The Nymphs' Training Method #4
Seo Yerim let out a scornful little snort as she scrolled through the articles written about her. The claim that she'd gotten prettier lately was dead wrong.
"I was always this beautiful. I haven't changed a single thing!"
Confidence radiated from every pore of her. Looks, fame, money, talent, pedigree — a colossal, flawless hexagon with not one side missing. That was Seo Yerim, and the natural order of the world was that someone this extraordinary could do anything at all and be forgiven for it, indulged for it. She was, in every sense, an S-Rank.
"What are you grinning at like that? It's creepy."
Cha Yura, who had just cleared T-321 alongside her, scowled. As far as Cha Yura was concerned, Seo Yerim was still her rival, and the competitive fire burned as hot as ever — plenty of people had tried to manufacture a rivalry between the two of them as content fodder over the years. Of course, Seo Yerim had never once considered Cha Yura a rival. If Seo Yerim had a rival at all, it was Yoo Ari, back in her B-Rank days.
No, wait. I can't even call her my rival anymore.
Seo Yerim revised the thought at once and turned to her compact mirror. Her makeup was flawless. Dust and soot clung to her clothes, but somehow it only made her shine brighter, as if the grime itself had been added for effect.
"Then we're heading out of the rift."
The two women stepped out of T-321, the rift they had just subjugated. Reporters and officials had already swarmed the site to celebrate the successful raid, and Seo Yerim greeted them with the smile she'd been drilling so hard lately — her Narcotic Smile.
"Hot—☆"
Click-click!
Pop-pop!
Camera shutters chattered and flashes burst from every direction.
"Shoot it! Shoot it!"
"That's front-page material!"
Even to Reporter Nam, a veteran of twenty years who had spent his entire career photographing nothing but beautiful women, the smile seemed to glitter like starlight. "A perfect smile!" For a good while yet, Seo Yerim's face would be plastered across fashion magazine covers and photo albums without coming down.
Naturally, Cha Yura, watching the whole scene, found her brow knitting. Every single camera angle was trained exclusively on Seo Yerim — and not on her.
Shff.
Cha Yura climbed atop a specially prepared box.
She was, by nature, someone who enjoyed standing on a box and gazing down at the crowd.
"S-Ranker Cha Yura has ascended the box!"
"Shoot it!"
"I don't know why, but I want to pet her so bad!"
For reasons no one could quite explain, people loved photographing Cha Yura perched up on her box.
How about that!
Having noticed the shutter clicks swinging at least partly back her way, Cha Yura preened and shot Seo Yerim a triumphant look — only to find that Seo Yerim had already wandered off, radiating indifference.
Seo Yerim's heart was full of certainty.
The Narcotic Smile. It's not perfect yet, but I've got it serviceable. This reaction is proof. I've taken one more step toward Kore Prime.
A lion, born king of beasts, does not train. For a lion, training would be cowardice. But what if a lion trained anyway? Then people would call that training lion Seo Yerim. Right now, Seo Yerim was exactly that — a lion who trained.
Now then — let's see how much that training paid off.
Seo Yerim drove straight to the well house, and the moment she came face to face with Ha Ildo, she unleashed the Narcotic Smile.
"Hot—☆"
"...What? What is it? What was that...!?"
The reaction was distinctly underwhelming. Ha Ildo just looked flustered, flailing about in confusion.
"...Did you eat something weird? Why are you suddenly smiling? Is there something on my face?"
"......"
Not the reaction she'd been expecting. Seo Yerim's face twisted in fury. The days of meditation and discipline she'd endured — the endless afternoons of being pounded on by Illinoi shrieking "It's the medicine fist~!" — turned to utter foolishness in an instant.
Shff.
Seo Yerim raised a hand and pinch, jabbed her fingers into Ha Ildo's side.
"Ow!"
Oinoi, watching the whole exchange, was deeply impressed.
"Aaah—! That is the fabled Kore Secret Technique: Flank Pinch...! This Oinoi has never once seen a Kore execute the Flank Pinch with such perfection...! That is Core Prime-tier skill, it is...!"
Seo Yerim had pinched me in the side without any warning whatsoever. One moment she was smiling radiantly, the next scowling, and then jabbing me in the ribs. Her emotional range swung so wildly I couldn't find the beat to dance to if I tried.
Then again, that was Seo Yerim for you. She'd always been that way — huge emotional swings, a hair-trigger temper, the kind of person who kept everyone around her walking on eggshells.
"Hey. Aren't you pushing yourself a bit too hard these days?"
I rubbed my sore side as I spoke. I'd heard she'd been clearing two T-Rank dungeons a day for the past several days. Even for a powerhouse S-Ranker, that schedule had to be a brutal march.
"Seo Yerim, working hard is great and all, but you should rest sometimes too."
Work too hard, and you start to lose it. There was even a published study showing that the more a person was exposed to rift mana, the more extreme their personality became in all sorts of ways. Considering that S-Rankers — the people with the heaviest rift mana exposure on the planet — were mostly certified weirdos, the claim had legs.
