Select and Print
“Method?” Cheon Mari asked. “Are you talking about the training method?”
“Yeah. High school’s right around the corner, and if we keep going like this, we won’t end up with anything worth having.”
“Nothing worth having?”
“You might see it differently, but to me the current situation looks extremely dangerous.”
Cheon Mari’s eyes narrowed, as though she doubted my words.
“Think about it. If I continue training like this, will I truly master martial arts?”
“Well… if you put in maximum effort, you might barely scrape by and learn it.”
“That’s exactly the problem. I’m not in a position to focus solely on martial arts. I need to start learning superpowers soon, pick up various spells, and study practical combat knowledge too.”
Time was running out. Once high school started, managing every hour would become even more critical.
“You know this. To enter the academy on solid ground, being good at just one thing isn’t enough.”
“No, being exceptional in one field is more than enough to get in…”
“You could get in, sure. That’s obvious. But there’s no stability in it.”
If someone displayed genius talent in a single area, admission might come easily. Yet when I asked myself whether I was that kind of genius, I could only shake my head. This was far too risky.
“Looking at it again, your plan is all-or-nothing. No matter how I slice it, this isn’t right.”
“Sian, you worry too much.”
“When lives are on the line, worrying is only natural.”
Though for her, risking her life might not matter. With only one coin to my name, I couldn’t afford to think that way.
“……”
My plan had been rejected. Silence fell.
One thing I had realized while staying by Cheon Mari’s side was that she took far too many dangerous gambles. As a regressor with years of accumulated experience, she rarely lost a bet—but that was precisely the problem.
A woman who loved herself endlessly. Among all the people I had met, she displayed the worst combination of self-righteousness and stubbornness. Yet when it came to execution, she was strangely missing a few screws. She usually swept up every prize, but that very success bred arrogance. And when she finally lost, a single mistake cost her everything. Exactly that type.
Suddenly I wondered whether the career path she was designing for me would end in that same kind of catastrophic error. It might not, of course, but the look in her eyes and the plan she had just shown made the possibility feel much more likely.
I continued speaking to Cheon Mari, who still rested her head on my thigh.
“Besides, if I don’t lay down other foundations right now, I’ll suffer for it later.”
“You’re saying it’s inefficient?”
“It could be. Or the skills I worked so hard to learn might end up holding me back.”
“Huh?”
Her dumbfounded tone sounded foolish, but for a regressor it was understandable. She might not have considered the intuition she had built over a lifetime, or perhaps becoming her younger self again made her assume others could do the same.
“Sian, then let me ask you one thing. Exactly how do you plan to change it?”
“From start to finish. Everything.”
Much more stably. In a way that considers the future far more carefully.
“Be specific.”
“Activity beyond the World Gate, or running Dungeon Gate expeditions.”
Real combat was the ultimate form of training. Lives might be at stake, of course, but by cleverly using the fact that we were minors, we could slip in among adults and operate safely.
“Obviously not right away. First I’ll spend a few weeks mastering superpowers and the essential spells.”
Then, fighting monsters inside the gates, I would steadily fill in every gap. By experiencing a wide variety of situations, I could raise my weak areas in a balanced way.
At the unprecedented suggestion of halting martial-arts training, switching to other forms of practice, and transitioning into live combat, Cheon Mari sat up. She stared at me intently.
“We can’t stay here doing nothing but martial-arts training forever.”
She still seemed conflicted, so I reminded her again. We needed to shift to something more practical. More efficient. More direct.
Cheon Mari gently bit her red, captivating lips.
“Once you become an adult, time to learn martial arts will probably grow scarce.”
“We’ll have to accept that. Later, when my mana capacity increases, I can split what time I have to learn whatever martial arts I need.”
“If you start working as a hunter now, you’ll have to solve everything for a while using only the full set of basics and beginner martial arts, plus a portion of the intermediate ones. You could run into real trouble in a fight.”
“Which is why we improve the weaknesses of what I’ve already learned and develop the strengths even further.”
“It’s too… too vague. You’re putting far too much burden on your future self.”
“And that’s no different from the present.”
Either discard everything except one thing, or raise everything else at the cost of leaving one skill incomplete. Relying on the future carried the same risk for both of us. I simply judged that my direction involved less gambling.
“And most importantly, at this rate I won’t even be able to touch advanced martial arts because of insufficient mana. The chance of learning them is uncertain, and even if I do, the odds of using them properly are low.”
“Hmm.”
