Training (4)
Training (4)
Professor Atra had beaten me black and blue. Bruise marks covered my entire body, evenly distributed without a single spot spared.
It was fine on the way back to the dormitory since there weren't many people around, but with lectures to attend tomorrow, walking around with a face full of bruises was bound to draw unnecessary attention.
Pressing down hard with an ice pack had reduced the swelling a little, but only barely. I still looked like someone who'd attract stares.
At least I could cover up my body with clothes. The real problem was my face.
'Beating someone up evenly takes skill...'
It looked like she'd just pummeled me recklessly, but examining my body closely, nothing was seriously injured.
The bruises were visible on the surface, but the way they started to recede with a little pressure from the ice pack was proof that these weren't major wounds.
By the next day, the bruising had faded further. At this rate, it looked like they'd be gone completely before long.
Still, my face remained a mess of bruises, so I debated what to do. I even considered throwing a scarf over my head, but I decided to go out as I was.
It felt like I'd be making too much of a fuss, and either way, people were going to stare whether I covered up or not.
Shoving my beaten-up face out there and dealing with the embarrassment... I decided to just bear it. These weren't shameful injuries, anyway—they were wounds I'd gotten during lessons with a professor.
I drew stares the entire way to school, and arrived at the lecture hall a bit late.
"Ha-yul! Good morn... Oh my god!"
Ellia, who had already arrived, turned her head with a delighted expression. She waved as if happy to see me, then her gaze stopped on my face.
Her eyes widened as if she'd seen something she shouldn't have, and she clapped both hands over her mouth, shooting to her feet.
"Ha-yul! Ha-yul! What happened?!"
She kicked back her chair and sprang up, rushing over to me in alarm.
Her dramatic reaction drew eyes in our direction.
"What are all these injuries?!"
She leaned in close with a face full of worry, examining me here and there. When she saw that the bruises weren't just on my face but elsewhere too, she wore a shocked expression.
[They happened during my major class]
"Yikes... just what kind of lecture is it..."
Ellia's lips trembled faintly, and then she brought both hands together.
In that moment, mana gathered between them. I felt mana inside her body taking on a steady, structured flow—and I grabbed her hand.
"Ha-yul?"
When I shook my head at the puzzled Ellia, her expression grew even more questioning. I let go of her hand, stepped back a few paces, and tapped at my smartwatch.
[You mustn't heal me.]
"??"
The question marks on Ellia's face didn't clear up; they only multiplied.
"I mustn't... heal you...? Why?"
[It's recovery training, so you can't.]
"??"
Ellia furrowed her brow and tilted her head. Her friends, who had followed her after she'd bolted upright, also had question marks floating above their heads.
"Recovery training? Is that a thing?"
"We're in different major classes, so I wouldn't know."
"No, no—do a lot of people do that kind of training?"
"...At the very least, I've never seen it."
Ellia must have heard the murmuring, because her expression grew even more peculiar.
'Was it not a widely used training method?'
It was a method I'd started using in the 2nd Iteration, after suffering a bitter setback in the 1st Iteration and diving into real stat-building.
A system where if you deliberately kept a character's HP low and left them that way, their stamina, durability stats, and HP recovery rate would gradually rise.
It was a training approach I'd used often in the early days of each iteration, when every minute and second was precious.
But if you cut it down too far, HP would permanently decrease, and if you got scared and cut too little, there'd be no effect—so finding the midpoint was crucial.
I'd been uncertain about it at first too, but after hearing Professor Atra say something similar, I'd been putting it into practice.
That was when Hong Yeon-hwa entered my spatial perception range.
I sensed her crossing the hallway and heading for the lecture hall within the slightly narrowed radius I was maintaining.
- Rattle
Before long, the back door opened. Hong Yeon-hwa, wearing the same red jacket as yesterday, trudged into the lecture hall.
She glanced around the room, then her gaze settled in my direction. A faint smile on her lips, she walked over.
"Ha-yul. Good, a... chi..."
- Drip
Her words tripped and sputtered. The unfinished sounds scattered hollowly into the air. It felt as if an icy wind had blown in from somewhere.
"......"
Hong Yeon-hwa's friends, who had been chattering as they followed her in, wore startled expressions at the abruptly changed atmosphere. They looked back and forth between me and Hong Yeon-hwa, then turned pale.
The lecture hall, which had been filled with quiet murmurs, sank into silence. It became a soundless zone where you couldn't even hear the footsteps of an ant.
The cause of it was standing right in front of me.
