"Let's get started."
Yang Jin-hak jeered at him with a dank sort of malice.
He looked thoroughly delighted at the prospect of beating on a D-Grade hunter.
'He's not using mana or skills, so there's no chance of serious injury.'
The weapon in his hands was an ordinary sparring weapon as well, hardly enough to wound a hunter's body.
"If you won't come, I will."
Yang Jin-hak leapt lightly and his hammer came flying at him.
WHOOSH!
He hadn't used mana, but it was still a hammer swung with a B-Grade hunter's body.
A speed invisible not only to ordinary people but to most hunters.
Yet somehow Garam could see that hammer coming clearly.
'I can see it.'
Was this what it felt like when a person's dynamic vision expanded to its extreme?
Garam barely managed to dodge the hammer swung at him.
"What?"
Yang Jin-hak's eyes flew wide; he clearly hadn't expected Garam to dodge the hammer.
His feelings weren't hard to understand.
The gap between B-Grade and D-Grade was as wide as the gap between a professional fighter and a small child.
If a five-year-old had dodged a punch thrown at full force by a professional fighter, a reaction like that would be only natural.
'Is this the True Progenitor's power too?'
It was physical ability that couldn't come from someone of his Grade.
That didn't mean he could counterattack, though.
For now, dodging was the whole of it.
Yang Jin-hak's hammer flowed on like water, and Garam couldn't see an opening to slip into.
'Then I'll just throw something out and see.'
Garam swung his axe timed to the moment Yang Jin-hak's hammer came down.
It was a fairly sharp blow, in its way.
"Ha. You call that an axe swing?"
Yang Jin-hak snorted and dodged Garam's axe easily.
"Listen, you bastard. Swing it like that and I couldn't let you hit me even if I wanted to."
The hammer swung again in an instant.
Garam hurried to raise his axe to block Yang Jin-hak's attack, but
he flinched.
The same subtle misalignment as before occurred.
THWACK!
Yang Jin-hak's hammer struck Garam in the side.
"GUHAK!"
"You moron of a bastard. Don't tell me you don't even know how to use a weapon? That's absolutely hilarious. Heh heh heh."
Yang Jin-hak sneered down at him, felled in a single blow.
Even so, Garam paid it no mind and got back to his feet.
"You've got grit, at least. Not that I know how long it'll last."
Yang Jin-hak began swinging the hammer again without mercy.
Just when it came from above, it was suddenly on the right.
Just when it flew in from the left, it came from above again.
Barely fending off the hammer as it swung with uncanny unpredictability, Garam kept watching how Yang Jin-hak swung and recovered it.
'What is it that's different between Yang Jin-hak and me?'
His weapon and Garam's were nearly the same kind.
The only difference was crushing versus splitting; the way they were used was similar.
And yet Yang Jin-hak handled his weapon better than he did.
He had to work out why.
'Simply because he's B-Grade?'
No.
If that were it, every hunter below B-Grade would have died long ago.
He had to think it through.
There would never be a better moment for a realization than this.
"Hahahaha! That's right! This is where you belong! How dare you stand up to me, a Saryeon Society hunter!"
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
While Garam was deep in thought,
Yang Jin-hak's hammer battered him in an instant.
It was a sparring weapon, and an attack with no mana behind it, so it wouldn't leave serious wounds.
Even so, the pain was the same.
"Dodge it like you did before! Go on, dodge!"
"Urgh."
In the end Yang Jin-hak's assault sent Garam flying into the wall.
He'd been struck so hard that blood ran from his forehead,
and his head rang all over.
'Ah, I think I've got it now.'
His mind was blank.
The sensation of floating above the clouds.
Yang Jin-hak's movements, which he had watched without missing a single one, distorted inside his head.
"Wh-what the hell. You."
Beyond his swaying vision, he could see Yang Jin-hak growing flustered.
"Y-you think staggering around like that will make me go easy on you!"
Yang Jin-hak swung the hammer at Garam once more,
WHIP-
and Garam pulled his body back lightly, dodging the attack.
At the same time.
"Huh?"
WHOOSH!
The axe flew in, aimed at Yang Jin-hak's neck.
A perfectly sharp blow, utterly different from before.
Yang Jin-hak raised an arm and blocked it.
CLANG!
Naturally, being a B-Grade hunter, there was no wound.
On the outside.
'Wh-what? A D-Grade's attack made my arm throb?'
A single swing of the axe had left a bruise on his arm.
On the body of a B-Grade hunter, a body you could call wrought iron.
"You damned bastaaard!"
Perhaps because his pride had been scratched by taking damage from a D-Grade's attack,
Yang Jin-hak swung the hammer with every intention of killing Garam,
but his hammer never landed on Garam again.
"What the hell."
Yang Jin-hak's attacks hadn't changed in the slightest from before.
Uncanny, unpredictable attacks, hard to guess when and where they would come from.
And yet the reason Garam could dodge them was this.
"It was centrifugal force. I was overthinking it."
It was because Garam had grasped the principle of how to handle a long-reach weapon.
Until now, Garam had swung the axe, stopped, and then moved into his next motion.
With a small hand axe, striking in separate, broken-off blows was most efficient.
That was why a small stiffness inevitably arose between attack and defense.
And in that gap came the subtle misalignment.
'But there was no need for that.'
In the end it was centrifugal force.
Swinging the weapon, recovering it, and swinging again.
As though performing every one of those motions as a single act.
There was no need to break it up partway.
