Look at Those Eyes
On the pretext of a private consultation, he followed the supervising professor out.
Has he guessed who the Bachelor really is?
The man was wearing a cold smile. There was no reason for him to turn an expression like that on Bihyung himself, which meant his mood had soured over the person who had barged in out of nowhere—and the only one who fit was the Bachelor.
...No. He wouldn't know the man is a villain.
Given the professor's temperament, if he had realized, wouldn't he have smashed the Bachelor's skull right there on the spot? This was the same man who used to pick fights with the Council of Elders and the Association Head in exactly that fashion. He certainly wouldn't have let it slide.
"What? Somebody talking shit about me?"
The professor suddenly dug at his ear as if it itched and spat the words out, irritation thick in his voice.
"Professor. Why do we even need a private consultation?"
"Hm? Oh, that? Just an excuse to get out of there."
He answered in a cynical tone, then glanced aside.
"Anyway, why'd you drag Cadet Mina along? Is it this?"
So saying, he lifted his pinky.
Ugh. That is way too old-fashioned.
"What? Feels like you're badmouthing me again."
Sharp instincts, too.
"It's nothing like that."
"Then what?"
"I didn't want to leave her back there."
Interest stirred. The professor jerked his chin for him to go on, and Mina was watching from the side as well, plainly curious. Bihyung laid his thoughts bare as if they hardly mattered.
"There was a Bachelor back there, wasn't there?"
"Huh? What about the Bachelor?"
Coming from a mere cadet, it was a little—no. It was deeply unexpected.
"As you know, the Bachelors are tied to the clans. They lend out a clan's power, and in return the Association has granted them full authority to lock down future talent ahead of everyone else."
Catch the eye of people like that, and one's future was as good as guaranteed.
"When we graduate from the Academy, play it right and you can enter a clan on excellent terms. Or they might drop a word with an allied guild and have them save you a seat."
No matter how he turned it over, there was no way the cadet standing in front of him didn't already know that. Hadn't the very first day of enrollment proved as much? Geum Taehyung's clan had looked ready to cross the line, and Bihyung had borrowed the professor's own eyes and mouth to keep that clan from laying a hand, from the outside, on the second-ranked cadet—or on himself.
Bihyung answered the unspoken question simply.
"I have no intention of joining a clan."
The ambition was so utterly assured that the professor lost his words for a moment. No. Even granting that you feel that way... the second-ranked cadet might think differently, no?
"Mina won't be entering a clan either."
To the question written across the professor's face, Bihyung answered just as boldly.
"Because Mina has agreed to form a party with me."
"...Ha. Heh heh heh!! Well, I'll be. Confidence that you can step over the clans whenever you please?"
Was he supposed to call the ambition bold? Or else...
Should I praise him for seeing himself clearly?
Whichever it was, the professor found Bihyung's words thoroughly to his liking.
"Good thinking. Clans and guilds aren't all sunshine, you know. The reason I wanted to pull you out of there was that Bachelor bastard had his eye on you."
There were exceptions, but among those who held real power, the odds were high that someone up the chain was rotten.
"Walk into a place like that, and your talent will never get the chance to bloom. You'll just get worked to the bone."
They did not readily tolerate anyone who threatened their seat.
"Tsk. Isn't that the most brain-dead mindset you've ever heard? They can handle anomalies up to a point, so they figure they'll just fatten their own bellies."
Rotten to the core, the lot of them. Watching the professor mutter, Bihyung swallowed a hollow laugh.
Who on earth is backing this professor, that he can talk like that?
A figure wrapped in veils. He had never even seen an NPC like this in the game, and he found himself genuinely curious about the man's identity. Still, it didn't seem like something he could ask. By then the professor had pressed his faculty badge to something, and they had stepped into a room.
"Well, since I already opened my mouth, we might as well have that consultation."
"Why are we holding a consultation in a training hall?"
Indeed. The room Bihyung and Mina had followed him into was yet another indoor training hall—unlike the earlier one, which had looked like a gymnasium or an auditorium, this place had been built in the likeness of an ancient coliseum.
"Why do you think? Figured I'd take a look at your skill while I'm at it."
The professor drew the bamboo staff slung diagonally across his back.
"And appraise whatever it was you ate down in the treasure vault."
"You knew I took a spirit elixir?"
"Mm... more or less? You jumped straight to 3rd Rank, and none of the relics have an effect like that, so I thought, ah—a spirit elixir."
The professor scratched his head.
"Still, honestly, I don't get it. No matter how outstanding a spirit elixir you swallow, your rank doesn't suddenly shoot up like that."
If that were possible, the great clans would cram elixirs down every dog and cow and count them as fighting strength.
"Even refining your insight after taking an elixir takes a certain foundation. And all you've learned since enrollment is the basic arts, right?"
The basic arts were the essence underlying every art, but they were, literally, basic. They were not so profound that insight alone could carry someone from 2nd Rank to 3rd.
"I'm curious, is what I'm saying. Just what did you eat that was good enough to raise your rank, and what's that effect going to turn into? I'll appraise it properly."
Tapping his shoulder with the bamboo staff, the professor smiled. It looked like something he was doing merely to satisfy his own questions, but it was for the cadet's sake as well. If a high-quality spirit elixir had raised his rank, there would surely be a backlash. Bihyung nodded, reading that intent.
