105. Interpersonal Combat Practical (1)
105. Interpersonal Combat Practical (1)
Riiip!
The harsh sound of paper tearing.
Even though night had fallen, one desk in the Velvet Academy instructors' office still glowed with light.
"This isn't it...."
A man sitting there crumpled the paper he'd been scribbling on and tossed it at the trash can. But the can was already overflowing with discarded wads of paper, leaving no room for more.
Sigh.
The cold-faced man let out a hollow sigh and ran both hands down his face. He normally had a sharp, always flawless appearance, but right now he was looking considerably disheveled.
"......I'm seriously going crazy."
The man was Park Jin-soo.
He was the instructor in charge of the Understanding Party Roles, Formations, and Organization class.
"This strategy... is really the best answer?"
A holographic window was open before his eyes.
It was the solution submitted by a boy named Jin Yu-ha—the one who had displayed a rotten attitude throughout his lectures.
The Tank spins in place, and the Healers step forward to block the monsters. Then the monsters end up eating each other, causing internal chaos and self-destructing.
"This isn't a solution any sane person could devise...."
Jin Yu-ha had called it a beautiful solution, but to Park Jin-soo, it was the solution of a madman.
A lunatic tactic where if the timing is off by even a moment, or the positioning shifts even slightly, the whole party is wiped out. He'd already verified, through hundreds of tests, that no other timing or positioning besides Jin Yu-ha's proposal existed.
"It's unusable in real combat. A strategy that relies solely on such coincidence should be discarded... However."
Normally, he would never have recognized this as a valid answer.
But.
The reason he'd been agonizing.
He turned his head to a small screen where a recorded video from basic training was playing.
An absurdly awkward video where Jin Yu-ha, a male quota student, was acting as party leader in a group that included the special admission cadets Kang Do-hee and Shin Se-hee.
[ Shin Se-hee, in twelve seconds, blow up the swordsman. ]
[ Kang Do-hee, take three steps back now. Step back! You're not stepping back!? ]
[ Tch, Kim Cheol-hyeon. Heal Kang Do-hee. ]
[ Kim So-hun, in three seconds, buff me. ]
The party members moved organically at his commands. Like a single mass.
'His commands are all calculated. And when the plan goes off the rails, he adjusts the orders in real time....'
Jin Yu-ha was actually executing that hair-raising, tightrope-walking strategy divided down to the second.
In other words, even if Park Jin-soo himself couldn't recognize the strategy as an answer, it was the right answer for Jin Yu-ha. He had proven that this ridiculous strategy could be used in live combat.
......Yeah, it was heaven-sent talent.
Park Jin-soo had always been called a genius and never let go of the title of youngest—whether as a Velvet Academy student or as a researcher after graduation. But now, he was crumbling in the face of overwhelming talent.
Jin Yu-ha had run his mouth, saying he was looking forward to the upcoming lessons. And now his absurd answer had spread as if it were exactly what Park Jin-soo had intended.
"What the hell am I supposed to teach him...!"
Imagining the humiliation he would suffer in front of the cadets tomorrow, his vision went dark.
Then.
Creeeak—
"Huh? Instructor Park Jin-soo?"
The door opened, and a hearty voice came through. A woman with a large, bear-like build entered his sight.
Instructor Hong Ji-na.
She was the instructor in charge of Interpersonal Combat Practical, the class taken by Kang Do-hee and Jin Yu-ha.
"Instructor Hong Ji-na? What brings you here at this hour...?"
"Ah, well, I forgot something. So, what are you doing here alone, Instructor Park Jin-soo? Not leaving for the day?"
Park Jin-soo normally didn't share much personal conversation with his fellow instructors. But he felt so stifled this time that he confessed his frustration.
"......I'm having trouble putting together my lectures."
Hong Ji-na raised her eyebrows as if surprised.
"Trouble? Instructor Park Jin-soo?"
Park Jin-soo was a genius, research-oriented instructor who had never missed first place in theory scores since his academy days. Having taken up his post as the youngest instructor the year before, he had already proven that his genius reputation was not an empty title.
'And Instructor Park Jin-soo is showing this side of himself? Is he preparing something truly extraordinary?'
In that moment, a boy's face flashed through her mind.
"Don't tell me, Cadet Jin Yu-ha is in your class too?"
At that, Park Jin-soo's eyes went round.
"Oh, I see. So he is. That cadet must be causing a storm everywhere since enrollment...."
Hong Ji-na clicked her tongue, recalling the black-haired cadet who had imitated the swordsmanship of the Slaughter-Crazed Woman, a killing intent that was grim enough to give anyone chills.
"Come to think of it, Instructor Park Jin-soo, isn't your class right after mine?"
"It is. Meeting his standard in my class is... frankly, impossible."
"Whoa, I thought he was only crazy with a sword, but he's smart too? Where the hell did a guy like that pop out from?"
"Sigh... That aside, there's also the problem that if I tailor the class to him, the other cadets get left out. Because he's special."
"Hmm, definitely... Velvet Academy prioritizes raising a single genius, so that must be a real dilemma."
Hong Ji-na nodded.
Velvet Academy's policy was basically to push the strong even harder. In a world where a single S-Rank Hunter was more valuable than a hundred A-Rank Hunters, she understood his worry.
But while she understood, she didn't quite sympathize.
Because her class was endless sparring.
The class operated through cadet interaction: the weak voluntarily kept advancing upward, and after they fought, the instructor pointed out where they fell short. So she didn't have to worry much about adjusting difficulty.
'Hmm, but could Instructor Park Jin-soo's class be run that way too?'
She furrowed her brow.
