Discipline 13. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Is Never Ambushed by Villains (1)
There were certain sectors in the academy city of Neo Seoul that had to remain independent of private interests.
The cultivation farms and grain-milling plants directly tied to survival, for instance.
There was nothing stopping individual citizens from raising livestock or growing rice on their own, but they lacked the qualifications to make a business of it and officially sell their products on the market. All they could do was send a formal petition to the Federal Board, have their goods assessed for marketability, and receive compensation accordingly.
It was a measure born of the fear that, with so little safe land granted to humanity, key food industries might end up monopolized by private individuals.
Opinions advocating for a shift toward free-market capitalism had been raised time and again, but the Federal Board had so far maintained a conservative stance, clinging to the old order.
In other words, certain fields were effectively excluded from the capitalist system.
Though apparently they got traded on the Black Market often enough.
Anyway.
Shin Yongsan Street, the commercial district where mileage could be spent, was treated as an independent zone as well. It wasn't directly tied to survival, but if one faction ever cornered the market there, the fallout would be anything but trivial.
The responsibility for managing such sectors naturally fell to the Federal Board — the power bloc that set the academy city's direction and dictated its major affairs.
They were also the ones with the authority to grant me Platinum Mileage.
But even the Federal Board couldn't blindly endorse monopolies, so each of the major academies had been granted the right to monitor these enterprises' conduct and crack down whenever something crossed the line.
"Been a while since I've been here."
"Same."
I had come to Shin Yongsan Street together with Vice Leader Oh Baek-seo.
We were in our school uniforms — the only way to get through the gates.
None of the blacksmith's romance you'd imagine lived on this street — the ringing clash of steel, brilliant sparks scattering in every direction, the heavy wall of heat. Forges tended by gruff artisans hunched over anvils.
Most of the blacksmiths here were AI, and the shops were fully automated.
"Crowded, huh."
Only Platinum Mileage was rare; ordinary mileage was handed out liberally at each academy's discretion.
Which was why Shin Yongsan Street turned into a sea of humanity every weekend.
"Leader, do be careful not to get lost, dear."
"Lost? Seriously?"
"One can never be too careful. If you're feeling anxious, I'll hold your hand."
Walking side by side, Baek-seo extended her hand toward me.
Her face was full of the same warm, motherly smile as always, but her voice was dripping with mischief.
I gave her palm a light smack, like a high-five.
"There are Ahseong kids around, so behave."
"Hehe, sorry."
Baek-seo giggled behind a loosely clenched fist.
...She seems kind of giddy today.
Baek-seo always smiled benevolently while radiating an air of lofty refinement, but having spent so much time glued to her side, I'd learned to pick up on her subtle shifts in mood.
Judging from the smile she wore right now, the corners of her mouth were lifted about five degrees higher than usual. That meant she was in a very good mood.
Still, not as good a mood as mine.
Starting today, my very own new weapon would begin taking shape.
And I was strolling down a street packed with things to do on a sunny weekend afternoon, right beside the girl I loved.
Could not be higher on life right now.
I was so happy that even the warm sunlight spilling over us looked beautiful.
"Have you decided which smith to commission for the forging?"
Baek-seo asked.
Every blacksmith had their own specialty.
Being excellent at one thing always meant being mediocre at another.
From Gold grade and above, the materials involved became far too dangerous to handle, so each atelier apparently carved out its own niche. It cost them less in expenses and liability that way.
But.
"Yep. This way."
A quirk of the game's blacksmiths:
there was always a hidden master craftsman nobody knew about.
Platinum Mileage was a hard currency to come by.
So when players set out to forge Platinum-grade equipment, they tended to play it safe rather than gamble — commissioning the atelier that promised at least an average return on their investment.
But I had a privilege none of them did.
What's the point of hoarding game knowledge if you never use it?
Game knowledge.
The veteran players on the community forums had mapped out every blacksmith's efficiency for each equipment type.
I'd relied on their guides whenever I spent Platinum Mileage in the game, too.
Having studied them carefully back then, I'd jotted down the essentials on a memo pad after my reincarnation, recalling as much as I could. Thanks to that, the knowledge I needed was still there when it counted. God bless the guides.
"This is the place."
"......?"
A tucked-away corner.
We arrived at an atelier that looked generations older than every workshop around it.
One look at its shabby exterior, and doubt bloomed across Baek-seo's face.
"Leader... are you quite sure about this place?"
A perfectly reasonable reaction.
Had I been in Baek-seo's shoes, knowing nothing, I'd have found it strange too.
"Every food district has places like this that turn out to be the real hidden gems. Let's go in."
