How to Live as a Fencing Genius Hunter - Chapter 13

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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 Prodigy Lives as a Hunter
Episode 13
Dragon Slayer (1)
I heard gunshots ringing out from far away.
I also saw someone fleeing through the undergrowth.
It was Jang Young-jun.
That coward had summoned the Magical Beasts.
“Damn it!”
But there was no time to waste on anger.
“Roooaaarrr!”
Roars echoed from all directions.
Orcs and Greenskins were pouring in.
Even I couldn’t handle their numbers.
“W-what do we do now?”
“This is bad!”
The Awakeners around us were panicking, stumbling about in confusion.
“I’m s-sorry. This is all my fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“These bastards are doing this because of me. Maybe if I just—”
Lee Hae-il rolled his eyes in different directions, his voice hollow and distant.
“Stop that nonsense and get your head on straight!”
At this rate, we were finished.
“Chae Ha.”
I spoke my companion’s name and pushed myself to absolute focus.
For now, I even forgot about Jang Young-jun.
All that mattered was getting out alive.
I saw the thorn-wood fence hundreds of meters around the Central Clearing, a dozen-meter pumpkin-dragon Evermore, and a Jackal o’ Lantern of enormous size.
In my mind, all the knowledge and strategies I’d learned so far flashed past in an instant.
One decent idea caught.
“Get out the gun and fire into the sky while we move. Be careful not to get hit by the shell casings.”
“Pardon? A gun?”
“No time to explain. Hurry!”
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
I drew the MP5 from my waist with my left hand and fired skyward while quickening my pace.
Whoosh!
The nearby Jack o’ Lanterns’ eyes blazed to life.
“Just do as I say!”
Rat-a-tat! Tat-tat!
Lee Hae-il followed my lead, spraying his submachine gun across the sky.
The Jack o’ Lanterns held flickering flames within their gaping mouths, lined with angular teeth.
“Watch out!”
I saw the blaze first.
Leaving Lee Hae-il and the other Awakeners behind, I charged forward alone.
[Advance]
[Fleche]
Rip!
I crossed through, tearing past the side of the Jack o’ Lantern’s jaw.
[Balestra]
I thrust and immediately bounded away to the side, avoiding the shockwave.
Kaboom!
The Jack o’ Lantern’s head exploded half-way.
The Pumpkin Shrapnel burst outward through the torn section of its mouth, overwhelmed by the pressure.
I’d gotten the hang of it fighting the first Jack o’ Lantern.
By striking the right spot, I could direct the force of that explosion.
“Roooaaarrr!”
Just then, the underbrush split open and more Magical Beasts came charging out.
A few Orcs and Greenskins from the nearest thicket.
One of the party cried out.
“Th-they’re here!”
“Stay calm!”
He let out a sharp cry to keep the others from panicking, then drew his blade with practiced speed.
Attack Composé
Snap!
Two rapid thrusts aimed at the orc’s eyes.
“Kaaaargh!”
Blinded, the orc clutched its face and shrieked, then went limp.
The orc was no different from the Jack O’Lantern.
Direct confrontation was near impossible, but strike through the eyes straight to the brain, and you didn’t need to trade blows with all that muscle.
“Big brother!”
Lee Hae-il snapped back to himself and rushed forward, swinging his Saber to sever goblin necks and cleave shoulders.
“Good work.”
“I’ll explain everything later, I promise.”
“I don’t know what you’re planning, but do as you see fit.”
By then, the trees and brush caught in the Pumpkin Shrapnel were burning fierce.
I grabbed a few burning logs and hurled them toward the thorny hedge fence that ringed the Central Clearing.
The dense bramble fence caught fire in moments.
“Spread it!”
“Yes, what?”
“Let the fire spread! Hurry!”
“But if we do that, the Jack O’Lanterns will—”
“That’s the idea.”
The nearby Awakeners hesitated, then followed my lead and pushed the flames outward.
Whether this was how wildfire normally spread or if the thorny wood burned unnaturally fast, I couldn’t say.
But the fire raced along the fence and sent heat shimmer rippling far into the distance.
Whoosh!
Beyond the haze, the lit heads of the Jack O’Lanterns glowed like tunnel lights, dense and countless.
“There’ll be a gap opening up ahead soon.”
I hadn’t expected it to work this well—I was grateful the fire spread faster than I’d anticipated.
“I’ll handle most of the Magical Beasts. But I can’t guard everyone, so use your judgment and run for it.”
The lights beyond the haze began to move noticeably.
The Jack O’Lanterns must have all fully awakened and leapt from the trees.
