Luck Comes Unexpectedly - 3
She glanced around once, then kept peering this way and that. “Suhyun.” She paused for a second, only to start looking around again. “Suhyun?” It had been like this nonstop. Ever since the lecture ended, she had been circling me like a satellite. I had no idea what was going on. It was obvious she had some reason, but still.
“What’s wrong? Just tell me.” Even when I pressed for an answer, Kim Suhyun simply kept orbiting me without saying a word. Her eyes looked so deadly serious that it felt awkward to ask anything more.
“Just a moment… just a little longer. Okay… yes, I’m done now, Examiner.”
Finally the endless circling stopped. Kim Suhyun approached my side and let out a long, heavy sigh of relief. Something about that sigh struck me, so I asked the question that had been nagging at me.
“Suhyun, were you checking to see if I was hurt somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you just ask me directly?”
“That’s…” She hesitated for a moment before carefully opening her mouth again. “I figured you wouldn’t tell me the truth, Examiner.”
“Huh?”
“You’re a good person. If I worried, you’d hide it no matter what.”
Her words almost made me reflexively deny it. But when I thought about it again, it was surprisingly hard to argue. If I really had been injured, would I have told her honestly? Probably not. Seeing her worry would have been too uncomfortable. She needed to focus on her promotion exam; I didn’t want her distracted by anything else.
“From now on I won’t hide anything. Is that good enough?”
“You promise?”
“Yeah. I promise. In return, you have to trust me and follow my lead, okay?”
Unlike Lee Hyunwoo, who was growing rapidly on his own, Kim Suhyun required constant care. The slightest crack in her confidence and she would beg to withdraw from the Silver promotion exam. That was no good. Any further delay would benefit neither of us. Above all, removing her deep-seated inferiority complex would require certainty—certainty that she was improving, that she was being properly recognized. For that reason alone, the promotion exam had to begin.
But I couldn’t force it. I had to persuade her, guide her, and make her come to me on her own. I couldn’t ignore the fact that her original future had been that of the Red Witch. Even if that wasn’t the case now. Even if she hadn’t been captured, tortured, and brainwashed by villains. I had to keep open the possibility that the original flow could still pull her in somehow. Especially since the seed of rage inside her still bothered me so much.
“Are we finished now? Can we start?”
Lee Hyunwoo, who had been waiting quietly until then, shot up from his seat. It wasn’t just Kim Suhyun here. That guy had been waiting too. Earlier I’d noticed the strange way the two of them had arrived together. Originally they should have been locked in a life-or-death struggle, yet here they were laughing and calling each other “Bronze comrades!” For a split second I even wondered if they were dating. But I immediately scolded myself for the ridiculous thought.
Like the protagonists in most novels, our hero Lee Hyunwoo was missing a few screws. Not in the same crazy way as Irina, but his social awareness—especially toward the opposite sex—was completely broken. At this point it would be fair to call him mentally impotent.
“Um, Examiner? Do we really have to do the exam today?”
Even though the normally timid Kim Suhyun was shooting him a sharp glare, Lee Hyunwoo simply looked at me with an expression that said, What does that have to do with me? Most other male students would have at least read the room, but not him. All I saw in his eyes was pure eagerness to take the test.
“The Examiner must be tired after yesterday’s incident…”
“It’s fine, Suhyun. It won’t take long anyway.”
“Wow, Examiner. That’s cold. I’ve been training hard every single day, you know.”
I knew that. I knew it, but he was still far from ready. The overwhelming pressure I had felt from Irina, the Elders, and even Ma Hakjun. I had decided to simply call that sensation the Gatekeeper’s Sense. Right now, I didn’t feel even the slightest trace of it from Lee Hyunwoo. If he had grown another step, there would have been at least a faint spark. But there was nothing. Which meant he was still Bronze.
“Please take good care of me today, Examiner!”
He said that while wearing an expression that looked like he wanted to throw a punch at me right then and there. I let out a small, dumbfounded laugh, and Lee Hyunwoo immediately charged at me.
Sweet After Bitter: Trait activated.
Target — Lee Hyunwoo
Stacks: 3
Thud—!
“Ugh!”
The Gatekeeper’s Sense had been accurate. Nothing had changed much from yesterday. Once again Lee Hyunwoo lay sprawled on the ground, breathing raggedly. It was a rather miserable sight for a protagonist, but it would all become his gain later.
The three stacks that had just accumulated on Lee Hyunwoo from this exam—I had no idea how enormous they would become in the future. But when he eventually grew so strong that the current him would be unrecognizable, in that fleeting instant where a single judgment or movement decided victory or defeat—no, life or death—those stacks would raise the possibility that Lee Hyunwoo, not the monster or the villain, would emerge as the final victor.
When I thought about it that way, the trait name really did fit perfectly.
