As Taught
As Taught
Wind blew across the wide field. The grass rippled softly in the gentle breeze.
- Whoosh!
A stealthy, sharp wind slipped through the calm. Her heightened senses didn't miss it. Narrowing her eyes, Daera twisted at the waist.
Silently, a hole was punched through the wind. The arrow of wind that had grazed past her waist flew on, then curved its trajectory and aimed for her back.
She had no eyes on her back, but she felt the path. Bang! The wind—the arrow—shattered against her swinging arm.
'That's one.'
There were dozens of such trajectories.
As if that single shot had been a probe, the arrows that had been circling suddenly surged in all at once.
The trajectories tangled chaotically.
These were arrows already hard to sense, woven from wind and with faint presence. Piercing through every last one of them with wide-open eyes was nearly impossible.
- Crackle!
Lightning sparked in Daera's eyes.
Her senses sharpened further.
The world in her sight slowed. The wind clinging to her skin was interpreted in fine detail. Lightning energy racing up her spine aided her predictions.
Both arms moved like comb teeth. Papabak! The back of her hand, her fist, the blade of her hand, her elbow. The wind intercepted on every part of her body burst apart.
She didn't just move her arms.
Against the wind flying at her from all directions, her legs too constantly shifted her stance, actively bent, rose, swung, and kicked away the wind.
Two, four, eight, sixteen. Thirty-eight...
"Last one!"
Boom! Her right hand clenched tight around empty air.
In the metal hand of the Hungry Ghost, a solid arrow was caught. Seeing the arrow trembling violently, Daera grinned.
"I win again."
"How on earth do you catch all of those?"
"Heh, I told you, my senses are good."
Crack! Snapping the arrow and the aura layered over it, Daera shrugged. Lee Ha-sol lowered her bow with a quiet sound of admiration.
"I knew it from the first time I saw it, but it's more amazing every time."
"Back then and now, well... the distance is pretty close."
Dropping the shattered arrow, Daera shook her head as she tidied her hair.
It was the same sparring they'd briefly done at the freshman welcome party. The venue itself hadn't been large, which put the bow at a disadvantage.
It was the same now. This lawn was spacious enough, but Lee Ha-sol was shooting from close range.
If she shot from sufficient distance? From that point, even Daera had trouble precisely reading the trajectories.
That was because she couldn't see the moment of release, and as the arrows closed the distance, they tangled and hid chaotically among themselves.
In fact, there was a past record of her being too slow to notice an arrow assaulting from afar, costing her the boss's last hit.
Shaking her head, Daera turned her gaze.
"So, junior, did you see enough— ahem! Did you confirm it?"
[Yes, that was plenty.]
A short distance away. Sitting on the grass and tending to a spirit that was begging for affection, Lee Ha-yul nodded.
[Is this how your usual training goes?]
"Yeah, we do this kind of thing a lot."
[Ah.]
That reply came from Lee Ha-sol, who had approached with light steps.
After petting the spirit a few times and releasing it, the next one crawled into his arms. Firmly hugging the spirit, Lee Ha-yul reviewed the results he'd observed.
'For Lee Ha-sol, the bow.'
Lee Ha-sol's main weapon was the bow.
She had wielded the bow as her primary before too, along with a few secondary weapons, but ever since manifesting Gale, she'd used the bow most of the time.
'Gale has archery-type corrections as one of its technique categories, after all.'
That was a fact he'd learned previously while imitating it. Perhaps since the manifester, Lee Ha-sol, already handled the bow, the archery correction had been included.
'Senior Daera mostly excludes weapons and relies on bare-handed striking.'
Daera's combat style was the same as her master, Atra's.
Of course, Atra had taught Daera various weapons. Before she'd been stranded in the Reverse Side, she had wielded a sword too.
But being stranded in the Reverse Side had forced bare-handed combat upon her. Acquiring any usable weapon there was practically impossible.
'At best, you'd have monster fangs, claws, or bones...'
Rather than risk disaster fumbling with crude weapons, hands and feet clad in aura would have been freer and more comfortable. And by now, that skill had become her fixed standard.
"I'm looking forward to how you'll teach me, senior."
Lee Ha-sol, who had settled down beside him, curved the corners of her eyes playfully. She was close enough for their shoulders to brush. Feeling the pressure, Lee Ha-yul hunched his shoulders and shook his head.
[...Don't expect too much.]
"But junior, your help really is huge, you know."
Those words came from Daera, who had similarly settled down beside him. She was close enough that he could feel the body heat she'd worked up from moving around.
