The Genius Every Academy Has (2)

She wanted to snatch up her sword and throw herself at him that very instant. She could not.

"......Kh—!"

A pawn of the Cheonryong Sword Family was watching her even now. He was a swordsman dispatched from the maternal house of the fourth son, Cheon Dae-seong — the Seongcheol Sword Family, the clan said to stand immediately behind Cheonryong itself — and his loyalty was a simple thing: he supported Dae-seong. From a distance, his eyes never left her.

Nor did it end there. Teachers throughout Cheonryong Academy, bound by ties to her older brothers and sisters and therefore aligned with them, were watching as well. Inside the academy, her every gesture might as well have been under surveillance.

Could she fight a man that strong without an Aura Heart? More precisely, facing a swordsman of that caliber, could she muster the patience to keep her Aura Heart in reserve and merely put on an act? Could she choke down this urge to detonate every last drop of it, drag his out in answer, and clash without regret even if one of them died? If she could not trust herself to endure that, then she had to put the sword away.

Yu-rin squeezed her eyes shut and carved her mother's words into her heart once more. Endure. She had to endure.

The world would not end if she refused to fight now, and everything she had done to hide her strength within the family would turn to foam. Even her only younger sibling — So-hyeong, whom her mother had worried over until the very moment she lost consciousness...

Steel whispered as Cheon Yu-rin at last uncurled the hand closed around the hilt and forced herself to step back. Watch his training any longer, and she would no longer be able to hold herself in check.

The sword sheared the air with a heavy rush.

Swinging a sword was fun. Let go of your head and simply move, and a kind of happiness came over you — the trouble being that it was so enjoyable you really did let go of your head. Call it a trance, maybe. All I could see was the sword in my hands, and swinging it the same way without end didn't dull my interest in the slightest. It was fun enough to be the death of me.

Finishing a daily quest usually left me only just warmed up. Judging by the feeling that this body was only now beginning to loosen, Seo Hoon's body could probably swing a hundred thousand times and still come out fine.

Still, I can't go burning time however I please. I should stop here.

I had expected to be soaked through with sweat, but oddly enough there wasn't any, and my body felt light and dry. What drifted up nearby instead was the smell of something scorching.

"Sniff, sniff... Is this the Aura Heart's doing?"

I had heard that once you had an Aura Heart, you could move your aura as you liked and your control grew steadier. Maybe because I had awakened a Heart not long after learning an aura cultivation method, mine was still lacking.

Well. Better than the first awakening, when I burned the clothes right off myself.

Even so, they felt crisp, as if someone had taken an iron to them. This much was probably fine.

I was trotting back toward the dormitory when I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠caught sight of one of the few familiar faces I had, glancing about in search of something.

"Ah! Young Master spotted!"

The one running toward me with a bright, open smile was unmistakably Duna.

"Honestly, where did you go? It's a good thing I found you before my sister noticed. Wander off alone and get lost, and I'm the one who'll get scolded, you know?"

Knowing Hana, she really would be furious if I went around by myself.

Duna came up with her eyes bent into smiles, took in my glum face, and asked with a little grin of her own.

"Oh? Young Master, do you want to keep playing? Shall we play a bit before we go in?"

As if she had been ready all along, she produced several toys from the folds of her skirt. She really did seem to love playing with me.

Right. She'd asked before, too — want to play swords?

She wore a blade for her work as a bodyguard, but that was a separate matter. Even now her shoulders were bouncing, as if she wanted to play this very moment.

What nagged at me more was the aura. Ever since I awakened an Aura Heart, I had begun to feel it, little by little, in my instincts.

Something's wrong.

It was different from the aura of the other students I had seen at Cheonryong Academy. Crooked — the sort of wrongness anyone could have spotted.

"Give me your hand for a second."

"Yes, here."

She scrubbed the sweat from her palm and held it out, without the slightest suspicion of what I meant to do. Seo Hoon's body ran on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the large side, so Duna, no taller than an ordinary woman, had relatively short fingers; two joints of mine came to about the length of one of hers.

"Do you want to hold hands?"

I was hesitating with my hand barely raised when she met my palm and took it herself.

Rougher than I expected.

If anything, Duna's hand was rougher than Seo Hoon's — the young master's own.

I had taken it to see how far her aura cultivation had come.

I knew her level wasn't all that high, but...

Duna had learned an aura cultivation method in her own way, yet ours was merely a rich house, not a great sword clan, and there was no chance we had gotten hold of a proper one. An aura method money could buy would be nothing more than some clumsy art a mediocre swordsman had realized for himself — not something made to fit another person's constitution.

And the flow isn't even whole in places.

Set beside the aura running through my body, the difference was large, even allowing for man and woman, for height, for the method itself. Take the wrong stance at the start of sword training and you only ruin your body until everything falls apart; keep drilling a faulty aura method, and the body is damaged just the same.

The very reason the protagonist, Cheon So-hyeong, had come to live like a ruined man was that in childhood another family, wary of him, had taught him an incorrect aura cultivation method, and his foundation had been laid wrong. I knew the early part of that story well. Until he stacked his daily quests, pooled the rewards, and obtained something close to a complete remaking of flesh and bone, he suffered for lack of aura.

If I don't set this right now, it'll be too late.

With my free hand I closed my fingers around the Black Dragon Yeouiju in my pants pocket and let a thin stream of aura flow into Duna's hand.

"Oh?"

