'What am I even looking at right now?'
Watching Garam's fight from the spectator seats, Jin-seong found that thought surfacing in his head unbidden.
Back when Garam first picked up the hand axe, Jin-seong hadn't thought he would pass this exam.
'That's the kind of thing porters carry around.'
Short reach, and compared with a sword, a vague striking point for putting real force behind a blow.
Cheap and low-priced, the hand axe was quite literally the weapon porters carried for self-defense.
Coating the hand axe in a fire-type skill deserved some credit, but only that far.
If a mere fire-type skill could kill a Vampir, the Holy Knights wouldn't exist in the first place.
'But that bastard.......'
The Garam fighting in front of his eyes was different from what a mere D-Grade hunter should be.
No, he was alien.
"KEEAAAAGH!"
The Vampir's sharp claws flew at Garam.
"Filthy fast!"
WHIP!
Perhaps because he was of the Vampir race himself,
he couldn't see the Vampir's incoming attack,
but with superhuman senses he barely dodged it.
At the same time he swung the axe.
"You don't even have a mana stone and you're filthy tough."
CRUNCH—!
Garam's axe bit into the Vampir's shoulder.
FWOOOSH—!
The flames burning on the axe set the Vampir alight.
"KEEEEEK!"
Wrapped in flame, the Vampir shrieked wildly.
Flames that would have reduced an ordinary hunter to ash and more.
But 'this time as well,' the Vampir swung its fist again, perfectly fine.
'How is he moving like that?'
The reason even a lowest-tier Vampir was rated stronger than a C-Grade boss monster was simple.
The Vampir race was just brutishly strong.
Strength, speed, mana.
Garam, barely Awakened, should have found it impossible to match a Vampir in any of them.
That was how it should be.
And in fact it was.
And yet Garam was matching the Vampir move for move.
He had even landed several attacks that, without its regenerative ability, would have killed it dozens of times over.
"Well? I told you he'd be quite the help, didn't I?"
At Hae-rang's whisper beside him, Jin-seong almost nodded without thinking.
If Garam grew just one step further from there, he'd become a decently useful asset.
Even so, out of defiance or something like it, Jin-seong forced himself to shake his head.
"It's still only D-Grade level, isn't it?"
He could admit that Garam was outstanding.
But that was as far as it went.
He was somehow matching the Vampir move for move, but that too would soon reach its limit.
Sure enough.
"GUHAK!"
Garam took the Vampir's attack and went flying.
It was a single blow, but even that must have done considerable damage, because he slammed down far away.
"Urgh, that hurts like hell."
For an arm swung while on fire, the impact was like being hit by a truck.
If he hadn't guarded properly, that one blow alone would have put him down.
"No wonder it's rated boss-monster class."
An enemy at a level he could barely handle as he was.
Even so.
'I can't give up.'
More precisely, there was no reason to give up.
Not over something like this, when the chance had finally come.
The life he'd lived until now had been harder than this.
"Ssss. Hoo."
Thump, thump.
His heart pounded.
The sensation of something spraying out of his brain in order to beat an enemy he couldn't beat.
"KRRK?"
The Vampir must have sensed something off as well, because it swung a fist at Garam, but,
'Ah, now I can finally see properly.'
perhaps because of his violently pounding heart,
Garam's eyes dilated,
and rather than dodging by relying on his senses,
he 'saw' the Vampir's attack and dodged it.
'The way to kill that bastard is... roast it, heart and all.'
His thoughts flowed of their own accord.
How to win.
How to fight most efficiently.
The sensation of being himself and yet not himself.
TAP—!
He leapt at the Vampir again.
Simply setting the bastard's body on fire was meaningless.
FWOOOOSH—!
Even so, Crimson Flame bloomed on the axe once more.
"Hah!"
He swung the burning axe at the Vampir along exactly the same arc as before.
As if refusing to fall for the same attack twice, the Vampir reached out to knock the axe aside.
'I can react!'
Until moments ago even blocking had been a struggle,
but now his body moved like flowing water.
Just before the Vampir's blow could knock his hand aside, he tossed the axe toward his other hand,
WHIP!
and snatched it with that hand.
At the same time he drove the axe down at the Vampir's heart!
"Go croak!"
CRUNCH—!
The axe lodged precisely in its chest.
But it was still one step short.
Unless the heart burst completely, it would clearly regenerate.
'Just burning it won't kill it.'
Melting a bit of skin had regenerated immediately.
