"Hooh, that’s quite the confidence, huh? Alright! But I’ll check and decide the opponent you name. Go on—say it."
"Jeong Sihyun."
Fuck.
Sihyun muttered a small curse at the premonition that hit dead-on without a single hair off, and slowly took one step forward.
Then he adjusted the cap he was wearing, pulled it down deeper, and lined up in front of Jang Myunghoon, who was smiling like something rotten.
'Jeong Sihyun, you’re an adult. Don’t be the same as kids….'
"You insect-like bastard. Trash like you just needs to stay crushed under me. Don’t get cocky just because you twitch around for no reason."
Snap.
Coincidentally, Myunghoon kept throwing provocations that were childish as hell, but effective specifically on Sihyun.
And of course, the thin string of reason Sihyun had been forcing himself to hold onto until it was frayed like a rag got cut clean in one go.
Sihyun curled the corner of his mouth up and tossed the issued wooden practice sword to the side.
"It’s fine if I pick whatever weapon I want, right, Professor."
"Uh, y-yeah, right."
But before the answer even finished, Sihyun grabbed the blunt club hanging nearby, tapped the floor with the tip of his foot a couple times, and spoke.
"See, I know a really useful martial art for times like this. There’s this Beggars’ Sect thing called the Dog-Beating Staff Technique—fits bastards like you perfectly."
"Martial art? Bullshit. Even to the end, you’re all talk."
Sihyun smiled brightly, like he was already excited.
Dog-Beating Staff Technique.
A martial art that a Beggars’ Sect elder supposedly created to chase off vicious dogs that rushed them when they begged. People said the forms were exquisite despite the shabby name, but he didn’t need any other reason.
He pulled it out because it fit this exact situation, that was all.
But Myunghoon just looked at Sihyun speaking with his head lowered and his voice gentle, and mocked him without understanding a thing. Of course, that smile vanished within five seconds of Sihyun raising the club.
Sihyun’s foot stepped away—and then in an instant he closed the distance. His hand flashed up over his head, then came down so fast it didn’t even properly register.
"Kuhk!"
Myunghoon stood there blankly, got smashed across the back by the club, and flopped onto the hard-packed dirt floor. And then Sihyun’s hands got even lighter, like he’d gone insane.
Like he was putting on a damn drumming performance, the club flew back and forth between both hands and hammered down on the curled-up body without pause.
"Khk! Agh! Agh!"
Myunghoon couldn’t even fight back and just kept screaming. But the drum-bursting sound didn’t lessen at all—it kept ringing out in a steady rhythm.
"It hurts! Wuaaaah it hurts!! Ugh! Please save me!!"
"I’m not gonna kill you, you little shit. Shut up. If you bite your tongue, you’ll actually die, okay?"
"Kehk!"
That was when the club’s trajectory, at some point, started moving in a way that went past simple and became bizarrely strange.
If you didn’t know martial arts deeply, it would look like he was just beating him however he felt, but the Dog-Beating Staff Technique had a pretty deep underlying principle.
And because it was structured to hit evenly without really leaving any one spot out, if you controlled your strength, it could turn into an excellent beating martial art.
Sihyun slowly lifted the corner of his mouth as he brought the club down again on Myunghoon’s forearm he’d already hit a couple times earlier.
"Wait! Wait!"
This is…. a martial art? You’re just beating him with whatever you’ve got!!
The professor, who’d been blankly listening to the harmony of screams for a moment because the situation didn’t immediately compute, rushed over and started trying to stop Sihyun.
After glancing at Myunghoon, who’d been beaten so hard it looked like the phrase “beat the dust out of him” was literal, the professor sighed, shaking his head side to side with a stunned face.
"Student Sihyun wins. You two, take Student Myunghoon to the infirmary.
As the professor—who’d picked out who the squid family was like a ghost—pointed at Myunghoon lying sprawled out like a rag, two guys who were trembling with pale-blue faces hesitated and shuffled forward.
Flinch.
And the moment their eyes collided with Sihyun’s half-lidded, bloodshot-looking gaze, they startled in advance, jerked like they’d convulsed, and quickly started hauling Myunghoon away.
"Haa…. I’ll admit Student Myunghoon’s words were too much. I won’t give you demerits separately, Student Sihyun. But it will all be recorded on the evaluation sheet. Are you okay with that?"
"I don’t care."
Sihyun clicked his tongue lightly, grinned, bowed to the professor, and went back to his spot.
He felt so refreshed—honestly the most refreshed he’d been in a long time—that he almost regretted what the hell he’d been holding back for. Of course, he’d had the excuse that it was class, and Myunghoon had pointed at him first, so he’d used his hands, but still.
'And I thought he was a little more tame…. Well, it’s not like there’s any normal bastard among Hunters anyway….'
When Sihyun, dressed cleaner than anyone, answered indifferently, the professor kept sighing as he roughly paired off the other students, then stood there blankly, lost in thought.
Dog-Beating Staff Technique—what a truly shocking martial art.
***
A few days later, expedition day.
Sihyun snorted when he saw Myunghoon walking around fine, like he’d gotten treatment.
