Meritocracy (3)
Meritocracy (3)
A brief clash, then silence.
"......."
"......."
Baek Ha-na stared blankly at her bare left hand.
Yoon I-seul studied the elegant half-glove now in her own grasp.
"The inside is worn... but the outside, which should be showing wear, is nearly spotless."
Yoon I-seul was the first to break the silence.
She lifted her head, running her fingers over the half-glove she had taken from Baek Ha-na.
The movement drew Baek Ha-na's blue eyes toward her.
"Doesn't look like you wear it just for show."
A soft curve touched Yoon I-seul's lips.
"You've taken awfully good care of it, haven't you?"
The fighting spirit blazing in Baek Ha-na died down as if it had been a lie.
Her gleaming blue eyes slowly settled, losing their sharpness.
Taken good care of it?
Of course.
Nothing that man gave her was ever insignificant.
From the precious name Baek Ha-na itself, down to the smallest trace of warmth.
"Give it back."
"If I meant to hand it over just because you asked, I wouldn't have taken it in the first place."
A smirk pulled at one corner of her mouth.
But her eyes didn't smile in the slightest.
'...My mistake.'
She had never let her guard down.
But the ability itself was too alien, too far outside her expectations.
A power that manifested somewhere entirely unrelated to where her opponent's mana was concentrated.
The precious item in her opponent's hand had been a distraction, but the only way to retrieve it was to defeat her—so Baek Ha-na had been furious, yet fully in control.
Yoon I-seul's next move, however, shook Baek Ha-na's composure once again.
Swish.
She had slipped the half-glove onto her own left hand.
She flexed her fist a few times before speaking.
"A little big on me. Still, the high-quality materials make it comfortable. I like it."
Yoon I-seul wiped the smile from her face.
"So give me the other one too."
The moment the words left her mouth, Yoon I-seul's shadow shot across the stage toward Baek Ha-na at vicious speed.
Baek Ha-na's halted legs began moving again in the exact same instant.
Fwoosh!!
From the long stretch of Yoon I-seul's shadow, thin, razor-sharp spikes of ink-black erupted in every direction.
They weren't aimed at a single point—they were meant to swallow the whole arena.
Crrrrrk!
The thorns met the fist of a white beast and burst into tiny fragments, scattering everywhere.
The shards that hit the floor seeped back into the surface and returned to Yoon I-seul's shadow.
Watching her junior advance with such straightforward brutality, shattering the shadow spikes head-on, Yoon I-seul's eyes narrowed.
It was because of the sudden surge in mana.
Crrrrrrrack—!!
The distance shrank in an instant.
"This is a bit unexpected, but..."
Yoon I-seul withdrew the shadow spikes.
The sudden disappearance of the obstacle made Baek Ha-na's center of balance wobble for a split second.
"That look suits you."
...It's charming enough to make me want to tame you and keep you at my side forever.
The widely scattered shadow rushed back beneath Yoon I-seul's feet.
Baek Ha-na regained her center quickly and stopped her forward charge.
Yoon I-seul looked as if she were a marionette, black threads bound to every joint from her fingers on down.
Ssssshh.
She extended a hand, and from the shrunken shadow a long staff rose.
Hwoong!
Yoon I-seul gave the staff a few practiced swings, then leveled its end at Baek Ha-na.
"Aren't you coming in? If you don't, I will."
Baek Ha-na couldn't answer.
The opponent she had expected to hold her ground really did launch herself forward, black staff in hand.
BOOM—!!
The shockwave from the collision of staff and fist swept across the stage.
'How....'
"How can a supernatural Awakened like me withstand your strength?"
Yoon I-seul grinned, as if the answer were simple.
"Easy. I'm dispersing the impact."
The black threads wrapped tightly around her body.
They funneled the force Yoon I-seul should have absorbed into her shadow, which bled it out into the ground and the air.
"And..."
Hwoooosh—!!
Yoon I-seul pushed off from Baek Ha-na's fist and retreated. The motion was clean—like that of a well-trained Awakened.
"I can mimic movement like this."
With a frail body, she moved like a seasoned Enhancement-type Awakened.
The weakness of any mage—a body that can't keep up with the mind's commands—she had compensated for by using her ability to control her own body.
Hwoong—!!
She leveled the staff at Baek Ha-na once more.
"Honestly, I could subdue you without moving like this, but I figured this would work better for taming you."
"...Only one man can be my master."
For the first time, Yoon I-seul's eyes widened at an unexpected reply.
BOOOOM—!!
A white afterimage had streaked right in front of her face.
A split second.
Yoon I-seul found herself staring into eyes that held the depths of a midwinter lake—beautiful and chill.
'Ha......!!'
The presence had swelled to an absurd degree, incomparably larger than before, and Yoon I-seul's lips twisted upward.
A pale fist, stripped of its glove, traced an azure blur as it shot forward.
A thin wall of shadow surged up in that heartbeat of time and clashed with Baek Ha-na's fist.
The howling gale blasted past the stage and over the audience, students and professors alike.
BOOOOOM!
The delayed roar rattled the entire sparring arena.
The brutal shock of colliding mana echoed in every direction.
Yoon I-seul's face, twisted a split-second ago into a smirk, now contorted into something savage.
'I want you even more...!!'
She scrambled to her feet after rolling across the floor.
Where her face had been a moment before, Baek Ha-na's foot slammed down, blue mana rippling off it.
