Choosing a Team
The first class after the midterms had ended.
"I imagine you've all been through a great deal during these midterms."
Korea Hero Academy had responded with remarkable speed.
Whatever else could be said, when Villains and demons invaded the school and students and professors alike got hurt in the process, the institution compensated the victims and covered their treatment.
"Which is why the school has revised its policy. The possibility of Villains and demons invading the campus once again has been left open. And having confirmed that this incoming class truly possesses limitless potential, we've decided to raise the curriculum to a higher standard."
At Instructor Seo Wooju's words, tense expressions spread across the room.
"It's going to be far more brutal than anything you've experienced so far."
The students tensed up at her announcement.
This was something that had originally happened in the second year — and yet it was already beginning. Did that mean the difficulty had been ratcheted up that much higher?
Perhaps one of the Transcendents on the side of the righteous and neutral factions had fallen to the demons. Or perhaps the Seven Evils and the existences above them had grown far stronger than before.
In the worst case, both would be true.
Either way, it wasn't a good situation.
At Seo Wooju's words, the students' eyes shifted all at once.
The first gazes to lock onto me belonged to the lower-ranked students.
Conversely, the students in the top tier — my own tier — turned their eyes toward Kim Ara, the one who had made the strongest impression during the battle against the demons.
"Additionally — in this case, the system is also designed to push everyone's abilities forward. If a top-ranked student takes on a bottom-ranked one, the top student receives a generous score bonus, and the bottom student earns accumulating points the harder they study under their senior's guidance."
At that, the gazes fixed on me grew even more intense.
"Then everyone, start thinking about who you want to pair up with. Team submissions are due before lunch today."
With that, Instructor Seo Wooju walked out of the classroom.
Thirty minutes remained until the next period. In other words, we were expected to sort ourselves out on our own.
"Kim Ara is teaming up with me."
Hong Yuhwa declared it with lofty, imperious confidence — while glancing sidelong not at me, but at Erciel.
"Hmm, so you have your eye on Kim Ara too, Hong Yuhwa?"
"Of course I do."
It was only natural. Hong Yuhwa and Erciel were mages of the rear and mid-guard, wielding devastating firepower and support magic in equal measure.
What they both desperately needed was an outstanding vanguard.
But a good vanguard was hard to find. Plenty of mediocre ones existed, sure, but most of them were nothing more than meat shields.
Kim Ara, however, was a genuinely exceptional vanguard — and because she'd hidden her true strength, her official rank sat at a modest spot somewhere in the 200s.
To the mages of the top tier, she was a commodity maddening enough to drive them insane.
Park Unhyeok, for his part, had already teamed up with the mage students who followed him around.
"Seoha, who are you pairing with?"
"Me? Hmm."
I glanced at Kim Seohyun as I considered the question.
I already knew who my partner would be.
Seo Gayeon.
Obvious as it sounded, the girl was still raw. She had bloomed her Star Mana only recently, after all.
She had more than enough potential to grow splendidly on her own no matter who clung to her side, but the right move was for me to stay close, teach her this and that, and raise her properly myself.
Kim Ara, on the other hand, will grow on her own the moment she awakens Primordial Force.
Outside interference would only hurt her, if anything. She was, after all, the child of the Overlord — one of this world's singular, self-contained existences.
"You still haven't decided?"
"Yeah. Still thinking it over."
I followed Kim Seohyun's gaze.
Kim Seohyun was staring at the other students with a troubled look on that androgynous face.
And at the end of that gaze stood Seo Gayeon.
Truthfully, for someone at Kim Seohyun's level, a partner was mostly a liability. Martial arts, magic, barrier techniques — Kim Seohyun could do it all. All Kim Seohyun really needed was someone stronger than their own ranking. Nothing more.
In that sense, Kim Seohyun was the person I needed to guard against most of all.
Not to mention the face was a work of art. Androgynous, I suppose you'd call it. Pretty, oddly petite in a way that stirred up maternal instinct — and on top of that, prodigiously talented.
Practically a literal prince. Which was exactly why I kept my guard up around Kim Seohyun.
"What? You're — you're choosing her over me?"
A stunned, dumbfounded voice cut through the room.
I turned to find Hong Yuhwa, Kim Ara, and Erciel all staring at me — Hong Yuhwa and Erciel wearing expressions of pure incredulity.
"Aren't I good enough?"
Kim Ara tilted her head and asked it with utter composure.
"You're certainly more than good enough, Kim Ara. But if we're talking synergy, wouldn't two vanguards be a bit much?"
Erciel answered calmly enough — but the corner of her mouth was twitching violently. She was clearly in a desperate hurry.
