The Genius Every Academy Is Said to Have (4)

The group that had slipped inside swept their eyes across the room, reading the situation in a heartbeat. Cheon Yu-rin had come in through the front. I was waiting by the windows—the route they had marked as their way out—and their gazes darted between the two of us as they waited on the order of the leader clutching the Imoogi Ointment to his chest.

Even now they neither panicked nor lost their heads. They moved exactly as they had been drilled, and that alone told me these were no ragtag nobodies. This was a proper organization. They seemed to recognize Cheon Yu-rin; their faces settled into wary guard. A killing intent thick enough to stop an ordinary person's breath poured through the infirmary of the old school building.

Steel rang. As one, they drew their weapons and charged me.

"Ngh—!"

Yu-rin had braced to meet a rush aimed at herself, the stronger of the two, and their sudden swerve caught her off guard. I, of course, had already guessed they would come for me.

The fifth daughter of the Cheonryong Sword Family. A swordswoman whose genius is already famous the world over. Even these people couldn't take her on lightly.

Anyone of Cheonryong blood had at least mastered an aura cultivation method. A few of the intruders looked as if they had learned one too, but none of them would fancy their chances against one of the family's heirs. If they were those two organizations, as I expected, they would still want their identities buried, and they would have no wish to injure Cheon Yu-rin on top of it. Lay a hand on the Cheonryong Sword Family—the strongest sword house still standing—and it could become an enormous obstacle to everything they meant to do. So they threw themselves at me. No aura to sense. A plain, honest face. The softer-looking mark.

Sorry, but what can you do? I'm not that easy either.

First real fight. This body—Seo Hoon's body—had trained with stubborn, single-minded diligence, and the Daily Quests had raised its abilities. Combat experience, though, it had none. A man came at me with a flashing blade, and the body moved on instinct. Just as Duna had taught me, I knocked the frontal charge aside with a horizontal slash. Empty-handed.

"Is he insane?"

No weapon. But I was fast. My fist caught one of them and sent him flying with a strangled yell.

"Ghk—!"

I brought the same fist down on the woman whose eyes had gone wide. That, too, was one of the two sword paths Duna had drilled into me: a vertical slash. No sword, of course. So I simply drove the fist straight down. A sickening crunch. The woman, still frozen in disbelief that a bare fist was coming at her, had her head slammed into the floor, and the intruders still standing whipped around to stare at me.

From their side of it, a student giving off not a shred of aura was throwing bare fists—and only sideways, or straight up and down. It had to look wrong. If I had been using hand-to-hand with any real skill, they might have written me off as a fighter. Standing there and merely wagging a fist left and right, or up and down? They had to be wondering what on earth they were looking at. Not that I could help it.

Damn it! I can't adjust the path of my fists!

This body, Seo Hoon's body, had repeated nothing but the vertical slash and the horizontal slash, millions of times, for far too long. Even when I threw ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a punch instead of a blade, it traveled only those two lines. I wanted to change the arc. Maybe the body had simply memorized the two paths too well. Cold sweat ran down my back at a body that would not obey, and still I kept laying into them—not with vertical slashes and horizontal slashes, but with vertical smashes and horizontal smashes.

"You can't even handle one idiot like that? Look at him! He's just a fool with nothing but strength!"

How did they know I was the foolish-older-brother character? Then again, if I didn't consciously manage my face, it defaulted to a vacant look, so maybe it wasn't such a mystery. Either way, anyone who rushed me had to choose: get punched, with admirable thoroughness, into a wall, or get punched into the floor.

Another crunch. When all five intruders had planted their faces in wall or floorboard and passed out, the ones who looked as if they had actually learned an aura cultivation method finally stepped forward. Even in a crisis like this, they did not recklessly call on it. They simply faced me. The man who seemed to be their leader was still turning something over, right to the end.

"By rights, its use would not be permitted even if every one of us died, but..."

He had been fidgeting with the Imoogi Ointment held against his chest. Something resolved in him. He drew the sword hidden along his forearm and shouted.

"Permission granted. Use it! Hail! Hail! All hail!"

"......Hail! Hail! All hail!"

Unable to endure a situation sliding out of control, the leader roared the slogan, and the aura users squared off against me erupted with black aura all at once.

"Look out!"

Cheon Yu-rin, who had been staring blankly at my performance, saw them surge in wreathed in aura and burst into the infirmary, sword already drawn.

She carried the strongest aura cultivation method alive, and the mere act of releasing her aura was enough to hurl the objects around her aside. Brilliant golden light poured from her sword, shearing through the weapons of those who tried to bar her and splitting their bodies in the same stroke. A wet, shearing hiss. An ordinary student would hesitate to cut a person. The heirs of the Cheonryong Sword Family were educated from childhood; they did not hesitate to cut human beings. More than that, the moment she saw the black aura they wielded, the Cheonryong Simju she had learned would refuse to tolerate its existence.

