Formal Training Begins
Before the special lesson began, Seres announced that he felt nothing at all about special admissions.
There was no fixed schedule or anything like that. Instead, he ran the class as close to real combat as possible, in the form of a sparring match that assumed close-quarters fighting.
With the added warning that it might be more hellish than anything I had experienced so far.
But there was one thing Seres had said that was false.
That he felt nothing about special admission.
Of everything he said, that much was a lie.
There was at least a hint of negative feeling mixed in with it.
Normally, the academy took in promising students who had scored high on the entrance exams, along with cadets blessed with abundant potential.
But Lim Paran, a special admission student, had woken up barely two weeks ago and entered Sielm Academy without taking any test at all.
At a basic level, the difference in effort was obvious.
Between those who had bled themselves dry to get in and those who had stumbled in fresh from waking, who would possibly be inclined to look kindly on the latter?
And on top of that, I was the one assigned to teach such a student personally.
Not a normal lecture-style class, but one-on-one customized instruction where I had to watch every movement myself, make corrections, and fix his posture.
And teaching in that way dragged up memories I wanted to keep buried.
Even now, years later, it was the worst memory I sometimes saw when I lay down to sleep.
A memory I never wanted to recall, and was afraid even to remember.
If anyone else had made me this offer, I would have glared at them, cursed them out, and told them to get lost. If they had kept talking after I refused, I would have made sure they couldn’t speak again.
But the reason I had no choice but to accept this offer was the star who had founded the academy.
He was a benefactor who had helped Seres many times over, and one of the few people who knew Seres’s past.
If he came to me with a request like this despite all that, then there had to be a reason.
So I had no choice but to accept.
Even so, the questions remained.
Was he really the sort of talent she had brought here? Had a clear seed of potential truly been found when compared to the other Sielm students?
Maybe, just maybe, the headmaster had made the wrong choice.
With those thoughts and my resentment toward one-on-one lessons still lingering, whatever expectation I had for the special admission student had already shrunk considerably.
He had said, in so many words, that he would push the schedule forward and talk about the direction of future lessons, but in truth I hadn’t planned any schedule at all.
There was no schedule. I simply went by instinct, corrected the parts that showed the most promise, and trained them.
In Seres’s view, he was doing it in his own systematic way.
No matter how much of a bastard the lesson was, he supposed he should at least do something minimal.
On the first day, running was used to check the special admission student’s basic physical ability and his will.
Of course, physical ability could have been measured in other ways as well, but I had heard that he had woken up and then mostly just been thrown around doing nothing, so what exactly could I have expected?
For that reason, rather than testing physical improvement, I tested how much determination he had to keep going.
The result was eight laps.
A failing grade.
His physical ability was at the very bottom of the bottom. If a student at Sielm were measured at that level, he would be expelled on the spot. It was a humiliating result, one that didn’t even rise to the level of the lowest rank.
And as for willpower...
That was definitely there. Even though it was hard, he still ran with a fair amount of effort. There was at least a faint sense of stubborn grit, of dragging himself forward by force. But was it strikingly strong? Absolutely not.
He had no innate ability.
The report I’d been given mentioned nothing like a unique ability. It only listed the condition called mana erosion.
And it seemed true that he feared humans. The moment someone got even a little too close, his body began trembling violently.
But if I had to ask whether there was anything unusual about him, then yes. The instant I opened my mouth, he seemed to notice my presence and took a step back.
Normally I kept the mana leaking from me suppressed as much as possible, but he reacted with absurd sensitivity.
If it had been a detection-type ability, it would have been strong enough to rank among the top.
On the second day, I ran him again, just like on the first.
I wanted to see how well his body was blessed by growth.
No matter how much of a Sielm cadet he was, it was hard to feel growth or see results in just one night. In the first place, why did the word effort even exist?
Only by steadily doing something over a long period of time did meaningful results appear. And Seres himself, having never attended Sielm, knew that better than anyone.
There was a reason young awakened ones struggled so desperately to get into Sielm.
Not bad.
Compared to the other cadets, his rate of growth was high.
No matter how special the admission, the blessing of growth shouldn’t have been set to a particularly high multiplier, and yet Lim Paran received it more effectively than most.
Even though it was only an ordinary blessing, Lim Paran was benefiting from it far more efficiently.
After checking his growth, I handed him a sword.
Then I rushed at him and watched his response.
Hah.
Seres still looked at Lim Paran with negative eyes, but that didn’t mean he could deny what was plainly there.
Even though I struck with a fast surprise attack, he caught on instantly and took a defensive stance.
Most people, when handed a sword for the first time, would flounder and leave an opening, but Lim Paran reacted immediately and blocked.
Even his eyes were different. The usual vacant stare was gone, replaced by something sharp as he tracked Seres’s slash.
In short, he had talent.
As the lesson went on, even though I wasn’t teaching anything major, he grew visibly with every passing moment.
The stance that had already looked solid became as firm as a planted stake, and the path of the blade grew sharper and sharper.
The sword strikes that had been fast and sharp from the beginning grew faster and more precise with time, as though they were truly aiming for the target.