'Then burn the heart and the blood so it can't regenerate at all.'
A Vampir's endless regeneration came from blood in the end.
If the heart that supplied that blood burned, not even a Vampir could regenerate.
There was a reason for the old legend that a stake through the heart kills them.
"Haaaaah!"
Flames burned atop the buried axe.
Burning deeper, more threateningly, the Crimson Flame reached the heart.
"KRAAAAGH!"
Recognizing that this time it was truly in danger, the Vampir twisted its body with all its strength, but,
TSSSSSSS—!
he was a little faster.
The Crimson Flame touched the Vampir's heart and, giving off the smell of rotten meat, cooked it medium-well from the inside out.
[Crimson Flame (C) Lv 1 has risen to Crimson Flame (C) Lv 3.]
Two skill level-ups, no less.
Whether thanks to that or not, the Vampir had burned pitch black.
"Hoo. Is that enough?"
At Garam's question as he looked up at the stands, Hae-rang took off her sunglasses and leapt down from the spectator seats.
"That was beyond my imagination, Mr. Garam."
She spared a glance at the Vampir, already reduced to ash, and took Garam's hand.
"Absolutely a yes. Let's sign the contract right now. If you run away now, I really will come after you."
"Please don't say things like that. It's frightening."
It really was frightening.
As it was, he jumped every time Hae-rang came near.
Her chasing him down to catch him?
He'd die of nervous exhaustion before she ever found out he was the True Progenitor.
"Kim Garam. What in the world are you?"
This time it was Jin-seong who spoke to Garam, wearing the expression of a man who'd chewed shit.
'This is impossible.'
What he'd just seen was power that might rival B-Grade, maybe even A-Grade.
Stranger still, the man in front of him was still a D-Grade hunter.
While fighting the Vampir, Garam had climbed to the level of a B-Grade as though ascending stairs, and once the fight ended he had come back down to D-Grade as though descending them.
'If this is merely the power of a D-Grade, then what if this man becomes A-Grade? Or S-Grade?'
The being in front of him was astonishing enough to bring such thoughts on unbidden.
Astonishing enough that he suspected the man might be hiding his power.
A thought he could only have because he didn't know that what had just happened wasn't anything Garam had intended.
"Just an ordinary porter. No, a D-Grade hunter now."
Garam shrugged and answered, wiping his sweat with the towel Hae-rang handed him.
"Ha. An ordinary porter? That's absurd."
Jin-seong let out a sigh of disbelief and turned to leave, looking fed up.
Garam watched him go and tilted his head, not understanding.
"What's the matter with him?"
Hae-rang shrugged and answered with a smile.
"I told you. He's a problem child."
***
As soon as the entrance exam ended, Garam headed for where the Grade exams were held.
A different training ground from the one he'd been in.
There, a number of hunters had gathered, waiting their turn for the Grade exam.
"What's this, what's this? Why did you come here?"
Hae-rang, whom he had definitely parted from at the training ground earlier, was standing right behind him.
"Hah, you startled me. Didn't you go back?"
"I was going to just leave, but you headed for the Grade exam hall, so I followed along."
S-Grade, indeed.
Forget sensing her follow him; he hadn't even known she was there until she spoke right behind him.
Making his heart clench came free with it.
"More to the point, is it all right for you to come somewhere this crowded?"
She'd drawn quite a bit of attention in the lobby earlier.
"It's fine. With sunglasses on like this, nobody knows."
As if.
With this woman, the sunglasses weren't the point; her presence couldn't be felt at all.
Unless she revealed herself, people probably wouldn't notice even if she waved a hand right in front of them.
A feat only an S-Grade could manage.
-Hunter Yeon Ha-yeon, the Grade exam will now begin.
He turned his head at the announcement from inside the exam hall.
Yeon Ha-yeon stood in the center of the hall.
In front of her sat a crystal orb the size of a person's face.
The Grade exam was different from the entrance exam.
In the entrance exam he'd been thrown straight into combat with a Vampir, but the Grade exam was different.
In the Grade exam, all you did was place your hand on the crystal.
-Hunter Yeon Ha-yeon, place your hand on the crystal orb.
The announcement sounded again, and Ha-yeon placed her hand on the orb.
-The exam will now begin.
With the announcement signaling the start, the orb began to glow.
VWOOOOOM—!
The orb shone brightly enough to fill the entire hall.
As if to prove this was a fairly high Grade, the letter B was showing above the orb.
