How to Live as a Fencing Genius Hunter - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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How a Fencing Genius Lives as a Hunter
Episode 1
Fencing Player Jung Jae-ha
I was an eleventh-century swordsman born by mistake into the twenty-first century.
I rose to the peak of the world with a blade in hand.
And then I lost the blade and fell to the bottom.
* * *
I loved the blade.
Katana, Korean Hwando, Western Swordsmanship, Fencing.
Simply the sword itself, the way to wield it, everything symbolized by the blade—I loved it all.
I started with Kendo and Haedong Kumdo in elementary school, and from middle school onward, I practiced Western Swordsmanship as well.
“You like swords, right? Want to join the Fencing Club?”
The Fencing Club, which I joined naturally, was nothing short of heaven for me.
“Eight to fifteen! Jung Jae-ha wins!”
They say that the diligent cannot surpass the gifted, and the gifted cannot surpass those who find joy in it.
“Five to fifteen! Jung Jae-ha wins!”
I was that one who found joy.
“Three to fifteen! Jung Jae-ha wins!”
From city tournaments to provincial tournaments.
From provincial tournaments to nationals.
From nationals to worlds.
Winning again and again, before I knew it, I was boarding an airplane with the Taegeuk Mark on my chest and the Olympic Rings on my back.
“Nervous?”
“Not at all.”
“Enjoying yourself?”
“Absolutely!”
After a final exchange with Coach, who often compared us to medieval swordsmen, I stepped into the ring.
All right, let’s play with all our heart.
Just as a mixed martial artist enters a ring called the Octagon, a fencer too has a ring of their own.
The Piste.
A battlefield fourteen meters long and two meters wide.
On this narrow bridge of a Piste, I face my opponent.

“Jung Jae-ha! Jung Jae-ha! Jung Jae-ha!”
“Andre! Andre! Andre!”
Tens of thousands of spectators roar our names, tens of millions of viewers watch this stage, and yet in this moment, there are only two of us.
“Salut!”
Beneath the torrent of lights, we exchange a classical blade salute.
The same greeting that knights of the eleventh century once offered before kings and noble ladies.
“En Garde!”
We point our blades at each other, preparing to advance.
Legs lowered, gaze locked, left arm raised lightly, right arm holding the blade with no tension.
“Êtes-vous Prêts?”
At the question of readiness, I nod lightly in affirmation.
“Allez!”
With that cry, now known even to ordinary people, I exploded forward on the Piste.
“Ha!”
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
I swing my blade at Andre’s torso.
Multiple times in a single second, our blades clash and dance through the air.
Thrusts coming from above, below, left, right, front, and back—like sunlight upon the naked eye.
I raise my head and meet Andre’s eyes beyond the mask.
A gaze heavy with the zeal and determination befitting a world-class athlete.
Mine is not.
“Ah, ha ha ha ha!”
I laughed.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
I thrust my blade forward again and again, from every angle.
“Attack, attack, attack! A barrage of continuous strikes!”
I advanced step by step across the fourteen-meter Piste.
“Jung Jae-ha! Parry Sixte followed by Riposte! A spectacular counter-attack!”
He blocked Andre’s counter to the upper right and struck back, scoring once more.
He felt the weight of the sword in his hand.
He thrust it skyward, gleaming in the light.
“Men’s Foil Individual and Team Competition gold medal—South Korea’s Jung Jae-ha!”
Standing before the Olympic Rings, sword raised, gold medal hanging from his neck, he smiled.
Coach, who loved web novels, called him the Best Swordsman in the World from that day forward.
Yes. Among seven billion people on Earth, he wielded a blade better than anyone.
He loved the blade more than anyone.
He was seventeen years old.
It was summer.
* * *
At seventeen, he was called the Best Swordsman in the World.
“You were really born in the wrong era. You should have been a swordsman in the eleventh century, not a fencer in the twenty-first.”
“I agree, sir.”
At eighteen, nineteen, twenty—he was still called the Best Swordsman in the World.
World Fencing Championship gold medal.
FIE Grand Prix gold medal.
Asian Games Fencing gold medal.
His name was always on the podium at international tournaments.
“Jung Jae-ha, Jung Jae-ha! Jung Jae-ha!”
Honor, wealth, fame.
Everything followed from a single blade he loved.
Twenty-one years old.
He stood beneath the Olympic Rings once more.
On a fourteen-meter Piste, he faced his opponent.
The same man he’d met four years before stood across from him.
“Allez!”
He parried Andre’s blade and struck his chest.
