Discipline 13. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Is Never Ambushed by Villains (4)
Rubber-hose cryptanalysis.
It was one method of extracting a password from a security administrator—a powerful, professional technique. What it amounted to was this: kidnap the target, beat them, torture them, and pry the code out of them. Yes, it was a formally established concept.
Through all my Disciplinary Committee work, pummeling villains one after another, I had proven the practical utility of rubber-hose cryptanalysis time and again.
Kim Dal-bi would be no exception. If she was determined to keep her mouth shut to the very end, then my only option was to apply force and make her cough up the secret.
Of course, entertaining such a thought against a powerhouse on the verge of the 7th Tier was roughly the equivalent of the biblical David declaring he would get violent with Goliath. That's right. It was laughable just to imagine.
But just as David brought Goliath down with a sling, the weaker party had no choice but to strike where the enemy least expected it.
Dal-bi had let her guard down. Now was exactly that moment.
Swissh!
The moment my lightning-wreathed three-section staff shrieked through the air toward the back of Dal-bi's neck, time seemed to slow, like a video played at reduced speed.
'I don't know what secret you're carrying.'
I thought.
You're holding a secret so grave that merely hearing it could kill me? Did you really think I was the type to stand around obliviously, twiddling my thumbs, after dropping a hint that big?
Even as she claimed to carry such a secret, Dal-bi had kept showing me lingering attachment all this time.
She didn't even take pride in what she'd done.
So the answer was obvious. What I was looking at now was the result of something that had arrived completely against her will.
'I don't know the exact reason why you said you liked my purity, but I think I'm starting to see the shape of it.'
The silhouette of the truth seemed to be revealing itself, faint but unmistakable.
There was a being even Dal-bi couldn't handle. That someone had driven her into this corner.
Back when she lived alongside me. And even now.
'So what?'
I wasn't a mind reader. I had no psychic power for peering into hearts.
Whatever burden Dal-bi had been clutching and agonizing over all this time, if she wouldn't tell me, I had no way of knowing.
Even if the secret came to light and I suffered terrible harm as a result—even if it left Dal-bi wracked with guilt.
If she wouldn't speak, then in the end, Dal-bi would simply be standing in the position of my enemy. That was all.
Which left me with only one choice.
Pin her down and force the secret out of her.
So the secret will kill me if I hear it?
I won't die.
If anything, I would resolve whatever threat came my way. That was the whole reason I had become this academy city's Disciplinary Committee Leader in the first place.
CRACK-CRACK!!!
Crack!!
My black three-section staff split the instant and the silence alike, closing on my target with two peals of thunder. The shockwave of powerful electricity crashed over Dal-bi in a chain.
Against an ordinary villain, that would have been the end of it.
"…."
Before long, the outcome I had half-expected lay before my eyes.
The lightning died down, and there was Dal-bi, gripping my black three-section staff in a hand wreathed in flame.
My attempt at a surprise blow had been blocked, just like that—pitifully.
She had refined her mana at an absurd speed to reinforce her body dramatically, and on top of that had wrapped her hand in dense flame mana. It was almost enough to pull a hollow laugh out of me.
'Well… I suppose that's only natural.'
After Goliath, Dal-bi was the opponent who felt like the most daunting challenge on the horizon. If she'd gone down this easily, I probably would have been disappointed instead.
It was plain as day what another attack with my staff would accomplish. Nothing but an exercise in futility.
So rather than that—
"…Just tell me, you idiot."
It would be better for her to pour out the honest truth instead.
At the sudden curse, Dal-bi's face filled with bewilderment.
"If you don't tell me, I don't know anything. You pull every stunt in the book, never ask for help until things spiral completely out of control, and then act all vague like you're some tragic heroine."
A trace of emotion crept into my voice. I couldn't hold it back. I was too frustrated.
Either leave for good, or stay by my side for good. Instead, she kept hovering in between, showing me nothing but that half-baked attitude of 'I won't give you the answer you want…'
What was I supposed to do with that?
"I'm sorry. I have to go now…."
"I."
Now would be as good a time as any to show a little sincerity.
I could already imagine cringing later, kicking myself for saying something so embarrassing. But it felt like I'd regret it even more if I didn't say it now.
In the end, I spat out my honest feelings.
"I missed you. Genuinely."
Dal-bi's head jerked. Her hair lifted as though static electricity were crackling through it, and the shock showed plainly on her face. Her eyes trembled like a candle flame swaying in the wind.
"So just tell me. I don't want to walk away knowing nothing. And I'm not going to die anyway."