CLUNK-
He raised the axe to block Yang Jin-hak's swinging hammer,
and spun.
He turned his body a full circle and swung the axe.
Yang Jin-hak dodged that axe, but
he didn't stop there. He recovered it in the direction of the swing and swung again, recovered again, and swung yet again.
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG.
The situation had completely reversed from moments before.
Garam, who had been desperate just to block Yang Jin-hak's attacks,
was now the one making Yang Jin-hak desperate to fend off his.
'A little more, just a little more.'
The hand gripping the axe moved on its own as though it had a will of its own.
The sensation that someone else was controlling his body.
Experience that wasn't his own was being used as though it were.
It was a sensation similar to fighting the Vampir in the entrance exam.
'What the hell! How, how is he handling a weapon better than me in a matter of minutes? Was this bastard hiding his power?'
A greenhorn who hadn't even known how to use an axe moments ago
was overwhelming him within those few minutes.
The relentless barrage of axe swings was enough to create the illusion of a 'different person' entirely.
"This makes no sense!"
B-Grade and D-Grade. Right now such Grades had no bearing at all.
There was only master and novice.
Only that boundary.
Yang Jin-hak tried somehow to break through the assault and swing his hammer, but
WHOOSH-
Garam dodged even that attack easily, and, "Cleaving Slash."
triggered the skill he had taken from the Kobold King.
The tip of the axe shone white,
CRUNCH!
and Garam's axe, surging up from below, struck Yang Jin-hak square in the jaw.
"Gu, hak."
Yang Jin-hak collapsed to the floor.
Being B-Grade, it seemed less that he'd taken real damage and more that he couldn't get up because of the humiliation of losing to a D-Grade hunter, and a greenhorn who couldn't even handle a weapon properly minutes ago at that.
"Haah, haah, haah."
His breath was up in his throat.
[Your proficiency in axemanship has exceeded a set threshold.]
[Generating the Axemanship skill.]
[Measuring the skill's Grade and level.]
[Normal skill: Axemanship (B) Lv5 acquired.]
A strange skill rose before his eyes.
Only after that skill appeared did Garam feel his head finally settle.
'What was that just now?'
The sensation that his body wasn't his own.
And at the same time, the sensation of perceiving himself more clearly than ever.
'Like remembering something I'd forgotten.......'
He couldn't remember at all how he had done it.
"What the hell was that just now!"
Yang Jin-hak lifted his upper body off the floor and shouted.
His eyes were wide and fixed on Garam, as though he couldn't accept the current situation at all.
'Then again, I can't blame him for not understanding.'
Garam himself couldn't understand what had just happened.
If Yang Jin-hak understood it, that would be strange in its own right.
'It's probably connected to the True Progenitor's power.'
There was no other way to explain a phenomenon like this.
But just because he couldn't understand it didn't necessarily make it a bad thing.
If anything, it was good, and only good.
'I can get strong fast.'
Whether it was the Blood Point Stone the other day or the phenomenon just now, either way he was growing stronger through the True Progenitor's power.
'At this rate, reaching S-Grade might not take long.'
As time passed, paths toward S-Grade seemed to be opening up one by one.
And as one of those paths, Garam turned his gaze to Yang Jin-hak, who was still lying on the floor.
"I won, so I'll be taking that six million won. Ah, and the spirit medicine too."
Burp.
This was the giving tree, no, the giving Yang Jin-hak.
"You, son of a bitch......."
Yang Jin-hak braced a hand on the floor and tried to rise.
He still hadn't loosened his grip on the hammer.
Yang Jin-hak glared at him with murder in his eyes,
but Garam wasn't the least bit afraid.
And with good reason. As with most so-called thugs,
people of Yang Jin-hak's sort were, for the most part, the kind who didn't have the nerve to actually kill anyone.
"Think it through. Plenty of people saw us walk in here together. What would everyone say if I came out as a corpse?"
A D-Grade hunter that Yang Jin-hak had dragged into a spar comes out dead?
Then that same day Yang Jin-hak and the Saryeon Society along with him would be drowning in it.
The Saryeon Society would probably sink Yang Jin-hak themselves before he ever saw a trial.
He might be the lowest rung, but Garam was Holy Knights.
And there was no way Hae-rang, suffering as she was from a talent shortage, would sit still.
That was a fact Yang Jin-hak didn't know, though.
'I've worked years in the hunter industry. My eye for this is accurate.'
Yang Jin-hak didn't have the guts to kill him.
Garam slowly crouched down beside the fallen Yang Jin-hak.
And spoke in a low, coaxing voice.
"Let's let this pass quietly. Six million won, no, just hand over the damages properly and we'll call this spar your win."
"Urgh, you damned bastard."
Yang Jin-hak seemed to have nothing to say against Garam's words; he only swallowed a groan and clenched his fist.
"Damn it! Give me your account number. And if you give me what you promised, nothing said in here gets spread around."
"Of course, of course."
He had no intention of provoking Yang Jin-hak and getting tangled up with the Saryeon Society.
There were no bastards of worse quality than that lot.
"Reading out my account number."
Very nice.
He hadn't expected to actually win.
He'd unexpectedly gained a skill for handling an axe,
and squeezed money out of Yang Jin-hak.
At this rate, his objective could be called a great success.
As he took out his phone to read the account number out to Yang Jin-hak,
-Mr. Garam, emergency summons. Come to the Association's First Operations Meeting Room by six.
a message arrived from Hae-rang.