An ominous current swirled around Hong Yeon-hwa. Everyone knew it. There was a bomb here, on the verge of detonating. Because of this, everyone held their breath.
And I, directly in front of Hong Yeon-hwa, held my breath even more.
A face frozen cold and hard. The eerie grinding sound that escaped now and then from between her teeth and clenched fingers. And in contrast to her expression, her eyes—crimson pupils blazing like hellfire.
It was the kind of expression where, if my eyes had been open, I wouldn't have dared meet her gaze. Anyone capable of making eye contact with Hong Yeon-hwa in that state would have to be a person of tremendous courage.
Hong Yeon-hwa's mouth, which had been shut like a solid fortress gate, opened. In the voice that leaked out, barely suppressed fury simmered.
"Who was it."
[W?hat]
"What kind of fucker... who did this to you."
Oddly, Hong Yeon-hwa refrained from harsh language in front of me.
But right now, it seemed she didn't have the composure to care about that—a profanity flew out of her mouth.
"...Gh."
I knew that Hong Yeon-hwa's attitude toward me was gentle. I didn't know exactly why, but I also knew that she was, oddly, worrying about me.
So I had thought about what kind of reaction I'd get when I showed up covered in bruises, but I hadn't been particularly worried about it.
Because I'd never anticipated a reaction this intense.
I felt her expression through my spatial perception. The grinding sound between her tightly clenched teeth. The twisting between her balled-up fingers.
And, aided by my mana affinity, the mass of mana inside Hong Yeon-hwa's body—like a fireball.
Hong Yeon-hwa's mana, which took on the properties of flame under the influence of her unique ability Calamity Flame, had always been easy to distinguish.
It wasn't that others didn't possess flame-attribute mana, but there was a clear difference from Hong Yeon-hwa's.
If others were torches, Hong Yeon-hwa was a savage flame that would swallow even the torchbearer.
A difference so stark you couldn't mistake it if you tried.
Hong Yeon-hwa's Calamity Flame is special. Even among the Calamity Flame manifestations—a unique ability whose sheer output has no equal—Hong Yeon-hwa's output is exceptional among all past holders.
Now more than ever. The flame, which already blazed fiercely, was now burning madly as if bracing for a storm.
"Who... did this to you...!"
The flame was blazing. Inside her pupils, a Calamity Flame that could devour everything was surging. A flame existed there, burning with emotion as its kindling.
"Urgh..."
My face went pale. Flames that looked ready to engulf me at any moment were wavering right before my eyes.
My right arm throbbed.
- ...!
A memory from childhood suddenly surged up. A memory laden with complex emotions.
- ...Ah!
Flames had surged that day too. It was a day when black ash rising into the sky obscured my blurry vision. A day when my already choked throat became even more suffocated.
- Aaaaagh—!
It was the day my parents, who had never acted like parents, burned to death.
A day when the smell of burning meat filled my nostrils and felt exhilarating.
A day when I felt the sentiment: good riddance.
A day when I considered it divine punishment.
It swallowed my arm too, but even so, I was happy that at least you two were dead.
- Fuck! Why is there suddenly fire—!
- Aaaagh! S-save me—!
...It was the day my parents, from whom I had once, for a time, craved affection, burned to death.
That day.
The flames I had watched as I lay collapsed on the stone floor, writhing to shake the fire off my right arm, overlapped with the flames before my eyes.
Why were they overlapping? Did the memory surface because of their shared commonality—fire?
It was in that moment that I sensed something was off.
The Calamity Flame, which had been blazing fiercely, flinched—and then its endlessly swelling mass began to shrink. The flames that had been flicking their tongues ferociously gradually subsided.
'Ah.'
I'd realized too late because I'd been lost in the past. Without my noticing, my Spatial Perception's viewpoint had changed.
Before the shift, my spatial perception had been like radar. The only thing I could perceive was the Calamity Flame blazing right in front of my nose.
Nearby, mana signatures large and small had gathered, and I also felt an aura of water and ice—most likely Baek A-rin.
My spatial perception quivered. Gradually, my viewpoint shifted.
The Calamity Flame that had been blazing savagely subsided, and in its place stood Hong Yeon-hwa, at a complete loss for what to do.
"Ah, uhh...! I'm sorry! I'm sorry...!"
Hong Yeon-hwa flailed both arms busily. Cold sweat poured down her face as she looked at me with eyes chaotically jumbled with unease, anxiety, and guilt.
"I'm sorry for getting angry...! I wasn't angry at you...! I just, I got too worked up...!"
The aura that had just moments ago evoked a murderous fiend was nowhere to be seen, replaced by this—I was dumbfounded, but I couldn't bring myself to say a word.
