Discipline 9 — The Disciplinary Committee Leader Tests a New Power
Byeokchukbong — the Lightning Rod Staff.
A magic tool capable of storing lightning mana and discharging that stored energy at the wielder's command.
They were hard to come by, and famously expensive. Never mind the difficulty of the manufacturing process itself — even the raw materials were nearly impossible to procure.
Out in the wider world existed a monster known as the Thunderbird. A dangerous avian beast that stored lightning mana in its horn and unleashed it in devastating barrages whenever it sensed a threat.
That horn was the core material of the Byeokchukbong.
In other words, the long rod-like section of the staff was carved and refined from a Thunderbird's massive, unbreakable horn.
That is insanely cool.
I thought, admiring the staff's gleaming figure.
Ordinary people were unaffected by their own mana. Even if I charged the Byeokchukbong with lightning energy and raised a million volts, then stood right in the middle of it, I would take no damage at all.
Which meant this staff was bound to be an extraordinarily useful piece of equipment for my style of combat.
At the crucial moment, it would let me deliver a single overwhelming strike to an enemy.
Time to test it out.
It was the weekend.
A spring rain was drifting down over the ground. The downpour hammered noisily against the pavement stones.
The moment I arrived at the wide open lot, the pleasant scent of wet earth rode the breeze and filled my lungs. Refreshing.
I set my umbrella down beneath a tree and made for the center of the clearing.
As I planted the Byeokchukbong's handle into the dirt, the gray sky's relentless rain soaked me from head to toe. I felt a sense of liberation I hadn't experienced in a long while. Romance aside, my body temperature was dropping and I briefly worried about catching a cold — but my body was sturdy, so it would be fine.
The long rod section pointed toward the sky.
Or rather — toward the sky rose the Thunderbird's horn.
I had already stored lightning mana inside the staff up to its limit. I could discharge it whenever I pleased.
I scanned my surroundings.
No one was there.
Just in case the Byeokchukbong attracted an actual lightning strike, I hid behind a tree some distance away.
So this is the sensation...
A strange feeling came over me, as if the staff and I were connected — like an invisible thread ran between us.
Presumably it was an interaction generated by my own mana.
I was certain that when I felt that thread being pulled, the staff's effect would activate.
Determined to etch this connection into every fiber of my body, I concentrated my mind.
"Alright, I can feel it..."
"Feel what, may I ask?"
"!"
Oh, crap.
That startled me.
Whipping my head around, I saw a woman gazing at me with narrowed eyes and a foxlike grin.
Lee Se-ah.
"Se-ah...?"
Why was she here? Was she tailing me?
Come to think of it, she had somehow already planted a red umbrella over my head. I'd been too focused on the sensation emanating from the Byeokchukbong to notice her approach.
"Senior, if you keep standing out here like that, you'll catch a cold."
Sneaking up on me out of nowhere, and now fussing over my health. Incredible.
Now that I think about it, ever since she found out I was keeping tabs on her, she's been hanging around a lot, hasn't she.
Well, fair enough. She was a prospective villain, after all.
Naturally, she'd be wary of the person watching her.
This was getting annoying.
"I'm fine. Take it."
I gently pushed the umbrella away.
"Hmm? Senior."
"What."
Se-ah tilted her head and asked,
"You're not nearly as surprised as I expected? I mean, I walked up right behind you. You could at least humor me and act shocked."
Her tone was playful, but the question carried genuine puzzlement.
I was surprised.
This was just the fruit of years of poker-face training. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest, thank you very much.
Poke. Se-ah pressed her index finger lightly against my side.
"If I'd been an enemy, you'd already be skewered. And it's not like people lack reasons to come after you — you are the Disciplinary Committee Leader."
"I knew you were tailing me anyway. No way I'd let it slip past me against someone like you."
Truthfully, I hadn't known — but I figured it went without saying, so I improvised a convenient lie.
Se-ah went quiet for a moment, then soon smiled slyly.
"Heheh... you really are something, Senior."
It was an enigmatic smile.
So that's a "naturally" reaction, huh...
Lately, a certain realization had been growing on me.
She was an idiot.
That was the conclusion I'd reached after long, careful deliberation.
Of course, I didn't mean "idiot" in the purest sense of the word.
What I meant was: she was far less wise than I had expected.
A prospective villain destined to become a magnate of the Black Market, with sharp business instincts and a talent for building connections — naturally, I'd assumed she would be brilliant.
How should I put it — I figured she'd have the cunning and insight of a venomous serpent.
Just look at those narrowed eyes and that sly smirk. Wasn't she practically a textbook case of the flashily superficial, inwardly sinister classic villain archetype?