If that many came at me at once, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
But instead of rushing me, the Jack O’Lanterns detonated their Pumpkin Shrapnel right where they’d landed.
Boom!
Even people will vomit if they keep eating endlessly.
Boom!
These creatures couldn’t just accumulate heat forever either—it only made sense.
“Ack-ack, ack!?”
“Grraaah!?”
The confused cries of orcs and goblins echoed nearby.
Fire spread in every direction.
The plan was working.
Jack O’Lanterns automatically absorb the heat from each gunshot and retaliate with it.
So I’d wagered that if we set a massive blaze, the Pumpkin Shrapnel would detonate before it ever reached us.
I’d called it right.
Boom!
“Ack-ack!?”
The shrapnel from that burst spread the fire faster still.
Jack O’Lanterns further out absorbed that spreading flame and awakened in turn.
The orcs and goblins seemed to hesitate even more.
If this were a match, this would be the moment the opposing player’s offensive crumbles and they run out of breath.
The joy of having read that moment perfectly brought a smile to my face.
“Now! Scatter!”
“What?”
“Run straight ahead until you see the Gate!”
“Yes, understood!”
I ran from the burning Red Zone together with the Awakeners.
The fire consumed the thorny fence entirely and crept toward the center of the clearing.
* * *
“Graaaaaaah!”
Along the way, we encountered several groups of Greenskins.
Packs of one or two Orcs and a dozen or so Goblins.
“Here!”
I pressed forward with momentum and struck them down.
I kicked a Goblin’s head clean off, then wrenched open the lid of a Jack O’Lantern.
“Ah, haha!”
I rammed my Estoc into an Orc’s mouth and drove it backward, pinning it against a tree.
Fights like that continued, one after another.
Thud!
I withdrew the Estoc from the Orc’s eye socket and breathed heavily.
“Huff, ha!”
Sweat drenched my hair, my chest heaved and fell in rhythm, and my raw throat burned from ragged coughing.
My right leg had been aching since before, and the Estoc—once light as a feather—had long since become heavy as a barbell.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this exhausted.
Yet this grin wouldn’t leave my face since the start of the fight.
“Ha, ha.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wielded a blade like this.
I was having too much fun to think straight.
Training couldn’t compare to this.
There was the tension of possibly losing, the responsibility that I couldn’t afford to fail.
There was the hunger to win, the intoxication of being able to swing a blade without restraint.
All those feelings that could only be felt in a real fight had completely absorbed me in this moment.
People usually called that happiness.
I wiped the Magical Beast’s blood from my face.
“Is he really like that?”
“That’s a bit scary, honestly.”
“Some kind of split personality? What if he suddenly turns that blade on us? We’d all die, wouldn’t we?”
“Shh! He’ll hear you!”
The whispers of nearby Awakeners reached me as a distant murmur.
Flames shot up on all sides, radiating oppressive heat.
My body was so heated through that steam seemed to rise from the crown of my head.
“Sir. Look at me for a moment.”

That’s when Lee Hae-il approached and thrust a wet cloth into my hands.
He wiped away the blood scattered across my face and the sweat pouring down.
“It seems like we’re almost there. There are hardly any Magical Beasts left in the area now, so I think we could rest a bit. What would you like to do?”
Receiving his anxious admiration made the blade feel light in my hand again.
In Lee Hae-il’s golden-tinged eyes lay both the concern that I might go wrong and the longing to become like me.
“How much longer could there be? Let’s go now.”
There was a time when I’d worried about such things myself.
Was my talent twisted somehow?
Shouldn’t I just be like normal kids, content with video games and soccer?
No matter what sport or dojo I’d tried, I’d never met anyone else who loved the blade and competition the way I did.
I’d thought many times that I was born in the wrong era.
My coach used to call me “an eleventh-century swordsman born by mistake in the twenty-first century.”
At my darkest, I’d even imagined becoming a killer, unable to resist this pleasure.
But what I loved just as much as the blade was the admiration, the envy, the cheers it brought me.
I’d thought I’d felt it in abundance as a competitor, but as a Hunter, it might cut even deeper.
“This is the last stretch! Scatter and run!”
“Hyaaaaa!”
We charged back into the burning forest.
At this rate, we could secure the saplings and make our escape.
The future of working at Guild Saetbyeol, living alongside Chae Ha—it shimmered before me like a dream.
[“SCREEEEECH!”]
A horrible screech shattered the dream.
My instinct as a living creature sensed danger.
My spine bristled, and my body went rigid.
Every flame in the vicinity seemed to shudder at once.
Flutter!
I felt the sensation of an artificial blast of heat sweeping over us.