Beep.
The light didn’t come on.
A malfunction, it seemed.
No matter.
The score gap was still large, and with exchanges happening so quickly, even referees made mistakes.
As an athlete, one must respect the referee’s authority.
He smiled again and raised his sword.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
But when the same thing happened three more times, the smile died on his face.
He turned to his coaching staff and signaled—what was happening?
The referee too gazed at him and the coaching staff with bewilderment in his eyes.
The crowd, instead of cheering, booed.
Andre himself faltered, his sword drooping.
Yet his coaching staff said nothing.
As if someone had hit mute.
That year’s gold medal went to Andre.
He harbored no resentment toward him.
Andre had done his best within the rules as they stood.
“Why didn’t you say anything from that position?”
His coaching staff was another matter entirely.
“You should have told the referee right then.”
“What do you want me to do now? Huh? Strip the medal from Andre?”
“Why don’t you take a break from this?”
They offered only incomprehensible excuses, even actively trying to block his selection for the next Asian Games qualifier.
“Jae-ha. From what I’ve found out…….”
“Gambling?”
That Coach—the one who’d called him the Best Swordsman in the World—looked into the matter for him.
Though he hadn’t even been present that day, and meddling would clearly bring trouble.
According to what he learned, the Association’s upper echelon had ties to an international sports gambling site worth hundreds of billions of won.
They had orchestrated his loss and pocketed tens of billions in return.
Fury consumed him.
Of course, he hadn’t stormed into the Association wielding a sword.
“I heard an unbelievable story.”
He’d tipped off the media and given interviews.
He’d tried to resolve the matter within the rules of twenty-first-century society.
That effort ended one evening.
“Chae-ha?”
When he came home, he found the door torn open roughly with a crowbar.
“Who are you people?”
The living room reeked of cigarette smoke, and some tattooed thugs had forced their way inside.
Beneath their feet, his younger sister Jung Chae-ha convulsed soundlessly, utterly helpless.
One of them raised a Claw Hammer to bring it down on Chae-ha’s head.
“What the hell?”
He rushed forward, seized the hammer’s handle, and wrenched it from the man’s grip.
He couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
The tattooed thug turned to face him.
“Listen here. Stop making noise with the media and all that. Just keep your mouth shut, understand? We didn’t want to do this either.”
“Keep causing trouble and next time we’ll really crack this brat’s skull open, got it?”
The other tattooed thugs snickered around him.
He checked on Chae-ha first.
“Oh, big bro…?”
Her twisted, broken hands—slicked with blood—trembled for a moment, then went limp.
He had to worry whether she was even alive.
But in his blank mind, only one image repeated itself.
Chae-ha playing guitar and singing.
Chae-ha’s dream was to become a guitarist.
“No. This can’t happen.”
These bastards had destroyed a guitarist’s hands.
“Chae-ha, you have an audition. You can’t die. You can’t die.”
Click.
Something snapped in his mind.
She had to live. She had to go to that audition.
She had to go to that audition. She had to live.
The gap between his sister, who had been living each day earnestly, suddenly facing not just her dream but possibly her life—that gap drove him to madness.
“If he goes out again and comes back, one wrist goes on the piano and the other on the guitar, yeah? Stay home and watch the kid. Don’t even think about holding any press conferences outside.”
“Look at his eyes. He wants a taste of the bat?”
The tattooed thugs turned to him and laughed cruelly.
“Perfect. We were told to deal with this guy anyway. Might as well handle both of you today.”
“So, champ. You’ll have to hold your sword with your left hand from now on, right?”
“Never actually swung a real blade before, have you? You can cry all you want—it won’t help.”
“Let’s just get it over with cleanly. I’ll make it neat for you.”
One of them slung a Baseball Bat over his shoulder and approached; the others displayed a Sashimi Knife with tape wrapped around the middle.
He couldn’t believe he was being threatened like this by such men.
The absurdity of it took his breath away.
His heart beat slowly, but his mind blazed with fury.
“Blade work?”
He turned his eyes toward the Real Swords hanging on his wall.
“Want to see?”
He’d collected them happily, without incident, both as a competitor and an enthusiast.
Today, it seemed, he would have to use them for something far less pleasant.
There was no referee here, after all.
* * *
Q. The verdict was finalized a month ago. You seem to have much you’d like to say, but let me start with the question viewers will most want answered: Do you regret it?
A. I regret it. But I don’t repent. If I went back, I’d do the same thing.
.
.
.
