The National Hunter Association.
A new state institution launched to manage hunters and gates after they came into being.
These days it was said to have become closer to a private company running half independently.
Still, the hunter license issued by the Hunter Association was a certification granted by the state.
Entering a gate without a hunter license was illegal.
Awakening and then failing to register was also illegal.
The Association was quite literally the sole body in charge of everything related to hunters.
"Wow, so this is the Hunter Association?"
Ha-yeon swallowed a breath as she looked at the enormous building before her.
Garam, who had been here often given the nature of porter work, wasn't much different.
The Hunter Association's building was huge enough to take his breath away every time he saw it.
"Ha-yeon, has your school never brought you here even once?"
Wasn't it the Hunter Officers' Academy?
A school famous at home and even abroad, and she had never been to the Hunter Association.
"We're hunter hopefuls, not hunters."
That was true as well.
Garam gave a small nod and was about to move toward the entrance of the Hunter Association when,
"Oh, come to think of it, where's Carmilla?"
If not for Ha-yeon's question he would have walked straight in.
At her question, Garam looked around. Carmilla wasn't visible anywhere nearby.
It wasn't the so-called concealment state that made her visible only to him, either.
She simply wasn't there.
Even so, Garam wasn't particularly worried about her.
And with good reason.
"She's asleep."
"What?"
Garam sighed and recalled what Carmilla had whispered to him in secret a little earlier.
Just after they left the house, right before entering the busy downtown streets where the crowds thickened.
Carmilla had looked at the mass of people, thought it over for a moment, said she was going to sleep, and vanished on the spot.
More precisely, she had turned into red smoke and been absorbed into him.
"That's remarkable."
"She'll come out again sometime. Let's hurry inside."
Leaving behind Ha-yeon, who stared steadily at him at the word absorbed, he set off walking.
Inside the Association was a vast hall and a great many people.
Most of them walked around carrying weapons like swords, spears, and bows.
Unimaginable in the old days, they said, but it was a familiar sight to Garam and Ha-yeon.
By the time they were growing up, hunters were something that simply existed as a matter of course.
"Big brother, let's hurry. They said the registration exam is over that way."
Ha-yeon tugged at Garam's collar, but Garam began walking in the opposite direction.
"Where are you going?"
"Because of this."
He drew a business card out from inside his coat.
The card Hae-rang had given him at the hospital.
The card she had handed over telling him to come take the Holy Knights entrance exam.
It was the very reason he had come to the Hunter Association today in the first place.
"You go and take your Grade exam. I'll come find you later."
"Okay. Come quickly."
Ha-yeon waved her hand wildly as she moved off.
Garam watched her for a long while, and only after she disappeared around the corner did he approach the Hunter Association counter.
"Then let me get going too."
There must have been no customers today, because the receptionist called Garam over the moment he pulled a number ticket.
As he approached, the receptionist gave him a sidelong glance as though he were a nuisance.
"How can I help you?"
"I have one thing to ask. I received this business card. Where should I go?"
"What business card?"
Was he busy, or just bothered?
The receptionist sitting at the counter answered without even looking at Garam, only turning over documents.
"This business card."
SLIDE.
Garam set the black card down on the counter.
The receptionist let out a sigh and shifted his gaze to the card Garam had handed over,
"Wh-what? Where did you get this card?"
and at the name Han Hae-rang written on the card, he shot up out of his seat in shock.
"I received it. From the woman herself."
"P-please wait a moment. I think I need to bring the Department Head."
With that, the receptionist vanished in an instant.
Seeing this drove home just how enormous a presence Han Hae-rang was.
To think that a single business card would get someone as senior as a Department Head summoned.
How long did he wait for the staff?
"Heeey, Mr. Garam. You came sooner than I expected."
Unlike the last time he'd seen her, Hae-rang was in shabby clothes, pushing up the sunglasses she was wearing as she smiled.
"H-Hunter Han Hae-rang. If an S-Grade hunter moves around this recklessly, p-problems could arise......."
And beside her, a bald man who kept sweating and fidgeting at Hae-rang's side.
Judging by the receptionist walking up next to him half out of his wits, that man must be the Department Head.
Fortunate, if you could call it that.
There weren't many people in the Hunter Association, so no great commotion broke out.
-Wait, isn't that Han Hae-rang?
-What? Why is an S-Grade here?
-Hey, get a photo, a photo.
Even so, a stir was rising among the few people who were around.
The sound of photos being taken and their gradually rising voices reached him faintly.
"Long time no see, Mr. Garam. Today is the long, long awaited day of your exam! Any questions or anything?"
She whispered with an arm slung around his shoulders.
Garam slipped out from under her arm and asked,
"Where are we going now?"
"You're impatient, Mr. Garam. Come this way. Department Head, don't follow us."
"Understood......."
The Department Head answered with his shoulders slumping.
Leaving him behind, Hae-rang patted Garam's back and started walking.
At first it looked like an ordinary Association corridor, but as he followed her the foot traffic gradually thinned,
TAP, TAP
until at last it grew so quiet that nothing could be heard but the sound of their two sets of footsteps.
Quiet enough to raise the pointless worry that if he kept following her, he'd be exterminated on the spot as a Vampir.
"Well, entrance exam or not, take it easy. It won't be that difficult."
Hae-rang said that, but he had no intention of doing this halfway.
The Holy Knights might have a way to fix Ha-yeon's mana circuit.
He intended to aim for the best treatment he could possibly get.
How long did he walk behind Hae-rang, making that resolve?
The place he arrived at, following her, was a broad training ground.
'No, this feels closer to a colosseum than a training ground.......'
Spectator seats ringing the circular training ground.
