The Reason to Live
“How did you reach the Fifth Tier?”
It was a question I tossed at Shiruen, who had stopped by as she often did. She didn’t visit every single day, but she came at least once every two to three days. She always claimed she just happened to have some free time or was passing by, but nobody was fooled. It was obviously her clumsy way of hiding embarrassment. She probably knew it too.
She knew, yet she still came. She knew, yet she still said it. The more we talked, the clearer her personality became.
“Yes. I somehow managed to reach the Fourth Tier, but I heard the Fifth Tier is completely different. Still, I figured hearing from someone with experience wouldn’t hurt.”
I asked because I had already come to understand her a little. Normally, I would have known better than to pry about someone’s enlightenment—it could easily be considered rude.
But the Shiruen Arpelt I knew didn’t care about such things.
“…Are you seriously telling me you’ve never once thought the Fourth Tier was your limit?”
“…? Why would I think that?”
“Crazy bastard.”
Shiruen let out a small snort of laughter, snatched an apple from the drawer, and bit into it. She hadn’t even peeled it yet.
“You said it was a gift, but you actually bought them to eat yourself, didn’t you?”
“What? Hey. There are so many apples here—one won’t make a difference!”
Just as she said, the apples piled on the drawer were the ones she had brought as a get-well gift. There was still a mountain of them left.
She grumbled that I was being stingy for someone so young.
If I showed this scene to anyone else and told them she was the Fighting Star, would they believe me? She was called that because she was obsessed with fighting and had survived countless battles. How could someone with that title be so pure-hearted?
‘No one would believe it.’
Even I, watching her right in front of me, had trouble believing she was really the Fighting Star. And yet, there had to be a reason for that fearsome title.
I was genuinely curious about her story. Not for the sake of the plot—this was pure curiosity.
And it looked like it would take some time to satisfy that curiosity. So I would just have to approach her slowly.
“Asking about the Fifth Tier… so you’ve already felt it too, huh?”
“If you mean… the ‘Wall’?”
“Well, people call it different things, but ‘Wall’ is the most common.”
At the start of the real conversation, I shifted my body.
It still ached, but I was much better. The doctor had said I could be discharged soon, so my time in this wretched hospital was almost over.
Shiruen glanced at my body before continuing.
“The reason the Fourth and Fifth Tiers are so clearly separated is because of that Wall. It doesn’t just block you—it demands something incredibly difficult.”
“Demands?”
“That’s right. The Wall doesn’t simply stand in your way. It demands qualification. The right to reach the Fifth Tier… and eventually, to touch the heavens.”
Touch the heavens. As far as I knew, that phrase could only be used for the pinnacle of mastery—the Ninth Tier alone.
And it was known that no Ninth Tier awakeners existed among the current generation. Even the strongest figures widely known across the world were at most Eighth Tier. No one had ever touched the heavens.
Yet here was Shiruen, saying the Wall blocking my path was demanding the qualification to reach the Ninth Tier.
This was something I had never heard while playing Final Academy. Of course, the current tier system and the game’s mechanics were completely different.
If I had to compare, the game’s system was far easier. No matter how broken the traits I chose were, the difficulty of raising a character on screen was on a completely different level from reality. Even Korman had given me a hard time despite the specs that should have let me crush him easily.
Of course, even with the demon’s interference, it was still a fight I could have won. If it had been on screen, I would have beaten him with pure control.
Even with those conditions, I had never reached the Ninth Tier.
I had reached the Eighth Tier before, but the Ninth felt like an entirely different category.
No matter how many demons I subjugated, no matter how much I trained, no matter how many traits I stacked and how hard I focused—I could never reach it.
It was as if the system itself had sealed it off.
“Well, the Ninth Tier is still a long way off, so let’s skip that. What the Wall of the Fifth Tier demands is surprisingly simple.”
“You just said it was difficult.”
“It is difficult. But it’s also simple.”
I stared at her with an expression that clearly said, What kind of crazy nonsense is that? If it’s difficult, it’s difficult. If it’s simple, it’s simple. How can something be both difficult and simple at the same time?
Even as I made that face, Shiruen remained calm. In fact, she looked like she had expected exactly this reaction.
“To begin with, there isn’t much I can tell you about the Wall. If someone could reach the Fifth Tier with just a few words of advice, there wouldn’t be so many awakeners stuck at the Fourth Tier. You already knew that, didn’t you?”