[Field Boss]
[Pumpkin Wyvern Evorrah (C+)]
A young dragon clad in smooth, pumpkin-colored carapace.
It was swooping low overhead, its wings beating in wide arcs above us.
Crack!
“Gaaah!”
The wyvern plummeted like an eagle snatching prey, trampling one unlucky Awakener beneath its talons.
[“Kaaaaagh!”]
It then planted both wings against the ground and roared.
A declaration that no one would pass this way.
“What is that thing!”
“It’s a dragon!”
“Why is there a dragon in the Tutorial!?”
Awakeners scattered in all directions, their screams piercing the air as panic seized them.
The fifteen-meter Pumpkin Wyvern seemed utterly invincible to us in our present state.
But there was something far more important.
[Gate Boss]
[Rotten Superior-Grade Jack O’Lantern (C+)]
I had been watching the colossal Jack O’Lantern beyond the wyvern from the very beginning.
A Jack O’Lantern the size of an eight-story building.
It too was a Magical Beast that inhaled heat and then expelled it.
Time to make my move.
“Haa-aa-aa-aa!”

The sound echoed like a giant drawing in its breath.
And in that instant, every flame consuming the clearing, the thorn fence, and the surrounding brush snuffed out at once.
The bright forest plunged into shadow.
[“Ka-awk!?”]
Even the Pumpkin Wyvern Evorrah, bellowing as if it feared nothing on earth, went rigid at the sight of the Jack O’Lantern, eyes bulging wide.
I hurled myself toward the nearest depression in the ground I could find.
Blade secured to my wrist strap, I clamped both hands over my ears and opened my mouth wide.
Kabooooooom!!
An explosion erupted that made the Jack O’Lanterns before seem like fireworks by comparison.
Scorching heat washed over my head.
I felt my body lift and tumble in that hurricane of force.
* * *
“Ah…….”
My eyes opened slowly.
As I drew breath, acrid, stifling air flooded my lungs.
Coughing, I looked around.
The dense forest had become a vast clearing, and the stench of charring orc and goblin flesh hung thick in the air.
Turning my head, I could make out orc corpses scattered across the ground in every direction.
[“Grrrrrrr…….”]
[Pumpkin Wyvern Evorrah (C+)]
[Status Abnormality: Fracture, Burn Wound, Daze…….]
That terrifying Pumpkin Wyvern was dragging one mangled leg, tottering and weaving.
“It’s so hot, so hot!”
“Daaaaaaamn!”
Far off, I could see Jang Young-jun and his gang.
They’d taken the brunt of the explosion dead-on and lay convulsing like flies struck by an electric swatter, unable to rise.
“Hah.”
I let out a breath of relief.
Perfect execution.
Set fires across the field, trigger a chain reaction of Jack O’Lantern explosions, and detonate the Gate Boss to obliterate all the Magical Beasts in one sweep.
I’d known scattered clashes would follow, but I was confident in handling those minor skirmishes.
When you commit to a bold strategy, you have to be able to stamp out the small variables.
I pushed myself up and began walking toward Zone 1.
Thump.
And immediately collapsed to the ground.
“Hell.”
My right ankle wasn’t responding.
Of all things, it had to be the right one again.
[“Grrrrrrr!”]
The pumpkin dragon stared at me from across the distance.
It stretched open that round yet sturdy-looking maw and unleashed its fury in a series of short bursts of flame.
It crawled toward me, lurching and dragging itself forward.
“Didn’t see that coming.”
This was a significant complication.
But my task remained unchanged.
“Right.”
I pushed myself up again, staggering.
The cord attached to the hilt, which I’d wrapped around my wrist, kept the blade from flying out of my hand.
I gripped the Estoc and faced the pumpkin dragon.
[“Caaawk!”]
Both its wings were torn, and one leg was broken.
We were both fighting at a handicap.
One could argue that even the weight class made it unfair, but that was the spectator’s concern, not the competitor’s.
Life’s matches were always unreasonable to begin with.
What mattered was only the attitude one brought to the fight, and what stakes rode upon it.
I took my stance like a professional.
“Jang!”
Then came a voice I hadn’t expected at all.
“Lee Hae-il?”
“I’m sorry!”
It was Lee Hae-il.
The soot from the blast clung to his face and clothes in dark streaks.
“Sorry for what?”
“Just grab my shoulders tight!”
Before I could say anything, he rushed over, dropped to one knee in front of me, and lifted my right foot.
As I shifted my weight to one leg, Lee Hae-il deftly wedged my foot under his arm and gripped my ankle with both hands.
Pop-pop-pop!
With a sharp, clean sound, strength flooded back into my right foot.
Lee Hae-il was an ace at emergency care.

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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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