Hero Academy (3-6)

After purchasing basic items at the base, I headed straight for the lane Cho Seo-hyun had told me about.

My destination was the bottom lane.

They say it's standard for a ranged dealer like me to head toward the bottom.

And more importantly, I wouldn't be going alone.

Standing beside me was a character that looked like the Grim Reaper itself, clutching a massive scythe-like weapon.

Once we arrived in the bottom lane, the character greeted me.

"Hello."

Politely, even…

"Hello."

I returned the greeting, but…

'I have absolutely zero desire to get close to this thing....'

'It has a skull for a face…. Any urge to hold a conversation just evaporated.'

Perhaps it was because I was new to this game, but seeing the appearance rendered so vividly was a bit overwhelming.

The reaper with the skull face, however, kindly kept the conversation going.

"We'll probably have to wait a bit longer for the minions to spawn."

"Minions?"

"You get gold when you kill them."

"Ah…"

It was talking about the little foot soldiers. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heard about them in the tutorial, but I had already forgotten everything.

That didn't matter, though. I had a feeling.

'…My instincts are tingling.'

I put on a gentle smile and held out my hand to the skeleton for a handshake.

"Looking forward to working with you. It's my first time today, so please go easy on me if I mess up."

"Aha! No worries. Honestly, it's my first time today too."

With an expression that was impossible to tell whether it was a smile or a cry, the skeleton took my hand and shook it.

With fingers made of nothing but bone, no less…

And while shaking my hand, it suddenly started apologizing.

"Sorry about earlier."

"Huh? About what…?"

At my question, although no expression was visible, the skeleton spoke with an air of embarrassment.

"Sorry about what my oppa said earlier."

"Ah…"

My instincts were right on the money!

'It's a woman!'

'Still better than some guy…'

It wasn't that I felt attracted just because it was a woman, but I simply felt that if the person I was talking to was a woman, it would be slightly more tolerable.

And above all, they seemed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to have a good personality. The kind of personality that wouldn't nag me annoyingly.

As I looked around, the skeleton continued with that same awkward energy.

"My oppa and I have been queuing together, but he keeps running into problems with people who play archer characters."

"Ah… is he your real older brother?"

"Pfft! No. We're dating."

"Aha~"

She kept calling him "oppa," so I had assumed…

'To think a rude piece of work like that actually has a girlfriend...'

I wondered if he was deliberately playing normals just so he could game with his girlfriend.

While the two of us chatted, our team's minions came shambling up from behind like ghosts.

And from the enemy side, two opposing champions began approaching alongside their own minions.

I looked at the friendly skeleton and murmured under my breath.

"Well then… shall we?"

The skeleton tilted its head and looked at me.

"Wow… are you sure this is really your first time?"

"Yeah."

She kept praising me in an awestruck voice as she watched.

However, seeing the way that skeleton looked at me, I felt a surge of fear that a scene from Final Destination might occur during the game.

No matter how desperately you run, you die in the end…

For something like that to happen, though, the guys from the other lanes would all have to collapse on us at once.

As it stood, the enemies in my lane were so far below my level it was almost sad.

I never missed a single minion, while the other side couldn't even farm ten of them.

On top of that, my constant harassment had dropped their health below ten percent, and they had completely backed off.

Honestly, if I had wanted to, I could have killed them more than ten times over by now.

The reason I didn't was simple.

'It's fun, isn't it?'

Under the pretext of practice, I was keeping them alive with less than ten percent health.

Toy with the enemy like this turned out to be more entertaining than I'd expected.

I could feel the skill gap—a kill window opened every few seconds.

Landing basic arrows was nothing special.

Cho Seo-hyun had been worried my archery skill was too high, but my archery ability was never something I earned through effort in the first place.

My innate aiming ability just handled everything.

Thanks to that aiming ability, I was able to progress through this game with ease.

It didn't feel like I was playing — it felt like my aiming ability was playing the game for me.