But while two aura users spent their lives holding her off, three more—including their leader—were already charging me. The black aura they poured out had more than enough power to cleave not only a person, but the wall of the old school building at my back.

I need a sword.

Until a moment ago they had been careless. Now they were throwing black aura and claiming the advantage of reach, and that changed things. Try a vertical smash or a horizontal smash carelessly here, and the best I could hope for was dropping one of them before I was carved to pieces.

"Take it!"

Faster than the members of the Dark Fire Bird Cult, aura already lit, could reach me, a single sword came flying straight at my face. A thin, beautiful silver blade—the very sword of the Cheonryong Sword Family that Cheon Yu-rin had been using. Swords bestowed by the family were treasures its heirs guarded like their own lives, and she had thrown hers without a moment's hesitation because I was in danger. Cheon So-hyeong had been right. Cheon Yu-rin really was that kind.

"Krk—!"

She had already dropped one aura user. Golden light poured from her hand and took the shape of a sword. In the instant a cultist who had rushed the opening left by the thrown weapon lost his head to that golden aura sword, one of the three charging me took the blade she had thrown straight through the back. That left two aura users, veins standing in their eyes, still coming for me.

Right. I had something like that.

I opened my left hand and set the top of my right fist against the left palm, as if I were drawing something long out through the left arm—the one closer to my heart. A long rush of power answered. This was not some special sword made to hold aura easily, like pressing dough into a bread mold. It was a sword formed of nothing but the aura pouring from my own hand. Flame burst from my clenched palm and took shape. Aura surged all the way to the tips of my hair, and black hair blazed red. As the flame aura formed, the entire right sleeve burned away, leaving the arm bare to the shoulder. It was a technique possible only after condensing aura into one's own body and seating it in the heart—only after stepping into the realm of the Aura Heart.

And that, I swung with the horizontal slash I had thrown more times than I could count. Flame roared.

"That's imposs—"

Before they could even finish a scream, the two aura users were ash. The flame aura that burst free burned the infirmary of the old school building in a wave of heat and reduced every body in the room to cinders—everyone except Cheon Yu-rin, who wrapped herself in golden aura. Because the fire was made of aura, it did not catch on the surroundings. Only what it touched carbonized, then crumbled cleanly away. Which was why my Imoogi Ointment could survive intact. The heat had been stoked by aura, so it sank quickly.

When I picked up the ointment, still pleasantly warm, all that remained were the ash-piles that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had been people, and Cheon Yu-rin, her body sheathed in golden aura. In her hand was an aura sword, the same kind I had just used.

Yu-rin already has an Aura Heart? Given her genius it isn't impossible, but...

She was supposed to reveal an Aura Heart awakening sometime during her years at the academy. Using it now meant she, too, had been hiding her strength. Flame aura glowed in my hand. Golden aura glowed in hers. We faced each other, and we spoke at the same time, neither waiting on the other.

"Keep it secret."

"Let's keep it a secret."

Good. We understood each other.

Cheon Yu-rin still could not sleep. Her face would not stop burning. She had felt that heat wrap the whole room of the old school building, and felt that aura against her own body; after that, proper sleep was out of the question. She had only followed because her curiosity had been stirred. The pulse of an Aura Heart, the same throb she was used to feeling, had suggested Seo Hoon was training somewhere.

Had she paid just a little more attention, she might have seen him hanging on the wall. Common sense had supplied the thought that there was no reason for a person to be stuck to a wall, so she had assumed he was pressed to the inner wall of the infirmary, doing something, and gone in. She had met the members of the Dark Fire Bird Cult, and after that Seo Hoon had shoved their fleeing leader back inside, and the fight between the two of them and the cult had begun.

But what had truly startled her was not that the Dark Fire Bird Cult was still alive, nor that their infiltration was strong enough to walk dozens of people openly into Cheonryong Academy.

Fundamentals so perfect there wasn't a single flaw to pick at.

Yu-rin herself had built her swordsmanship up from the basics in the Cheonryong Sword Family since childhood, and she had never seen a vertical slash or a horizontal slash that clean. That single stroke was the equal of her father's—of Cheon Jin-myeong, praised even within the Cheonryong Sword Family as the strongest swordsman in its history. The confidence of it, as if a vertical slash and a horizontal slash alone were more than enough for trash like these, had struck her so freshly that she had simply stood there, dazed, watching the fists he swung.

Did he use only the fundamentals on purpose, so I wouldn't see his real swordsmanship?

The reality was that Seo Hoon knew no sword paths but those two. She, however, had every reason to suspect otherwise. A stinging heat still seemed to linger in her cheeks. Her face burned. With the sensation of a heart beating while it held golden aura through Cheonryong Simju, she could not easily fall asleep, and she stayed awake through the night.

At that same hour, Seo Hoon was getting an earful from Hana for having burned the entire right sleeve off his uniform.