I’ll Retire After Saving the World

TL: SHW

Unfortunately, Hong Seok-young was the type who never walked away from a fight once it was offered.

Since I'd known that from the start, I knew exactly how he would react.

"Just once?"

Hong Seok-young's eyes lit up as he asked.

I'd expected that question too. So precisely what I'd predicted that it left me feeling hollow.

I thought about my answer for a moment. Flatly saying yes would mean kicking away the chance to face someone as formidable as Hong Seok-young, and that would be idiotic. Of course, even if I answered that way, he'd cheerfully grab a weapon and come trotting along the second I wanted him to.

The truth was, whatever I said, all I'd get back was an irritating reaction. If I said no, he'd smirk at me with that insufferable, self-satisfied look on his face. And even if he really was that good, I had no intention of ever admitting it.

So I waved a hand vaguely and answered.

"Depends."

"Depends…?"

Hong Seok-young's eyes went wide, his face blank.

"Do you have any idea how many people come to me hauling piles of cash just to beg for one round of sparring? And you say depends? Depeeends?"

"If you don't want to, forget it. I don't… particularly need to."

"No!!"

Hong Seok-young let out a bellow. At the noise, the others turned their heads toward us. I shrugged. It wasn't as if this was the first time he'd carried on like this.

"You're the one who asked to spar, so why are you being so limp about it!"

"I've never had much taste for badgering people who'd rather not."

I had no desire to watch him gloat about it. The more indifferent I acted, the more it was Hong Seok-young who ended up getting antsy.

"Come on, let's do it!"

Hong Seok-young grabbed the back of my neck and shoved me forward. Not a hand between the shoulder blades; that habit of steering me by the neck hadn't changed. I let myself be pushed out into the garden, pretending to give in. Lee Mi-seon noticed us leaving a beat late and followed after.

I had said we should spar, but I hadn't meant this very second.

Still, I was the one who'd goaded him, so I said nothing and scuffed the toe of my shoe against the garden soil, threaded through with Kim Chae-min's mana.

The Archmage, her pride wounded by Sem Bloom, had been grinding her teeth about it ever since. She'd said she was going to reinforce the magic she planned to inscribe on the Pilot High School building as well, so in a sense, maybe it had all worked out.

Hong Seok-young stopped and faced me.

Then, out of nowhere, he asked,

"With what?"

I considered it for a second. There were wooden swords in one corner of the garden, the ones the kids had been using. They'd been handled so roughly that they weren't in any decent condition, but… whatever.

Still, I had no intention of using a sword.

"Do you have a spear?"

Hong Seok-young's eyes glinted sharply. I hurried to add,

"No, not a real one. What, are we out to kill someone? I haven't touched a spear in over half a year."

"Half a year? Why?"

"That's my business."

"Huh… is that so."

Hong Seok-young mulled it over for a moment, then reached inside his thin windbreaker. One of the occupational habits of a Hunter. Wearing a jacket with pockets even at the height of summer. Not that it was summer now.

Inside the jacket pocket sat an item linked to a subspace. A wallet, or whatever else. Since nobody could walk down the street carrying a weapon, it counted as a necessity. And even setting that aside, it was simply more convenient.

Grunting as he rummaged through the pocket, Hong Seok-young pulled out two wooden poles, each taller than I was. There were no blades fitted to them, but the length was about the same as the spear he used.

"These ought to do it."

He tossed one of them to me. Heavier than it looked. I gripped it and gave it a light swing, and it cut the air with a surprisingly vicious sound. It had probably been crafted from wood harvested in a Dungeon. When I breathed a little mana into it, it didn't splinter at all, and instead began to give off a low, smooth hum.

"Rules?"

"Casual, whatever."

"There's no such thing as 'casual, whatever' in sparring!"

"Then dead serious, with everything we've got? Are we out to kill someone?"

"Not that far, maybe, but at least at a focused level."

"Then I'd die."

"At the focused level? Just how weak are you?"

So annoying….

Hong Seok-young spoke in a voice full of concern.

"Don't you worry. Why would I ever kill you! You're my…."

"Never mind that."

I shot a glance at Lee Mi-seon. Hong Seok-young cut himself off, twisted his mouth into an odd shape, and gave an obnoxious grin.

I tightened my grip on the spear and lowered my stance. Weight settling into my legs. Instinct told me there was only one way to shut that ajeossi's mouth.

"Young Hwijae here is my so…."

"I said never mind."

Whoosh.

Bang!!

The sound was far too heavy to believe it had come from two wooden poles striking each other.

"Ha!"

Hong Seok-young laughed with delight. Fuck, sure. Of course he was enjoying himself. Someone who moved exactly the way he did had dropped out of the sky in front of him, so why wouldn't he be?

Hong Seok-young shifted slowly, as if inviting me to attack as much as I liked. He drew his foot back in time with my strikes. No counterattack. Instead, he raised his spear at just the right moment and let my attack slide off it. I reset my stance immediately and kicked off the ground. All the while, Hong Seok-young simply turned to face me and repeated the same thing. Unlike me, running myself ragged circling him, Hong Seok-young barely moved at all.

From that short spar with Han Tae-kyung, he'd probably figured out exactly how I fought. What an infuriating ajeossi.

There was no winning anyway, and I had no intention of winning. Hong Seok-young didn't look like he seriously meant to beat me either. The difference was that he could have, whenever he pleased.

With no blade and a blunt tip, the attacks were bound to be monotonous. There was no reason to work my brain for tricks the way I always did when sparring with Father.

