How to Live as a Fencing Genius Hunter - Chapter 21

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

How a Fencing Genius Lives as a Hunter
Chapter 21
Demon Realm (3)
Second team leader of the Saebyeol Guild’s Demon Realm branch.
Lustrous black bob cut that gleamed like obsidian.
A Telekinesis user and Body Enhancement practitioner who wore formal wear well.
“Now you’re going to kill them like this?”
Yeo Baek looked up at Choi Jong-hyuk standing in the corridor with a sideways glance.
“If we just beat them to death directly, Su Seong-min will probably give up entirely and report it to the chairman.”
She was a seasoned hunter who combined experience, ability, sharp instincts, and nerve—originally the first team leader of the Demon Realm branch.
No matter how high-rank an A-grade Awakener he was, she could speak to Choi Jong-hyuk, who’d lost out on executive promotion and transferred from headquarters’ hunting division to land here as a branch team leader, at least this plainly.
“It’s a reasonable test for a team leader to conduct. Since they’re Rehabilitation-type Awakeners, we can’t trust their character, so we need to verify their abilities at minimum.”
Choi Jong-hyuk answered flatly, like a stone statue.

“I’ve lived through the entire Apocalypse Period! Raiders, criminals—I gnash my teeth at the thought. But not like this!”
Yeo Baek’s voice crashed down like a waterfall.
“We’re not going to harvest the Demon Realm? We’re not going to mine Demon Stones? The mining yield here is fantastic, and we’ve got Cheol-hyul, the Jianghu, the Angels—everyone’s converging on this place!”
It was a shout tinged with surprisingly naive pragmatism.
“Get your head on straight. At this rate, we’ll lose ground. We need to take in even one more Rehabilitation-type hunter and claim even one more cavern!”
…….
“That’s how we mine Demon Stones, make money, and bring in stronger natural Awakeners with higher market value.”
The guild would only maintain official housing for her family if she kept delivering solid results.
To keep her family living in Sejong—with its barriers protecting against large-scale Demon Beasts—what wouldn’t she do?
“Incompetent recruits will only become a hindrance. I’m already securing the caverns, am I not?”
“An A-grade hunter of your caliber should naturally be capable of that much! But you’re the first team leader too, aren’t you? You need to know how to make even mediocre recruits work like they’re worth something!”
Thus her words were, in part, venting frustration.
‘They’re all dead by now, I’m sure. Only the ones hiding in corners, shaking like leaves, are left. What good is that? A hunter should be reckless, but never petty.’
In there, hundreds of orcs swarmed alongside Demon Supervisors, Demon Elite soldiers, Demon Knights.
‘Jeong Jae-ha and Lee Hae-il are the ones Su Seong-min and Hong Si-yu praised so much, and the rest—even if they’re rough around the edges—they’re kids who can handle Demon Beasts well.’
No matter how excellently they’d graduated from the Tutorial, these weren’t enemies they could simply overcome.
‘It’d be wasteful to just throw them away like this.’
Yeo Baek vented her frustrations, abandoning all hope.
Tap, tap.
“Huh?”
So when she heard knocking from beyond the stone wall, she was taken aback.
……?
If it wasn’t her imagination, Choi Jong-hyuk seemed startled too.
“Didn’t I say I wouldn’t open it until they’d eliminated everything?”
Choi Jong-hyuk asked with uncertainty in his voice.
If it had been desperate pounding for mercy, he wouldn’t have bothered asking—but this was far too composed a knock.
“Yes. We’ve eliminated them all.”
The two of them weren’t unaffected by that answer.
“What?”
“What?”
Yeo Baek shattered the wall with her Telekinesis before Choi Jong-hyuk could even speak.
‘Even if it’s a bluff, I don’t mind. If he’s got enough guts to pull that off in front of dozens of demons and hundreds of orcs, I’m happy with that alone.’
She was prepared to overlook it even if it was mere bravado.
“Oh?”
But it wasn’t bluff.
“It was quite enjoyable.”
Jeong Jae-ha stood before the corridor entrance, his combat uniform torn and scorched in places, his blade glowing red with heat.
From his eyes flowed the pale, luminous gaze that only Awakeners possessed.
“How did you finish so quickly?”
Yeo Baek asked, genuine bewilderment in her voice.
Even if she’d been ordered to claim this cavern, she doubted it could have gone this fast.
“I…….”
Jeong Jae-ha opened his mouth.
* * *
“What do we do now?”
“Let me out! Let me out, please!”
The Rehabilitation-type Awakeners fell into panic, crying out.
“Damn it! This is a nightmare!”
“Get out of here. Staying put just means we die with these bastards.”
Jeong Ho-min stepped forward with his crew.
“Fall back! Fall back! Now!”
By then, the demons in the cavern had taken notice of us.
A creature with a whip-like tail pointed at us and stretched out its clawed hand.
“Chirp, chirp-chirp!”
“Meat! Meat! Flesh!”
The crimson-skinned volcanic orcs turned their heads toward us one by one.
“What do we do, sir?”
“This way.”
