A Day Off and a Night of Stars
With the mock battles over, I was finally taking a proper rest in my penthouse for the first time in ages.
"Master, you have done nothing but run yourself ragged of late. A rest so long overdue is balm for the mind—so take this day and rest it to your heart's content."
Since Heukcheon herself had said it, I intended to write off the entire day. So what should I do with myself? Maybe I'd been running too hard lately, because nothing I tried held much appeal. Maybe I'll just watch some videos.
This world had its own version of the video site that had ruled my past life: Nutube. The only real difference was that this one brimmed with videos uploaded by heroes themselves. And then something in the latest-news feed caught my eye.
Honestly, what had happened was a natural disaster, plain and simple. Who could have dared imagine that one of the Seven Evils would move against a school? But the public owed them no such understanding—and that was exactly why they tore into it like this. The sheer nerve of them.
Yawning, I clicked inside. It was one of those videos titled something along the lines of Seo Yebin Dragged Korea Hero Academy's Name Through the Mud—Is She Fit to Stay?
I whiled away the time on videos like that until, at some point, I stumbled across one about me.
The funny part? My face wasn't even blurred out. ...I'm still a civilian, you know. Absurd as it was, I decided to watch.
"Korea Hero Academy's current class is so stacked with prodigies that many have taken to calling it the Golden Class. There's Kim Seohyun, foremost disciple of Korea's greatest mage; Hong Yuhwa, granddaughter of the Red Tower Lord; Park Unhyeok, the young master of the spear produced by the famed Park clan of spearmanship; and even Saint, the paladin."
"But every last one of them has been pushed down the rankings by a single boy whose caliber people are calling the greatest of all time. Let's take a look, shall we?"
The video was stuffed with praise lavish enough to make my face burn—from clearing the Tower of Ordeals at an all-time-record pace that rewrote every entry on the board, to taking down the Shadow Serpent, though I had no idea how that had leaked. One detail, though: the Shadow Serpent was listed as my kill alone.
The rest was simple. The future of Korean heroes, they declared; perhaps, they gushed, the very one to succeed the great and glorious Greatest Hero himself. And amid all that breathless fuss, the video came to an end.
Even so, resting never came easy. I know how this looks—like a workaholic who can't switch off—but I do pace myself, taking my breaks as I go. And it's fun, too. Training is grueling, but there's a real pleasure in watching my stats climb, step by steady step. Effort rewarded, fairly and in full. That's what lets me drive myself without a moment's pause. Still, rest was necessary—that much was true.
So, for the first time in a while, I dropped into the Alchemy Guild. As expected, the place was drowning in praise for me. I ignored all of it and typed WantToEscapeTheLab into the search bar.
Whether the recipe I'd scribbled down for her had helped or not, she was out there making money with the one I'd given her—complete with a postscript:
P.S. This recipe was completed with the assistance of Lord Veritas. All rights to this recipe belong to Lord Veritas.
...Not that I should have any money right now. And yet my savings had somehow crept past a billion won. Recipes had a way of piling up astronomical sums the longer time passed, so I figured the rest would take care of itself. Just in case anyone tried to pick a fight over it, I'd already made it known that the copyright to the lab recipes belonged to WantToEscapeTheLab.
Checking my messages afterward, I found one that was quite interesting.
[You have been invited to the Alchemy Assembly.]
The Alchemy Assembly was a gathering held in virtual space where members met to debate and exchange ideas. It was hosted in a virtual world built by the Electronic Witch, and no one but her would ever dream of laying a finger on that place.
Hm. It was about time I made contact with the Electronic Witch, too. She was a being with any number of routes—depending on the choices a player made, she could become a demon or a saint. Best to reach out early and pull her onto my side. She had little power to sway the real world, but in cyberspace she wielded influence of staggering scale.
I jotted a cipher that only the Electronic Witch could possibly decipher onto the corner of a recipe and slipped out.
My stomach growled. Come to think of it, I hadn't eaten a thing.
Throwing on a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts, I headed outside. It was lunchtime. I mulled over what to have—then, more importantly, dug through my phone looking for someone to have it with. And then it hit me.
