The Hell of a Regressor – Aren's Brutal Lesson
Why the hell are you doing this to me?
Finally.
Finally I can fight this bastard Cheon Seong again.
The academy’s professors might try to brush it off as “just a simple sparring session with a student” but that’s what people who don’t know his true strength say. No matter how the previous injury happened or how I used a wooden sword meant only to keep students safe, that flame storm of a blow had already landed on me once. That magic wasn’t something a mere genius who had just grown up could cast. Even among seasoned heroes who had crawled through the outer world for years, it was an extremely rare level.
But what caught my eye wasn’t the magic at all.
The very first time I started paying attention to this bastard Cheon Seong was because of his sword. That clean, precise sword stroke that slaughtered the hounds. The way he moved was unmistakably the pure combat-type unique ability. It was a shame that in the end I had to end him with magic because I somehow provoked his pride, but I couldn’t team up with the others in that manner. This time would be different. I would force him to wield a weapon and enter the sparring, so he would definitely face me with the sword he was familiar with.
“Come on! I’ll take you on, Aren!”
I was watching him with narrowed eyes.
Why the hell does he think he can just move the way I want?
At that time, I had only used the wooden sword to pick it up casually. My main weapon was a chaotic melee mix of magic and martial arts. I wasn’t doing one-on-one with a blade.
And if I had to use a weapon, the one I would use at the academy had already been decided.
“I’m ready.”
“...Huh? N-not that, right?”
“Yes. The staff is more convenient than the sword.”
The weapon I was holding was a staff. I had decided on it.
“A staff? That thing looks pretty weak.”
Someone muttered while looking at me swinging the staff, but I hadn’t been using a staff at the academy for no reason.
“No. I saw him using a staff in the training ground before. It wasn’t that weak. He was playing around with the wooden training dummies like they were toys.”
“Really? The wooden dummies are insanely hard to deal with. He’s seriously strong.”
A few students who had watched me swing the staff in the training ground were whispering, and Aren’s professor’s expression was darkening pretty entertainingly.
‘But the real problem is how I should deal with him.’
The best option was to let Aren win. That would give me an advantage in the practical combat course. If I beat Aren, the flies that kept buzzing around him in real combat would increase, and then the muscle-brained bastards who kept challenging me would become even more annoying. Plus I’d have to deal with Seol Si-yun. The moment word spread about our sparring match with the professors, more students would gather to watch, and the number of people who would end up interested in me would explode beyond what I could handle. In the end, even the professors would start paying attention to me.
But if I lost to Aren completely, there would be no such students, the current ones would slowly dwindle, and the interest would dry up like a faucet turned off cold.
‘But then the bastards who want to move on Yuna would increase.’
If I lost, I would gain a huge advantage, but I would also be seen as weak and more bastards would try to move on Yuna. One of them was, of course, Cheon Yu-seong.
‘Yeah, I’ll just fight him moderately and let him win.’
Whether I won or lost, if I couldn’t keep things even and step back, it would be better to fight him a bit, leave a deep impression on him as a slightly strong opponent, and minimize all the downsides.
‘So let’s do it. I’ll put on my own little act of losing.’
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“Well, you look ready. First move’s on me.”
“Then I won’t refuse and will take the first one. Professor.”
Aren gripped the long wooden staff and watched Cheon Seong set his stance.
Even though the weapon had changed from sword to staff, the whispering students around them suggested the staff was being used quite well.
While I had been expecting the sword most, seeing him switch his thinking was actually better. If he was good with the sword, good with the staff, and also good with magic, that meant something else entirely.
‘If I take this guy as my disciple… the future is going to be very exciting.’
These days I would say his talent was so endless that drool practically dripped from me. Lately, as I got older, I was more interested in teaching the kids so they could fight me than in getting stronger myself.
And among the kids I had been watching lately, the top student had too many people targeting him so I gave up on him.
I would have kept aiming at the top if I could have beaten him myself, but most of them were stronger than me, so I just gave up. And that was actually better. Most professors were aiming for the top and second place and the Lucinus students, so they weren’t paying much real attention to this Cheon Seong guy. Not Lucinus, but if I took this guy who could even match the second place, my disciple would not be the absolute best but closer than the absolute best, right?
‘Come on, come at me, Aren. I’ll check your skill—’
WHOOSH!
Aren, who had let his guard down while thinking about taking Cheon Seong as his disciple, couldn’t use teleportation as a counter. So instead he buffed his speed with a speed enhancement magic and Cheon Seong rushed in from the blind spot, swinging the staff.