Lee Hae-il and I climbed onto a nearby stone pillar.
The cavern floor was far from flat.
Below flowed a river of lava, and massive stone pillars jutted out haphazardly across the expanse.
It was no battlefield for heavy-set orcs to dominate.
“Incoming!”
“Fire!”
The orcs didn’t climb toward us. Instead, they attacked the panicked Awakeners and Jeong Ho-min’s crew first.
[Flame Bat (F)]
There was good reason for it.
“Kee-ee-eek!”
“Screee-ee-eech!”
Winged creatures with wingspans of two meters came diving toward us, fluttering their wings.
Ordinary humans would have had their flesh torn to shreds by just a touch of those glowing, hooked talons.
“I’ll cut these things to pieces!”
“Wait.”
I stopped Lee Hae-il as he was chambering a round in the Machine Gun.
“Why, sir? Aah—aaaah!”
I simply stabbed the approaching Flame Bats with my Estoc.
[Attaque]
Piercing through their torsos could have dropped them instantly, but there were far too many, and I accumulated minor wounds.
Not enough to penetrate our enhanced muscles and deliver a fatal blow.
But a paper cut still hurts.
“They don’t possess Authority, do they?”
Lee Hae-il cried out in frustration mid-swing of his Cavalry Sword.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
“Die, you miserable bastards!”
Far off, another Awakener seemed to share the same thought and opened fire with his Machine Gun, dropping the Flame Bats that had closed in on his position.
[Flame Demon (D)]
Just then, one demon fixed its gaze on that Awakener.
[Warning! Detonation anticipated.]
The moment my Status Window Ring flashed the warning across my field of vision—
Boom-boom-boom!
There was no time to shout a warning. The Awakener’s Machine Gun detonated.
“Aaaaah!”
His fingers flew away, and shrapnel embedded itself deep in his face—a gruesome sight.
Countless bats descended on the fallen Awakener.
“Huh?!”
Lee Hae-il glanced once at the Machine Gun in his hands, then lowered it.
“I—I’m sorry, and grateful.”
“It’s not that guns are weak. There are guilds like Cheol-hyul that harness an Awakener’s power and make heavy weapons their primary arsenal.”
I continued fending off the bats as I spoke.
“But if there are still demon beasts that haven’t been cleared out despite all this, something’s going on.”
Gradually, the layout and situation here became clear to me.
“Keep going, Para!”
“Block that river below!”
The demons were directing the orcs to dam the river of lava, and on another front, they were widening the opening through which the lava flowed in.
They meant to flood this place with Mana-infused lava, turning it into a spawning ground for their own kind.
A rather purposeful construction project, it seemed.
So I decided to lend a hand.
“Hae-il.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Run down there and gather up some grenades for me, will you? I’m going to hand them out to those panicked Awakeners. If they won’t take them, you can hit them and take what you need.”
“And what will you be using them for?”
“You didn’t object to the hitting and taking part, I notice?”
“S-sir, are you joking at a time like this?”
Hae-il had a point — the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
[“Powerful thieves! Send more!”]
[“We’re moving in.”]
Orcs were now flooding in by the thousands, like bullets.
It had never been easy killing those creatures with a 9-millimeter machine gun; you burned through an entire magazine just to drop one.
With demons joining the fray now, the odds had gotten considerably worse.
“Damn it all!”
Jeong Ho-min was already surrounded by his own crew, pressed in by Orcs on all sides.
“No time — move!”
I gave Hae-il a light shove on the back.
“Sir, if you ever start streaming again, you’ve got to come on the channel!”
Hae-il cursed his way down the slope at a sprint.
He wove through the Orcs, reached the Awakeners near the entrance where we’d come in, and brought back grenades from them.
“Borrowing these!”
They’d all apparently breezed through the Tutorial on luck, and they were still panicking, hammering at the rock wall — so Hae-il just unclipped them from his waist and they never noticed.

“Here they are, sir. What are you planning?”
I took the grenades in hand.
“Never really thrown round things before, but…….”
“Sir?”
“……I’ve done Knife Throwing, so.”
I eyed the lava waterfall in the distance, where the Orcs were making good progress on their excavation work.
One more large boulder fell, and the entrance would open wide.
‘Mechanical genius I’m not, but I can sure as hell pull a safety pin.’
Whoosh!
The grenade traced a dizzying arc, traveling nearly two hundred meters.
Boom!
The grenade detonated on the massive boulder the Orcs had been trying to split.
The rock shifted slightly toward the lava waterfall.
I repeated the maneuver twice more, and the boulder finally tumbled into the lava cascade, falling away below.
Whoooosh!
The entrance where the lava had been flowing in widened, and the volume of lava surged in more than threefold.
“Screeeee!?”
The Orcs who hadn’t pulled back in time were swept away and killed.