There were many parts of his style that seemed to copy others, but little by little they were changing into his own techniques.
He was impressive enough.
But compared to cadets who possessed innate abilities related to swordsmanship?
He was clearly behind.
Talent was there.
But was it talent worthy of special admission? Absolutely not.
It was too small to wear the label of special admission.
If he had entered through examination, he would have been ordinary. If he had been admitted by recommendation, he would have been remembered as a rather decent rough stone.
But to parade around with the title of special admission, it was all far too ambiguous.
A frail body that barely surpassed the lowest level, ordinary mental strength, and swordsmanship that only showed the hint of talent.
He was unsuitable for carrying the title of the academy’s first special admission student.
Anyone other than Seres would have thought the same.
Compared with Sielm’s famous promising students, Lim Paran looked completely different.
It had only been two days, admittedly, and even though he showed remarkable talent with the sword, it was still too early to conclude anything.
So the next day, I handed him a spear instead of a sword.
Lim Paran accepted the sword and made an awkward expression. He looked uncertain, as if asking, Is this really right?
Well, I couldn’t exactly blame him. You need some basic foundation before moving on, and here I was telling him to change weapons after a single day.
For Lim Paran, who was already running short on time, it must have been an even harder choice to understand. In his position, lagging far behind everyone else, it would seem wiser to focus on just one thing and drill it endlessly.
There was a reason the saying went, “If you dig a well, dig one well.”
But Seres’s thinking was a little different. If you dug only one well, that one well would certainly be completed.
But what if he had dug another one? What if that other well had suited him far better?
Even aside from that, he needed to know how to respond when faced with other weapons.
Even if he fought using only a sword, shouldn’t he know how to deal with a spear?
By giving him one weapon after another, I could find what suited him best, and in the process he would naturally learn the methods for countering each weapon.
Seres had also trained this way. And thanks to that method, plus a fair amount of talent and sincere effort, he had become a hunter at mid 1st Class, even without having graduated from Sielm.
Because he knew through direct experience how effective this kind of training was, he ran the class in that manner.
“Don’t dawdle. Come on.”
For the next few weeks, I would judge his talent in this way.
If Lim Paran’s growth kept stalling, or if his talent didn’t match the level of special admission... well, then I would lower the intensity and teach him in a more ordinary manner.
After making sure he was ready and settling into his stance, the professor swung the wooden staff with a warning.
- Tak! Tak!
He immediately parried the rapid flurry of attacks.
...?
Even though the attack landed faster than expected, he read it accurately and responded in time.
Feeling a faint sense of wrongness, I swung again.
- Tak! Tak! Tak!
He blocked all three swings aimed at his leg, arm, and head.
Even yesterday, Lim Paran had reacted urgently to Seres’s surprise attack and blocked it at the last moment.
Honestly, it was interesting that he managed to parry an opening strike I’d expected him to miss entirely.
But after that, his movements became clumsy, and even the flow of the attack kept breaking apart. I could have cut off his motions before the strike even landed.
That had been yesterday.
- Kkak! Kagang! Kkeugeug!
The attacks were being blocked immediately.
Even though I had thrown out a fairly serious barrage, he was still managing to block them one by one, clumsily but quickly.
It was clumsy, yes, but the chain of movements itself connected fairly smoothly. It was clearly a developed sequence, far beyond what he had shown yesterday.
Then came the thrust.
The tip of the wooden staff was blunt, but thanks to its length, it was still a very effective attack.
- Whoosh!
But the swift thrust stabbed into empty air where Lim Paran was no longer standing. Apparently realizing that it would be difficult to block, he didn’t respond directly. Instead, he naturally leaned his body away, kicked off the ground, and charged in.
It was a quick but honest thrust.
Seres smoothly diverted the wooden spear and immediately followed up with a flurry of strikes.
This time, Lim Paran answered the barrage.
- Kang! Kakga! Tat tatat!
The spear and wooden staff collided and clung together. They deflected each other’s thrusts, met each other’s slashes, and kept grinding into a contest of strength.
Hah...
It was absurd.
The attacks kept knocking each other aside, and the exchange continued without pause.
Seres began to lose words in his mind, and his confusion only grew.
Lim Paran with a sword. At first he had been clumsy, but little by little he seemed to regain the senses he had lost.
Lim Paran with a spear. From the start, he was meeting the attacks head-on, getting the feel for it, and answering Seres’s strikes.
He had definitely only handled a sword yesterday. And yet today he was growing as though he had been using a spear all along.
- Tadatadak! Chaeng! Kang!
Even now he was still growing, and at a very steep rate at that.
He was developing at a pace so abrupt it could not even be compared to the growth I had seen yesterday.
To get a better sense of just how much he had improved, I increased the density and speed of my attacks even further.
Until moments ago, Lim Paran had been answering them with confidence, but as they became harder to keep up with, he stopped meeting them head-on and shifted his focus to deflection.
Unlike yesterday, when he had stood frozen in place as if nailed to the ground, now both feet moved freely across the floor, responding with flexible precision.
The weapon that had been busy only defending now naturally flowed into a counterattack the moment it slipped an attack aside.
