novelraw Chapter 100
Chapter 100
Chapter 100
The long hours of pain had finally ended. I looked down at my body, soaked with blood and sweat, then checked the time with hands that still trembled.
“Three days passed huh.”
I lay back for a moment and drew a deep breath. It had been a razor’s edge attempt. There had been so many crises in the middle that it was hard to say which moment counted as the crisis.
There has always been a crisis. If I had slipped even once, my body would have burst and I would have died. Then the Association’s janitors would have had a hard time scraping tomato ketchup off every wall of this room.
“Ugh.”
I forced myself upright, and my whole body creaked. My joints felt like they would come apart, and my muscles felt shredded. That was all within the range of what a Hunter recovery injection at the hospital could fix in an instant.
“Let’s go see… How are my kids doing right now.”
Maybe they had run off by now? With that thought, I opened the door.
The moment it opened, Han Sang-ah and Jung Oh-hoon, who had been sweating hard while clashing with sword and rifle, turned their eyes to me at the same time.
“Looks like you worked hard.”
Jung Oh-hoon answered me.
“We worked hard, sure. But looking at you makes it feel like all of it was pointless.”
Han Sang-ah replied to him.
“I feel more mana from you than a typical Partner Hunter. And the fact that you’ve reached that level of mana is huge.”
Unlike other Hunters, my mana capacity was small, but the total amount didn’t drop and stayed fixed.
Which meant every single strike I threw hit harder than the finishing moves of most Partner Hunters.
“Now I think I can even go a round with Lee Se-eun noona.”
When I turned, I saw Lee Se-eun smiling as she listened.
“Really?”
I wasn’t surprised. I had known she was here from the moment I opened the door. Wait, hold on, what is that?
“Why did you get stronger again in the meantime?”
“I fought the one who looked like the Captain of the Descendants of Dangun during the relief transport operation last time you know? And I felt a step behind.”
So she got mad and powered up? What kind of situation is that? Still, it felt like we could have a proper spar now.
“Want to have a round with me?”
“If we do it here, the place might collapse.”
Lee Se-eun burst out laughing at my words, then jerked her chin at the door.
“Then let’s go somewhere else. I waited an entire day.”
“That’s not good, considering you’re probably very busy.”
Lee Se-eun nodded at that.
As we walked down the corridor, we chatted about this and that.
“Since the rail line reopened, the amount of relief supplies going to Europe increased. That’s good, but it made things a bit busier. On top of that, I had a few contracts. So, what’s your next target?”
I answered her.
“The Crown.”
Lee Se-eun let out a soft oh and looked me up and down.
“If it’s you, you can take care of a rank 20 Hunter. So that troublemaker might finally find a master huh.”
“What about Choi Yeoreum?”
This time Lee Se-eun stopped walking and stared at me.
“You mean the Choi Yeoreum I know?”
“Yes, Choi Yeoreum of the Wonder Club. I heard she’s third. I had a chance to meet her right after I cleared Jaun Valley.”
In my words, Lee Se-eun drew her sentence out with a thoughtful sound, then reached a conclusion.
“You’ll need more work. As you are now, I think you still lose.”
“There’s still time after all.”
Lee Se-eun nodded.
“For reference, almost no one dies in the Selection events, but a lot of people end up crippled. Did you get close with Choi Yeoreum? Given your personality and hers, that doesn’t sound likely.”
“We had a long talk, and the longer we talked, the more we scratched each other’s nerves.”
Lee Se-eun answered with a small sigh.
“Choi Yeoreum is ranked third. If you challenge her and win, there will be only two Hunters in the world above you.”
“There are more organizations than I expected that don’t like me smashing Erosion Cores.”
The Descendants of Dangun, the Korean government, Taebaek, even the Wonder Club. Give it a little more time and the Korean Hunter Association would probably start finding me inconvenient as well.
There were too many enemies. Aside from the Descendants of Dangun, the rest were holding off because of my record and public profile, but the moment I slipped, they would pounce and tear into me as if they had been waiting.
Which means,
“I need that title.”
I had no idea what the senior at the very top of the List of Hope, the rank one, was doing or where he was. It felt like an honorary position. In practice, that meant number two was the strongest among the Hunters who actively worked.
If I challenged Choi Yeoreum at the tournament and managed to take that title, I would climb to what people called the number two seat.
On top of that, Choi Yeoreum seemed very devoted to guarding her place, and her pride looked fierce. I had openly picked a fight during our meeting. I doubted she would let it slide.
So I needed to swing first.
“Honestly, it didn’t feel like the gap from rank two to rank ten was that big.”
To change the order, people had to fight and settle it, but when Hunters in the top ten went at it, the damage to overall combat strength could be enormous, so most avoided it.
At least in ranking duels, to judge pure personal skill, they fought with standard issue gear provided at the venue instead of their own.
Even so, that only reduced the chance of injury. It didn’t erase it.
Lee Se-eun nodded to my words.
“Right. People say the result can swing with condition.”
Which meant, if I could beat Lee Se-eun, I could aim for Choi Yeoreum’s seat as well.
“Still, there’s a reason for the order.”
While we were talking, we reached a different space.
“Wow, this place is,”
“Do you remember the Hunter qualification exam?”
