I don’t think I’m that old yet.

But to certain groups, I might look plenty old—like some privileged relic who gorged himself on the fruits of the past.

Everything is relative.

“Professor is just old corruption.”

Oh Hee-tae sees me as nothing more than an outdated evil to be torn down.

I think I understand why he reached that conclusion.

In the end, it’s envy.

When someone else has what you don’t, some people can admit it. Others get furious at their own inability to obtain it, and dismiss everything that person has as ill-gotten.

The latter probably live easier lives.

Less stress, at least.

The world is full of people like Oh Hee-tae.

By my reckoning, they’re easily more than half the population.

And people in that category tend to have the loudest voices.

“The Awakened who sided with Jeon Si-hoon—you know what they are. The ones who fell out of Kang Han-min’s favor or got cast out of their groups. Outcasts, all clumped around Jeon Si-hoon. Oh Hee-tae—I know him, he’s notorious. That bastard was in and out of juvenile detention like it was his own house. Even among the Awakened, a lot are afraid of him. He’s got that kind of presence. A lifetime spent bullying people. He can sniff out someone weaker than him like a hound, and torment them without fail.”

Defender’s character sketch was striking, but not particularly important.

What mattered were the data points, stripped of sentiment.

“Five SUVs with armor plating, one military jeep. Close to thirty fighters. All armed with military rifles. They’ve got recon drones. The only true Awakened is probably Oh Hee-tae.”

I was the only one assigned to this battlefield.

In the worst case, I’d be facing thirty against one.

The Defender siblings could help, but only indirectly. And truthfully, I didn’t want direct support.

If needed, Hong Da-jeong would provide drone support. One of those cutting-edge Chinese drones we’d carefully saved for emergencies.

But that was insurance, nothing more.

I had no intention of going up alone against Oh Hee-tae’s gang.

The odds of victory were slim, and it was far too dangerous.

That didn’t mean my life was forfeit.

The risk of dying was high, yes—but not hopeless.

Just look at the most dangerous missions Hunters like us face.

The truly lethal ones are when we confront unknown new variants.

I was the one who took on those variants.

Compared to that, what was happening now was nothing.

I knew my enemy’s purpose, his intentions.

I also knew how to shake him, and I held the means to do it.

In short, I might be a rat in a trap—but I had the strength to break it.

“Ah, Professor. No—Hunter Park!”

The moment I saw Oh Hee-tae’s triumphant grin and the camera shoved in my face, I had a bad feeling.

But except for rare intelligent types like the Nemesis-class, their so-called plans are nothing more than each unit fulfilling its part in the grand strategy dictated by the Crack, that planet-sized hive-mind.

Individually, they have no special purpose.

They’re just macros, reacting to preset triggers.

Which is why fighting monsters always comes down to brute force.

You can’t out-think them or trick them into mistakes. There’s no such cleverness to exploit.

Your shots must honestly strike, your close-range combat must dodge their slow—sometimes shockingly fast—ferocious blows, and your strikes must hit hard enough to shatter tissue tougher than human flesh.

It’s a brutally honest kind of fight.

The strong win. The weak die.

Humans are different.

Of course, humanity is too diverse to sum up neatly, and any blanket statement risks oversimplification.

But the most dangerous type I can face ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) right now is the desperate raider.

A human filled with nothing but the thought of killing me and taking my things—that’s far more dangerous than a monster.

By comparison, those who merely want to use me are easy opponents.

Our “knight,” Oh Hee-tae, must’ve dabbled in broadcasting before the war.

The way he talked into the camera mounted on his selfie stick was practiced.

“Today, we’re going hunting with the famous Professor, Old School Hunter Park Gyu! And the targets—two Dancer-types! That’s right, the monsters known as the natural enemies of Old School Hunters. But for Professor, the man who killed a General-type, they’ll be no problem at all!”

The tone he used talking to me and the tone he used for the camera were completely different.

With me, his words were mumbled in a deliberately lowered voice, slurred with a hiss of air between his teeth. But when speaking to the camera, his diction was clear, his voice resonant from the diaphragm, loud and cheerful like a seasoned broadcaster.

I had no interest in his past.

What mattered was his weapon.

Everyone carried guns, but he carried something unusual—a fencing sword.

“That, is that... a fencing sword?”