"Instructor, does this have to be something you teach directly? Can't you have the students come up and teach it?"
"But that's something no cadet other than Jin Yu-ha could—"
"Mm, true. Even I can't tell the cadets to copy Jin Yu-ha. What I'm saying is, couldn't you just handle the balance adjustment yourself? Draw the line—'You can't do that yet'—and then present an alternative yourself as the instructor."
"......Balance... adjustment...?"
At the unexpected suggestion, Instructor Park Jin-soo's eyes went wide as lanterns.
It was the face of someone who had finally found the answer to a long dilemma.
"......Then, indeed. Feasible. It's feasible."
He shot to his feet and clasped Hong Ji-na's hands.
"......Thank you!"
"Uh, um. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm glad it helped."
Instructor Hong Ji-na's face flushed bright red.
'Whoa... A guy who usually radiates coldness suddenly shows up looking shabby like this, and acts so unexpectedly....'
"Mm, well, I also have my eye on that cadet a bit... I'll observe him more in tomorrow's class and share what I learn."
"......Really!? Thank you so much! I won't forget this favor!"
Instructor Park Jin-soo looked at Instructor Hong Ji-na with sparkling eyes.
Ahem. Ahem.
Instructor Hong Ji-na turned her head away awkwardly.
* * *
The next day, Instructor Hong Ji-na's Interpersonal Combat Practical class.
I went up to Kang Do-hee and said bluntly,
"Kang Do-hee, let's grapple."
Kang Do-hee glared at my slick face and chewed her lips.
'...He wants to do that shameless thing right here?'
"......Let's grapple."
"Yeah, because that was our sparring condition. You breaking out of the grapple."
She remembered. The day we cleared the Thorn Grasslands Dungeon and came back. What atrocities he had committed when he showed up at her house.
The Jin Yu-ha video that had been replayed more than thirty times while she was pinned down.
The shame and humiliation from that moment were still vivid.
— Huh? Why am I in there?
— Whoa, shot like a movie. But who filmed it?
— The replay count here... 257? You dog.
Tremble tremble—
As she recalled that day, her body began to tremble again.
Hoo—
'Endure it.'
If she let her temper loose here, she'd just be falling for this Yellow Dog's tricks again. She took a deep breath and calmed herself.
"Wait... Jin Yu-ha. You said you wanted to teach me grappling."
"Yeah, so?"
"Then isn't it a little strange if I'm the only one on the receiving end? Learning the counter when I'm grappled is important, but I think learning how to apply it is just as important. Won't I learn it properly that way?"
"...Oh."
Jin Yu-ha's face turned flustered, as if he hadn't considered that point.
"Then let's take turns."
Kang Do-hee smiled a victorious smirk.
"Jin Yu-ha! Fight me!"
Suddenly, an orange-haired female cadet ran up and shouted at Jin Yu-ha.
*
'Ah, right, that's true too....'
The training I started with the idea of making Kang Do-hee learn grappling. The pretext was that she'd learn the counter when she got caught, but the process of her learning how to apply it herself was left out.
'...Now that I hear it, she's right. I can't logically refute it.'
Tch.
I thought I could play with Kang Do-hee one-sidedly, but she's not an easy one after all.
Anyway, who's this now?
"Fight me!"
I turned my head to see the orange-haired cadet holding a small shield and a sword.
Righteousness Freak(正道蟲), Lee Min-young.
I'd given her a thorough lesson in the last class after all the frustration she'd piled up as the game's designated frustration-character.
'Tch, I thought I'd shown her the gap in our levels well enough last time, but was that not enough?'
"You got completely crushed last time."
I said it with a frown. She glared.
"That was then, and this is now! I won't lose this time!"
As expected, she's a hassle when you get tangled up with her.
'Ha, fine. I went too easy on her last time. I let her off a lot since she's a regular character.'
"Don't regret it."
I turned my head and looked at Kang Do-hee.
"Oh, Kang Do-hee, I'll go deal with this one real quick and come back. And taking turns grappling—I'm good with that."
"Hmph...."
Kang Do-hee, perhaps annoyed at being interrupted, looked at Lee Min-young with her arms crossed.
That was when.
"Cadet Jin Yu-ha."
Huh? Who is it this time?
Another voice suddenly cut in. A fairly husky voice. But this time, it wasn't a cadet.
"...Instructor?"
"Mm, I'm sorry, but today you'll have to be my demonstration sparring partner."
"......Me, a demonstration spar for you, Instructor? All of a sudden? Wasn't sparring only between cadets used for grading?"
"Hmm... a one-on-one with the instructor might feel a bit daunting. Alright, then Cadet Kang Do-hee, and Cadet Lee Min-young. You two join in as well."
Instructor Hong Ji-na singled me, Kang Do-hee, and Lee Min-young out.
"If the three of you face me, it should be worth a try, don't you think?"
At that, Kang Do-hee quirked up the corner of her mouth as if she found it interesting. Lee Min-young, flustered by the sudden development, rolled her eyes before nodding.
And as for me,
"That's suspicious... Did someone tell you to fight me?"
I narrowed my eyes and voiced my doubt about her sudden involvement.
Hong Ji-na, looking like I'd hit the nail on the head, stammered.
"......T-Told me! I-I simply wanted to check your skills since you three have been making a name for yourselves lately! No, no ulterior motive at all!"
'Damn suspicious...'
Hmm, well. Gaining experience by sparring with an instructor isn't bad. I'm used to doing it with Instructor Baek Seol-hee anyway.
I nodded.
"Understood. I'll accept the spar."
And so the spar between Hong Ji-na vs. Jin Yu-ha, Kang Do-hee, and Lee Min-young was set.