A fight between human beings, rather than against monsters, wasn't decided by raw force. It was a battle of tactics fiercer than anything else. A contest of intelligence, in other words. A man with a dull mind couldn't fight, no matter how strong he was. That was how Father had taught me. And for all his bold, easygoing exterior, Father was the type to lay out this scheme and that one before entering a Dungeon or taking down a monster.

So when Hong Seok-young dodged one of my attacks instead of blocking it, I pretended to change direction and quietly drove my spear into the ground. To avoid rousing suspicion, I couldn't afford to linger. And I didn't need to. The time it took to let out one short breath. That much was enough.

"……So annoying."

The garden was scattered with the seeds Kim Chae-min had planted. Before she left, she'd explained that the magic would activate if it detected any anomalous mana.

The mana of the Hunters currently staying at the Villa was mana Kim Chae-min already knew. But registered or not, if the core itself was directly stimulated, a spell with an algorithm written into it would fire automatically. Like the mage who'd coded an algorithm to make his body explode the moment his heart stopped beating.

"Tired already?"

He must have caught my muttering, because his voice came back even more elated. I'd muttered it precisely to draw that reaction, but when it landed exactly as expected, a genuine surge of irritation rose in me.

Has that ajeossi actually caught on to everything? To what I'm trying to do? He knows and he's just letting it slide?

"Who's tired? Are you going to fight me properly or not? This is sparring."

"You're the one who said casual, whatever."

"That wasn't an invitation to phone it in."

"I am taking you seriously."

"Without a single counterattack? You were merciless enough teaching the kids."

"Well, they're students, and you're my…."

"Guild member, and I get the full treatment. What a humane Master you are."

While we carried on like that in the garden, the people inside the Villa began drifting out one by one to watch. Anyone with a decent eye would have noticed that my movements resembled Hong Seok-young's.

When I'd been using a sword, only Han Tae-kyung, who had crossed blades with me directly, caught on right away, but the spear was different. How to grip it, how to shift my center of gravity, my breathing, my footwork. I'd learned every part of it directly from Father.

With the original moving right there beside me, anyone who couldn't see it might as well have been blind.

Look at that. Wasn't Lee Mi-seon's expression something to behold? Far worse than when he'd been loudly proclaiming I was his disciple. Half a year at the outside. She had to be working her brain overtime, trying to pin down when exactly I'd become his disciple and how I'd learned enough to copy his movements.

"Calling you a Guild member makes us sound far too stiff, don't you think."

Hong Seok-young grumbled, twirling the spear round and round in his hand.

"Ours isn't that sort of businesslike relationship, it's…."

I lunged at him before he could say son again. I knew he was doing it deliberately, but there was nothing for it but to let him have his way. Even so, I'd primed Kim Chae-min's magic just barely enough….

"That's exactly it!"

For the first time, Hong Seok-young swung his spear in earnest. Bang! A stinging pain spread across my palms.

I glared at him with every ounce of I will kill you if you say son in my eyes. Somehow it only made him grin more obnoxiously.

"You're my disciple, aren't you!"

…He didn't say son, so I supposed that was a relief.

I copied his movements exactly. Easy enough, when I could have traced them with my eyes closed. Half a step forward. Drop the upper body, drive the spear out.

The spears Hong Seok-young and I normally used had heads that were thin and long, like an ordinary sword. Barely any difference in thickness from the shaft. So we would shift where we gripped the shaft to keep our attacks from turning monotonous.

That couldn't be done with the poles we were using now. If either of us had truly intended a proper spar, he wouldn't have taken these out, and I wouldn't have said they'd do.

This was just… how to put it.

It was something like a ritual.

One of those routines that wakes the mind every morning. Opening my eyes and washing my face, brushing my teeth, drinking coffee…. That sort of thing.

'When your head's too full, nothing beats putting your body to work.'

All I had to do was wipe away every stray thought and hold on to one thing alone.

Land a hit on Father.

Hong Seok-young came forward for the first time. I matched the movement and gave a step of ground. I evaded a spear whose swing alone carried the pressure of his mana, then thrust out my own, weighted just as heavily with mana. The two spears met, and the mana they cancelled out surged into a gust that whipped through the garden.

And it dealt the decisive blow to Kim Chae-min's seeds.

I felt the seeds germinating beneath my feet. Hong Seok-young must have sensed something was off, because a puzzled look crossed his face. If he'd been taking the spar seriously he would have dodged at once, but in 'casual, whatever' mode, detecting an Archmage's magic would be difficult.

I planted the wooden spear against the ground and used it as a brace to launch myself. When I brought both feet together into Hong Seok-young, he raised his spear and blocked. There were times this ajeossi behaved as though he'd never heard the word 'dodge'.

At any rate, it made him lose his timing completely. I kicked off the wooden spear and landed as far away as I could. Only once the sprouted seeds had grown into slender vines did Hong Seok-young realize what I'd been aiming for.

Hong Seok-young shouted, the picture of injured innocence.

"That's cheating!"

"Make use of all terrain and features. Isn't that the first thing a Hunter learns?"

Bound tight by vines that had shot up like bamboo shoots, Hong Seok-young let out a hollow laugh. Weaving around the sprouts popping up all over the ground, I brought the wooden spear up under his chin.

"Feel better now?"

Hong Seok-young gazed at my face for a while before he asked it.

I hesitated a moment, then nodded.

"Yes."

"Then that's that. Happy birthday."

Hong Seok-young shouldered his way out of the vines without effort and ruffled my hair roughly.

***

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