“Ah? This? It’s not a fencing sword. It’s an épée.”

He corrected my mistake with a mocking sneer, subtly putting me down.

“I heard Old School Hunters received training with melee weapons. Didn’t they teach you about Western blades?”

We did learn melee weapons, but not high-end toys like that.

Maybe a chainsaw, at best.

Monsters are like giant trees. And when you fell a tree, who in their right mind uses a fencing sword to poke at it?

It wasn’t a bad performance weapon, but it wouldn’t make meaningful impact against a monster.

In anti-monster combat, the point of close-range weapons is to collapse the monster’s structure as quickly as possible.

Even the axe wasn’t especially efficient, but compared to a thin Western blade specialized for stabbing, the axe was practically scientific.

“I fenced when I was a kid.”

So, despite appearances, he’d grown up well-off.

My classmate Lee Sang-hoon once said he had fenced too.

I scanned the surroundings.

The vehicles and fighters matched what Hong Da-jeong had reported.

She hadn’t included the massive Mutation dog, but I counted it as a unit of its own.

The beast turned its head away when it met my eyes.

“John.”

Oh Hee-tae called.

So the dog’s name was John.

The beast looked at him.

Its ears lowered, its body slack and limp.

That confirmed it.

The creature itself was timid.

And it must have been beaten brutally to become like that.

“If you hit a dog, it obeys. That’s one of the few sayings adults ever got right.”

Oh Hee-tae boldly walked up and patted the beast’s head.

Close enough that if it turned, it could’ve torn him apart. Yet his expression didn’t flicker as he smiled at me, standing face-to-face with a beast that could kill him, then thrust the selfie stick forward.

Click!

“Want to take a photo?”

“I’m not fond of dogs.”

“Really? Then what animal do you like?”

“White-browed Skywalker Gibbon.”

“...What?”

“I like rare things.”

I gave the name of an animal he’d never be able to find.

“Let’s go inside.”

The warehouse awaited.

More than twenty armed fighters surrounded it, rifles at the ready, while a recon drone hovered overhead, scanning the ground.

It flew high enough to avoid the monsters’ detection range, but it was oversized and gaudy, painted bright colors—easy to spot.

Easier still to shoot down.

I thought that as I kept my eyes on Oh Hee-tae.

He guided me forward, his face split in a bizarre, gleeful grin the entire time.

“Let’s go.”

“I could go in alone.”

“I’ll accompany you.”

He didn’t come alone.

Two men with rifles and another carrying a pistol and camera came along.

Suppressing a bitter smile, I activated the comms.

“Signal check.”

“Skeleton. You sure you’re okay?”

The Defender siblings’ voices came through.

My steadfast friends.

They sounded worried, but there was no need.

That camera’s glow, illuminating Oh Hee-tae’s self-satisfied grin, gave me certainty.

There’s a kind of pattern you see.

When the inexperienced step into society and taste a little success, they start thinking the world is simple.

“You know when Korean men become the most arrogant assholes?”

I remembered something my mentor, Instructor Jang Ki-young, once said over drinks.

“First! When they get into university. Second! When they just finish military service. Third! When they first land a job and see their paycheck. That’s when even the most pathetic bastard struts like a great man. And the worst are the third kind. Fresh grads at big corporations, their egos are through the roof.”

I suppose Jang Ki-young had gotten stung by some relative at a holiday dinner and vented it at us.

Anyway, I’d never gone to college or lived a normal working life, so I hadn’t understood him then. But when I looked at people like Oh Hee-tae, I found myself unconsciously agreeing.

The world must look laughably easy to him.

The heavens handed him the gift of being Awakened. Jeon Si-hoon then crowned him with the title of Knight, a twenty-first century aristocrat.

The thirty armed fighters waiting around the warehouse to kill me if I tried to flee—all of them were his men.

How many twenty-somethings enjoyed such luxuries?

As we walked through the dark, Oh Hee-tae slowly dropped his facade.

“Hey.”

The camera switched off.

I saw white lines marked on the ground.

Not by me.

Probably cleared in advance by his subordinates.

The thralls that had been wandering here had been swept away.

But the most critical spots had been left untouched.

They’d only cleaned what showed.

As I entertained unpleasant thoughts, his voice, smug and grating, pricked my ear.

“Aren’t you scared?”