No idea whether that logic applied to blacksmiths, but whatever.
Strike-type weapons — this was hands-down the best place to forge them.
Apparently this was one of the few elements in the game designed to tickle the player's sense of romance.
A cliché, in other words.
"Well then... shall we?"
Baek-seo simply smiled kindly and asked nothing more.
As she always did, she seemed content to follow my lead.
We stepped into the atelier.
As expected, there were no other customers.
Thud! Thud!
CLANG!
The sound of hammer on metal drifted in from the workshop.
Through reinforced glass set into the wall, I could see the scene inside — a vast space where bank after bank of machinery whirred along automatically, work in full swing.
The moment Oh Baek-seo and I reached the waiting room, a friendly receptionist's face appeared on the wall-mounted TV. It was the AI's appearance skin.
Several selectable options appeared on the screen as icons.
"Weapon forging."
"Three-section staff."
The shape of a three-section staff materialized on the screen.
"Yep."
A series of forging-related questions appeared on the screen.
Look at these material options... Absolutely insane.
The moment the list of usable materials appeared, my tongue clicked on its own.
Iron-Armored Dragon scales, boasting supreme hardness.
Amdra tree leaves, which amplified the power of circulating mana.
Breath of the Black Mirror, which vastly strengthened water-elemental mana.
And so on, and so forth.
Materials harvested from the nightmarish magic beasts roaming the world outside, and plenty of them.
Forging a weapon out of this stuff was as good as acquiring endgame gear right then and there.
The corners of my mouth twitched upward before I could stop them.
"Baek-seo, wait here a minute."
"Take your time, dear."
Baek-seo settled leisurely into a chair.
My affinity is lightning, so something like this should work nicely.
Mindful of cost, I picked through the materials and gave a rough description of the design I wanted. Several design samples promptly appeared as holographic graphics.
I was also informed that the final product's appearance could differ depending on the forging process.
Adjusting the details back and forth with the AI to settle on the weapon's look, I worked through the remaining questions, then tapped the Confirm button.
"Obviously I want it."
Aptitude assessment.
A procedure that judged whether the applicant was suited to wield the weapon they'd commissioned — one carried out only when forging weapons with Gold or Platinum Mileage.
To put it in game terms, it was like checking whether my level cleared the level requirement attached to a piece of equipment.
And if I fell short, it could measure by exactly how much.
A far more precise method of measurement than the routine mana-capacity tests the academies ran.
I placed my hand on the panel in front of me.
The gauges on the machine connected to the panel glowed blue, and then—
fzzt.
Static broke across the screen.
[Mana grade, unable to meas—... an anomaly has been de—tected... please, wait, a mo—ment...]
The AI's voice cut in and out.
The lights flickered on and off as well.
What the? What's going on?
Just as I was starting to panic, it turned out to be nothing more than a fluke — the screen and lights soon steadied, and the measurement results appeared.
Element:Lightning
Aptitude:S+
Huh?
An S+ aptitude? For a Platinum-grade weapon?
According to the academy's measurements, my mana capacity was B+.
High, sure — but nowhere near the level that warranted a top-tier aptitude rating.
...Is this the mana cultivation method's doing too?
The reason was obvious at a glance.
I knew perfectly well that the quality of my mana was exceptional.
I'd been drilling the mana cultivation method since infancy, after all.
This had to be another effect of that.
Mastering a mana cultivation method in early childhood was extraordinarily rare.
As far as I knew, the only person who'd ever managed it was Goliath — the final boss of my plans, so to speak. I'd merely trained the cultivation method relentlessly with Goliath in mind as my benchmark.
It wasn't the kind of thing anyone could simply be ordered to do. It would be like asking a baby barely able to babble to solve calculus.
Even so, I never expected my aptitude to come out this high.
"Hmm..."
Whenever I was confronted with moments like this, I don't know—
it just made me unreasonably proud.
Like I'd become the protagonist of some manga.
My shoulders were creeping up on their own when reality kicked me in the shin, reminding me not to get cocky: I was a mediocrity who hadn't even reached the 5th Tier.
The price was calculated based on materials, weapon surface area, forging difficulty, and so on.
The sample display had shown the price alongside it, so I'd built my configuration to land exactly on the 100 Platinum Mileage I had.
If I was going to get good gear anyway, wasn't the smart play to burn through every last mile of it?
Beep.
I held the payment barcode from my mileage app up to the scanner and paid.
The friendly AI man on the screen bowed his head in greeting and vanished.
After that, the screen displayed the Deus Atelier logo.
Chunk.
A receipt slid out of the machine.
It was a card.
Oh right, they gave you one of these too.