No matter how wronged he felt, the way he still glared with dissatisfied eyes even after getting beaten like that really pissed Sihyun off.
Do I need to beat him until he learns. Sihyun licked his lips once as he recalled the feel of it, and lightly flexed his fingers.
Freeze.
'Ah…. I wasn’t this kind of person. Fuck, it’s annoying. That squid bastard, seriously.'
But at the self-loathing that surged up in the moment, Sihyun lowered his head and let out a sigh. When you really thought about it, he was thirty-three now, and it was pathetic as hell that even at this age he was getting so furious at some kid in his early twenties.
"Alright!! The teammates should’ve been delivered to your watches! Check and get on the assigned bus!"
Just then, maybe he’d used some kind of amplification magic, because the administrator’s voice from far away boomed right next to his ear.
Sihyun naturally lifted his wrist to check his watch, and he couldn’t help spitting out another curse.
-Team H: Jeong Sihyun, Lee Minseong, Yoo Myeongcheol, Kim Changwoo, Kim Seol, Jang Myunghoon….
Now he had to move as a team with that squid bastard going forward. The schedule ahead was obvious even without looking, and his steps toward the bus got slow and soggy.
"Ah, goddamn…."
Of course the bus Team H had to take was parked somewhere you had to walk a good distance from where they were standing now.
So, climbing onto the bus a bit late, Sihyun felt the inside—packed with heavy silence—welcome him, and without a word he planted his ass in the very front seat.
"Hey."
'Does that crazy bastard really not value his life.'
Right then, like he’d been waiting, the squid’s whining voice rammed into Sihyun’s ear.
Sihyun simply ignored the voice and neatly arranged the issued bag and sword with a couple taps, placing them tidily on his knees.
Then from the back, he heard a voice muttering and huffing. Maybe he’d gotten a little scared, because instead of charging in like before, he only muttered—but even that was so pathetic it made Sihyun want to laugh.
"Hello! Hi, everyone! I’m Sa Cheongrin, and I’ll be leading you today. I’m looking forward to working with you!"
"Wooaah!! Moonlit Blue Cloud from the Baekhwa Guild!!"
Just then, a Hunter Sihyun had never seen before boarded the bus, did a fist-and-palm salute, and started introducing himself.
Maybe he really did have a name, because students who knew it started whispering and talking.
Of course, Sihyun didn’t care about any of it. He hid his face with his cap, closed his eyes, and let all the words go in one ear and out the other.
After that, the bus kept running nonstop along the wide road toward the destination.
Where Team H was headed now was Paju, Gyeonggi Province. The place where an F-rank Gate that had appeared yesterday was located.
In fact, aside from explosive Gates, normal Gates were being claimed in an instant through auctions and trades between guilds. But one of them was an exception.
In the case of F-rank, clearing was easy, but nothing valuable at all came out, so to Hunters—who were required by Hunter law to clear all Gates—they were like a chicken rib you couldn’t really eat or throw away.
The ones who stepped up to handle that were the Hunter Association, and after that, they were using it well as part of training while also raising trust in Hunters.
"We’ll be facing the Gate soon. It won’t be dangerous, but even so, you absolutely can’t separate from each other. The Gate is still an unknown space, so you never know what could happen and where."
Feeling the bus vibrations slow, Sihyun slowly opened his eyes.
It was the first time even for Sihyun to resolve a Gate officially, so he felt like he needed to carve the leader’s words into his head.
The bus crawled along slowly for a while, and only stopped after it got close enough that the Gate was clearly visible even through the window.
"Whoaa! That’s crazy."
"We’re really going in?"
The bus, which had been quiet until then, filled with a soft noise.
The Gate, shining white light and floating just slightly above the ground as it radiated a clear presence, looked special despite being only F-rank.
Following Sa Cheongrin’s lead, Sihyun got off the bus slowly and started picking the Gate apart again.
'This too. There’s that natural energy here too.'
When he’d first seen the C-rank explosive Gate, he’d sworn he would never get involved and had shut it out and erased it from his mind, but now that he was moving around busily to become a Hunter, Sihyun was only now properly analyzing Gates.
Honestly, he still didn’t really know what was what, but one thing was certain.
Compared to C-rank, F-rank had a really, really small amount of that natural energy in it. It seemed like the amount of it changed depending on the rank.
"Alright, before we go in, there’s something we need to decide first! We’ll pick a team leader. Anyone want to do it?!"
As if to break Sihyun out of his thoughts, Sa Cheongrin’s bright, ringing voice came out, and silence followed.
But after a moment, a familiar voice popped out and flowed into Sihyun’s ears.
"Me! I’ll do it!"
It was Jang Myunghoon.
He dashed out, stopped in front of the leader, then turned his gaze slightly and looked at Sihyun with a triumphant expression.
Then he snapped his head back to face the leader so sharply that if this were a comic, there would’ve been some loud sound effect slapped on it.
'Yeah, do a lot, you bastard…. Taewoon, who’s the same age as you, was so calm and serious and gentle, and you’re what. Ugh.'
Sihyun looked at Myunghoon, who kept trying to check and keep him in line every time he did anything, with tired eyes, then shook his head side to side.