Whether with game knowledge or anything else, I would survive no matter what. If I'd only intended to half-ass it, I never would have become Disciplinary Committee Leader in the first place.
"How… can you just come out with something so embarrassing like it's nothing?"
Dal-bi stammered, avoiding my eyes. She clearly hadn't expected the words I missed you to come out of my mouth.
I bit down hard and forced my feelings back, keeping my mouth shut.
For a while, Dal-bi deliberated. Before long, her eyes settled on my face with new resolve. Perhaps now, at last, she was ready to speak properly.
Above us, thunderclouds were slowly rumbling their way across the sky, and a fine drizzle had begun to fall.
"…This may be shameless of me, but may I ask one thing?"
Dal-bi's voice was damp with rainwater. I nodded.
"Let's just run away together—"
That was when it happened.
The thunderclouds opened into a downpour, and at the same moment a heavy wave of mana washed over my skin, Dal-bi's eyes flew wide open.
A storm, descending without warning. If someone had claimed that all of it stemmed from a single person's mana, no one would have believed them.
"…There's no more time to talk."
Whish!
"Ugh!"
Sensing the gravity of the situation, Dal-bi shoved me back along with my staff and bounded away.
"Take care of yourself, Woo—"
Just as Dal-bi turned to offer her farewell—
KRAKOOM!!
A violent roar split the air as a bolt of blue lightning tore through the sky, and a single stroke of thunder struck down directly behind Dal-bi.
There stood a woman, riding the lightning down.
The strike of thunder caused every drone hovering in the sky to malfunction simultaneously and crash to the ground. Crash! The drones shattered, fragments scattering in every direction.
The thunderclouds blanketing the sky over Shin Yongshan Street, the storm slamming into the ground—all of it served a single master: the woman who had arrived at Dal-bi's back.
Ahseong High School's greatest asset.
Oh Baek-seo.
The reason Baek-seo was called the unrivaled genius of Neo Seoul was no mystery. She simply possessed power that made the title inevitable: immense mana, extraordinary precision, and overwhelming unique ability.
The Unique Ability, Cloud Master.
Beneath the thunderclouds Baek-seo conjured, her mana was amplified several times over.
KRAKOOOM!
CLEEENG!!
One strike. When a sword slash descended as swift as a thunderbolt, Kim Dal-bi hastily recovered her stance and caught it with her blade.
A peal of thunder rang out alongside a clear metallic shriek, and a wave of mana rippled outward, buckling the ground and the walls.
"Oh Baek-seo…."
Dal-bi's eyes narrowed.
"Hello."
Baek-seo, the one who had loosed the strike, spoke in a measured tone.
"You laid hands on my Leader… how bold of you."
Shing!
A brilliant mingling of blue and violet mana coursed down the blade. Then, without a sound, several dozen immaculate arcs of the sword etched themselves across Dal-bi's field of vision all at once.
The Unique Ability, Cloud Master. Magic Formula, First Form: Butterfly Dance.
Baek-seo's mana attribute was water at its core, but thanks to her cloud-wielding unique ability, she could apply lightning as well.
This was a technique that summoned dozens of threads of lightning-light through that power. Baek-seo had adapted it to her swordsmanship, reforging it into something entirely new—hence the name, Butterfly Dance.
Elegant sword strokes, laden with lightning, carved through the air with nowhere to dodge. A single touch would slice through Dal-bi's mana-reinforced body like paper.
Dal-bi focused, swinging her flame-wreathed sword in a ceaseless blur.
Clang-clang-clang-clang— the ring of steel met steel rang out again and again, each collision punctuated by thunderous detonations. But Dal-bi failed to block every attack, and deep gashes opened across her cheek and arm.
Before long, Woo-jin moved to join the fray—
[GRAAAH!]
—when a dokkaebi that had sprung up out of nowhere lunged at his back.
"!"
Whish! Woo-jin dodged the dokkaebi's club swing. It hadn't carried enough force to threaten his life even had it landed—a single blow equivalent to a warning shot. There was no mistaking it: this was Dal-bi's will.
Woo-jin spun around. The dokkaebi had multiplied to five, all of them now trained on him.
He had no choice but to deal with them, and meanwhile Dal-bi and Baek-seo's blades collided without pause, lightning and flame mana detonating against each other in burst after burst.
Newly summoned dokkaebi threw themselves at Baek-seo as well. But before they could even reach her, their heads went flying or their torsos split clean in half, dissolving into smoke that seeped into the rain.