“Jeong Jae-ha!”
Jeong Ho-min trained his machine gun on me, screaming.
“Do you want to die? What the hell are you doing? We need to keep the lava from flowing in!”
I shoved Hae-il behind me and grabbed another grenade.
“Either you’re stupid or you’re wicked — pick one. Life’s hard enough as it is, yeah?”
“You bastard!”
“If you want to live, get up high.”
Part of me wanted to throw a grenade at him too, but I held back for the sake of what was coming.
He was going to be my connection to the Scorpion Crew.
I couldn’t just sit around waiting for Hong Si-yu to call.
From what I’d heard, that bastard was something of a field commander himself.
His old comrades had become powers opposing the nation itself, and here he was, crawling through the dirt like a dog — he’d have plenty of time to think about that.
He’d definitely reach out.
With his patience running thin, we’d have a resolution within a month or two.
I finished my thoughts and tossed the grenade into the gap between the cliffs where the river of lava had been flowing.
The Orcs had already been breaking apart that cliff face and packing the rubble into it, so it sealed up fast.
Whoooosh!
The lava rose in an instant.
* * *

Lee Hae-il found himself staring at Jeong Jae-ha anew.
‘That man is truly, impossibly remarkable.’
Lava surged upward rapidly, and the temperature inside the chamber spiked violently.
‘He can’t operate machinery, can’t work a computer, but when it matters he becomes a genius.’
Yet the sweat trickling down her spine was cold sweat.
Jeong Jae-ha surveyed the chamber from above, his face flushed from the lava’s heat.
“Beautiful.”
The ravine that had existed moments before was now submerged beneath molten rock.
“Shriek! Shriek!”
“Screeeech!”
Orcs that couldn’t climb the stone pillars fell into the lava and perished.
“Shriek, shriek……!”
Of the hundreds of orcs, only dozens managed to escape in time.
Now the chamber had become a space of narrow passages and small footholds alone.
“Perfect.”
Jeong Jae-ha twirled the Estoc with a purely gleeful smile.
“Let’s play!”
He shot forward like an arrow, the Estoc leading the way.
Thunk!
He pierced straight through the heart of an orc standing on an adjacent stone isle.
The force and velocity collapsed its ribs and folded its spine; the orc’s body crumpled around Jeong Jae-ha as it fell.
The orc didn’t even scream before collapsing.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Jeong Jae-ha skewered two more orcs beyond that one.
He kept moving with his momentum, charging toward the lava.
“Watch out!”
Lee Hae-il cried out urgently, thinking Jeong Jae-ha couldn’t see the lava, but there was no need.
Jeong Jae-ha tilted the Estoc and shoved an orc’s chest hard with his left palm.
As the orc’s corpse tumbled into the lava lake, he vaulted off it.
He landed lightly on the next island and threw himself at the orcs there.
‘He was already fast before.’
An orc hefted a great sword and leaped, trying to cleave Jeong Jae-ha in two.
Jeong Jae-ha stabbed its thigh and slipped aside, sweeping a kick at its ribs.
“Shriek?”
Losing its footing, the orc flew backward despite its bulk and tumbled into the lava lake.
‘Now his strength has grown too.’
An orc was still just an E+ rank Demon Beast at best.
Lee Hae-il had reached that level now, and Jeong Jae-ha had already entered the D rank realm.
“A festival indeed!”
Jeong Jae-ha threw an orc to the ground and drove the Estoc downward in reverse grip, plunging it through.
The orc with its heart pierced thrashed its arms in the air before going limp.
Jeong Jae-ha wielded the Estoc with a dancing fluidity, thrusting it again and again.
Orcs fell as he pierced their philtrum, eyes, brow, and heart.
‘Just weeks ago I had to angle carefully just to face a single one.’
Now there was nothing to fear.
“What the hell is that guy?”
“When did he get this strong?”
“Was it real that he killed that pumpkin dragon and became a Dragon Slayer?”
Jeong Ho-min and his group stared with vacant expressions.
Thunk!
Jeong Jae-ha pierced the last orc’s neck and twisted the blade with a side step.
In the Tutorial, that same attack had barely torn muscle.
Crack-crack-crack!
Now the head tore clean away.

“Hah. Hah.”
Jeong Jae-ha caught his breath for a moment.
“Yes. This is a festival.”
She swept back her sweat-dampened hair and smiled—sharp and graceful as reed leaves beneath the sunset glow.
“The challengers just keep coming, don’t they!”

In the next breath, she hurled herself at the demon.

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