WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
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◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 15: Hunter
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“Set out.”
The old man at the front stopped and looked over the thirteen people with a grim expression.
“Before we enter the mountain, I’ll tell you the three most important rules for hunting the Mountain Lord.
“First. Whoever strays even one step from the group dies.
“Second. Whoever turns their back on the tiger in fear and runs will be the first one bitten to death.
“Third. If you begin to see the tiger in the forest, it is already too late. It means that cunning beast has been watching your throats from the darkness for a long time. Never let your guard down.”
The trembling spearpoints hardened with fierce resolve.
Fourteen of us raised our torches and left the village entrance.
Enormous tracks stamped deep into the soft earth led into the dense forest.
They were a trail of death, inviting us to follow.
From the darkness at the end of that trail came a cry that broke strangely like a wail.
The seasoned hunters from the village, who knew this mountain inside out, led the pursuit.
With only the wavering light of a single torch, they read the night forest.
They read the direction of grass bent beneath the beast’s weight.
They even read the scraped bark and the places where dew had been shaken from leaves by its massive body.
“It turned this way. The marks from the broken branches are still fresh.”
“It’s climbing toward the mountainside along this stream valley.”
Elder Bae walked at the very front, using his heavy spear as a staff.
Though old, the tiger hunter’s steps remained light and steady.
I followed silently around the middle of the group.
There was no reason for me to step forward and pretend I knew better.
Their eyes could read the traces of the forest a hundred times more clearly than mine.
Or so I believed.
“Wait. Stop.”
One of the leading hunters raised his torch before a large boulder, bringing the group to a halt.
The tracks split in two.
One trail was clearly stamped along a narrow cliff path climbing a sheer precipice.
The other scattered faintly and chaotically into a densely wooded valley.
“Look, Elder! It took this cliff path! The tracks are so clear and straight!”
The hunter tracking the beast shouted as he held his torch toward the path.
Even Elder Bae nodded and began to turn his spear toward the cliff.
But I saw something entirely different.
The tracks leading toward the cliff were too uniform and clear.
The stride was even, and even the depth pressed into the earth was identical without the slightest deviation.
They were not tracks left by a living beast walking and running.
They were marks deliberately pressed down with force, like a stamp.
The faint tracks in the opposite valley could not have vanished on their own, either.
They had been deliberately obscured.
After walking through, the huge beast had swept dirt over them with its thick tail.
I knew nothing about the habits of wild animals.
But the part of me that had been hunted told me it was a trap.
“That isn’t the cliff path.”
The words came out before I could think.
Thirteen pairs of eyes turned toward me at once.
None of them believed me.
“What could a young man possibly know about the basics of tracking wild beasts?”
“It was stealthy enough to enter the village without making a sound. Yet when it left the yard, it deliberately left clear tracks for us to see. Would such a cunning creature honestly leave its trail at a fork in the road?”
“Then what are these clear tracks stamped all over the ground?”
“They are bait and a trap meant to drive us into a dead end. That cliff path is a narrow, single-file trail. The moment we enter it in a line, it will cut off our escape from both ends. Then it will chew us up one at a time.”
The forest air froze.
Elder Bae frowned and held his torch close to the ground at the entrance to the cliff path.
He studied it for a long while before spitting softly.
“...The young man is absolutely right. This is a false trail, made by forcing its weight into the ground!”
Elder Bae turned and looked directly at me.
For the first time, he looked at me anew.
“You take the lead.”
“What? Elder! How can you put a traveler who doesn’t even know this area at the front?”
“We experienced folk can read the marks in the dirt better. But that young man can read the beast’s killing intent hidden beyond those marks. In a hunt, the sharpest eyes should lead.”
And so I became the leader of the fourteen.
The hunters guarded the sides and rear of the formation.
I had only one task.
To strip away the beast’s lies and open the true path.
* * *
The deeper our pursuit went, the more lies the beast left behind.
There were overlapping tracks where it had carefully retraced its own footprints backward.
There was a clump of yellow fur it had deliberately rubbed against branches along a narrow passage.
There were tracks where it had loudly splashed across a stream, then quietly climbed back out again.
They were lies that would have kept even ten hunters wandering for half a day.