Q. Do you have plans to work in Fencing after your release?
A. If I can, I’d like to. I really would.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Yes. Thank you for yours.”
I finished the press interview and wheeled myself down the corridor toward the medical office.
Whirr, whirr, whirr.
The sound of the wheels echoed through the hallway, and a guard watched me with eyes full of countless emotions.
Whirr, whirr, whirr.
Looking at that gaze, I recalled a memory from a few months ago.
That day, without so much as a scraped finger, I cut through those tattooed thugs.
I never actually intended to kill anyone.
The ones with sashimi knives went down, and the one with the baseball bat tried to flee, flinging his weapon away.
That’s when the police arrived.
They didn’t recognize me, covered as I was in blood.
They mistook the fleeing thug—the one who’d thrown down his bat in panic—for a frightened homeowner being chased by a madman with a blade.
Since I was holding a real sword, I never bothered drawing the nunchaku.
Bang!
The bullet tore through my thigh and passed clean through.
Because of that, my footwork faltered, and the blade meant for the thug’s wrist caught his neck instead.
“Ah.”
The trial went on for over a year.
Self-defense, excessive self-defense, injury resulting in death, special murder, life imprisonment, suspended sentence, consideration of public sentiment.
Countless legal terms were thrown around, and in the end, I received a ten-year sentence.
Prison life itself wasn’t particularly difficult.
An island in the south of the Republic of Korea.
The facilities at the new model-prisoner-only prison were quite decent.
Some of the guards took pity on me and provided various conveniences.
Whirr, whirr, whirr.
But when I thought of my younger sister left alone outside, stripped of her dreams.
When I recalled the doctor’s words that I might have to have my leg amputated.
“Damn it.”
There was nothing to do but exhale a heavy sigh.
“You’re here?”
“Yes. Thank you for your help today as well.”
I entered the medical office.
“Athlete Jung. There’s something I absolutely must tell you today.”
I greeted the Medical Officer from the prison’s medical office who’d been helping with my physical therapy, and his expression became difficult to describe.
“Your leg is impossible to recover with modern medicine, Athlete Jung. The main nerve in your thigh is completely dead. Complications could even lead to necrosis. Rehabilitation is meaningless.”
I understood why he was saying this.
“I do feel sensation sometimes.”
“Athlete!”
“There were movements I couldn’t do before.”
“What?”
“If I did them a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times over, eventually I could. This isn’t about willpower. It’s about how repetitive motion affects the nervous system.”
…….
Then you understand why I’m saying this too.
“Even if the main nerve is dead, aren’t there cases where auxiliary nerves in the surrounding muscles develop and compensate for the main nerve? Ordinary people have managed it. As someone who was an athlete, how could I not?”
“Very well.”
The Medical Officer let out a deep sigh and stepped outside.
“If you can reach this point without the wheelchair, I’ll do my best to help you with rehabilitation.”
It was what I’d been waiting to hear.
“But if you can’t reach this point, then as a doctor, I’ll proceed with amputation. What will you do?”
When something must be done, conditions don’t matter.
I gripped the wheelchair handles firmly.
“Please remember those words.”
Standing was easy.
My left leg was intact.
Now I had to take a step.
But my right leg showed absolutely no intention of moving.
“Why are you struggling?”
“It’s nothing.”
I recalled the Advance—the fencing forward step where weight transfers onto one leg.
Since the front foot naturally leads anyway, the back foot barely bears any weight.
If I controlled my strength properly, I could manage it with just my left leg.
Of course, I’m not sure if I can even maintain my balance.
I could very well collapse, end up flat on my face.
“Hah.”
I meet the gaze of the Medical Officer standing before me, his eyes full of pity.
I know it too.
The chances of this leg healing are slim.
One in tens of millions, perhaps.
But I was a man who once stood at the summit of eight billion people.
Tap.
I executed an Advance toward the Medical Officer.
That footwork I must have performed hundreds of thousands of times.
My left leg moved forward.
My right leg would not follow.
“Ungh!”
My center of gravity tilted backward, and I nearly toppled over.
“Jung Jae-ha!”
The Medical Officer cried out.
“I didn’t fall! I didn’t fall.”
“What’s happening?”
Even a guard came running, staring down at us.
I tensed my abdominal muscles with everything I had, lurching my body forward, and barely managed to stay upright.
Gritting my teeth, I prepared for the next step.
“I’m going to do this! Even if I have to crawl, I’m going to keep going — please, just help me with rehabilitation. Please!”
That day, I finally walked out of the medical office on my own two feet.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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