The real issue was the skills.

It was important that I understood the skills and used them according to the necessity of the situation.

'Guess I'll just have to learn by using them…'

The moment I glanced away to check my skills, Lena's voice came through the comms.

'Oh! Thanks'!

Hearing Lena's warning, I calmly fell back toward the tower.

The skeleton tilted its head at my retreat.

"Huh…? Pulling back again?"

"Yeah, I've just got a bad feeling."

"Come on~ you see the ward placed over there, right? It's safe."

The skeleton rattled its face and pointed at the minimap, trying to ease my nerves.

From her perspective, I must have looked like a complete beginner.

But in that instant, something entered my field of vision, and I shouted at the skeleton.

"Hm? Fall back!"

A guy who looked like he specialized in Muay Thai burst out of the brush.

"What? Eek!"

Scrambling at my words, the skeleton spun around in a panic and retreated to the tower with me.

Once she made it safely, she praised me.

"Whew… that was a close one."

"Wow… you're amazing!"

Honestly, that praise belonged to Lena, not me.

'Lena, thank you.'

A soft laugh came through the comms.

Lena had a sharp eye — and one more talent on top of that.

The same talent that had once driven Gardia, the Demon King protagonist of the Zodiac faction, into a corner.

From Lena's perspective, the movements of the people playing this game were extremely easy to read.

She had said it herself, the mere fact that allied vision was shared was already bordering on broken.

While I harassed the enemy, Lena watched the minimap, predicted their movements, and reported to me constantly.

Thanks to her, far from dying, we kept making the enemy waste their time and turned every failed gank into an advantage.

Our lane hadn't racked up any particularly flashy KDA, but we held a comfortable lead.

The problem was upstairs.

The lane where the skeleton and I were was the bottom lane.

Then there were the top and mid lanes, and Cho Seo-hyun was an assassin who frequently roamed through all lanes.

By any measure, our team was winning.

The top lane was already beyond recovery due to an immense number of kills.

The mid lane had secured kills comfortably, and Cho Seo-hyun had supported everyone by roaming.

Every single lane was winning.

The problem was the mouth.

"Fuck… did I tell you not to take the kill, or didn't I?"

"...Swearing really just rolls off your tongue, doesn't it? So I should've just let them get away?"

"If you're gonna take them like that, just don't fucking come over!"

The guy who would picked a fight with me earlier was going at it with Cho Seo-hyun.

She had tried to ignore him at first, but the constant provocations had finally worn through her patience.

At the sound of their bickering, the skeleton beside me bowed her head in apology.

"I-I'm so sorry… my oppa is a bit… how do I put it… he gets frustrated when things don't go his way."

"Haha…. I'm more worried about my teammate than myself."

Honestly, the whole situation made me feel bad for Cho Seo-hyun.

Part of me wondered if that guy was throwing an even bigger fit because I had picked this character in the first place…

One side was hanging her head in embarrassment over her boyfriend; the other was hanging his head out of guilt toward his teammate.

However, the reason no one could say anything was because of the man's skill.

16/0/4

That was the KDA he'd built in under twenty minutes.

Even in a normal game, numbers like that shut everyone up.

Looking at that kill count, though, I started getting pissed off.

'What's this guy's problem? He's throwing a fit just because he "accidentally" took the kill four times?'

And if he'd just kept quiet from the start, I wouldn't even care.

He had screamed absolute bullshit at Cho Seo-hyun for every single one of those assists.

More than anything, Cho Seo-hyun was using her high-level skill to effectively pass kills to her allies in the lane.

Though I didn't see it personally, if it were Cho Seo-hyun, there was a high probability she had judged that she had no choice but to take the kill.

'But why is Cho Seo-hyun even playing this game…'

This was exactly why I wasn't fond of online games.

The thin story content was one thing, but the thing I hated most was the drama.