“Ugh! He’s faster than I thought!”
Aren barely dodged the staff and countered by slamming it back.
“Kuh!”
Cheon Seong barely blocked Aren’s attack. His body floated up slightly and was pushed back. The moment he was pushed back, he used wind magic under his feet and attacked again with that momentum.
‘Ho. He’s calmly chaining magic, huh.’
Aren, who hadn’t shown any wavering, immediately seized the situation and kept attacking. The interest Cheon Seong was receiving grew even stronger.
CLANG!
‘The power of the attack is a bit disappointing, but look at this bastard?’
Aren had blocked Cheon Seong’s attack. The strike was clean but weak, so he felt a little regret. But when the power suddenly increased, he stared at Cheon Seong with dumbfounded eyes.
Just like with the speed increase magic, he had used the strength enhancement buff magic.
Buffs were indeed very helpful in combat, but they were also extremely difficult to cast. A moderate buff had almost no effect, but the stronger the buff, the greater the impact on the fight.
This world wasn’t a game. Buffs didn’t make you stronger instantly without any downside. Your body and brain had to adapt to the sudden power increase. There was a mandatory adaptation period.
An example would be people who had just reached a higher realm. The gap between lower and mid was obviously large, but it wasn’t so vast that it was impossible. But the gap between mid and upper, upper and highest was not like that. So people who had just reached the new realm couldn’t adapt to the power in daily life and suffered.
The power would gradually become tolerable as their body and brain adapted, but buffs were different. Buffs weren’t continuous. When your strength suddenly rose and you slowly adapted, once the duration ended and the power went back to normal, your body would be left in chaos because it couldn’t adapt to the sudden increase and drop.
So the adaptation period for buffs of upper rank or higher was ridiculously long—days if you were lucky, months if you were unlucky. Even the best heroes had to endure it.
Aren, who was a highest-rank hero, had received buff magic from many heroes, so he knew exactly how painful it was. That was why what he was seeing now with Cheon Seong was so shocking.
Even if the guy with the combat-type unique ability was also good at magic, being proficient with buff magic and perfectly adapting to the increased power after only a short time meant Cheon Seong had spent a lot of time in class already mastering the buff magic. It was incredible talent and he wasn’t slacking on the effort either.
“Truly the best!”
CLANG!
Aren, who had been putting more and more strength into blocking the staff, whipped it away forcefully. Before Cheon Seong could continue his attack, he dove into his guard and slammed his own blade up.
BOOM!
Cheon Seong’s jaw took the direct hit from Aren’s sword. The shock to his brain made him unable to steady his body and he floated into the air.
Without End, Shattering Rigidity, Shattering Thrust
Aren, who had gathered mana in his legs and exploded upward to launch himself, swung his sword down at Cheon Seong who was floating helplessly in mid-air.
KRRRUM!
Cheon Seong’s body took the strong impact and crashed to the ground at high speed. Aren landed on the ground and shouted at the fallen Cheon Seong.
“Hey! I know you’re fine, so get up already!”
If it was the Cheon Seong he had seen so far, he should have been completely fine even with only partial strength control on his own sword. So the way he was lying flat out there was clearly meant to provoke his carelessness.
“...”
“Hey! Get up already! I’m not lying!”
It had to be.
“...”
“Um…?”
Wasn’t that too much?
‘Wait, this isn’t good…’
Even with strength control, he had adjusted it according to the level of the top and second place students he had seen. It was the same talent level he had assumed.
Everyone who had come to the academy was a genius among geniuses, but now that they were average students inside the academy, if I had misjudged Cheon Seong’s power and he was still at that level for a while, it would be an attack that even normal students couldn’t withstand. And if he was even weaker in durability than that?
If I, the professor, used an attack that could cause serious injury to a normal student on a durability-weak student?
That would be fucked.
Even if practical combat was supposed to reduce injuries, if the professor teaching the class did it himself, that was fucked too.
The worst situation was the reason I, the professor, was there. If I, the professor, created that worst situation, what the hell was I going to do about it?
If even the principal Eira found out, I might be broken all day long by the Snow Witch.
‘Please, please get up! You can do it!’
Aren had once been called in by the academy principal Eira and gotten a thorough beating. Thinking about that time, his body still trembled slightly even now.
So to avoid being called in by Eira again, Cheon Seong had to get up right now. He prayed with all his heart that Cheon Seong would stand up.
Even to the gods he didn’t believe in.
But even with that desperate prayer from Aren… Cheon Seong didn’t stand up.
‘Ha, fucking done for.’