"You're saying you'll let me see whether there are side effects, and how far I've grown."
"Something like that. And if I spot a weakness, I mean to give you some advice, too."
"Understood."
"The force of my attacks, reduced to one-tenth. And any strike I judge dangerous gets dispelled on the spot. That ought to do it, yeah?"
The moment he designated the training hall's arts that way, a talisman formed in his grip. And so the first sparring match with the professor began.
Boom!
A fierce barrage of fire poured down like rain. Bihyung clenched his teeth and moved.
About ten percent of its original power. And still this fast...
Reducing the force to one-tenth was not a statement about destructive power alone. Speed, the efficacy of the arts, their size—every factor that could inflict harm on an opponent had been cut to a tenth. Even so, the arts the professor loosed were as numerous as rain, and each was the size of a boulder.
...I knew a single rank of difference was absolute, but I'm feeling it all over again.
He had thought himself somewhat accustomed through his sparring with Dueok, but facing someone who actually wielded arts was another matter entirely.
What is this... does he have a bloodline as versatile as Mina's?
The man usually carried a wooden staff on his back, so Bihyung had assumed a close-combat type like himself. Watching him now, he handled the arts well enough to match someone of the same rank.
No. At this level, it isn't even a matter of merely matching them...
Kwaaang!
His stray thoughts could go no further.
"Who told you to woolgather in the middle of a spar? Am I that easy to you?"
The flames that had been pouring down like a squall suddenly spun in midair, and the fire began to be honed to a razor edge. What was born inside that ring of flame was a massive bow and arrow—a bow whose string was already drawn, looking ready to loose at any instant.
Pang!
The arrow split the air and fell like a shaft of light, and Bihyung met it by driving the Spirit of the Joyous Fight to its limit.
Dodging is impossible. I have to meet it.
Roots sank into the floor of the training hall. At the same time, the arts loaded into them—beginning with Wood, passing through Fire, into Earth.
More.
And again, into Metal.
Spirit of the Joyous Fight
Threefold Cycle of Mutual Generation
Wood → Fire → Earth → Metal
Kwaaaang!
Adamantine will frosted over the fist Bihyung drove forward, and he met the loosed arrow head-on.
"Hoh?"
Seeing it, the professor smiled as if proud.
"That thing was stronger than your average 3rd Rank art, you know? And you broke through it? Damn! That punch of yours is at least on par with 4th Rank..."
Before he could finish, Bihyung's form chased him in a single instant.
"Whoa!"
Pang!
The leg he flung out together with a violent step was sharp as a blade, yet the professor evaded it with nothing more than leaning his body back.
"Fast. But isn't that too straight a line? Come at me like that and even the hits that ought to land..."
"I know."
He knew, which was why he had fooled the eye. Bihyung's body spun like a top. The flow of force—accelerating it, his foot stamped the ground with savage strength.
Boom!
The professor's chest caved in, deep as the footprint left in the training hall floor.
"Kehuk!"
He looked as if he were vomiting blood. A fatal wound, to anyone's eyes. Even so, Bihyung's gaze remained utterly flat.
"How about you drop the act? It was a fake from the start, wasn't it?"
"Ah, damn. You caught me?"
Only after hearing him did the professor smile, looking a little sheepish—and then his form began to change. Skin like tree bark, limbs as if vines had been strung together. It was a wood-carved puppet, a kind of wood art.
Crack. Crack.
After the puppet shattered, the professor emerged unharmed, breaking up through the floor a short distance away. An unconcealable smile was drawn at the corner of his mouth.
"To think you'd see through that. How'd you know?"
"The moment my foot connected, there was no feeling."
"Ha. Those senses are genuinely insane."
How were those the senses of a 3rd Rank? Laid out like this, even the heavens that had bestowed such talent seemed heartless.
"Still, you've got plenty of rough edges."
"I'm aware. But isn't the reason we're sparring so you can tell me what they are, specifically?"
"That part's right."
A grin. The professor's smile deepened another shade as he raised a finger.
"First off, if I had to name the biggest weakness, it'd be a lack of response, I suppose?"
"Response?"
"To put it bluntly, your senses are too good."
Through those senses, he could probably turn most assaults into nothing. But nothing in the world was complete.
"Meet an enemy who can do something about those senses, and the ways you have to answer their attacks are absurdly lacking."
"......"
Bihyung couldn't argue. The Spirit of the Joyous Fight, evolved from the Wraith-Battle Art, was a combat method of the extreme—in other words, the pleasure of dokkaebi who pursued nothing but the attack.
And a half-yokai's senses suit the Spirit of the Joyous Fight far too well.
What was going to hit, hit. Huh? If this lands, I'm dead? Only then did he carve an evasive path into instinct. That was the point the professor was jabbing at now.
"Meaning, just working out a way to respond would raise your combat power even higher."
Seeking that out was one of the purposes of this spar.
"I'm in the mood. If you find it in this match and manage to surprise me... I'll gift you one of the spirit pills I've got."
Bihyung's eyes lit up.
"You're making that a promise?"
Reading the will coiled in that gaze, the professor thought:
Whoa. Look at those eyes. Why do I get the feeling he's actually going to pull it off?
If he took it back now... he couldn't, could he?