- Bang!
The wooden spear, having blocked a powerful blow, shook as it failed to hold its center. Even the legs that had been moving to evade continued to wobble. The body that had been holding the defensive line hesitated for an instant.
But he made sure not a single strike touched him, and then he leapt sharply backward.
He was no longer letting himself be hit as easily as yesterday.
His physical ability had also grown since the previous day.
In those sharply opened eyes was also a fierce determination to identify Seres’s openings.
Seres narrowed his eyes and raised the level again. It still wasn’t all laid bare. He needed evidence before making a judgment. He had to drive Lim Paran harder and find it.
That kind of determination can come from nowhere --
“Teacher! Aren’t you going easy on me? Come at me properly! Someday I’m going to become a hunter way better than you, so!”
Ugh....
I remembered it again.
That disgusting, unpleasant sensation.
I raised the level sharply, and in that instant Lim Paran’s solid defense was broken through.
* * *
The speed and force suddenly rose to an abnormal level, and the line he had desperately held was shattered.
I tried to sense the trajectory of the mana moving through the weapon and block by instinct, but I couldn’t stop everything.
Ghk!
Until yesterday, I had kept looking through books on swordsmanship and running simulations in my head, imagining how Seres Professor would attack.
But today he told me to use a spear.
Where did all my effort go?
Well, I took the spear anyway. Since it was the professor saying it, he must have had some reasonable basis for making me use another weapon.
Still, maybe there was some value in the results of analyzing Seres Professor’s movements while sleeping less through the dawn hours. I could at least pick up his textbook, orthodox motions to some extent.
This morning, while watching Han Riae’s mana circulation, I realized one thing.
It was true that seeing mana with my own eyes gave me a great many advantages.
But if strong mana kept appearing right in front of me, it blurred my vision.
I didn’t know what would happen in real combat, where other forms of magic were used.
Once I could tell what kind of mana was being gathered, avoiding the attack would naturally become easier.
But in this kind of sparring, where there wasn’t much magic being used, did I really need to keep watching mana like this?
My brain had its limits to begin with, and if I kept taking all of that in, my calculation speed would naturally slow down.
Trying to read everything one by one while sparring was still beyond my level.
So what, right now, would help me most in a meaningful way?
- Kakaakakak...! Chaeng! Tadat!
To block out all the mana coming from my eyes and pour every last bit of my focus into mana erosion.
The more attention I gave mana erosion, the more fully my bodily senses came alive.
Because of that, I could vividly feel where Seres Professor’s slash was headed and from what posture he was chaining together his flurry of attacks.
Unlike yesterday, when I had been clumsy, I could feel so much more now.
That was why I still hadn’t been hit.
To be honest, I was fighting this desperately because I really didn’t want to get hit.
The pure mana from the morning lecture had erased all the bruises on my body, so if I made even the slightest mistake, I could be beaten far more terribly than yesterday.
There was a line in a comic I used to read: “A lesson that doesn’t involve pain has no meaning.”
But if there was too much pain, could that really still be meaningful?
Well, maybe I’d grow more desperately.
Still, having experienced yesterday’s pain, I absolutely didn’t want to gain any more of it.
In plain words, I didn’t want to hurt.
I tried to do everything I could to avoid being hit...
- Chaeng! Taseok! Tak!
“Agh!”
“There’s an opening here.”
A powerful strike broke through my defense, and the wooden staff slammed hard into my waist and legs. The pain surging through my body left me no choice but to scream.
It hurt.
Even though I’d grown, I was still getting hit.
I had clearly managed to deal with things up to the middle, but the instant he raised the level sharply, my defense crumbled like cutting soft tofu.
- Tak!
Even my brief cry seemed to create an opening, and the wooden staff followed up by striking my shoulder.
“Once it’s broken through, there are too many openings.”
- Tadadak! Tak!
“Your deflecting technique is also unstable. That’s why the attacks keep coming.”
- Pabak!
“Moving your legs actively is good, but if you move them too much, it becomes hard to settle your stance. Be more careful and precise with your footwork.”
Well, if he were just beating me for the sake of beating me, I could at least try to think of a direction. But every time he hit me, he pointed out what I had done wrong, so there was nothing I could do about it.
Hours passed as I was mercilessly struck again and again.
And by the end of the day, I was once more sprawled on the ground, panting.
Seres Professor quietly watched the wooden staff, its tip worn down and its middle covered in scratches, before slowly approaching me.
“You lasted longer than yesterday. That’s unexpected. You have grown.”
Even with growth, I still couldn’t escape the beating. Even after cutting my sleep as much as possible and controlling my mana as carefully as I could.
“We’ll proceed like this tomorrow as well. It’ll be even more advanced, so look forward to it.”
He quietly watched me gasping for breath, then turned and left the training grounds.
Wait, what?
I tried to speak, but all that came out of my throat was a dull, clogged breath.
I was dehydrated.
Hold on, where’s the water?
I was exhausted, and there was no water...
But wait.
I remembered what he had just said.
It would be even more advanced?
My body had already lost all its moisture long ago, and yet tears were still coming out.