But to me, they were as obvious as if each fake trail had a label attached to it.
The pursuit grew faster.
At first, I stopped to inspect the ground.
Then I inspected it without slowing my steps.
Now, I ran as I chose the road ahead.
I was in a hurry.
The pale face of the woman I had covered with salt in place of incense kept appearing before me.
That day, I had been late once because a mere hundred and fifty steps had been too far.
Ever since then, something like a stone had lodged in my throat and refused to go down.
If even little Dallae, who had smiled while clutching three jujubes in her hands, had gone cold, I felt that something inside me would collapse.
What boiled through my veins was not fear, but rage.
That beast had crawled into a peaceful village and taken an innocent child in its jaws.
Today, I would catch it and kill it with my own hands on this mountain.
It was not because I coveted martial arts.
The Ghost Sword Art at Heartbreak Cliff did not even cross my mind.
I would save that child, carry her on my back, and descend this mountain.
That was all.
* * *
We were passing a rocky slope halfway up the mountain.
Something was wrong with the sounds.
The problem was that there were no sounds.
A night forest should be loud enough to hurt one’s ears.
Insects should chirp, owls should hoot, and the wind should rustle through overturned leaves.
But at some point, all those sounds had died away as if cut out with scissors.
For every ten steps we took, the silence followed us ten steps.
The entire forest was holding its breath under the weight of fear.
“It’s coming.”
My low warning came at the same instant the darkness erupted in a roar.
Roaaar!
A small mountain burst from the darkness at the edge of the torchlight.
It was targeting the torchbearer at the rear.
“Everyone, get down!”
At Elder Bae’s shout, the man flattened himself against the ground.
In that instant, the beast’s enormous body swept over his head.
Though it passed twenty paces away, the gust raised by its leap lashed my cheek.
The beast landed lightly in the darkness opposite us and slowly turned around.
At last, its outline appeared at the edge of the torchlight.
It was huge.
Even on all fours, its shoulders reached my chest.
Its torso looked like two full-grown bulls joined end to end.
Muscles like iron hammers writhed beneath yellow hide wrapped in black stripes with every step.
One forepaw was as large as a man’s torso.
But what was truly unlike a beast were its eyes.
They burned crimson, as though lanterns had been lit in the darkness.
That red glow spread across its broad forehead, making the pattern of the character for king stand out as if it were weeping tears of blood.
Its jaws opened wide, revealing its fangs.
The claim that there was a handspan and a half between those fangs was wrong.
There had to be at least two handspans.
“...This can’t be.”
A broken groan escaped Elder Bae’s lips.
“That thing has shed the skin of an ordinary tiger. It is covered in dense demonic qi. A monstrosity that has begun transforming into a yokai.”
“W-What does that mean, Elder?”
“When a mountain beast craves and devours too much human blood and flesh, its qi grows foul and it changes like that. Hellfire fills its eyes, and its hide becomes as tough as iron. Once that foul energy completely takes command of its body, it becomes a demonic beast.”
Sweating coldly, the old man readjusted his grip on his spear.
“But the fact that it is only half-transformed is still a stroke of heaven-sent luck for us! Raise your spearpoints and keep your wits about you! Even in all my years of experience killing nine tigers, I cannot guarantee anything against a monster like that!”
Grrrr.
A sound rolled from deep within the beast’s throat.
Its ending twisted strangely, just as I had heard days ago.
It sounded as though it kept the resentful spirits of those it had swallowed in its throat, then spat them out in mockery.
“Form a circle! Tighten the formation and press your backs together!”
At the old man’s command, the fourteen of us formed a tight circle back to back.
Ten sharp spearpoints stretched like a hedgehog’s spines toward the darkness in every direction.
“Torchbearers, gather in the center of the circle! We need to see the darkness where it is hiding! If you stare straight at the fire, you’ll die because you cannot see far!”
The torches gathered in the center of the formation.
The beast began circling us along the boundary where light met darkness, walking with the arrogant gait of a predator.
Grrr. Grrrr.
It growled continuously as it circled us.
The sound echoed from the darkness in every direction.
It seemed to be trying to keep us from knowing where it was.
Just hearing it made my stomach tremble on its own.