Of course I did. I knew that asking about enlightenment like this wasn’t exactly a good thing.
The essence of enlightenment was different for everyone. That was common knowledge. Some people gained it while smoking a cigarette. Others while swinging a sword, or even while sleeping. Enlightenment was so vast and personal that hearing it from someone else’s mouth was nearly impossible.
Even so, I had asked for one reason only.
“There’s only one thing I want to confirm.”
“What?”
“In the end, to reach the Fifth Tier… I have to break that Wall, right?”
I still didn’t fully understand what she meant by “difficult yet simple.” But in my head, I could vaguely piece it together.
The conditions to break the Wall were incredibly demanding, but the method itself was brutally straightforward.
“Pfft—Puahahaahaha!”
Shiruen burst into laughter the moment she saw my face. She tossed the apple core onto the drawer and looked at me.
“You already knew? Then you asked me just to confirm it?”
“……”
“You really are an interesting guy. Maybe that’s why I’ve been sticking around the first-years for so long.”
Shiruen slowly rose from her seat. She smiled faintly and picked up the outer coat she had hung up. I simply watched her.
“Well, since you already seem to know, I don’t have anything more to say. But as your supervising professor, it’d be embarrassing to leave it at that…”
She paused for a moment, then spoke.
“The fists and sword you showed me still lack proper form and technique. You’re just swinging wildly, and only your talent is organizing it into something coherent. If you refine that a little more, it’ll become much easier.”
I nodded at her advice. I still didn’t quite understand what she meant by “form,” but the part about technique made perfect sense.
Every technique I had used so far was something I had recreated after copying it. In other words, I had simply struck out with whatever came to mind at the time.
No matter how good I was at copying techniques, I couldn’t keep living like this forever. Even freedom had its limits. I had always known I would eventually need to build a proper framework, but it had only been a vague idea.
Now that she had pointed it out, I would have to invest my time into that from now on.
“Then I’m off.”
After Shiruen left, Elesia and Cheon Yu-ha came to visit.
They told me they had woken up a little later than I had. It wasn’t just because of their physical injuries—the first encounter with demonic energy had worsened their conditions. It had taken a long time to neutralize it.
“By the way, are you close with Professor Shiruen?”
“We’ve just exchanged a few words here and there.”
When I asked Elesia why she was asking, she said it was because she had rarely seen Professor Shiruen smiling as she left. She said even when she was a first-year, she had almost never seen it. The professor only ever showed any reaction when she witnessed a truly good fight, so she seemed slightly surprised.
Hearing that, I recalled how Shiruen had awkwardly made excuses every time she came here. I had planned to pretend I didn’t notice, but now that I knew the truth, it was hard to keep acting oblivious.
Since the topic had come up, I asked for a few more stories about Professor Shiruen. Since Elesia was a second-year, she seemed to have run into her a few times.
Of course, since Shiruen was originally in charge of the third-years, there weren’t many stories. But from what I heard, she seemed exactly like the Shiruen I knew.
Or rather, exactly like the Fighting Star from the game.
“Anyway.”
Elesia stared at me intently.
“Don’t tell me… you’ve already taken another step forward?”
She didn’t need to elaborate. I knew exactly what she was asking. I simply gave a light nod.
Both of them looked utterly shocked. Well, that made sense—Elesia was a second-year at the Fourth Tier. And even then, she was at the top of her class, wasn’t she?
Since the academy usually expected students to reach the upper end of the Fourth Tier by their third year, my growth rate must have looked completely insane.
“You really are a monster…”
Yu-ha stared at me with a fed-up expression. Still, calling someone a monster to their face? That was a bit much.
“Are you two roommates?”
“Yeah.”
“Neutralizing demonic energy is pretty tricky, so separating you two for treatment must have been difficult.”
“Thanks to that, I finally got to see the face of the Sword Saint that I supposedly could never meet.”
The moment Elesia finished speaking, Yu-ha shot her a glare. If I hadn’t misheard, did that mean the Sword Saint was currently at the academy?
Because his beloved granddaughter had been hospitalized?
Yu-ha, who had been glancing at me while I was lost in thought, suddenly gave me unexpected news.
“…Tana woke up too.”
“……!”
“Want to go see her?”
That was by far the most interesting thing I had heard all day, and I couldn’t find a single reason to refuse.