Drunken Talk
Drunken Talk
Liana liked to drink. But she didn't have a constitution that let her get drunk easily, so she drank in massive quantities until she got drunk.
That didn't quite make her an alcoholic, but there was no denying she was fond of alcohol.
On top of that, she was a top-ranked hero. The money she'd saved over years of fighting on the African Front was immense.
Bottles of liquor costing a few million won didn't even make a dent.
"Hahaha...!"
And that's how evenings like this—guzzling booze and getting half-drunk—came to happen.
Her face was bright red, practically screaming that she'd been drinking heavily.
The corners of her mouth were slack, too. Liana, who usually wore a gentle smile like a well-managed image, was now grinning from ear to ear.
"Here, have a glass! Wilirila's Waterdrop—an old friend and one of my personal top-ten favorite liquors!"
She thrust a glass filled with blue liquid to the side. There sat Atra, looking distinctly green around the gills, sipping warm milk to settle her stomach.
"No. Drink it yourself."
"Oh, come on. You came all this way just to have a few drinks? I know you can't hold your liquor, Atra, but still..."
"Quit your bullshit and drink it yourself."
Liana let out a giggle at the frosty reply. Hadn't she once said it was absurd how Atra always walked around with a gentle expression to manage her image?
'Heh, look at her.'
Even pretending otherwise, Atra's expression was flushed. For all her usual act of lifting her chin and casting superior looks, Atra was a lightweight.
The proof was in her manner of speaking.
'No,' 'That is so,' 'I refuse'—all that stiff, formal speech had peeled away, turning into a much more ordinary way of talking.
In other words, her true feelings were starting to leak out. That had been the whole point. Atra had such a firm outer shell that unless you got some liquor in her, she'd just put on a strange mask and parrot formal answers.
"Aren't you being too hard on Cadet Lee Ha-yul?"
The mood had ripened. Liana finally broached the main topic. Atra's hand froze mid-motion.
"You could be a little kinder. Do you really have to push him that hard?"
"Don't talk about things you don't understand."
Atra scowled deeply and, with a thud, slammed her mug of warm milk onto the table.
"Kinder? Push him? Do I look like I have the fucking luxury for that?"
"Hmm..."
Liana looked taken aback. She'd only meant to prod lightly before getting into the real topic, but the reaction was unexpectedly intense.
She shifted her gaze a few times before opening her mouth.
"...I know the whole situation isn't all sunshine and roses."
Lee Ha-yul was a Special Admission Cadet. The first cadet ever admitted under that category in Siyoram's history.
If you asked about the origins of the current top-ranked heroes, eight or nine out of ten hailed from the Cradle.
The Blessing of Growth conferred by the Cradle was that absurd, and Siyoram was an institution for fostering superhumans without equal.
Precisely because it had no equal, all manner of talented people desperately wished to enter. It was a kind of virtuous cycle.
And at that Siyoram, Lee Ha-yul was the first.
Naturally, he drew attention. That was inevitable.
The trouble was, he didn't attract only the good kind of attention.
"That crazy bastard of a Headmaster. What on earth is he thinking..."
Atra clutched her throbbing head. Just thinking about it made her dizzy all over again.
Good attention—just how much potential does he have for the Headmaster to seat him as a Special Admission? Can we bring him to our side later? It'd be nice if he participated in a future Demon Realm Purification Operation...
Bad attention—just how much potential does he have for the Headmaster to seat him as a Special Admission?
Let's nip it in the bud early.
In the two centuries since the Great Cataclysm, the world had undergone countless changes. But as long as there existed the species called humanity, and things called emotions and desires, some things remained immutable.
In short, bastards who defied ordinary moral judgment existed in every era, in every corner.
Atra had once received help from the Headmaster. It wasn't the kind of help that saved her life, but it was certainly enough to consider a debt.
Of course, even that had only come through the Vice Headmaster.
Anyway, under the pretext of that debt, the Headmaster requested that Atra take charge of and instruct the Special Admission Cadet.
The problem was, nothing more had been said since. That was it. The Vice Headmaster appeared at an internal Siyoram meeting, announced, 'We've selected a Special Admission Cadet,' and with those words, no further remarks followed.
"Fuck. Shouldn't there be some further measures?"
Were they just going to drag him out and leave it at that? At the very least, shouldn't they say: we selected him as a Special Admission Cadet for such-and-such reasons. He's a cadet I brought in, so please take good care of him. So educate him well. He's a cadet under my protection, so you're dead if you touch him... and so forth?
Why were there no further measures? That shitty handling of the situation fed Atra nothing but stress and questions.
Everyone knew the Headmaster had effectively ceased to be active for the past several decades. Siyoram's internal affairs were managed by the Vice Headmaster.
The Vice Headmaster maintained that the Headmaster held the final decision-making authority and that he was merely following it, but the Headmaster had hidden his face from every official and unofficial setting for decades.