But after spending time together — weekly volunteer club sessions, plenty of chat conversations — one impression had taken root in my mind.
Lee Se-ah was simply a person who knew a lot of things.
Knowledge and wisdom, after all, are entirely different animals.
Somehow... she's gotten easy to handle.
It wasn't as if I was a genius myself.
The academy didn't evaluate knowledge alone — physical strength carried significant weight too — and that was the only reason I'd managed to hold onto top-tier grades.
Otherwise, no amount of all-night studying would ever have put my scores in the upper ranks.
A clever villain had been my greatest threat to guard against... but somehow, I had the strange feeling that even if Se-ah became my enemy someday, I could simply block her.
Maybe that was why.
For some reason, she felt harmless now.
"Are you perhaps thinking something rude right now?"
"!"
Se-ah's question, delivered with a tilt of her head, sent a jolt of tension through my lax guard.
Noticing someone insulting her — that was pointlessly sharp of her.
An insight like a freshly honed blade.
Truly a prospective villain.
So I couldn't let my guard down after all, huh.
"Just kidding, Senior."
Se-ah laughed breezily.
Smooth recovery, that one.
"Besides, I just happened to spot you while walking by and followed you. Whether that counts as 'tailing' is debatable... weeeell, from your perspective, I suppose it might."
"Sure..."
Se-ah beamed.
I couldn't tell if it was the truth or a lie, but arguing about it would get me nowhere, so I let it go.
Probably a lie, though.
The optics were bad from the start, to say the least. Put uncharitably: a stalker being stalked by the stalker she was stalking.
It felt tiresome to even point that out, so I didn't.
"So anyway, what were you up to?"
"Testing a magic tool."
"A magic tool? That thing?"
Se-ah looked at the Byeokchukbong planted in the middle of the clearing.
Then she gasped in admiration.
"Ooooh, a Byeokchukbong? Nice find, Senior!"
With her encyclopedic knowledge, I'd figured she'd recognize it immediately.
"It's dangerous, so don't come any closer."
"Of course! I'll just stick right behind you!"
...Hold on.
"Wait, you have no reason to watch this, do you?"
"I have plenty of reason. I happen to be extremely bored right now."
Well, whatever.
"...Don't complain if you get hurt."
"Yes, siir."
"Cover your ears."
"Yeees, siir."
Se-ah answered with a laugh and clamped both hands over her ears — holding the umbrella's shaft against her shoulder with her arms as she did so.
Alright. Let's do this.
I closed my eyes and pictured myself grasping the invisible thread.
Then, pulling on it, I opened my eyes again.
Lee Se-ah knew the Byeokchukbong's practical value all too well.
For all its rarity, the Byeokchukbong was actually less cost-effective than a mass-produced mana grenade.
The staff's mana discharge radius was, on average, about two meters.
Whether its mana capacity was filled to the brim or not, the blast generally stayed within a two-meter range.
By most standards, that was a narrow radius.
Granted, the more refined, purer, and denser one's mana, the wider the attack radius grew — one could conceivably extend the effective range to a meaningful degree.
But that was innate, a matter of birth, so there was no point in discussing it.
If Woo-jin had mana that exceptional, he would already be eyeing the 5th Tier or beyond.
Of course, it went without saying that a Byeokchukbong, capable of storing vast quantities of mana, could hit harder than a mana grenade.
But Se-ah had always thought: rather than lugging around an expensive, rare, oversized magic tool like that, a mana grenade — small enough to fit in one hand and easy to throw — was simply the better choice.
Crackle!
Teal electric currents danced across the Byeokchukbong.
Then the energy compressed —
"!!"
BOOOOM!!!
With a deafening roar, teal lightning mana expanded with ferocious force.
Startled, Woo-jin whirled around and threw his body over Se-ah to shield her.
Tremendous lightning mana erupted in every direction.
Sheaves of blazing bolts tore sharply through the air, lashing the distant trees like whips. KRA-BOOM! Superheated energy slammed into them in an instant.
Unstoppable, an entire domain of lightning spread outward from the Byeokchukbong in an ever-accelerating ring.
KRA-KOOM!!
Devastating teal electricity scorched the air itself.
The expanding domain of lightning gradually dimmed until it finally seeped into the atmosphere, and the explosive flashes the Byeokchukbong had been unleashing died down all at once.
Fsss... Every tree around the clearing that had been caught in the blast was already burnt black as charcoal.
The trees couldn't even stand anymore — they collapsed into piles of ash.
Drip.
The sound stopped.
The pouring rain settled the air.
"Any injuries?"