A flamboyant registration card symbolizing the Platinum grade.
The design was satisfying.
It was purely symbolic, mind you.
I could collect the forged weapon without it.
And yet the corners of my mouth still crept up on their own. Couldn't be helped.
"Vice Leader, behold the resplendent glory of this Platinum card."
I waved the registration card back and forth in front of Baek-seo with exaggerated pride. My own little bit of fun.
"......"
"?"
Why... is she so quiet?
Way to make a guy feel awkward.
An uncomfortable silence hung between us for a moment.
Baek-seo looked quietly lost in thought.
"Baek-seo?"
"Mm. Congratulations, Leader."
Smiling as though she'd just recovered her expression, Baek-seo rose from her seat.
"Shall we go, then?"
"...Yeah, let's."
What on earth had she been brooding over so intently?
Setting aside the pride of watching my very own weapon enter production, I left the atelier with a nagging question about Baek-seo lingering in my mind.
Ahn Woo-jin.
He possessed mana far surpassing that of others in the same tier, and his combat ability was exceptional as well.
But it wouldn't be accurate to simply say that Woo-jin was stronger than average.
Something more.
Woo-jin was a breed apart — so Oh Baek-seo had come to believe.
Baek-seo strolled through Shin Yongsan Street beside Woo-jin.
Habit carried her along, flashing her kindly smile and chattering away with him. And yet the only thing circling through her head was the aptitude assessment result she'd witnessed at the atelier.
The highest aptitude grade, for Platinum-grade equipment...
Baek-seo gave a wry smile.
It defied belief.
The sword at her own hip, Baekryundo, was a Platinum-grade magic weapon.
Even she — hailed by the world as a genius of the age — had only managed a B+ aptitude the first time she'd grasped Baekryundo. And even that had been enough for people to marvel at her talent.
Yet Woo-jin's aptitude was S+.
"In a league of his own" didn't begin to cover it.
That boy really is a monster.
It was nothing new.
She'd sensed for a long time that Woo-jin had the genius to grow stronger than even her.
It was especially true every time she felt his mana up close.
The purity of his mana, which governed how smoothly it circulated, and its density, which governed its raw firepower, were both astonishingly elevated.
Roll it all together into "growth potential," and no matter how far she imagined him going, the reality would exceed it.
...It would've been better if his talent were merely ordinary.
It was a feeling too honest to ever say aloud.
Whenever she confronted the true scale of Woo-jin's talent, one elderly woman came to mind.
That damned woman, coveting the academy city's most gifted students — Goliath, its undisputed strongest, included.
Baek-seo's eyes went cold.
Her resolve hadn't wavered since last year.
If that old woman ever cast her gaze upon Woo-jin—
Baek-seo would stop her, no matter what it took.
Just then—
"Baek-seo."
Tap. Woo-jin caught her by the wrist.
Her thoughts were severed mid-thread.
"Leader?"
"Walk quietly for a bit, then let's cut across over there."
Woo-jin's expression had turned dead serious.
Before Baek-seo could even ask why, he murmured, low:
"There's a villain."
Meanwhile.
On a hilltop.
A girl with a silver wig spilling down her shoulders was gazing out over Shin Yongsan Street.
A black mask covered the lower half of her face.
The name tag pinned to her chest bore the alias Kim Yeon-hee.
Kim Dal-bi.
Her eyes — a swirl of pink and red — trailed one particular student through a small telescope.
The Bomber... There you are, finally.
The boy in her scope was a villain.
Alias: the Bomber.
He'd surely taken a contract killing from that elderly woman.
His objective would be to take down Ahn Woo-jin.
Dal-bi had wanted to neutralize the Bomber in advance, but she'd struggled to track him down.
Now that he'd finally entered her field of view, she wasn't going to let him slip away.
Woo-jin... no sign of him leaving yet.
She'd known for a while now that Woo-jin had come here.
She'd guessed from the start that he'd show up on Shin Yongsan Street today.
It was obvious he'd spend his Platinum Mileage as soon as possible, and on weekdays his Disciplinary Committee duties would never have left him the time.
Oh Baek-seo accompanying him was a thorn in her side, but that was a problem for later.
Woo-jin had no idea the Bomber was targeting him — he didn't even know what the man looked like.
Which was why Dal-bi had come today to carry out the task of tailing the Bomber to the Platinum shops.
Because at any moment, among all these crowds, the Bomber might make his move on Woo-jin.
However strong Oh Baek-seo at his side might be, if a capable villain launched a surprise attack, there was no guarantee she could prevent every casualty.
"......"
The Bomber's movements turned unnatural.
The moment to take him down had arrived.
Dal-bi began to move.