CHAPTER 5

005- Who Are You

The Magi shimmered all over the monster's body.
That black, haze-like smoke was the source of the monster's power, and at the same time, it was an armor that deflected most attacks and impacts.
So he was worried this arrow might not work, but...

'If it doesn't, I'll have to give up.'

He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
With a little anxiety and a lot of tension, Jinwoo released the hand holding the bowstring.
Perhaps because it was an old bow, the tension was weak. Even the sound of the string being released was feeble.
Still, the arrow flew reasonably fast.
Fortunately, the arrow flew straight into the cave and struck the head of the bear crouching inside.

—KRRHUUUUUOOOONG!

It pierced the black smoke and hit it right in the eye!
The result was better than expected. Jinwoo clenched his fist and threw the bow aside. There was no time to shoot a second arrow.

BOOM! K-KOOM!

The enraged bear slammed its body against the cave walls and shot out like a cannonball.
Then it charged madly in the direction the arrow came from—that is, toward Jinwoo's position.
Jinwoo, having anticipated this, ran as calmly as possible toward the area where he had prepared the traps.
Calmly, he told himself, but his heart was pounding, and his head was hot.
Still, he tried to maintain his composure as much as possible, constantly recalling the plan and route he had set up.

His eyes focused, and the surrounding scenery blurred. With a concentration similar to when he had fled from the Elf, he leaped over a thick log lying horizontally.

—KRRHUNG!

KWAA-JIJIK!

The moment he jumped, he heard the sound of wood being crushed behind him.
He didn't need to look back to know what had happened to the log.
If he got caught, he was dead.
His entire body would be pulverized before he could even register that he'd been caught.

Maintaining a focus as sharp as walking on a knife's edge, Jinwoo took out a knife and cut a rope as he passed it.
THUD!
The pre-bent tree branch was released, striking the bear.
For the first time, Jinwoo glanced back.
The result of the first trap was...

KRRHUUUONG!

...nothing.
The charging bear didn't even flinch from being hit by a tree branch.
Its body, shrouded in black smoke, crashed through every tree and rock in its way, charging straight for Jinwoo.
It was the same at the spot where he had set the snare.
The thin wire bit fiercely into the bear's ankle, but it snapped it as if it were a spider's web.
The pit he had dug with a shovel to trip it was also useless.
If anything, the beast used the pit as a foothold to leap even higher, trying to strike Jinwoo's back.

"You've got to be kidding me!"

Feeling the encroaching presence of death, Jinwoo scrambled to get out of the way.
He squeezed his already screaming thigh muscles and dove forward.
Just ahead was a narrow gap between a thick tree and a rock, a space just big enough for a person to pass through, but too small for the bear.

BOOM! CRACK!

Of course, the beast just bulldozed its way through.
All the traps and obstacles so far had failed to slow it down even a little.
In the end, it caught up to Jinwoo.
A front paw, wreathed in black smoke, swiped at Jinwoo's side.

"Aaaaaaaack!"

Jinwoo's body flew like a ball and slammed into a nearby tree.
Blood streamed from his side where the paw had grazed him, and a shock that made it hard to breathe shot up from his back where he'd hit the tree.
Even so, Jinwoo couldn't afford to stay down.
The bear had already closed in and was raising its paw to strike him.

'The spear!'

He had to block it.
Fortunately, he had the spear from Mark's corpse. Perhaps its long, sturdy shaft could block a paw of such monstrous strength.

KWAJIK!

No.
He thought it was a decent spear, but the bear's paw instantly shattered the shaft and clawed at Jinwoo's chest.
The only silver lining was that the shaft seemed to have absorbed a good deal of the impact, so the wound on Jinwoo's body wasn't immediately fatal.
But it was still a serious injury.

'Damn it.'

The bear raised its paw again.
Standing on two legs with the sun at its back, the bear raising its paw toward Jinwoo looked no different from an executioner dropping a guillotine.

WHOOOSH—!

As the claws descended, the only thing Jinwoo could believe in was the sword in his hand.
'The sword.'
The standard-issue sword that appeared from his inventory into his hand.
The blade's craftsmanship was clumsy, and the hilt's finish was poor, with a leather strap coming loose and dangling.
It must have been made from cheap scrap iron, as the color of the blade wasn't clean, but speckled as if mixed with dust.
And yet, when he held it, everything changed.

His breathing stabilized, and his posture shifted.
Even without the achievement of having felled a wolf with a single stroke, Jinwoo's instincts themselves considered him complete while holding the sword.
Perhaps it was more accurate to call it a sense of oneness than a sense of security.
It wasn't simply that the sword felt like a part of his body.
He felt a sense of unity with the sword from a place deeper than his physical form. It told him that by holding the sword, his very existence became more complete.
However, his sword ability had already been awakened.
He had heard that it was difficult for a Hunter's ability to awaken further in the same area.
For example, if someone like Jinwoo had awakened abilities in their 'legs' and 'sword,' it was extremely rare for those legs and sword to awaken again.
A single awakening was already a breakthrough of one's limits; it was not possible to break through those limits again without some profound realization.

[A Fragment of a Past Life emerges.]

Therefore, this was a miracle that Jinwoo could not understand.
Something he did not know, but his past life did.
[You shall cut its soul and covet it.]