The reinforced stage floor—a special alloy mix—split apart with a brutal crack, shards flying everywhere.
She's only a first-year.
A feat that even upperclassmen struggled to achieve, and she pulled it off with a stomp.
A chill ran down her spine.
And at the same time, exhilaration.
Not since the current Student Council President had a student bared their fangs at her like this junior right before her eyes.
"Hahah...!!"
Yoon I-seul burst out laughing as a punch—launched seamlessly from the leg that had just planted into the ground—came flying at her.
KOOOM—!!
The ink-black staff and the white fist collided again.
But the outcome differed from before.
Even with impact dispersal active, tiny cracks spiderwebbed beneath Yoon I-seul's feet where she stood on the stage.
A bead of sweat traced down her forehead.
"...Aren't you going to use that hand?"
She nodded toward the right hand—Baek Ha-na had only attacked with the left, the one missing its glove, since the fight resumed.
Baek Ha-na answered flatly.
"I don't want it to smell like you."
"Oh my... calling a senior 'you'? Such bad manners."
"Better than someone who steals other people's belongings."
"Hahah...."
A short laugh escaped Yoon I-seul.
This brazen junior.
She was starting to like her more and more.
In a place where worth is proven only through struggle,
the girl in front of her had more than earned the right to talk like that.
"Then this fragile senior will assume you're going to stick with just the left ha—"
She couldn't finish. She threw herself backward in a hasty leap.
Fwooosh!!
A kick whipped through the space she had occupied a moment before. Half a beat slower and it would have smashed into her ribs instead, sending her rolling across the floor messily.
"...I'll take it to mean only your right hand is off-limits."
Baek Ha-na didn't respond.
The distance between them vanished again.
Koom! Boom! BOOOOOM—!!
Yoon I-seul blocked with the staff. When that wasn't enough, she scrambled and dodged, barely avoiding the barrage of fists and kicks.
'This is a problem....'
She had chosen close combat based on the force she'd measured when Baek Ha-na first shattered the spikes. But then her opponent's mana had swelled like a dam with its floodgates wrenched open, until now it was blasting out a monstrous presence that easily dwarfed her own.
If the opponent had been someone wielding a cold weapon, she could have managed an even back-and-forth somehow.
But this one was a melee-type transformation Awakened whose entire body was a weapon.
A staff alone wasn't going to hold up forever.
'I'll have to end this before my mana runs dry....'
She flung the staff aside and leaped far back.
Baek Ha-na ignored the staff spinning toward her and took to the air, closing on Yoon I-seul.
In that instant.
Sssssrrrk.
The threads binding Yoon I-seul's body slid down her frame and pooled below. Her shadow swelled.
"Got any flight abilities?"
As she spoke, her shadow connected to the staff she'd just discarded. Baek Ha-na was perfectly inside its reach.
Yoon I-seul's plain expression hid a savage grin as she playfully pointed a finger at her junior.
"Bang~"
FWAAAAAH—!!
Dozens of spears erupted from beneath the shadow and streaked toward Baek Ha-na.
Both feet were already off the ground. No way to dodge.
CRRRRRKKK—!!
The spears swallowed Baek Ha-na, and the sound of metal being raked shrieked through the sparring hall.
"Hoo..."
Yoon I-seul landed, steadied her breathing, and looked ahead.
Her junior stood a short distance away, mostly unhurt, uniform reduced to tatters.
No—she should rephrase that.
Not completely unhurt.
There were no visible injuries, but her ragged breathing and drastically depleted mana told the real story.
'Impressive....'
She meant it.
Those hadn't been ordinary shadow spears.
She'd poured 90 percent of her remaining mana into pushing their penetrative power to the limit.
Even professors who served as evaluation opponents usually chose to dodge them—yet this girl had coated herself in an absurd volume of mana and taken them head-on.
She'd blocked an attack meant to inflict at least moderate injuries.
"Your name's Ha-na, right?"
"......."
Yoon I-seul addressed the junior who was glaring at her with even more terrifying eyes than before.
"Next year, I'm recommending you for Vice President."
"......?"
The adorable, beloved junior frowned.
A faint smile rose on Yoon I-seul's lips as she continued.
"And, you know what?"
She pointed at Baek Ha-na's shadow.
"The one shadow I can't control...."
Yoon I-seul's eyes flew wide open in what might have been the first genuine surprise of the match.
Because her junior's shadow hadn't moved an inch.
The plan had been to exploit that, catch her off-guard and finish her. That plan shattered completely.
She'd saved 10 percent of her mana expressly for that purpose—now it was useless.
"Haha...."
Yoon I-seul gave a hollow laugh as she watched the white fist reach her nose.
Thump.
But the fist never struck her face.
At the last moment, its trajectory shifted—and instead, it grabbed her left hand.
"...You really did treasure it, didn't you."
Yoon I-seul watched in silence as her junior pried the half-glove off her fingers.
And the instant the glove came free.
CRACK—!!
"Kyaa...?!"
Searing pain wrenched Yoon I-seul to her knees.
Her wrist was swelling fast.
"...Touch my things again and it won't end at just this."
The cold, chilling warning sent a shudder rippling through Yoon I-seul's body.
She lifted her head to follow the shadow as it receded, step by step.
A girl of pure white, a perfect contrast to her own darkness.
'How lovely....'
Yoon I-seul was certain of one thing.
Before the 100 days ended, she was going to grow even stronger.