Woo-jin looked down at Se-ah, who was huddled beneath him, and asked calmly.
"......"
Se-ah stared up at him in a daze, then let out a hollow laugh.
"Somehow... none."
She rose to her feet and surveyed the surroundings.
"Wow..."
The admiration in her voice was laced with disbelief.
The landscape around them had been transformed into utter devastation.
The spring rain hadn't even managed to put out the fires still smoldering in the trees.
It was a sight no one could believe.
Crzzt. Teal currents lingered along the Byeokchukbong like an afterglow.
Woo-jin and Se-ah stared at it in silence.
"It certainly looks practical enough for combat, but..."
Woo-jin couldn't finish the sentence.
H-how the hell am I supposed to deal with all this...?
A glance around was enough to leave him at a complete loss.
Meanwhile, one of Se-ah's eyebrows was twitching.
"'Practical,' you say..."
Was now really the time to be evaluating practicality?
That was not the power of a Byeokchukbong as Se-ah knew it.
This was leagues — leagues upon leagues — beyond anything ordinary.
How refined did one's mana have to be?
How dense?
How extraordinary did one's mana have to be for a Byeokchukbong to unleash this kind of devastating force?
This wasn't the realm of genius.
It was somewhere beyond even that.
With mana this exceptional, it followed that his mana efficiency, his mana's raw power — everything connected to mana — would operate on a different dimension from everyone else's.
She was beginning to understand why Woo-jin, despite being merely 4th Tier, wasn't pushed back even by strong fighters of the 5th Tier.
And yet — no matter how she turned it over, she simply couldn't accept that someone wielding mana like this was still only 4th Tier.
That alone was a staggering question in itself.
And here he was, breezily chatting about "practicality."
Se-ah was flabbergasted.
"Senior."
"What."
"Do you, by any chance, know what a Byeokchukbong's power is supposed to be, on average?"
"That was about average, wasn't it? It's a rare magic tool."
At the utterly unexpected answer, Se-ah swallowed hard.
Don't tell me he'd lived his whole life treating things like this as completely normal...?
Anyone could see this was anything but ordinary.
"...Wait, this isn't actually normal, is it?"
Having reconsidered Se-ah's question, Woo-jin cautiously asked, a vague suspicion dawning on him.
Se-ah nodded.
"It appears that way, yes."
"Hmm... Thanks for telling me."
Lost in thought, Woo-jin headed over to retrieve the Byeokchukbong.
"Ah! Senior, the rain is still—!"
"Don't come. You might get electrocuted."
Se-ah started to bring the umbrella over to him, then froze.
It was still pouring.
There was a real risk of him getting shocked if he approached the staff.
Woo-jin pulled the Byeokchukbong out of the ground and admired it by the handle. Teal currents were still flowing menacingly along the rod with a low crzzt.
...This is seriously awesome.
The power the Byeokchukbong had displayed far exceeded his expectations.
At first he'd assumed it was simply because it was a rare magic tool.
But according to Se-ah, the cause had to be his own mana.
It seemed the effects of honing his mana cultivation technique since childhood were now manifesting through the Byeokchukbong.
Knowing that all the time he'd invested hadn't gone to waste, he felt nothing but deep satisfaction.
Woo-jin nodded in contentment and fastened the Byeokchukbong to his belt. The three-section staff now sat on one hip, the Byeokchukbong on the other.
At that moment, a red umbrella appeared over his head.
"Senior, you really will catch a cold."
Woo-jin turned back to Se-ah.
"...Hey, junior. Want me to buy you some tteokbokki?"
"Ooooh, is that hush money?"
Se-ah glanced around at the devastation and grinned slyly.
Woo-jin flinched, then continued calmly.
"Don't be absurd. We ran into each other, so I'm simply doing my duty as your senior. What kind of senior wouldn't be moved by a junior who shares her umbrella and even worries about him catching a cold?"
The words flowed out of him like water.
"In that case, I'll gratefully accept."
Se-ah beamed.
That night.
Woo-jin, fully prepared, came back to clean up the wreckage his Byeokchukbong test had left behind.
"Huh?"
Astonishingly, the site had already been tidied up completely at some point.
Only later did he learn from the neighbors that people in black clothing had been moving through the area carrying equipment.
......
"Senior, if you keep standing out there like that, you'll catch a cold."
"Cough! Cough!"
He'd caught one.
And not just any cold — a vicious case of the flu.
"Ugh... I'm dying..."
Bzzz. Bzzz.
Even though his smartphone was buzzing, Woo-jin lay wrecked by a burning fever, unable to move a muscle.
The vibration ran long, then stopped — and two missed calls lit up the screen.