I nodded while steadying my ragged breathing. My heart was pounding. I clasped both hands together and pressed them firmly against my chest. Honestly, I'd nearly fainted on my feet.
Facing a Calamity Flame burning with the momentum of an outbreak head-on was maddening enough, but with the combo of spatial perception and mana affinity, I'd felt it even more vividly than anyone else.
[It's okayyy]
After a little time passed, my heart calmed down too.
Still, even though I repeatedly expressed that I was fine afterward, calming Hong Yeon-hwa down took some more time—a fact that sat awkwardly.
The one who'd been scared was me, so why did Hong Yeon-hwa look more unsettled?
"...Recovery training? They still use that outdated method?"
Since there was still time before the lecture started, we had the leisure for me to explain the situation.
After taking my seat and calming down Hong Yeon-hwa, who was busy calling herself trash and trying to dig a tunnel into the ground, I explained the circumstances to her step by step.
[Outdated?]
"Yeah. It's not like no one's ever used that method, but..."
She scowled deeply.
"The efficiency is absolute dogshit, you know? Yeah, s-so... no, no! That came out wrong! The efficiency is extremely poor, you know? So these days, it's a discarded training method."
[I see]
Hong Yeon-hwa, who had been grumbling with dissatisfaction as if trying to swallow her emotions, flinched right after saying "dogshit" and started glancing at me nervously as she backpedaled, saying she'd misspoken.
I had to wonder whether she really needed to swap "dogshit" for "extremely poor."
She could just speak comfortably. If anything, talking while filtering herself like that seemed incredibly uncomfortable.
I kept telling her it was fine to speak comfortably, yet Hong Yeon-hwa would spit out desperate excuses about slips of the tongue and bizarrely maintain a prim and proper tone of speech.
"Improved recovery? It's not that it doesn't exist. But is it a meaningfully significant stat boost... if you ask me, no, it isn't. If anything, outside, you'd just end up damaging your body without many good effects."
[Ah-ha]
So, in other words, it was an early-game training method with poor efficiency.
And damaging the body, she said... That sounded similar to the original, where HP could permanently decrease if you weren't careful. As expected, it had barely any effect later on.
"Yeah. It's not that it has zero effect here. There'd definitely be an effect with the Authority of Growth's correction. But if you ask me whether you have to do it—I wouldn't."
Having finished her explanation, Hong Yeon-hwa let out a deep sigh.
"Hoo... I'm sorry about just now. I couldn't control my emotions again... But are you really okay? It doesn't hurt or anything...?"
[It's bearable. It's not that painful, really]
It hurts enough to make tears spring out. I want to run away. Even I have my doubts about whether this is really necessary.
But she's the expert compared to me... She'll teach me better than a layman like myself...
"...So? What did you say the professor's name was?"
It seemed things were wrapping up, so I was organizing my belongings and preparing for the lecture. Hong Yeon-hwa, who had been resting her chin on her hand and staring off to the side opposite me, asked.
[Professor Atra Clyde]
"Atra, Atra... Okay. Thanks for telling me."
When I answered reflexively, Hong Yeon-hwa nodded without looking my way.
...She had her head turned, but my spatial perception picked up her expression completely. Hong Yeon-hwa, with a strangely cold look on her face, was muttering something under her breath.
A chill I couldn't explain ran through my body, making me shiver.
I mustn't ignore my instincts.
I remember the intuition that had howled desperately right before I came to this world, screaming at me never to press that character creation button.
From the sight of Hong Yeon-hwa muttering ominously, I felt a prickling premonition.
And so, during every break, I clung to her desperately, asserting that Professor Atra had done nothing wrong.
That for the past two days, she'd taught me to the best of her ability and was teaching me well how to handle weapons.
That I had agreed to this recovery training myself and was doing it—I emphasized this repeatedly.
"Yeah, I got it. I was just curious, so I only asked for the name..."
As I persistently buzzed around her like that, Hong Yeon-hwa's chilly aura somewhat subsided.
When I kept pestering her, she seemed to get annoyed—her face flushed red and she waved her hands at me, so I swiftly put distance between us.
The intuition that had been screaming its head off settled down.
I didn't know why I'd gotten that feeling, but leaving it alone would have spelled disaster...
I let out a small, relieved sigh.
.
.
.
The spacious, old-style training yard.
Professor Atra handed me a long spear. In her other hand, she held a wooden practice spear.
"Today, we'll be using the spear."
I accepted the spear with a dumbfounded expression.
The weapon had changed in a single day.