...I don't have any friends?
Scrolling through my contacts confirmed it: not a single friend. Mostly girls. And like girls that age always seemed to be, they only hung out with boys they were interested in. Barely ten people were even registered under "friends."
My social life. Was this really okay? Just as I was seriously contemplating the state of my interpersonal relationships, a familiar silhouette appeared in the distance. Kim Seohyun was walking along, humming a tune to himself.
"Hey."
"Oh, Seohyun. Hey."
Kim Seohyun greeted me with an easy smile.
"Heading out for food?"
"Yeah, that's the plan. You too?"
"Yeah. Felt like getting out and wandering around a bit today."
"Want to hang out together, then?"
"Sure, why not?"
At my suggestion, Kim Seohyun nodded.
"So, what are you eating?"
"Nothing I'm dying for. If we spot a place that looks good while we walk, let's just go there."
"Sounds good."
We walked the streets. They were quiet—probably because it was the weekend after the mock battles. Most of the students had headed out for some rest and gone home.
"Decided what you're getting?"
"How about that tonkatsu place over there?"
"Let's do it."
At the tonkatsu restaurant, Kim Seohyun ordered the spicy cut while I played it safe with cheese tonkatsu.
"How's training going?"
"They say today's a rest day."
"Then again, you have done nothing but grind yourself into the ground, Seoha."
Kim Seohyun nodded along. We were still chatting when the food arrived, and Kim Seohyun bit into a tonkatsu smothered in blazing-red sauce. I watched quietly, thinking about Kim Seohyun.
A boy who had inherited—and it was no exaggeration to say so—every martial art the Murim had to offer, while studying magic under its greatest mage. As if that weren't enough, he had an aptitude for every ability that existed. And on top of it all, a Dragon Heart spewing out mana in near-infinite supply.
None of it was talent he'd been born with. He had been made into that.
I cut off a piece of tonkatsu and put it in my mouth.
The training grounds were all but deserted. Seo Gayeon stared blankly up at the night sky.
Stars glittered overhead. Back in the age of advanced science, people said you couldn't see them anymore—but now, with magitech having all but erased pollution, the stars were there for anyone to see.
They shimmered, much like the mana she had brought into bloom.
How did he know?
Seo Gayeon thought of Lee Seoha. At first, he had simply seemed wondrous—a man who might have wandered in from another world entirely. She'd been stunned the first time, discovering that a man could be that handsome; stunned a second time when she learned he was the boy who would go on to shatter every record the Tower of Ordeals had ever known. And a third time, when she found out that he had taken an interest in her.
After that, every moment had felt like a dream. Being by his side, feeling his attention settle on her—Seo Gayeon had loved every minute of their time together.
It's not kindness aimed at me alone, of course.
That goodwill flowed, surely, from the Starlight Mana she possessed. And Seo Gayeon thought that made it better, somehow.
Because I'm not particularly pretty.
She didn't have Hong Yuhwa's dazzle, nor that meticulously maintained figure. She wasn't Kim Ara either, whose beauty struck her even as a fellow woman—Hong Yuhwa's chest was large, but Kim Ara played on another dimension entirely. And she couldn't be girlish and mischievous like Erciel, teasing and toying with a man's heart.
A modestly filled-out chest. Average height. She used to think her face was pretty... but since coming here, even that confidence had taken quite a beating.
Seo Gayeon sighed inwardly and resumed her training. A fear gnawed at her: if Lee Seoha wasn't satisfied with her power, his interest might fade.
He wouldn't, probably.
Lee Seoha was kind. But Seo Gayeon knew—there was always a reason a person became kind. If she failed to properly wield her Starlight Mana, he would lose interest. And relationships that ended that way never ended well.
Steadying her breathing, Seo Gayeon drew out her Starlight Mana once more.
Fwoooosh!
Dazzling, pure-white starlight erupted from deep within her body. Seo Gayeon herself never noticed it, but her hair and eyes were merging with the starlight mana—her hair shimmering into silver, her eyes washing over with violet.
Had Lee Seoha been there to see it, he would have applauded, calling it the scene where his second-favorite character finally awakened.