They were simply helpless against Baek-seo's flash-fast sword strikes. From a distance, it looked as though a shield made of blades itself was guarding her.
And so Baek-seo swam alone through time that seemed to crawl, again and again tracing lethal, lightning-quick trajectories with her keen edge.
"Tch!"
Having barely torn open some distance between herself and Baek-seo, Dal-bi kicked off the wall and in a single bound landed on a rooftop. At once, countless plumes of smoke bloomed in the air as a swarm of dokkaebi was summoned. Armed with iron clubs, swords, and spears, they plunged down toward Baek-seo in unison.
Fwoooosh! From the rooftop, Dal-bi began spreading flame outward. Clearly, she was preparing something.
Chk. Baek-seo extended her sword to the side and bent her knees.
In an instant, her figure remained behind as an afterimage in that very stance, washed away by the rain.
A mere fraction of a second later, Baek-seo's mana carved a path through the empty air—silent and serene, like a billowing wave made calm. That current of mana was threading directly through the falling swarm of dokkaebi.
Then the lightning spread.
Shing.
The sharp whistle of the blade rose and fell, soft and almost gentle.
The next moment—
Shrrk. SPLAT!
Every last falling dokkaebi was cleaved in half, piling onto the ground and going limp.
Baek-seo's new form had already ridden the tail of its own sword-arc to the top of the building.
The Unique Ability, Cloud Master. Magic Formula, Second Form: Butterfly Effect.
Beneath the thunderclouds Baek-seo conjured, unless one was a truly formidable enemy, resistance meant little. There was nothing waiting but the end of a blade.
Had Dal-bi summoned an upper-rank dokkaebi, or unleashed her own dokkaebi power in earnest, the tide might have turned. But for some reason, she was holding back her true strength.
'I have to subdue her somehow, right now.'
Woo-jin thought. He had to press Dal-bi here and now.
"Hoo…!"
He had just cut down the dokkaebi attacking him, and resolved to climb to the rooftop immediately and mount a joint offensive on Dal-bi alongside Baek-seo.
"…!"
Then, Baek-seo—still suspended in midair—wore an expression of alarm.
On the rooftop, Dal-bi was being swallowed bit by bit by the flames.
Baek-seo's sword flashed out once more, tracing light through the empty air—but the arc did nothing more than slice the blaze in half.
The flames guttered out, pathetically powerless against the rain, and only Baek-seo remained alone on the rooftop.
'She got away.'
Baek-seo and Woo-jin, down on the street, both grasped the situation at once.
Dal-bi had fled.
In the game, too, Dal-bi would spread flame and escape by teleportation whenever the moment wasn't right to commit her full strength.
The solutions were simple: never give her the opening to teleport, or corner her at the moments she was fighting for real.
"Tch."
Woo-jin clicked his tongue. A skill reserved for emergencies would carry an enormous mana cost—and given how demanding its activation conditions were, it could never be used while fighting at full power.
'She might still be within range.'
He didn't want to let her go like this. Even if she slipped away in the end, he had to dig out those critical pieces of information somehow—
[Ahn… Woo-jin….]
A thick voice wormed its way through the rain and reached Woo-jin's ears. It was strained, phlegm-choked.
Woo-jin turned toward the source. There sat a dokkaebi, sliced down to just its upper body by Baek-seo's blade.
"?"
Every other dokkaebi had dissolved into smoke and vanished. For whatever reason, this one alone remained intact.
Woo-jin approached and looked down at it. The dokkaebi squeezed out its voice with the last of its strength.
[My master bade me deliver a message…. Because of that woman, the ears that were listening have been silenced for a while….]
The dokkaebi's master could only mean Dal-bi. And "that woman," Woo-jin judged, meant Baek-seo.
Though what on earth "ears that were listening" was supposed to mean…
Suddenly, something entered Woo-jin's field of vision.
'…A drone?'
The drones that had crashed to the ground when Baek-seo appeared. Nothing else fit.
The dokkaebi coughed up blood and forced out its words.
[My master… has a plan…. When the plan bears fruit, she will tell you everything…. Those were her orders….]
"What kind of bullshit is that supposed to—"
Woo-jin couldn't finish the sentence. His eyes were slowly widening.
A single possibility had surfaced in his mind, out of nowhere.
"…?"
What Dal-bi's secret actually was. Why she insisted she could never reveal it.
Thanks to the dokkaebi's final message, Woo-jin had finally begun to guess.
[Then… farewell.]
Shrrr.
Squeezing out one last goodbye, the dokkaebi dissolved into smoke and was gone.