"But it's not like she's the type to worry about team synergy anyway, is she?"
"...That is true."
Erciel nodded, conceding the point with visible reluctance.
...So Kim Ara had chosen Kim Seohyun?
While I was still puzzling over it, Kim Ara trudged across the room.
Toward me.
"I want to pair with you."
"...With me?"
"Yeah. Someone like me has proven skill, and my ranking's lower than my actual ability — doesn't that make me a pretty great teammate?"
Kim Ara said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Her face was expressionless, but there was a faint glimmer of confidence behind it — the quiet certainty that of course you'll pick me.
"Uh..."
And honestly, Kim Ara really was an excellent option. If Seo Gayeon was my best choice, Kim Ara was a very close second.
"Wh-what about me?!"
Just then, Seo Gayeon cut in out of nowhere.
"I — I did climb up in th — this eval — evaluation, but I'm st — still seven hundredth. B-but Se — Seoha, you said it, didn't you? Th — that I could reach the — the very top."
"...I did say that."
"A-and I'll — I'll work so hard!"
"..."
I already knew she would. She was the kind of person who, before her talent had ever bloomed, whipped herself forward with nothing but sheer effort — because effort was all she believed she had.
"Hmmm."
Erciel's expression turned mischievous.
"Then what about me?"
"You?"
Now Erciel was cutting in too.
"You're ranked third, Erciel."
"Well, if you and I combine our strength, the difficulty does become laughably easy~ which makes it hard to rack up points. But the school raised the curriculum, didn't they? With the two of us, they'd surely give us something brutally hard to do — and then we'd earn quite a lot of points, don't you think?"
...She wasn't wrong.
The results would be marginally better, sure, but compared to the added difficulty... was it really worth it?
Still, the moment Erciel jumped in, the eyes of the other two wavered.
It bothered me how Kim Ara's quiet confidence seemed to crumble ever so slightly.
There was a reason I called Kim Ara a loner. She acted like one.
If I rejected her here, she would absolutely sulk about it. For a good six months, at least.
Seo Gayeon, meanwhile, still couldn't properly handle her Star Mana. If we teamed up, I'd have the perfect foundation to advise her from up close and raise her right.
If this had been a three-person team, I could have taken them both without a second thought.
But no. Seo Gayeon was the right call.
I looked at all three of them, and quietly opened my mouth.
"Shall we install it here?"
"Yes, right there is perfect."
The penthouse.
Installation technicians had come out to the apartment and were setting up the VR device for me personally.
The reason I'd bought the thing in the first place was the Alchemy Guild. Connecting to cyberspace required one of these devices.
The Alchemy Guild was a strange beast — fiercely closed off and yet remarkably open at the same time.
The reason was simple: the guild had been born inside the space of the internet.
Under normal circumstances, such a thing would be impossible. Alchemy wasn't the sort of craft you could crank out just by having ingredients and a recipe. An apprentice — effectively worked to the bone like a graduate student — had to labor for ten years or so before a master would even deign to pass down a single secret formula.
That was why alchemy had always been a closed world.
Under normal circumstances, none of this could ever have happened.
The reason it could — the reason the Alchemy Guild existed at all — was the being known as the Electronic Witch.
The Electronic Witch.
She possessed the talent to turn the electronic world itself into her own personal domain, shaping and creating it as she pleased.
And she had used that talent to its fullest, projecting reality itself into a virtual world.
That was what had made it possible.
Alchemists would gather in that reality-projected space, show off their personal recipes, synthesize new elixirs, secure the copyrights — and rake in fortunes.
That was how the Alchemy Guild had opened up.
What was more, the guild held these gatherings once a month, because this space allowed them to reduce the margin of error in their potions.
Materials that in reality might appear once in a decade, if at all, could be partially projected here — and potions brewed from them carried almost none of the usual variance.
In exchange, the Alchemy Guild provided the Electronic Witch with whatever she needed. A symbiotic relationship, through and through.
That said — call it a drawback, perhaps.
Because this place only partially projected reality while remaining a virtual space, users could configure a separate avatar for themselves.
That's right. A VR device — where you could design and build your own avatar.
With those two elements combined, the abyss of this place was said to be... an abyss in the truest sense of the word.
Even Erciel and Kim Seohyun, both of them iron-willed, had glimpsed that abyss and passed out cold. Just how terrifying the place truly was, I could only imagine.
"Well, let's see what it can do."
I set Heukcheon down beside me and lay back into the virtual reality rig.
It had better be worth the money. Perhaps because this level of rig was exclusive to the Diamond class, the moment I settled into it, pure comfort washed over me.
I put on the VR device and initiated the connection.