"Just look at me. How much have my movements improved thanks to your help?"
[That was because your master stayed right by your side and helped.]
"Of course my master's help was huge too. But the way you pointed things out in spine-chilling detail—that was enormous."
There was no helping it.
He'd pointed things out using Observation, down to a single strand of hair, so the volume of feedback was vast and the accuracy was bound to be uncannily precise.
"On top of that, you even helped guide my internal mana refinement, looked over my techniques..."
Looking back on it, she'd received so much it was honestly too much. Folding down her fingers one by one, Daera wore a strange expression.
"...And that prosthetic arm was a gift from Ha-yul too, right?"
Lee Ha-sol also wore a strange expression.
The deep-blue metal fingers folded one after another. The movements were so natural and smooth it was hard to think of it as a prosthetic.
It was so smooth that even using it in combat, it followed like her own body. It handled delicate manipulations skillfully too.
Was that all?
Its durability was so vastly superior that small flaws were hard to make, and even the tiny scratches that appeared would absorb mana and repair themselves.
On top of that, it bore and amplified Daera's already powerful lightning energy without strain.
Despite all that, this was a treasure that made control and manipulation even more docile.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. My junior made this for me too."
An artifact that easily ranked in the highest grade was, in truth, not an artifact at all but a weapon personally created by a craftsman.
Hearing Daera say this as she stroked her own prosthetic, Lee Ha-sol's expression turned briefly complicated.
It was Lee Ha-yul who had personally created such a treasure and then casually gifted it like it was nothing.
The winged garment the people of this mansion wore around as if showing it off had also been made by Lee Ha-yul.
- Hek-hek...
"Hm?"
In the middle of her complicated thoughts, Lee Ha-sol tilted her head. Turning her gaze, she saw a semi-transparent, light-green puppy looking up at her.
"You're... Ha-yul's spirit, aren't you?"
- Hek!
Nodding its head vigorously, the spirit wagged its tail back and forth. The familiar energy and color... It was a wind spirit.
When she reached out and stroked it, it rubbed its body against her, delighted. The reaction was similar to their master's.
Blinking, Lee Ha-sol scanned the surroundings. Before she knew it, the area was full of light-green spirits.
They'd already sensed the energy of Gale and been poking around nearby, then seeing they were resting, had crept closer bit by bit.
"Hey, hey, why do you little ones keep biting and hanging on?"
- Grrr...
Daera's situation was similar.
When Daera, who manifested Heavenly Thunder, sat down on the ground, the lightning spirits that came darting over rubbed against her, bit her fingers, and played pranks.
[Hmm... Let's try doing it this way for now.]
After a brief rest.
Lee Ha-yul, who had been running calculations in his head, rose from his spot.
"How?"
[I'll try doing what I just did. Senior Daera, please wait here. Lee Ha-sol, please move a little farther away.]
Having put some distance between them, Lee Ha-yul pulled a bow and arrows from his subspace.
Lee Ha-sol and the spirits drew back, and Daera readied her stance.
"Like this? You're talking about what Ha-sol and I just did, right?"
[Yes.]
Nodding, Lee Ha-yul slowly, slowly drew the bowstring. Once Daera was ready and gave the signal, Lee Ha-yul released the string.
The arrow surged forward. Not wind, but a real arrow.
'One shot?'
And yet it wasn't terribly fast, and its trajectory was a straight line. Daera tilted her head.
- Flash!
At the same moment, the arrow exploded. Daera's eyes widened, as did Lee Ha-sol's from where she watched at a distance.
It was an illusion. Not an explosion, but a division.
Dozens of arrows flew at her. And that wasn't the end. The straight-line trajectories bent, curved, and tangled chaotically.
'This is.'
It was a technique she'd seen somewhere before.
Appalled, Daera reached out her hand. A hand wrapped in aura composed of lightning energy. She struck away the very first arrow at the vanguard.
- Clang!
The struck arrow. The feel of it was odd. Deflected, the arrow rode the wind and circled the vicinity. There were over a hundred arrows like that.
'I think that's the one.'
Daera stretched out her right hand.
She scattered the lightning gathered in the metal hand of the Hungry Ghost. Crackle! The innate talent within the arrows struck by lightning was annihilated. The arrows thudded to the ground.
This was how she'd neutralized it before.
"Udadada...! Gyak!"
She'd neutralized it then, but she couldn't this time. The precision and persistence were on an entirely different level.
After batting away roughly seventy, Daera was struck in the head by an arrow and collapsed. Thanks to the blunt tip, it didn't draw blood.
[Well?]
"...Isn't this the technique that bowman used before?"