Warm energy spilling into her palm seemed to startle her, but I was holding on with a serious face, so she quietly left her hand in mine.

"Ahaha... our Young Master's hand is warm."

Ordinarily she grabbed my hand and played without a second thought. With me holding on in silence, though, she grew awkward, flushed faintly across the cheeks, and looked away.

"If you wanted to hold hands, you should have just said so. My hands are stiff, though, so playing with Sena's soft ones would be— ghkk!"

A sharp pain lanced through her shoulder, and a groan slipped out of her. I was forcibly correcting a wrongly formed aura path in her right shoulder, a crossing vital to circulating aura.

"Ah... it hurts...!"

Until now she had forced herself to use it even while it ached a little, and I was straightening it by force, so of course it hurt. But if a doctor stopped treatment just because the patient was in pain, nothing would come of it. I drove not only the Black Dragon Yeouiju but my Aura Heart as well, and shoved a vast surge of aura through her shoulder.

"Ah... aahh...!"

Only after the path formed in her shoulder had been properly opened did I let go.

She must have been in considerable pain. The strength went out of Duna all at once, and she slumped toward me hard enough that I had to catch her with my own body.

"Haa......"

This isn't just one or two places gone wrong.

Her method and the paths it had carved were too much of a mess to repair her whole body here and now. She had never had a proper teacher. However much money was paid, whoever taught her had not wanted to hand over the art that put food on their table, had deliberately twisted the instruction, and she had dutifully gone on drilling that twisted version. That was how it had come to this.

"You okay?"

"Ah, Y-Young Master?"

"Ah, yes! Yes! Being healthy is what Duna's good at. Look, I'm perfectly fine even now... huh?"

The shoulder that had always ached from the wrong aura path felt clear, and Duna was startled. It was like moving with a nail driven into your shoulder and ignoring it — the stinging was gone, and if anything the joint moved with a refreshing ease. Surprise was only natural.

"Huh? Why is this...?"

"What, did your shoulder hurt?"

"Ah, yes... I just thought it was because I trained so hard..."

"My hands are healing hands."

I said it, and it was a hopelessly uncool excuse. I couldn't tell Duna about the Black Dragon Yeouiju, and I couldn't say I had received an Aura Heart as a reward and healed her with it, so I had no choice but to brush past the question.

Still looking at the hand I hadn't released, she went red and snatched it back in a flurry.

"Ah, right — my sister's looking for you, so shall we head back?"

"Now?"

"Yes. If she gets angry, the nagging will be incredible. The Nagging Overlord — you know her, right?"

She wouldn't meet my eyes. A little flustered, she seemed not to know what to do with her hands.

"Yeah. Let's go back."

I had finished everything I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠needed to do outside anyway. But Duna seemed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to be lagging, and when I looked back she was fiddling with her own hand, murmuring something under her breath.

"......Usually, holding hands and playing doesn't feel like anything at all."

Classes at Cheonryong Academy were not particularly difficult. To tell the truth, they were astonishingly perfunctory. Clear the dungeons of each prescribed stage in order, prove your skill, and no one so much as touched you. The dungeons were like naturally formed arenas, where teachers who had gone in ahead herded the monsters together. When necessary they adjusted the numbers, and if something seemed too strong they dealt it a suitable wound and tuned the difficulty. Using them that way, as exam subjects, was the Cheonryong Academy examination.

Students of the great houses each had their own aura cultivation methods and no trouble fighting monsters, but students of common birth met a serious crisis here. The difficulty had been set harshly on purpose, as a means of weeding out anyone who could not handle monsters or dungeons at all. No one died, yet some saw something ugly enough, took a heavy shock, and withdrew.

The opponent this time was kobolds. Even an unawakened civilian, keeping a cool head and answering calmly, could manage a defensive fight.

I was sitting in the clearing with a view of the dungeon, tapping at empty air, checking the daily-quest window and collecting rewards, when a number of presences approached.

"You are Seo Hoon, I take it."

Cheon Dae-seong stood blocking my path, his personal guard at his back.

"I have heard a great deal in the way of rumor."

A few of the guard smothered laughs at that, which meant they definitely knew about the persimmon-tree incident. Just how far had that rumor spread?

"Yet your face and your manner of speech appear sounder than I expected. Rumors, indeed, are not to be relied upon."

So saying, Cheon Dae-seong showed me his bracelet — a disposable band made to measure time from the moment one entered the dungeon for this exam, finished the task, and returned.

"I am told that to finish within ten minutes is to stand all but first in one's year. Depending on the cohort, the ten-minute mark itself sometimes claims first — but for this esteemed one, heir of the Cheonryong Sword Family... heh heh..."

Watching him boast in front of me, and his guard sing his praises, I gathered that finishing the entrance exam inside ten minutes really was an impressive standard.

A shrill beep announced the dungeon opening, and Cheon Yu-rin stepped out, breathing a little hard. Cheonryong Academy had plenty of international students and no shortage of striking looks, yet her bright blonde hair stood out even there. She checked the time written on her bracelet.

"As expected of our little sister, finishing so early..."

Cheon Dae-seong started toward her as if to make himself known, then stiffened. The number was not four digits — not the ten-minute range — but only three. Cheon Yu-rin covered her wrist at once, so the others failed to notice. I saw it.

Hm. So that's Cheon Yu-rin's level?

Before anyone else could catch it, I casually covered the bracelet they had fastened on me to confirm I had entered the dungeon.

And here I thought everyone was about this good.

It was a relief the records weren't made public.