Discipline 18. The Disciplinary Committee Leader Foils the Villain's Plan (2)
Remembering the contents of the game with any real precision was a difficult task.
Especially the Six Sinners' assault on Ahseong High — it wasn't connected to any storyline or event in the game at all. All I had managed to recall was a few words spoken by a news anchor inside the game, and barely at that. Honestly, just remembering that the incident would happen at all felt like an achievement in itself.
I'm nervous….
I couldn't help it. The tension had been creeping up on me all day. It wasn't that I knew nothing — it was that I knew the future in such a vague, half-baked way. I could only hope things went smoothly.
Then again… did that person even know the practical assessment would take place here?
I was talking about the Necromancer.
Even I had no way of knowing in advance where this semester's practical assessment at Ahseong High would be held. The Disciplinary Committee oversight documents I'd signed off on had described only the structure and features of the venue — nothing more. As Leader of the Disciplinary Committee, I was also a participant in the assessment itself, so for the sake of fairness, we were given only the bare minimum of information. Only after today had the students been informed where and how the practical assessment would proceed. The venue, on top of everything, was a facility newly developed this year.
Besides, as test proctors, the Disciplinary Committee didn't gain any special advantage from touring the exam site early. The evaluation focused on the ability to handle mana; once one assessment ended, the targets automatically relocated for the next; and students could practice at the academy anyway.
At a venue even I couldn't have predicted, the Necromancer stages her attack…. Why?
Two possibilities seemed most likely. Either the location simply didn't matter to the Necromancer's assault — or she was entangled in some arrangement with a faculty member who could leak information.
Assuming the latter, hardly anyone could be trusted. So I shared the intel that one of the Six Sinners might appear during the practical assessment with the executives alone. On the surface it was nothing more than my own half-baked speculation, but everyone seemed to agree that a little extra caution couldn't hurt.
Please… let her be captured without incident.
The thought that we might have to risk the students' safety to take down a Sinner weighed heavily on my chest. It was responsibility, I suppose. I knew the assessment was our one real chance to catch the Necromancer — and knowing that didn't make the feeling any easier to shake.
That was the problem with having game knowledge. It was exactly this.
"Leader."
Just then, Vice Leader Oh Baek-seo came up beside me and spoke.
"Nervous?"
"!"
No way. Seriously. Was she reading my mind again?
"Wh-what makes you think that? The Disciplinary Committee Leader, nervous about catching a villain? That's a contradiction in terms."
"Mm, I suppose so."
When I feigned composure, Baek-seo nodded with a gentle smile.
"After all, what Kim Dal-bi said might have been a lie. And even if it's true, the assessment could still pass without incident."
"I'm hoping that girl was lying, honestly. I'd like nothing more than for nothing to happen at all."
Beneath a vast cobalt sky, starlight glittered like scattered salt across the night. We stood together, gazing out at the exam grounds.
The practical assessment venue was located quite a distance from Ahseong High — a colossal testing ground built from a reworked forest, packed with artificial structures. It had been developed by the Ahseong Academy as a whole — the greater Ahseong Comprehensive Academy — and boasted a labyrinthine layout.
To think they'd build something like that for educational purposes….
Major academies really did spare no expense. Anyway — today was the day of the first-year practical assessment. The second-years of the Disciplinary Committee would serve as proctors.
Meanwhile, the executives with strong combat ability (Park Min-hyuk excepted) had each been assigned to proctor on separate days regardless of their year. I had volunteered to sacrifice myself and take on multiple days of proctoring duty.
But somehow, Baek-seo had followed along. She insisted on working alongside me on every single day I served as proctor. Her stated reason: as Vice Leader, she couldn't leave her Leader to suffer alone.
She'd also pointed out that with the possibility of a villain among the student body, safety had to come first — which left me with no room to argue.
Not that I mind having Baek-seo's help.
Having someone like her by my side was nothing short of reassuring. Absolutely rock solid.
"Looks like it's starting."
The first-years, arranged in groups across the plaza, began filing toward the exam grounds under the proctors' guidance. Each group would enter the venue from a different position and take their assessment there.
"Time to split up. Take care, Leader."
"You too. Good luck out there."
"Mm."
We parted ways. We'd agreed to shadow the prime suspects — the first-years most likely to be the Necromancer — each of us taking a separate target, in our official capacity as proctors, of course.
And the person I would watch most closely was the expressionless junior: Han Seo-jin.
Not that I could afford to watch only her. There were several suspects, and I needed to keep track of everyone's positions. All assessment participants wore bracelets, and those bracelets could be tracked through a smartphone app. So I planned to monitor the suspects from a distance.
Expressionless… please, don't let it be you.
I desperately hoped that the girl I'd singled out as a promising recruit — the one I'd shown even a little warmth — wasn't a villain.