That question came from Lee Ha-yul, who approached step by step. Daera, who had planted her face in the grass, spat out her words.
[Yes, that's right. It's the technique-type expansion ability that person used.]
It was the expansion ability of the mage and bowman who had followed Hong Yeon-jun's orders in the Reverse Side... Est.
Since it was a technique-type expansion ability, he could imitate it with Myriad Transformations.
'And besides, I squeezed them for direct experience too.'
The three locked up in the Association headquarters, the ones he'd fought in the Reverse Side.
While practicing erasing the Brand with Calamity Flame, he had also taken the opportunity to imitate their expansion abilities in meticulous detail.
[Lee Ha-sol, your techniques aren't a technique-type unique ability but are being manifested through Gale. Of course, Gale does include quite a bit of technique categories, but manifesting it independently would be far better.]
"I was thinking the same thing."
Lee Ha-sol, who had come over after Daera collapsed, agreed. At that, Lee Ha-yul gave a small nod as well.
'There's a similar precedent, after all.'
The 8th Iteration's unique ability from Heavenly Thunder had been two-fold.
One was 'Divine Bow,' pioneered from the archery talent received as a perk.
The other was 'Heavenly Thunder,' pioneered from lightning-attribute mana with the help of an artifact.
'They're separate unique abilities, but...'
They hadn't been completely distinct. To be precise, they'd complemented and linked with each other.
The 'Clear Lightning Flash,' which could practically be called the 8th Iteration's ultimate technique, was also an expansion ability utilizing both Divine Bow and Heavenly Thunder simultaneously.
And as it happened, Lee Ha-sol handled the bow.
It was Gale rather than Heavenly Thunder, but... he could help align it with archery.
'Senior Daera manifested Heavenly Thunder from the start, so I just have to offer whatever help I can within what I know.'
Having roughly estimated the work ahead, Lee Ha-yul nodded firmly.
[I'll help as diligently as I can.]
"......"
When Lee Ha-yul finished his broad explanation and clenched both hands as if making a vow, Lee Ha-sol's expression turned deeply complicated.
She recalled everything she had experienced so far.
He personally owned a mansion and grounds of staggering scale.
The vitality-filled field had a numinous and majestic tree standing tall, a dreamlike place where countless spirits and baby unicorns frolicked.
His appearance was more handsome and beautiful than anyone you could bring from anywhere in the world. A cute, lovable, and kind disposition.
His ability?
It wasn't even worth mentioning.
Sensing ability with range and precision that laughed at common sense. A technique-type unique ability that just brought expansion abilities over. Calamity Flame, Azure Sea, Taesan. Spirit arts, necromancy. Mage-level magic. Crafting ability that just churned out things like artifacts. Preposterous combat skill...
"Haa..."
[?]
[...Uh... um... Is there perhaps some part you're not happy with...?]
When Lee Ha-sol suddenly let out a small sigh, Lee Ha-yul, prematurely frightened, shrank back.
"No. Just."
Shaking her head vigorously, Lee Ha-sol pressed Lee Ha-yul's cheek firmly with one hand.
[?]
- Pffuuu...
"Who said you could be this amazing? Huh?"
- Beh?
[Confusion]
He had lots of women around him? Honestly, thinking about all that, wasn't it only natural he'd have many?
Now that Lee Ha-yul had become a superhuman, he was amazing—far too amazing...
'Ah, right.'
Lips gathering cutely like an octopus. Cheeks faintly flushed, perhaps from receiving a compliment.
Looking down at him, Lee Ha-sol recalled a question she'd forgotten.
"Ha-yul, you only look with your eyes and talk to certain people... is there a special reason?"
She'd actually been curious since first meeting Ellia before, but there hadn't been a chance to ask.
[Ah, that's...]
Lee Ha-yul, who had been squirming at the sudden praise, flinched, then slyly rolled his eyes.
What Lee Ha-sol was asking about... was the bypass condition of the curse.
Of course, there was no way he could easily say that.
A kiss? How could he say that? Even if he did, would she even believe it? If she didn't believe him, he was afraid of how Lee Ha-sol would look at him...
[A kiss]
[A peck]
"...Huh?"
[?]
While Lee Ha-yul was agonizing. His body answered Lee Ha-sol's question just as it had learned.
Lee Ha-sol, holding his cheek, and Lee Ha-yul, whose cheek was held, both blinked at the same time.
"...?"
Beside them, Daera, who had been playing with the lightning spirits while subtly eavesdropping, also blinked dumbly at the words she'd just heard for the first time.
* * *