Even small arguments were annoying enough — run into a guy like this and I just wanted to AFK and leave them to rot.

At least with something like Yggdrasil, I could endure it knowing I would get my revenge later.

But in online games, once you lose an argument and part ways, you usually never see that person again.

Lose the war of words and you spend the rest of the night under your blanket, cursing them out in the language of hell.

I thought about why Cho Seo-hyun played this game. And one possibility came to mind.

'Is she trying to overcome her trauma?'

'…'

If that really was her goal, I needed to reassess Cho Seo-hyun.

If it was true, she was an incredible woman.

Most people carry one or two traumas like that.

And wanting to overcome them doesn't mean you can.

As Armonia had mentioned before, even if you erase negative traits, they keep can reappear.

You have to erase them through your own effort, not with Enel.

Cho Seo-hyun was passionately teaching cadets in that state, all while working to overcome her own trauma.

She was a woman I genuinely liked.

'Even if she acts like a kid sometimes…'

While I was thinking about Cho Seo-hyun, a massive message window suddenly appeared.

"Huh?"

"It looks like they surrendered as soon as it hit 20 minutes."

"Surrender?"

"It means they gave up. It's a feature you can use once twenty minutes have passed since the game started."

I vaguely remembered seeing that in the tutorial.

Once everything wrapped up, we were summoned back to the character select lobby.

Both our team and the enemy team had been summoned there together.

And the enemy side immediately erupted into a storm of curses.

"Holy fuck! Who plays the game like that..."

"You gotta gank if you want kills."

"What's the point of going if you don't follow up!"

"Jungle diff~~~"

It was pure chaos.

Compared to their team, ours was practically a warm family gathering.

Except for two people…

"…Let's go, Jia."

"Uh… yeah."

The skeleton called Jia gave me a small nod and left the lobby.

Once those two were gone, Cho Seo-hyun and I left as well.

"Um… Instructor Cho Seo-hyun, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I feel like picking this character just made things worse…"

"…There's nothing for you to apologize for."

Cho Seo-hyun gave a bitter smile.

"If anything, I should be the one apologizing for dragging you into this. That was… pretty ugly of me."

"I don't think that at all."

I smiled as I spoke.

"But... because of your skill, Instructor Cho Seo-hyun, it ended so quickly that I still don't have a feel for what kind of game this is."

"Hehe… ahem…"

Cho Seo-hyun grinned at the compliment for a second, then composed her face and opened her mouth.

I meant every word, too.

The game had ended so fast I hadn't even gotten to use my ultimate once.

I barely got to use my regular skills either.

"Come to think of it, you were pretty good. For a first-timer, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠your laning was excellent. You didn't die once."

"Thank you. Mind if I try this character one more time?"

"Goodness... you've completely fallen for it."

Cho Seo-hyun laughed loudly and hit the find match button.

Watching her press it with that intrigued look on her face, I thought to myself.

'If she's playing this game to overcome her trauma… then this is an even better situation, isn't it?'

Only Cho Seo-hyun knew what she currently thought of me.

But if she really was working to overcome her trauma, then I was essentially joining her in that effort.

It was a companionship that could influence her favorability toward me..

While I was thinking about Cho Seo-hyun, a window popped up announcing a match had been found.

She smiled brightly and tapped the screen.

"Alright! Let's go!"

Matching her energy, I tapped the Enter button on the hologram window.

The moment Cho Seo-hyun locked in her character and checked the enemy team, she bit her lip with a troubled look.

"Of all people, that guy..."

"That's unfortunate."

Following the flow of Cho Seo-hyeon's worried words, I spoke as if I were also concerned.

"I'm sure they remember our IDs, right?"

"Judging by how they act, they seem dumb enough that they might not… but still."

"Hahaha…"

I laughed and checked the enemy roster one more time.

I looked again just to be sure, but there was no longer any room to doubt my eyes.

It was definitely the couple who had been on our team just a moment ago.