Then, after decades of silence, he broke it. The Vice Headmaster made a point of saying it was 'a choice the Headmaster made after deep deliberation.' And so they selected the Special Admission Cadet.
The end.
That ambiguous handling of the situation made people harbor all sorts of doubts.
And it drew unwanted attention.
Inside Siyoram, things were fine. The Headmaster might be silent, but the Tower of Growth itself was here.
Siyoram had existed for over one hundred and twenty years and had never once suffered an intrusion or allowed harm to befall a cadet within its walls.
"Damn it..."
But outside? The Headmaster's protection didn't reach that far. Past incidents had proven it. Outside the Cradle was a cold, bitter reality. If something bad happened out there, there was no one to step in.
When Lee Ha-yul was alone in the outside world and couldn't resolve a situation himself, that was it.
She couldn't just stay at his side protecting him forever. She couldn't be tethered to him for the rest of his life.
Attach a guard? What level of guard, and could that guard really protect him in every scenario? In a crisis that exceeded the guard's capabilities—a crisis that reached Lee Ha-yul's throat—if he couldn't overcome it himself...
Crunch— Atra ground her teeth. Fueled by emotion as the alcohol poured in, it felt like her blood was on fire.
- Stop worrying! I'm not going alone, I'm going as a party unit, so you're worrying way too much! Do you not trust me that much?
A shitty memory dredged itself up. It was always like that whenever she was around Lee Ha-yul.
That was why she tried to raise his combat power as fast as possible. So that he could at least protect his own body, no matter what misfortune came.
From the second day, she'd thrust a weapon into his hands and held sparring sessions. By the standards of an active-duty superhuman, it wasn't especially harsh.
But she knew it was a punishing schedule for Lee Ha-yul, who was still just a first-year cadet... who had only just awakened.
Normally, you raised the basic physical level first. Drilling techniques into a frail body was terribly inefficient.
First, you brought the body up to a superhuman standard, and only then did you teach skills befitting a superhuman.
Lee Ha-yul was different.
Between the fundamentally granted Blessing of Growth, the amplified blessing from his Special Admission status, an already steep growth curve because he'd just awakened, and a suspiciously high absorption rate when it came to lectures and skills—
From what she'd roughly grasped, Lee Ha-yul had the potential to digest her schedule fully. He could raise his physical level and skills simultaneously. As time passed, she grew even more certain.
"Umm..."
Liana's mouth twitched at the unceasing tide of grumbling. The reaction was more intense than she'd imagined. It seemed Atra had quite a lot bottled up.
Liana also knew a bit about Atra's past.
She'd once had a disciple, met by chance. At the time, Atra was a high-rank hero and the disciple was an ordinary academy student.
Atra put up a prickly front, but she was really the softhearted type. It just didn't stand out much because her martial prowess was a bit... well, she had a personality that was tough on the outside, soft on the inside.
So she'd once given her affection earnestly, she said. As her first disciple, she tried to teach her everything she could, even if her methods were clumsy.
The disciple, too, knowing that devotion, followed Atra like an older sister, and they lived like family, she said.
─She had such a disciple. She did not have one now.
"I don't know what the Headmaster is thinking, but it's right that he gets stronger as fast as possible. If you dawdle thinking you have plenty of time... there's no going back."
The political situation had been strange lately. The number of monsters pouring out of the Demon Realm was steadily increasing. Villains who fled to the Demon Realm to lurk and then rampaged in the world had also grown in number. It wasn't dramatically noticeable yet, but the rate of dungeon generation was also gradually climbing.
It felt like a major incident could erupt in the near future. That kind of atmosphere was circulating these days.
"...And in the middle of all that, there's no room for taking it easy..."
Atra muttered, draping her body completely onto the table. Her voice had gone slurred, too, as if the alcohol had suddenly hit her hard.
"I get it. The situation is such that you want him to get strong quickly, I understand... but can't you just say a kind word to him?"
Atra looked totally out of it, but Liana had still said her piece.
"If you keep this up, Cadet Lee Ha-yul might end up hating you. Then it's bad for both of you, isn't it? Wouldn't it be better to just explain the circumstances?"
When Liana said this, patting her on the back, Atra shook her head.
Hate? What a ridiculous notion. To Atra, it was actually welcome.
She would never take on a disciple again. Even the current teaching was something she'd only temporarily agreed to because of the Headmaster's request.
She would teach him just enough so that Lee Ha-yul wouldn't be swept up somewhere and die meaninglessly. After that, she didn't care what happened.
"I don't care. Just let him hate me. That's actually better..."
Seeing Atra brokenly repeat the same words over and over, Liana let out a deep sigh.
'Oh dear.'
She understood the sentiment. Atra didn't want to form an attachment. Past wounds kept her from getting close, yet she also didn't want Lee Ha-yul to be caught up in terrible events.
Because the situation was what it was, she'd work him hard to make him grow as fast as possible. Her mindset was that since the training was harsh, if resentment naturally turned her way, well, all the better.
"Being hated is a hundred times better than dying..."