I heard the sound of someone’s trouser leg soaking with urine.
No one in this death trap laughed at them.
“It’s natural to piss yourself and be afraid!”
The old man shouted like thunder.
“You may shake inside all you want, but keep the spear in your hands upright! A tiger will rip out the throat of the man whose fear makes him lower his spearpoint first!”
The trembling spearpoints barely regained their strength at the old man’s rebuke.
The beast circled the formation again and again.
It watched like a hunter choosing which of the ten spearpoints was the most frightened and weak.
Even in its route, I could see a pattern.
The intervals between its steps and the angle at which it twisted its head whenever it changed direction repeated every three circuits.
But no name came to mind.
This was not martial arts refined by human hands.
I had to read and break the beast’s instinct with my own eyes and intuition.
* * *
After studying us, the beast chose a man named Deoksan as its first prey.
He was standing in the place where the trembling was worst.
The beast kicked off from the darkness and sprang like a coiled spring.
“Urk!”
Deoksan cried out in terror and thrust his spear forward.
Before the thrust could even reach the beast’s shoulder, its forepaw struck the shaft.
The ashwood handle snapped in two like a hollow millet stalk.
Deoksan froze like a stone statue, clutching the broken half of his spear.
Jaws full of fangs descended over his head.
I could see the path of those jaws, as well as the brief opening created when its joints bent just before it bit down.
I abandoned my position and charged in, thrusting my spear at its eye.
Just before the spearpoint pierced its eye, the beast jerked its head aside.
As a result, its jaws bit empty air rather than Deoksan’s head.
Crunch!
The sound of its upper and lower fangs colliding was horrifying.
“Get back now!”
Deoksan came to his senses and rolled into the center of the formation.
The beast, having missed, nimbly retreated into the darkness again.
“I-I lived... I’m alive.”
“Tighten the formation again and hold it! The line must never break!”
After that, it became a suffocating game of tag.
The beast used the darkness as a shield.
It sprang out from the east, from the west, and from blind spots behind us, striking once before melting away again before we could retaliate.
Beomsu, the archer, did not even have time to draw their bowstring.
The beast’s claws sprang out and raked across Beomsu’s side.
Beomsu collapsed to the ground.
Dark blood mixed with the breath they coughed out while clutching their ribs.
One spearman was struck by the beast’s tail and flung away with his spear.
He smashed his back against a boulder and lost consciousness.
The third ambush was a move difficult to believe came from a beast.
The creature sprang out again and scooped dirt and stones toward us with both forepaws.
A rain of dirt poured over the torches at the center of the circle.
One torch went out with a sizzle.
The other was knocked away and rolled across the ground.
Our field of vision narrowed.
The darkness tightened around our throats by another handspan.
“Damn it! Get that fallen pine torch lit! Relight the flames first!”
For the first time, Elder Bae’s usually calm voice cracked with urgency.
It was a beast that understood how humans relied on fire and targeted the flames first.
The more we fought it, the colder my back grew at its cunning.
Fortunately, no one had been killed with their throat torn out yet.
It was not because we had defended well.
The beast simply had not tried to finish anyone off yet.
It broke the weapons of the troublesome spearmen and crippled the archer.
Then, at last, it turned its head toward Beomsu, who lay fallen and coughing blood.
It was about to deal the final blow.
I saw its shoulders lowering for the leap and its weight shifting onto its hind legs to gather recoil.
Not that easily.
I judged the path it would take when it leaped.
Then I hurled my spear with all my strength into its path.
Thud!
The heavy boar spear buried itself in the ground directly before the beast’s snout.
It flinched.
Its charge came to a forced halt.
This was already the second time I had interrupted its hunt.
Its two eyes, blazing with rage, slowly turned toward me.
The fallen Beomsu and the trembling spearmen vanished from its sight.
I saw a cold calculation pass through those eyes.
It was the look of a beast deciding that it had to tear apart that sharp-eyed, fearless nuisance first if it wanted tonight’s hunt to go smoothly.
Should I call this an honor or a disaster?
“It’s coming! Its gaze is fixed on him! It is going for the young traveler!”
The old man shouted.
I knew.
I picked up the spear dropped by the spearman who had been struck down by the tail.
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