It was where I sparred with Lee Se-eun for the first time.
“Are you going to go easy on me again?”
“I think we’re past that.”
Lee Se-eun took a greatsword from the weapons on the wall and gave me a sly grin.
I also chose a spear. They were practice weapons, so they were lousy, but if the conditions were the same, the skill each of us had mattered.
“Ready?”
When Lee Se-eun swung the greatsword once through the air, wind poured along its path and the dust on the floor rose in a pale cloud.
I gripped my spear, settled my stance, and we stared at each other. Our figures flashed in and out, and the greatsword and spear crashed together.
A thunderous roar and a shock of air burst outward. The chamber was fairly large, yet the inside felt like it was about to shake apart.
“Is this going to be okay?”
“It’s the Association’s budget anyway, so why should I care?”
She wasn’t wrong. We had no reason to worry about that. If it bothered them, they could spend more money.
Countless blue trajectories rose like clouds and wrapped around me. At this point, counting the trails didn’t mean much.
That was thanks to the shard of Banshee’s Tears I had ingested.
“An annoying technique got even more annoying huh.”
Lee Se-eun swung her greatsword. The blows linked softly, billowing like heat haze.
I slid backward and spoke.
“Why are you showing off your finesse with a greatsword?”
A greatsword’s essence was speed and overwhelming force. It crashed down like lightning with enough momentum to topple a mountain and pressed like a typhoon.
What she had just done wasn’t a greatsword’s assault. It felt like a thin blade or a flurry blade. The problem was that she kept up a flow that didn’t even suit a greatsword, and she did it well.
“You aren’t biting.”
“If I bit, you would switch in an instant.”
She would keep things light and silky, then the moment I got caught, she would change tempo at once.
A puffy white cloud would change in a heartbeat into a thunder-laden storm front. If I got caught in that, it would hurt.
It wrapped like a spill of silk thread, then suddenly the silk would turn into a thick iron chain swinging a flail.
“This is something…”
I don’t like to say this kind of thing, but I had to. The level of this fight was rather high.
One small mistake from either of us would decide the loss on the spot. In that taut exchange, Lee Se-eun ran along the wall and cut at me.
The air around her jolted with the force of the swing, and a heavy wind pressure surged toward me.
It didn’t just surge. It looked like a small sidestep would be enough, but the pathing made it tricky.
If I only slipped aside, the wind would wrap around me and whirl like a tornado.
If I wanted to avoid it, I had to leave the zone entirely. It forced a big movement.
“However,”
Why should I dance to that beat? I swept my spear in a wide arc and moved all the blue trails that curled around me at once.
I smothered the wind she had raised with the wind my spear and blue trajectories exhaled. The pressure that had begun to take shape as a cyclone soon scattered.
“Aw, couldn’t you have just let me have that one?”
“Are you planning to throw a promising Hunter into a blender?”
I charged the wall where she perched, and as if waiting, she kicked off and fell toward me like a meteor.
One, two...
Her greatsword and my spear swung, dense with mana. With each collision, that power burst, and the blast shoved both of us backward.
Then the ceiling of the place we fought cracked with a jagged series of tears and began to cave in.
“Weapons.”
Both of our weapons shattered. Grinning, Lee Se-eun rushed me barehanded.
And we started throwing punches. Calling it punching was generous, since the force packed into our blows was on the level of a wrecking ball used to bring down buildings.
“You’re strong.”
“Indeed.”
In barehanded fighting, there always came a moment when you had to close in tight. We swung with our faces almost touching.
With a crack, we both planted a hook at the same time, and with a blast like an explosion, the sweat we had shed burst into mist under the shockwave.
In a blink we switched places dozens of times, then kept our limbs moving without a pause and traded offense and defense.
Thirty minutes later, without anyone saying who first, we stopped the spar. Lee Se-eun flicked me a towel and spoke.
“Our skill is in the same tier.”
“Then if a gap opens, it will come from gear.”
She nodded without argument, then looked genuinely surprised.
“Even so, you’re growing too fast. That stings a little you know.”
It wasn’t that I grew fast. The years sent to me were much longer, and the path had been rough. There was no need to explain, and even if I did, she wouldn’t understand, so I let it go.
“I’ll continue to count on you from here on.”
To train at a meaningful level, I basically had to keep training with Lee Se-eun.
If I helped and Han Sang-ah and Jung Oh-hoon kept working, they would reach a much higher level soon enough.
Then a droplet tapped my cheek.
“Huh, why is water leaking from the ceiling?”
Was the Hunter Association so broke it couldn’t even fix a roof? I checked the ceiling and let out a soft oh.
“We caused some trouble huh.”
Lee Se-eun glanced up and lifted a shoulder.
“We’ll just tell them to invest more and reinforce it.”
The ceiling was shattered clean through. Not only the ceiling. The space we fought in looked like a dog chew toy after a beagle got done with it.
“This wasn’t our fault. This place was built on the premise that it would be used this way and would break this way.”
“I hope the Association President also takes it that generously.”
Either way, it didn’t matter that this room collapsed. The effect of ingesting the Banshee’s Tears was proven.
Now I looked forward to what I would do at that tournament or whatever it was. We would see soon enough.