In the darkness, Oh Hee-tae looked at me with mock pity.

“Two Dancer-types, right up ahead. Two. Isn’t one already overwhelming? If you’re scared, just say you’re scared.”

“······.”

I silently stared back.

He smirked, pointing at the camera.

“Fine, I’ll be honest.”

This was the moment when Oh Hee-tae revealed his true self.

Not surprising. Just the natural order of things.

“I don’t actually want to kill you. You may be a relic riding the winds of history, but you did step onto the battlefield. A useless guy who managed to kill a few monsters. People just lick your ass too much, that’s all. But I admit it—you’ve got some credit.”

Not as vicious as his appearance suggested.

“But your time’s up. Si-hoon offered you a hand, and you refused. That’s on you.”

So he had his justification.

“Still, there are people who look up to you. Nobodies who never got chosen, clinging to the fact you killed a General-type by sheer luck. They invoke your name. I hate that.”

He even explained why.

“······.”

Apparently, I’d become a mythic name not just online but in reality.

Even if I was treated like garbage—John Nae-non would say even the shit around my ass had cosmic vibes.

“The problem is that a useless bastard like you killed a General-type!”

“It was a Nemesis-type.”

I corrected him.

Oh Hee-tae glared, unable to hide his rage, his eyes blazing as though he meant to kill me.

Fiercer than the chained Mutation dog outside. Yet through that savagery, I saw something weaker than a dog.

Sure, he’d killed people.

Sure, he’d fought battles.

But had he ever touched the edge of the Crack?

No. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Kang Han-min wouldn’t have allowed it.

Kang Han-min and I were like inhabitants of different planets, but in some things we shared values.

Like judging people.

We both studied under Instructor Jang Ki-young, at the same school. Treated differently, yes—but the same mentor.

“Don’t they teach you in your training curriculum that the first slayer names the monster?”

Clack—

The soldiers behind us raised their rifles.

“He’s a Knight. Show some respect, fossil.”

One barked sharply.

Oh Hee-tae raised a hand.

“Stand down.”

He spat on the ground and glared at me.

“You really think you can handle it? Two Dancer-types.”

I’d felt it already. Oh Hee-tae talked like he wanted me dead, but what he actually wanted was different.

What he wanted was the disgrace of seeing the Old School’s peak beg for his life.

He wanted footage of a mere human, the man who had slain the Nemesis, on his knees.

So be it.

I met his gaze calmly.

“Confidence has nothing to do with it. A Hunter who accepts a mission executes it.”

“What?”

“Once accepted, execution is what makes a Hunter.”

I looked forward.

“I’ll do my part.”

Oh Hee-tae snapped his head.

“Go in.”

He pointed into the darkness.

I walked slowly toward it.

A mocking light shone on my back.

The camera must have been recording.

I didn’t want to act old, but moments like this made me feel the youth of my opponent.

That obsession with perfection—it’s something young souls often display.

If I were in his shoes, I would’ve just shot me and spun the story.

“Skeleton died disgracefully.”

That would’ve been simpler and more certain.

No stagecraft. No setup.

Sure, there’d be rumors. But rumors don’t last long.

We all know that most truths are nothing but stubborn lies given time.

But being young—and therefore pure—he demanded raw, perfect footage.

And that suited my predictions.

Thanks to it, I had my chance.

The chance I had already been 99% sure of.

Shing—

I drew my twin axes.

From behind, someone whistled.

“Here he comes, finally.”

The axes were for show.

I had no intention of taking on two Dancer-types alone.

But how about this?

“Defender.”

I spoke into the comms briefly.

“You may begin.”

“Roger.”

Boom!

A dull concussive thud echoed from beneath my feet.

“What? What was that?”

Oh Hee-tae’s sharp voice cut from behind.

“A bomb?”

“It’s fine. Underground? Not here. We cleared this side.”

The flaw of the young is that they half-ass everything.

Not that I wanted to be meticulous. But on the battlefield, a single mistake is death. So we obsessed, paranoid, criticized for it.

Mistakes happen. But mistakes in war are fatal.

Boom!

Another shockwave rumbled underfoot.

And then—

Woooooong—!

The monsters’ scream.

Or perhaps a siren.

I turned.

And there he was—a child’s face, trembling, staring at me, overwhelmed, not knowing what to do.