own brilliance, couldn’t stomach humiliation like this.
They’d start doing reckless things like a bull worked up by the sight of blood.
And if he was a hunter with no qualms about killing people?
He’d blame me for “bringing shame on him” and come after me.
He’d show up tonight at the earliest, tomorrow night at the latest.
“I’m kidding, of course.”
“Hey, what kind of joke do you tell that doesn’t sound like a joke?”
Because it wasn’t a joke.
I shrugged at her, and then I sent a message on my smartphone.
It was to the two people who had been watching this whole thing.
Lee Jae-wook replied immediately.
He didn’t ask why he should do it.
I put the smartphone back in my pocket and slung Arca over my shoulder again.
The crowd let out murmurs of admiration.
They looked amazed that I could easily lift the sword Kim Mu-yeon hadn’t been able to budge.
I felt that same amazement too.
Why couldn’t Kim Mu-yeon lift Arca?
Yu Jae-i answered my question.
“Arca chooses its master.”
“Its master?”
“Not in the sense that it has a will of its own. More like it decides who’s allowed to touch its body and who isn’t.”
“So Kim Mu-yeon not being able to lift it was…”
“Yeah. Obviously because that kid didn’t permit him to.”
Hearing that, it almost felt like Arca was wrapping me in warmth.
Yu Jae-i had said it didn’t have a will of its own, so it was probably just my imagination.
Or maybe it was because it had been made from a branch of the World Tree.
“So make sure everyone here knows that you’re the master. For that kid’s sake, too.”
Saying that, Yu Jae-i pushed my back toward the crowd.
Even though Kim Mu-yeon had left, the people hadn’t dispersed; all of them were still watching me.
Just then, the World Tree quest came to mind.
It had told me to show the dignity of the manager so that no one would dare say such pointless things again.
“If that’s what it wants, then I suppose I should give it what it wants.”
I gripped Arca with both hands, pulling it properly free from my shoulder.
Then I poured mana into it with all my strength.
In an instant, a blue blade as tall as the third floor of an apartment building came into being.
The crowd looked up at Arca in awe.
“It’s huge and beautiful!”
“My God, it’s even bigger than the one in the video!”
“Holy crap! You swing something like that?”
“It could cut a dragon, not just a cyclops!”
Standing still in the middle of a crowd wasn’t exactly easy.
Just as my face was about to flush with embarrassment, Yu Jae-i stepped forward in front of everyone.
“This child’s name is Arbor capulus. It means ‘great sword hilt’!”
“A sword hilt? That’s a hilt?”
“Oh, right! Of course! The blue part is the blade!”
Yu Jae-i, stepping out to explain Arca, looked genuinely happy.
She looked like a proud mother at a school observation day, watching her child answer a teacher’s question correctly.
Then she explained the sword’s active duration.
It consumed 50,000 mana per minute, and even an ordinary A-class hunter would struggle to keep it up for five minutes.
After that, she pointed at me.
“But this man is different. He has a record of maintaining this phenomenon for at least thirty minutes.”
At those words, the crowd gasped and started whispering among themselves.
“No way!”
“Isn’t an A-class hunter’s total mana supposed to be somewhere between ten thousand and one million?”
“Wait, he said thirty minutes. Then his mana total would have to be... a hundred, one point five million?”
“If we’re talking mana alone, that’s S-class hunter territory!”
People kept looking at me, and their stares were hard to handle.
They looked like they were seeing something bizarre and unbelievable for the first time in their lives.
Truthfully, my maximum mana, including the 50,000 I’d gained from holding Arca, was 200,000.
The reason I’d been able to sustain that mana output for thirty minutes was because my recovery rate was absurdly fast.
Of course, Yu Jae-i and the others didn’t know that.
The quest condition has been fulfilled!
You have obtained the previous World Tree’s leaf as a success reward.
The reward has been sent to your mailbox.
Thanks to that, I finished the quest easily.
I’d completed the quest and driven Kim Mu-yeon off, but something still felt off.
Then a message arrived from Lee Jae-wook.
Just as expected.
How could these guys stay so consistently stupid?
Well, fine.
How should I cook this one so people would talk about it as a good job?
Baek Do-woon’s World Tree Sprout asks for another chance.
The sprout says it’ll add a spin next time.