Ophelia (1)
Time flew by, and before I knew it, it was the academy entrance ceremony. I sat near the back, half-listening to the headmaster’s painfully dull speech—the same one I’d seen countless times in the game—while my mind wandered elsewhere.
‘The Dae-po-dong Missile stays sealed for now.’
I was thinking about what happened a few days ago, when I’d completely vaporized that thorn boar. The area where my Magic Missile had struck was utterly devastated. If I’d been any closer, I would’ve been caught in the blast myself. Even though the shot had technically missed, the boar, the nearby bushes, and even the trees had all been shredded to pieces. The crater-like impact site that looked like a meteor had slammed into the ground was just the cherry on top. If not for the lack of fire, you could’ve sworn a real Meteor Strike had landed.
A freshman who hadn’t even attended the entrance ceremony yet was already wielding magic with that kind of destructive power? If word got out, I’d become a prime target for the shadowy forces lurking behind the scenes. This was the world of Golden Academy, after all—a place where even second-years could get brutally killed off. If I was going to catch the eye of those dark powers, it needed to be as late as possible. In my current state as a complete weakling, the only smart move was to stay hidden.
‘At least no one was around to see it. That’s something.’
Having such an absurdly powerful ace up my sleeve but being unable to use it… what a frustrating situation.
“……Next, we will have a speech from the freshman representative.”
The emcee announced the next part of the ceremony. This was the only segment I actually cared about, so I lifted my gaze toward the distant podium.
‘I wonder who got first place.’
Because Golden Academy generated a new world every time the game was restarted, the student who delivered the freshman representative speech always changed. Still, it was always one of a handful of fixed characters.
My eyes settled on the graceful female student who had just stepped onto the stage.
‘Ophelia.’
She was the precious only daughter of the prestigious Duke Lanchester family and one of the captureable heroines. A strict, by-the-book principle-follower who embodied the very definition of noblesse oblige. She wasn’t the easiest person to get close to, but she was definitely someone worth befriending.
Her class was Archer… but in a world where magic power was everything, she fired magical arrows. While she could function as a damage dealer, Ophelia’s true value lay in being the best debuffer around. She could rain down arrows that inflicted all kinds of status ailments and debuffs.
‘What a shame…’
There was only one reason I cared who took first place among the freshmen.
She was going to die in her third year. That meant she couldn’t become a permanent ally.
Early morning. The first-year training grounds.
A girl holding a bow stood with her eyes closed. A cool breeze brushed past, gently tickling her elegant silver hair. The girl’s name was Ophelia—the very same student who had delivered the freshman representative speech just a few days earlier as the top entrant to Golden Academy.
Instead of her uniform, she wore practical archery attire. With her eyes shut, she focused on the flow of the wind. Then her vivid blue eyes snapped open, locking onto the distant target.
It was a training dummy. Professor Evelyn, the homeroom teacher for the upper class, had personally placed a powerful mana barrier on it.
‘Just because you’re in the upper class doesn’t mean you can slack off on training. There’s a dummy in the training grounds, right? I’d love it if at least one student from our class could break that barrier before their first year ends.’
After hearing those words, Ophelia had come to the quiet training grounds every morning and evening to train against the dummy.
Whoosh!
Her first shot of the day flew. The arrow flew without the slightest deviation, aimed precisely where the dummy’s heart would have been if it were human.
Thud!
It embedded itself cleanly.
‘Why…?’
Startled by the unexpected sound, Ophelia’s body stiffened. This was unbelievable. Her face was filled with confusion.
Just like the previous evening, she had expected a loud clash of mana followed by the arrow bouncing off. But the arrow had struck the dummy perfectly, completely unimpeded. It was almost as if the barrier had never existed.
‘This can’t be right.’
If the barrier had been broken, there should have been a massive collision sound, yet nothing had happened. It didn’t seem possible that her efforts over the past few days had suddenly borne fruit. The barrier was even enchanted with self-repair magic; it was supposed to be impossible to break without a single, overwhelmingly powerful strike. So there was no way she had destroyed it herself.
Clang!
Just to be sure, she fired a second arrow at a different dummy. As expected, it bounced off the barrier just like yesterday.
‘Don’t tell me… only this one had its barrier disabled?’
Ophelia looked back at the first dummy where her arrow was still lodged. The sight was still impossible to believe. There had to be something wrong.
‘I need to tell the professor.’
There was still time before her first class. Ophelia decided to go straight to Professor Evelyn, the one who had cast the barrier herself.
“It appears one of the training ground dummies has had its barrier disabled.”
After offering a polite greeting, she immediately stated her business.
“That can’t be. I cast that barrier myself. Unless someone physically broke it, that’s impossible.”
Evelyn smiled kindly as she answered. Hearing such a confident reply, Ophelia could only feel shocked inside.