His head spun. His mind was pushed to its absolute limit, and his vision blurred as if he would collapse at any moment.
Within that dizzying vision, something shone.
Inside the monster's body, at its very core, was a shape like a burning blue flame.
The beast's size, the way it was swinging its paw—none of that entered Jinwoo's eyes.
The sword Jinwoo swung was drawn as if mesmerized toward the blue flame at the creature's core, and—

Hwaaa—

—he cut it in a single stroke.
The low-grade iron sword, a mere standard-issue item, pierced the monster's black smoke, and cut through its hide, muscle, and even bone.
The sight of the giant bear's body being bisected was truly overwhelming, but what Jinwoo was seeing was something else entirely.
The image of the blue flame being severed.
The cut flame, as if in a final struggle, flared up before scattering, breaking apart, and being sucked into Jinwoo's sword as if absorbed.
The flame wasn't just in the beast; it was in Jinwoo, too.
The beast's flame, drawn in through the sword, merged with Jinwoo's flame, which then flared up a little larger.

'What is this...'

In his shimmering, distorted vision, he could only see the blue flame.
The beast had it, Jinwoo had it, and so did the grass, the trees, the chirping birds, and the crying insects.
There were only differences in size and hue.
The sudden expansion of his senses and the flood of information forced Jinwoo's mind into a shutdown.
With eyelids as heavy as lead, Jinwoo managed to push them open and looked at the being before him.
Next to the bisected, fallen corpse of the monster, he saw a figure he had seen before.
The long-eared, black-haired Elf.
She had approached with all of her presence concealed. Anyone who had not reached a considerable level of mastery would not have easily noticed her presence with their ears or their skin.

"&#%#$......."

She was muttering something, staring at the black bear's corpse in astonishment.
When she realized Jinwoo was looking at her, she looked back, surprised once again that her presence had been detected.
She had approached hiding her breath, her footsteps, even the sound of her heartbeat. How?
It wasn't Jinwoo's eyes or ears that had noticed her.
He had simply felt the presence of the blue flame burning in the center of the Elf's body.
The flame she projected in Jinwoo's eyes was far more orderly and beautiful than the monster's, resembling a flower bud made from a traditional craft.

'Damn it...'

He had to run, but he couldn't.
It was good that he had noticed the Elf's presence, but he didn't have the strength to hold onto his consciousness.
The eyelids he had barely managed to lift were forced shut. Like a film snapping, his consciousness faded into darkness.

"Hut!"

Snapping to his senses, Jinwoo shot up and scanned his surroundings.
The sword was still in his hand, ready for battle at a moment's notice.
But Jinwoo quickly realized there were no enemies.
A sixth sense, completely different from sight or hearing—the one that detected blue flames—told him there were no threats to be wary of nearby.

'Did I awaken a detection ability?'
... No.
He remembered the final moment.
The moment he cut down the monster with this iron sword. The moment he severed and absorbed the blue candle flame burning at its core.
The detection ability to sense his surroundings through the flames was likely just a secondary effect derived from that power.
Well, that aside.

'I'm fine. The monster's corpse is still here... huh? My wounds have healed a bit, too?'
Jinwoo examined his own body and was stunned.

The wounds on his side and chest from the monster had been partially treated.
To be precise, the wounds themselves were still there, but the contamination from the Magi had been completely healed.
This meant he’d been treated with a purification potion or a holy art.
But who did it?
It was obvious who. Jinwoo clearly remembered locking eyes with her the moment he lost consciousness.
The question wasn't who, but why.
Jinwoo shook his head. He had given up on trying to guess that Elf’s thoughts long ago.
"Time to go home."
In any case, his body was healed, and he had survived.
All that was left was to truly go home.
Jinwoo felt a wave of relief at the fact that he had somehow overcome the crisis.
It wasn't a perfect performance, and there were many moments of immaturity, but he had survived in the end, and that was enough.
After placing the monster's bisected corpse into his inventory, Jinwoo noticed a sword stuck in the ground next to it.
A sword with a white gem embedded in it.
It was the jeweled sword the Elf had been carrying when they first met by the stream.
He picked up the sword without a word.
Just by gripping the hilt, he could feel it. This was a masterwork, hundreds of times superior to the iron sword issued by the Bureau.
He was about to head to the rocky cave where the blue portal was, but then, as if a thought suddenly struck him, he scrawled something on the ground.
He didn't think the Elf could read Korean, but still.

His work finished, Jinwoo finally sought out the blue portal and threw himself inside.

The black-haired woman returned to the spot Jinwoo had just left.
She had originally planned to leave as well, but Jinwoo's final action had piqued her interest.
On the dirt floor where the sword had been left, a few unfamiliar characters were written.
When she raised her finger, a small cluster of light formed at its tip.
"Can you read the intention dwelling in these letters?" she asked the cluster of light.
While it was impossible to read the letters themselves, she could read the residual intent left behind from the act of writing.
It wasn't a perfect translation, but she could grasp the general meaning. For freshly written letters like these, a fairly accurate understanding was possible.
After a moment of examining the letters, the cluster of light replied.
An expression of gratitude. A name. And a question.
"There's a name written?"
Life sparked in the woman's eyes as she committed the string of characters Jinwoo had written to memory.
She didn't know which part was the name or how to read it, but she figured a day would come when she would find out.
"What's the question?"
—Who are you?
"Oh, my."
For reasons she couldn't explain, her mood lifted.
She scuffed out the letters in the dirt with her foot, then disappeared into the forest, humming a little tune.
She headed in the opposite direction of Jinwoo, toward where the red portal was.