'She's completely stuck...'
There was no answer. At least for Liana, there was no further angle from which to probe this.
She let out a deep sigh.
* * *
The next day.
Greeting the late morning, Atra looked at the sunlight spilling past the curtains and opened her mouth.
"Fuck..."
It was difficult for a superhuman who had reached the top grade to get drunk. There were spirits suited for superhumans, but for someone like Atra, who had evolved her body to the extreme, truly getting drunk was hard.
If you willingly accepted the intoxication, however, you could get fairly drunk. That's what happened yesterday. Her emotions had somehow run high, so she'd fully embraced the drunkenness.
There were cases where you guzzled alcohol, got wasted, and the next day your memory was wiped. Atra wasn't like that. She recalled yesterday's memories in full.
It was a truly shitty morning. Atra got up feeling like she wanted to spit.
Atra lived in a house on the Siyoram grounds. It wasn't just her—most of the professors did.
While straightening her clothes, her expression crumpled on its own. Not just from the state of her clothes, but from the smell of alcohol soaked into her whole body. Just how much had she guzzled the night before...
She stepped out onto the veranda connected to the second-floor bedroom. As she took a deep breath, the fresh morning air filled her lungs.
Just as her mood was lifting, the memories of yesterday resurfaced and soured it again.
- Hiss.
"Hoo..."
Because of that, she reached for a cigarette she hadn't touched in a while. On the front line she always had one in her mouth, but at some point she'd grown sick of even that and tossed it aside.
Now an impulse arose and she picked it up. She took out a cigarette and, with a rough snap of her fingers, lit it. The dry yet refreshing smoke filled her chest.
Wasn't it made from a medicinal herb with an excellent nerve-stabilizing effect? ...It was a brand Atra favored.
The date suddenly occurred to her and she checked her smartwatch.
[ Tuesday AM 10:32 ]
Tuesday. The day the first-years who'd gone out for Dungeon Practice returned.
"......"
With a complicated face, Atra stared at the time. Starting tomorrow, Lee Ha-yul's training would resume.
She changed into rough, comfortable clothes and left the house. Feeling so gloomy, she figured she'd at least move her body.
At a moderate walk... her physical level being what it was, she crossed the grounds at a high speed. Before long, the training facility came into view in the distance.
And with it, a small male cadet in front.
'Ah.'
A robe over the Siyoram daily uniform. A large backpack was on his back, and two daggers and several pouches hung from his waist.
That was the equipment Atra had prepared for him. Carrying roughly that level of gear for Dungeon Practice was permitted, even if the Tower of Growth didn't know about it.
And the magic staff hanging next to his backpack looked somewhat comical, but because of the owner's appearance, it came off as cute rather than comical.
Had he already come out of the dungeon? "......"
Atra moved her steps with a complicated expression. Her course was toward the training facility behind Lee Ha-yul.
She briefly considered taking a detour, but he was right in front of the entrance, and going out of her way seemed ridiculous.
- Trudge, trudge.
At some point, Lee Ha-yul abruptly turned his head this way. At that reaction, Atra raised one eyebrow.
'The distance...'
Had increased. About three hundred meters still separated them. And yet he detected her, even though she was suppressing her presence as always.
'...Has his detection ability grown?'
It was a steep rate of growth. On the first day of lectures, he'd barely noticed her when she was right in front of him, but now he reacted immediately at this distance.
Of course, she wasn't suppressing her presence as much as back then, but it was still remarkable progress. It was commendable—and it produced a feeling she found hard to describe.
The gap narrowed.
Lee Ha-yul also approached. It seemed that since they'd run into each other, he thought he'd at least exchange greetings.
"Is your schedule all finished?"
Atra initiated the conversation as a formality. The distance had closed considerably. Lee Ha-yul began to manipulate his smartwatch.
No, he tried to manipulate it. The hand about to move stopped. His legs, too, halted.
"Hmm?"
Stopped in his tracks, Lee Ha-yul showed no further movement. A moment later, his head tilted. It was the kind of reaction that looked like something was puzzling him.
- ...Sniff, sniff.
Lee Ha-yul's nose twitched. In that instant, his body gave a start.
'What's this?'
It was a reaction of unknown cause.
But it was certainly less violent than the action that followed.
Lee Ha-yul had never once voiced an objection to the harsh training.
He hadn't asked for the reason. He hadn't questioned why he was given such a schedule. He hadn't shown resentment toward Atra, who responded stiffly and coldly at every turn.
Even that time when she'd been lost in thought and forgot to give him water, he hadn't complained at all.
He might well have once asked something out of sullenness, but as if he trusted her, he only diligently followed the lectures.
That Lee Ha-yul.
"Ugh..."
Grimaced fiercely and stepped backward. Undisguised disgust surfaced on his face. It was a reaction as if he were retreating from something filthy.
- Thud!
"......"
It was a dizzying sensation, as if a giant boulder had been slammed into her.
Atra's eyes trembled.