"Whoa, what's this? B-Grade right from the start? Couldn't she aim for S-Grade at this rate?"
"Come on, that's going too far even so."
It was common knowledge that the higher one's Grade right after Awakening, the greater the chance of becoming a strong hunter.
Naturally a hunter who started at B-Grade was more likely to reach a higher level than one who started at C-Grade.
'Wait, but if I use the True Progenitor's power I can kill B-Grade monsters too?'
Gallos before being weakened had unmistakably been a B-Grade monster.
After the weakening most of his stats had been C-Grade, so Garam had thought of him as about C-Grade,
but thinking about it now, given the traits of the Vampir race, he might have been at least B-Grade no matter how weakened.
'Then am I about A-Grade?'
His level with the True Progenitor's power drawn out completely.
He needed to check it.
"Wait, isn't that light gradually dimming?"
"You're right. The Grade's dropping too."
While he'd been lost in thought for a moment, the light Ha-yeon was giving off was going out.
In step with it, the Grade displayed behind the orb fell from B to C, and then all the way to D.
"Haah, haah."
Ha-yeon screwed up her face in frustration and took her hand off the orb.
-Hunter Yeon Ha-yeon, D-Grade confirmed.
With the announcement, she left the Grade exam hall.
"Whoa, shit, I really thought she was B-Grade."
"Heh heh, right? You get them sometimes. Bastards who take mana amplifiers and try to fake their Grade."
At the muttering voices beside him, his fist clenched on its own.
The light that had burst out just then was no fake made by some mana amplifier.
It was a shard of the potential that should have been hers entirely, if not for him.
"That girl seems to have a problem with her mana circuit."
"So you can tell."
"Is she your sister?"
"Something like that. She's like a little sister to me."
"Wounds can be treated, but scars can't be erased. And that is the kind she'll have to carry forever."
Hae-rang's words fell like a sentence.
Was there no way to fix a mana circuit, not even for an S-Grade?
"Still, it's remarkable. With a broken mana circuit she shouldn't be able to use mana at all. Her Grade fluctuates, but she can still use it."
That was because of Vampir traits, but he couldn't say so.
If he did, his neck would come off with a clean snick.
"With an Elixir it could be fixed, though."
"An Elixir?"
Hae-rang had murmured it quietly, but Garam didn't miss it.
Garam closed in on her in an instant, and perhaps finding that too much, Hae-rang raised a hand as if to say calm down.
"I didn't know you were this forward, Mr. Garam. Calm down first......."
"How can I get hold of this Elixir? Or even how to make it!"
"Ugh. The Elixir is one of the pieces of information available to senior knights of the Holy Knights, which is to say to S-Grade hunters like me."
"Then could you pass that information on to me? If you need money, I can give you as much as you want!"
He was desperate.
More desperate than when he'd been dying at Gallos' hands.
It was the first hope he'd seen in eight years.
'It really exists.'
He'd thought the Holy Knights might have a method, but to think there really was one.
He wouldn't even begrudge his life.
If only he could get that information.
But Hae-rang, looking regretful, laid a finger on Garam's lips.
"I can't. This is regulation. You wouldn't really understand even if I told you, but the Elixir isn't of this world."
No. He understood perfectly.
The Holy Knights hadn't existed in this world to begin with. He'd been told they were beings who had crossed over from another dimension.
"And things that aren't of this world can't be disclosed carelessly to outsiders. They don't have sufficient qualification."
"Qualification?"
"S-Grade. That's the minimum qualification to know information that isn't of this world."
S-Grade.
A distant word.
In the few minutes since he'd arrived at the Grade exam hall,
he'd felt any number of times how far removed an S-Grade was from him.
Even so.
"I'll get there soon. So when I become S-Grade, you have to hand that information over to me right away."
"Sure!"
Saying you'd become S-Grade wasn't something just anyone did.
Out of a humanity numbering in the hundreds of millions and beyond, there were only fourteen S-Grades in all.
Even so, he had a method.
'The True Progenitor's power.'
Wasn't it the power said to be king of those mighty Vampirs?
Besides, hadn't he just thought it through?
He'd killed Gallos outright with power he had only just gained.
Using the True Progenitor's power, he might become S-Grade quickly.
'No, I will become S-Grade.'
Beyond simply earning money, he now had a clear, concrete goal.
"Yes! That would be great. She shows real promise, so let's cure her and get her into the Holy Knights too!"
"That's a bit......."
"Awww."