“Wow, seriously… this is ridiculous.”
Lee Hyunwoo, trembling as he barely managed to sit up, blinked rapidly.
“Examiner. Aren’t you a support type?”
“That’s right. Support type.”
“But your hand-to-hand combat and weapon handling… those aren’t support-type skills, are they?”
His question made me flinch for a moment. Honestly, even I thought it was a bit of a stretch. Fortunately, I had already discussed this with Ma Hakjun and settled on a concept: a support-type civil servant who never gave up and trained in secret. After all, I didn’t have any ultimate techniques that used special abilities like pure weapon or martial arts types. And it was entirely possible to learn both weapon handling and hand-to-hand combat through pure effort. It was simply that focusing on one well was far more powerful and easier to get recognition for.
“I worked as hard as you, Hyunwoo. You’re doing the same thing, aren’t you? You’re a weapon type, yet you’re also using martial arts like a martial arts type.”
“But I’m not as skilled as you, Examiner.”
“You’ll reach my level soon enough. Effort has always been the greatest talent, after all.”
At least for Lee Hyunwoo, that was true. For him, effort alone led to growth. He was the perfect example of a protagonist receiving every possible buff.
At my words, Lee Hyunwoo grinned and sprang to his feet.
“You really get it, Examiner! That’s right. Effort is the real talent.”
Only for you, though. Only you get to grow explosively just by working hard.
“I’ll challenge you again tomorrow. Tomorrow for sure!”
“You’re going for promotion? That confident?”
“…Um. Not tomorrow. I’ll try again the day after.”
With that, Lee Hyunwoo turned and sprinted off. He was probably heading straight to the training ground to swing his sword. Outside of class hours, he spent every day swinging his blade, tempering his body, and building his endurance. With that level of effort, it would be strange if he didn’t grow.
But is the exam really over for today? This is bad.
I was supposed to be the Silver Gatekeeper, yet no one was coming to challenge me. At this rate I was even starting to hope Jeong Yuhyeon would show up. If I didn’t find some way to fix this, my growth would be completely blocked…
“E-Examiner?”
“Yes?”
“Um, it looks like someone’s coming.”
Students? At Kim Suhyun’s words I immediately turned toward the entrance. Sure enough, several students were heading toward the exam hall I was in charge of. I hoped they hadn’t gotten lost like last time. Or that they would take one look at me and run away.
“Excuse me… are you Examiner Baek Seojin?”
“Yes, that’s me. If you’re in the wrong place, you should head back…”
“No, we’re in the right place. We… came to take the exam.”
I wasn’t hearing things, right? They really said they came for the exam? When I glanced at Kim Suhyun, she was quietly clapping. It seemed to be a congratulatory gesture, so at least I hadn’t misheard.
“One moment.”
I scanned all the students who had come with my Third Eye. Immediately I understood why they were requesting the exam. Among them, one boy and one girl had come for reasons similar to the reporters. After yesterday’s article, they probably thought I had some connection to that famous S-rank ability user and wanted to make an impression. Their intentions were obvious.
I knew it. Well, people don’t always gather for the right reasons.
Still, the silver lining was that one of them was different from the other two. More precisely, he seemed to be here because of Lee Hyunwoo. Rather than the fact that I had shaken hands with Irina, taken photos, and shared the same space, he was focused on how I had performed during the sudden Gate incident and fulfilled my duty as an ability user. He had clearly come because he thought there was something to learn from that.
“So all three of you are Bronze, correct?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right.”
“Then we’ll proceed in order.”
I would quickly weed out the first two and properly evaluate the third. If he had talent, I could attach him to Lee Hyunwoo and make him work even harder. If he couldn’t keep up, that was unfortunate. If he could, he would become Lee Hyunwoo’s comrade, which wasn’t a bad outcome.
“All right, then…”
“Oh! Examiner!”
Kim Suhyun, who had been sitting quietly in the back, pointed at the entrance again. When I looked, yet another group of students was approaching the exam hall.
“Is this the place?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Baek Seojin, the examiner.”
“That guy? He looks less impressive than in the photos.”
Just from their tone, I could tell exactly what kind of intentions this bunch had. Was it because of yesterday’s events? Students were showing up in numbers I had never expected. Naturally, most of them seemed to be riding the sudden wave of my increased recognition, coming with purely calculating motives.
“Hello, Examiner. I saw the article yesterday. You’re even more impressive than I thought.”
Not everyone was like that. Some, like the student standing before me now, possessed a genuine will to rise higher, to break their current selves. There were definitely people like that too.
“I’ll be in your care.”
So I decided to help those students. In other words, I would stand in their way. The process might not be easy. It might be frustrating and painful. But I hoped the sweat they shed here would later spare them from shedding blood.
And while I was at it, I could make a decent living too.