That would mean…
‘Someone already broke the barrier?’
According to Professor Evelyn, that was the only possible conclusion.
“Just now, I…”
“Wait, did you already break the barrier?”
Ophelia had been trying to explain that the barrier was already broken when she arrived, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“That’s not what I—”
“Ophelia, you did it already!”
Evelyn jumped up in excitement and grabbed both of Ophelia’s hands.
“A freshman breaking a dummy’s barrier? This is the first time in seventeen years. My goodness… and in less than a week! This is a new record. I’m so proud of you, Ophelia.”
“It wasn’t me.”
While Evelyn was beaming like a young girl, Ophelia’s expression remained blank.
‘It wasn’t me.’
The professor’s praise wasn’t hers to claim. That dummy’s barrier had been perfectly intact as of last night. Someone else must have broken it overnight.
“It really wasn’t me.”
“So humble too. How admirable.”
“I’m serious. The barrier was already disabled when I got there.”
“……Is that so?”
When Ophelia insisted, Evelyn’s excited voice calmed slightly. But she still didn’t seem to believe her at all.
“I’m really curious who could have done something even the top freshman couldn’t manage…”
The subtle remark was clearly meant to tell Ophelia to stop being so modest. But Ophelia genuinely wanted to know.
Between last night when she had been practicing and this morning, someone other than her had broken that barrier. Considering when the training grounds were open, the only possible time was last night.
‘Will they show up again tonight?’
Ophelia wanted to find the freshman who had accomplished a feat unseen in seventeen years.
The first thing I invested my time into after entering the academy was… studying.
‘Even after coming here, I’m still stuck reading books.’
It was all to prepare for the group assignment happening next week. We had to spend a night camping at Moonlight Hill inside the academy grounds. The professors would release controllable monsters, and among them were boss-level ones that gave good skills as rewards.
The difficulty was a bit high, but I had my one-punch Dae-po-dong Missile. The camping site was the perfect place to fire off my loud, eye-catching cannon without drawing too much attention. As long as I could land a stacked Magic Missile without getting hit first, I figured it was doable.
‘Which means I need to grow at least a little.’
Since my mana measurement had come back as E-grade, I was naturally placed in the lower class. The lower class moved at a snail’s pace. If I wanted to learn even one more spell or raise my stats even a little faster, I had no choice but to study on my own.
But even after spending several days wrestling with books in the library, my stat growth was negligible.
‘This is definitely hell difficulty.’
I had felt it while dealing with small fry on Bingryong Mountain, but it became even clearer after entering the academy. Even back then, my stats had barely increased while only my Magic Missile level had gone up thanks to my trait. The fact that my stats were rising this slowly could only mean it was the highest difficulty.
No matter what I did, I needed to prepare thoroughly.
‘It’s already this late?’
When I checked the time, I had two hours left until curfew. The first-year training grounds should be empty by now.
I closed the book I was reading, stood up, and placed it on the librarian senior’s desk.
“Returning this?”
“Yes.”
The female senior flipped through the ledger for a moment before speaking.
“You’re borrowing a lot of books.”
“This is only my third one.”
Students were allowed to borrow up to five books.
“If you’re in the lower class, you should focus on keeping up with classes. Stop studying useless things.”
Her eyes were fixed on the name tag pinned to my uniform chest. All first-years wore the same uniform, but the color of the name tag differed by class. If you didn’t like it, you had to climb to a higher class. That was how the lower class was treated.
‘She talks too much.’
I mentally loaded a Dae-po-dong Missile just once in my head, grabbed my books, and headed for the training grounds.
Practical training was still the best way to raise stats. But with Kael’s pitiful mana pool, the number of times I could practice in a day was limited. So I spent my spare time studying and devoted about two hours at night—when the training grounds were empty—to magic practice.
‘My accuracy is still bad, and controlling the stacks isn’t easy either.’
Even the stationary dummies were hard to hit if they were far away; about half my shots missed. Adjusting the number of stacks was harder than I expected too. Stacking two or three Magic Missiles was manageable, but when I tried for more, the staff would greedily burn through all my remaining mana on its own.
That was why yesterday, while attempting a five-stack, I had accidentally used up all my mana and fired off a heavily stacked cannonball. Thankfully it hadn’t gone flying in a weird direction, and the dummy was ridiculously durable, so nothing bad happened. But after burning all my mana, I was completely exhausted and had to return to the dormitory without even finishing an hour of practice.
Clang!
‘Huh?’
The moment I stepped into the training grounds, I heard the crisp sound of a bowstring being drawn, followed by the noise of an arrow failing to pierce the dummy’s barrier and bouncing off.
In the night training grounds that I had expected to be empty, a silver-haired girl was standing there.