“This might actually be more efficient. My attacks already have high mana efficiency and are powerful from the foundation up. I should be able to deal solid damage even with simpler martial arts. Using superpowers will only make that more true.”
I had tested it multiple times since first discovering its power. Even when I operated the mana in my blade only “roughly” according to the basic Far North Sword Technique, my sword was remarkably strong. Ordinary objects fell in one or two strikes. Objects wrapped in protective barriers shattered after a few solid hits.
Just look at hunter aspirants my age—no, even adult hunters. How many of them infused their weapons with mana only for poor efficiency to render the attacks useless? How many people couldn’t even cut a single wooden chair?
In that respect, I held the advantage of not needing to master intricate mana manipulation. Of course, completely neglecting it would cause problems, but until I entered the academy there should be no major issues.
Cheon Mari dragged a hand down her face, as if she genuinely disliked this outcome.
“…I hate seeing my friend go through hardship.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I just didn’t expect you to be thinking along those lines.”
She stood, grabbed her phone from the table, and swiped away the wallpaper photo of the two of us. The screen changed to a calendar. She showed it to me.
“I seem to have judged wrongly. We’ll do it your way.”
“Oh.”
“However, no matter what schedule you have in mind, it won’t be relaxed.”
“Well, it wasn’t relaxed to begin with… so it doesn’t really matter.”
“That’s not what I mean. The time you can actually spend inside gates won’t be plentiful.”
Entering and exiting gates demanded considerable time. Moreover, the moment you stepped inside, you were no longer free in either time or space. In other words, trying to run gate activities after school would face severe restrictions.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Really? Outside of vacations and weekends the schedule could be razor-thin, you know?”
“Then I’ll just have to do it. If weekdays become completely impossible, I can always come here for training instead.”
My first goal was Palaestra Academy. My second was to crush Lim Hana and her circle of friends. To achieve those, I was willing to do anything.
Cheon Mari pondered for a long time before finally pocketing her phone.
“Follow me.”
We left the special training facility and walked through the Nartika complex. Though I had visited the grounds for years, we were heading somewhere I had never had reason to go, so the surroundings felt distinctly alien. Occasional glances that treated me like an outsider and scattered murmurs followed us. Whether it was because of Cheon Mari’s status or simply the presence of a student inside Nartika, I saw no need to care.
I closed my ears to the noise and followed her into a factory-like building. Glass walls revealed machines of various shapes producing metal forms in real time. What exactly was this place? Where were we going?
When Cheon Mari finally opened a door and stepped inside, I witnessed something I had never seen in my entire life—not on television, not on the internet.
She pointed to a massive monitor in front of us and the machine beneath it.
“A 3D printer for weapon fabrication.”
It could print an entire weapon according to any blueprint the user desired, or produce it piece by piece. This was the equipment she often boasted about while praising Nartika’s technological prowess.
“Sian, I’ll ask you one thing. Do you prefer a blade forged by a blacksmith, or one made by a machine?”
“…One that cuts well.”
Give me a sharp utility knife, please. Not the toy-level junk I used during training.
“Generally, blades that cut well are machine-made.”
“I suppose so.”
“But did you know some people insist that only blacksmith-forged weapons are truly good?”
People with classic tastes. They were probably the type who would run to the neighborhood hardware store the moment a tool broke.
“That is a very, very mistaken belief.”
“From the outset, the difference in precision between machines and humans is enormous. It can’t be helped.”
“Exactly. And according to recent research by our company, factory-produced weapons are ‘generally’ superior to forge-made ones.”
Assuming identical materials, factories held an overwhelming advantage. Price, performance, durability, reliability, time—automated machines were simply too difficult for human hands to match across every metric. As a result, hand-crafted equipment was steadily losing ground.
“Of course, it lacks the most important thing: romance.”
Beyond the intangible “vibe” people called gamsung, the statement included the weapon’s appearance. Weapons dug out of the earth, looted from monsters, or forged by blacksmiths usually carried a fantastical charm. Factory products, by contrast, possessed a near-future aesthetic typical of mass production—tightened screws, cut iron plates, and clean lines.
Each shape arose from its own circumstances and limitations. Still, judging a weapon by appearance alone could lead to disaster. The 9 o’clock news frequently ran stories about hunters who bought flashy but inferior gear and ended up dead. In the past and now, a weapon’s most critical attributes remained performance and durability.
“Choose any blueprint you want and print it. Production cost and quantity don’t matter.”
What I needed to choose was rather obvious.