And directly opposite, an enormous door whose purpose he couldn't identify.
If this were ancient Rome, the atmosphere said a lion would come bursting out of it.
As Garam looked around, Hae-rang came over.
"All right then, shall we run the entrance exam?"
"Is this the rookie you mentioned, Team Leader?"
A man appeared in the spectator seats.
Perhaps in his twenties, by the look of him.
The man with intense red hair wore the same white uniform Hae-rang had been wearing when Garam first saw her.
He must be a member of the Holy Knights, the same as Hae-rang.
"Lee Jin-seong? Weren't you off duty today?"
"I was curious about the rookie the Captain mentioned, so I came to take a look......."
The man called Lee Jin-seong looked Garam up and down and then let out a small laugh.
It was the sort of look you'd give a pathetic little kid.
"Doesn't look like much to me. Shouldn't we go get another one of those curse scrolls you tore up that time?"
Rudeness that came out as easily as breathing.
"Haah, Lee Jin-seong. Why do you go crooked every time a rookie shows up? Hm? Sorry, Mr. Garam. This bastard is what they call these days, what was it, a problem child? Something like that."
Hae-rang apologized, but Garam himself was unbothered.
'This is about average for a hunter.'
Hae-rang was simply too nice to begin with.
Hunters who strutted around on the strength of their Grade were as thick as weeds in every direction once you got to B-Grade.
Living as a porter, he'd had plenty of occasions to meet hunters like that.
Compared to those bastards, the one in front of him was at the level of a small child.
"Well, since he's the one the Captain brought in, we'll run the test. Not that it'll work out anyway."
"What do you mean, it won't work out anyway?"
"Here's the thing. The entrance exam itself is simple. It's a Vampir hunt."
The Holy Knights, indeed.
She said they were holding a Vampir captive alive, no less, as though it were nothing at all.
A Vampir being here in the first place was a shock, and what Hae-rang said next was a bigger one.
"The problem is that the lowest-tier Vampir you'll be facing is stronger than most C-Grade boss monsters."
"What? How is that possible?"
C-Grade boss monsters caused more fatalities than the monsters of any other Grade combined.
The reason was a fairly monstrous difficulty curve even compared with boss monsters of other Grades: too strong for C-Grades, too weak for B-Grades.
And now he was being told that the lowest-tier Vampir was at minimum the level of a C-Grade boss monster.
'Gallos, the one I fought in the gate, was an Intermediate Vampir.'
A being on par with a B-Grade monster if you went by stats alone.
He had managed to bring Gallos down one way or another,
but that victory had come thanks to weakening him with the True Progenitor's power.
'Just what level am I at without the True Progenitor's power?'
At the question that suddenly surfaced, Garam clenched and unclenched his fist.
Excluding the small fry he had killed while working as a porter, Gallos was the only proper opponent he had ever faced.
And even that had been too special a situation to compare with other monsters.
"Don't worry. I'm not telling you to kill it. Hold your own reasonably well and you'll be recognized as a knight right away."
Perhaps thinking that Garam's stiff expression came from nerves, Hae-rang struck a fighting pose beside him and cheered him on.
Live long enough and you see everything, apparently.
To think he'd be cheered on by an S-Grade hunter.
"What I'm telling you is that holding his own is impossible too."
Jin-seong said it with a shrug.
Hae-rang, smiling awkwardly as she encouraged Garam, likewise didn't seem to think that Garam would kill the Vampir.
'Using the True Progenitor's power, killing a Vampir would be nothing.'
But if he immediately used the True Progenitor's power, Domination for instance, being caught by Hae-rang was a certainty.
So this time he planned to use only Crimson Flame, an ordinary skill driven purely by mana.
'I should test it while I have the chance.'
Once he was in the Holy Knights, chances were high that he wouldn't be able to use the True Progenitor's power openly anyway.
In that case, checking in advance where he stood wouldn't be a bad idea.
What level he was at without using the True Progenitor's power.
"Don't you lend out weapons?"
"You can grab a weapon over there."
Where Hae-rang pointed was an armory with all sorts of weapons lined up.
With those words, she went up to the spectator seats after Jin-seong.
When Garam approached the armory, there was every kind of weapon imaginable.
"Still, familiar is best."
What Garam reached out and chose was an axe.
A hand axe of a size he could hold in one hand.
It was the weapon he had favored most in his porter days.
"Rookie Knight, Kim Garam. The entrance exam will now begin. Your opponent is a lowest-tier Vampir. Do you consent?"
Once he had chosen a weapon and stood in the training ground, Hae-rang's voice came down from the spectator seats.
"I consent."
CLANK—!
The moment Garam answered, the door ahead of him began to open.
"KRYAAAAGH! KAKH!"
What came out of it was a monster with pale skin and flesh torn away here and there, resembling a zombie.
The Vampir in front of him had a form that brought a ghoul to mind.
'That's a lowest-tier Vampir?'
Gallos, whom he had seen inside the gate, had been deranged in mind but close to human in appearance.
The Vampir in front of him bore no resemblance to a human beyond the fact that it walked on two legs.
"Go on, thrash around a bit. Lucky if you don't die, though."
Jin-seong was still sneering even after going up above,
but Garam didn't care in the slightest.
FWOOSH—!
Flames bloomed from Garam's axe.
The acrid smell of soot flowed up his nose.
Of course, not using the True Progenitor's power didn't mean he was going to do this halfway.
FWOOOOOSH—!
Crimson Flame burned fiercely.
All the more desperately, because he couldn't use the True Progenitor's power.
He had a reason to get into the Holy Knights with the best possible result.
'All right. Shall we shoot a movie?'
Genre: a thrilling action blockbuster.