The sunset's orange glow pressed a kiss to the horizon.
The sea, dyed crimson by the dying light, rippled in waves. In the film, the male and female leads leaned their shoulders against one another, watching the sinking sun together, deepening their love with every passing moment.
It had been achingly beautiful. And that was why, in childhood, the sea had been carved into Han Seo-jin's memory more deeply than anything else.
Until billions of the old humanity lost their lives, the sea had been a symbol of romance. Even the media produced in the present era sought to recreate the beautiful oceans of the old world, didn't it?
But every citizen knew exactly what the sea was now — because an old photograph, taken at mortal risk by some explorer of the past, still circulated on the internet. What had once been a symbol of romance had become a living hell.
And yet Seo-jin wanted to see the sea. Because she wanted to take even a fragment of that beautiful scenery in with her own two eyes. It was nothing more than a small, childish pout of a wish — but Seo-jin wanted it all the same.
"……."
Somewhere in the practical assessment grounds, fireflies and lamps strung through the trees lit up the surroundings. Unlike the other students dutifully taking their assessments, Seo-jin sat atop one of the artificial structures, quietly bathed in moonlight.
The structures built to test mana control, the targets meant to be located through mana sensitivity and search abilities — none of it held the slightest interest for her. What she had to do here was never going to be "take the practical assessment."
When she lifted her head, she could see it far in the distance: a supertall skyscraper stretching toward the heavens like a tower of Babel, its summit casting a long, brilliant shaft of light into the sky. The center of the academy city. The beam of light that marked the Central Point.
Atop that building was the Head Principal of the academy city.
"Ahae."
The Head Principal's voice drifted across Seo-jin's memory — a recollection of the past, lingering like an echo.
When she was young, in her infancy — a time when child after child under the Head Principal's care was disposed of, discarded — Seo-jin alone had barely survived. And the Head Principal had told her:
"I will show you that beautiful sea you longed for."
That single sentence, for an instant, stirred something in Seo-jin's eyes.
"So, for the sake of everyone's future — will you lend me your strength?"
The Head Principal claimed to know a safe route leading to the sea beyond the city. Which meant that Seo-jin herself might one day see that sunset-colored ocean from the films with her own eyes.
That alone was enough. The simple hope — I want to see the sea, and one day I will — was enough to keep Seo-jin alive. Without even that, she would have walked down the very same road as the children who had been disposed of, entirely of her own accord.
"…Let's begin."
Seo-jin made a gesture of picking something up.
Shhhhh.
Violet mana stirred in her palm and took the shape of a black skull mask. She raised it to her face. As she rose from her seat, mana flooded over her body as well, and in moments it transformed into the shape of a dark robe.
The iconic skull mask and robe of the Six Sinner Necromancer. Magical vestments that could be stored as pure mana, materialized or dematerialized at will.
Suddenly, a violet magic circle bloomed across the ground, and from it a single staff rose upward — part of the same materialization process. With a soft pop, Seo-jin took hold of it. A magic staff fitted with a mana stone. With it in hand, channeling mana and pushing her output to its limits became far, far easier.
Staff in hand, Seo-jin drew her mana upward.
Guuuuuguuuuguuu!
That instant, with a light tremor running through the earth, violet mana began tracing an enormous circle at the very center of the exam grounds.
Fwoooooooosh!
Along the circle's rim, an eerie tide of purple water rose and wove itself into a spherical space — and in moments, a massive barrier had formed around Seo-jin. An otherworldly barrier where unseen waves gently lapped at its inner walls. It swallowed a portion of the sprawling exam grounds and sealed the space within.
Unique Ability: Necromancy. The Fourth Form of magic rites — Domain of Souls.
Seo-jin had received advance information about this exam ground and prepared it beforehand — so that her unique ability could be deployed with maximum efficiency, and maximum force.
"What the—!?"
"What IS that…?"
"Isn't that a barrier…?"
"Kyaaaah!"
As the students plunged into chaos, the inner wall of the Domain of Souls unveiled a new sky. The exam grounds brightened as if the entire space had been carried off to another world — because a mystical phantom had appeared: a moon, weeping blood and radiating a faint, eerie glow.
Whoosh. Seo-jin gave the staff a light sweep.
In the next breath, the summoning circles etched across every corner of the exam grounds began to glow, and all at once they spewed out the dead.
"What are those things!?"
"Run!"
"Insane!"
Students scattered in every direction, screaming, fleeing, or bracing for battle. What was being summoned was the dead. No — to put it precisely:
[Grrrrrrr…!]
They were dead magical beasts. Skeletal monsters cloaked in mana like a second skin heaved their massive bodies upright, and from their paws, razor-sharp claws gleamed as they caught and reflected the light of raw mana.