"What's this? Are you worried about my body?"
Seo Yerim narrowed her eyes at me. I nodded.
"Of course. You're an important person."
"Important..."
Seo Yerim calmed at once, as if she'd come back to her senses. One of only two S-Rankers in all of South Korea. Could anyone on earth be more important than that?
"If you ever feel like relaxing, come hang out at my place anytime. I've got a whole zoo of animals."
Was there anything in the world better for recovery and rest than time spent with cute animals? Seo Yerim took the Ing-ing-i in her hand and gave the little cloud a long, luxurious stretch, pulling it left and right.
━Yingyingaing.
She seemed to love the fluffy, cool sensation — kept tugging Ing-ing-i this way and that for a while before finally snorting and holding the cloud out to Oinoi.
"A flame doesn't know how to rest. It only knows how to go out. Anyway — you said you might be going to Greece, right? Take Illinoi with you when you go. She'd obviously want to see Greece."
And with that, Seo Yerim pivoted on her heel and strode off. There it was, then. She'd come all this way just to tell me to bring Illinoi along to Greece.
"More importantly, what were you up to? You've got a cushion laid out under that tree."
Seo Yerim seemed to have taken an interest in the cushion spread beneath the golden apple tree. At that, Oinoi thrust a hand into the air and declared:
"The Master of this house was engaged in meditation training, it is...! For reaching The Hero's Way, meditation is of the utmost importance, it is...!"
"I don't know what The Hero's Way is, but she's right that meditation matters. It's no exaggeration to say the difference between A-Rank and S-Rank is the difference in time spent meditating."
Was that so? I felt faintly surprised that Seo Yerim — of all people, the last person on earth I'd pair with meditation — was singing its praises.
"But the Master of this house is terrible at meditating, it is...!"
That made me flush a little. It was like overhearing my mom telling her friends, "Our Ildo's smart, he just doesn't apply himself—" back in the day. Surely Seo Yerim would laugh in my face — "You're dreaming of S-Rank and you can't even meditate?"
But instead, Seo Yerim turned back to look at me and said, with uncharacteristic seriousness:
"Ha Ildo, your foundation really is a little shaky."
"My foundation is shaky?"
That was news to me. If anything, I'd have said my inner foundation was rock solid. But Seo Yerim didn't explain herself. She just said what she'd come to say.
"When emptying your mind is hard, don't try to empty everything at once. Pick one thing and focus on it. When the spirit is fully applied, nothing fails to be accomplished. Concentrate on one thing, and nothing is impossible."
Focus on one thing—
Wait. Wasn't that the nonsense I'd spouted at her back in the day, when I was rambling off whatever came to mind? To hear that same story coming back out of Seo Yerim's mouth as advice — the world truly was a strange and unpredictable place.
"Anyway, I'm off. Don't forget — take Illinoi with you to Greece."
Hmmmmmm—
Seo Yerim's electric car pulled out of Taecho Village with barely a whisper. Same as ever — say what she wanted to say, then vanish.
"Meditation."
I sat back down under the apple tree, ready to resume the meditation she'd interrupted. But emptying the mind was easier said than done, and a hundred stray thoughts came crawling in. My meditation, in short, was a total wreck.
Then, all at once, Seo Yerim's tip floated back up to the surface.
"Focus on one thing, huh?"
Focus. Concentration on a single point—.
But on what, exactly, was I supposed to concentrate? I rummaged through my mind, and the earlier moment surfaced. What was that, anyway? That glittering "Hot—☆" smile of hers?
I'd never seen Seo Yerim beam like that before, and it had honestly been a little chilling. At the time it had only thrown me off balance, but now that I'd recalled it once, I couldn't stop recalling it. It dominated my brain like some cursed hook of a jingle you make the mistake of hearing during exam week — lodged there on endless loop!
What WAS that!
"The Master's aura of meditation can be felt, it is...! He is clearly concentrating on a single thing, it is...!"
Focus on one thing.
That day, I felt I'd gained a small flash of insight into the art of channeling my mana toward a single point.
"So THAT's why she said my foundation was lacking."
Ever since my awakening, I had spent years grinding in the trenches, climbing all the way up from D-Rank, so I had accumulated more experience and training than most. That was why I had always believed my foundations were thoroughly solid. But the truth was, I had rocketed from C-Rank to A-Rank at a near-breakneck pace—I simply hadn't had enough time to properly develop my mana control. What took most people three to five years, I had blasted through in mere months. So, of course, my foundation in mana manipulation—the experience and fundamentals I should have absorbed along the road from C-Rank to A-Rank—was hollow, and Seo Yerim had seen straight through that weakness with pinpoint precision.
"Come to think of it, this single-point mana focus could combine beautifully with my Hyper Evolution, couldn't it?"
If I could pull it off now, I might manage to Hyper-Evolve Ang-ang-i.
Nursing that hope, I projected my mana into the little ant cradled in my palm.
━Zzji...!
Vmmm—.
Ang-ang-i's body began to glow.
This was the light of evolution — and my heart soared!