Jo Ga-ju of the Jo Clan Spear Technique -1
Yeah. I should at least get a look at their faces.
"Adjutant! Escort Advisor Ho to the training grounds. And on the way, brief him on the overall situation with the trainees!"
Once again under the adjutant's guidance, I set off for the training camp.
"Embroidered Uniform Guard trainees first pass a selection examination. Physical fitness, martial realm, scholarship, character, and any other talents they might possess — all of it is tested. The provincial officials recommend them as promising talent, but even among those, there are gems and duds."
"I see."
"Yes. The unit you'll be taking charge of as External Advisor can be said to meet the minimum qualifications for Embroidered Uniform Guard recruitment. Every one of them was called a prodigy or genius back in their hometowns, so their noses sit rather high. Especially once they learn of your background, Advisor — plenty of them will look down on you. Young men full of confidence tend to be that way."
"Understood."
In the Murim world, realm was everything — but in the military, rank was king. No matter how gifted a young master from some prestigious clan might be, when the drill instructor said jump, a trainee jumped.
"The selection exam doesn't wrap up overnight, so it's still in full swing. The final training roster should be locked in two or three days from now. So a few more faces may join the ones you see today."
The adjutant first introduced me to the other training instructors. After a round of brief introductions, he spoke as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
"I nearly forgot to mention this. As External Advisor, you are under no obligation to follow the training manual to the letter. You've been granted full discretionary authority — do as you please. Of course, following the manual is perfectly fine as well, but..."
Was this what I thought it was?
"If I run training according to my own ideas — as someone with no military experience — it could cause quite a stir."
"Haha. Yes. But weren't you invited precisely as a means of blowing fresh wind into the Embroidered Uniform Guard?"
In other words: go ahead and troll a bit, so they'll have a ready-made pretext to kick me out when the time comes.
"There's no need to feel pressured. If things look like they won't work out, you need not step forward at all. We've made various preparations on our end, and we can coordinate as the situation develops. Ah — we've arrived."
Looking at the rows of nearly identical halls, I thought that no matter where you went, the military was still the military. The buildings that appeared to be the barracks were old halls, though they must have been decent structures when first built.
But the traces of years upon years of repairs! Not the work of professional carpenters or plasterers — just the slapdash handiwork of soldiers with a bit of natural skill, patched over with sheer volume. The signs were everywhere.
The whole exterior reeked of pure, unfiltered military stink.
A mild PTSD flare-up hit me, and I steeled myself. I am not a private. I am a drill instructor. Not just any drill instructor — a special forces instructor. An officer.
Hmm. Thinking of myself as an officer didn't actually make me feel any better.
"The buildings are rundown, aren't they? Still, next year they'll be reborn as the 'Advanced Barracks.'"
I flinched.
"...Impressive."
"Yes. The Advanced Barracks plan was drawn up long ago, but it kept getting rejected for lack of budget. Years of nothing but rejections — and then this time, as if money had fallen from the sky, it got approved."
The Golden Family's assets that Sama Yeom had sent over, no doubt.
"The old buildings will be renovated or expanded, and all the furniture and daily implements will be replaced with modern ones. As it is, the bottom boards of the bunk beds have been collapsing lately — non-combat losses, if you can believe it."
"Hahaha..."
"Ah, one more thing. Whether to issue balls for free-time cuju is a decision you should make with great care. It's excellent for morale, but every selection cycle without fail, someone cracks their skull or breaks an arm or leg playing and gets eliminated. Be especially careful with friendly matches against other training units."
"..."
And so, with advice that poked at my lost two years of military service, we arrived at the hall.
"Each building is used by one unit. It seems this class of trainees will be divided into about ten units. So as External Advisor, you'll be serving as the training instructor in charge of Unit Ten."
"I see. Thank you for the thorough briefing."
The adjutant exchanged a few polite words, told me I was free to leave for the day, and hurried off. Well, as the adjutant to the Eastern Depot's director, he must have had plenty on his plate. I stood before the door and took a moment to collect myself.
Song Chang-sik had said he'd gathered those among the applicants with clear disqualifying marks. None of them would be pushovers.
I steadied my heart. Who was this body of Ho Cheon-an? A sergeant who'd completed his full two-year term of service.
Even if they'd only collected the defective ones, compared to the darkness of a Korean barracks, this would be a drop in the ocean.
I deliberately dredged up those lost two years I normally never allowed myself to recall.
The despair of receiving a junior so slow he took over a minute just to lace one combat boot. The junior in my company who claimed a demon possessed his left arm and that working caused him pain. The senior with a single month on me who dumped his work on me with a "You really expect me to do this at my rank?"
The platoon leader who'd gone from enlisted man to the Third Military Academy and strutted around the barracks acting like he'd mastered the soldier's life.
The company commander who'd taken that platoon leader's intel and torn through the company under the banner of rooting out barracks corruption.
Oh... I was darkening.
"Heh."
That's right. This body of Ho Cheon-an — a son of Korea who had survived the darkness known as the Korean barracks. There was no reason to flinch before a bunch of infants who were, at best, Embroidered Uniform Guard trainees.
I opened the door onto a single, undivided space. A place that showed not the slightest intention of respecting privacy. The hall was large enough that walls could have been built to divide it, yet all that stood within were beds and lockers arranged at regular intervals.
The headcount was somewhere between ten and twenty. The gazes that turned on me as I abruptly opened the door carried a clear note of curiosity.
One of them approached me.
"I am Jo Ga-ju, currently serving as temporary unit leader of this hall. What business brings you here?"
Already a full soldier, this one. Or had he been serving in a provincial garrison and been recommended upward?
"I am the training instructor assigned to this unit. I stopped by simply to put faces to names."
"Sir! My apologies. I failed to recognize you in civilian dress."
"Mm."
I studied Jo Ga-ju as he snapped off a crisp salute. His martial realm was around the Peak Realm, was it?
"Trainee Jo Ga-ju. Were you recommended up after serving in the military?"
"Yes, sir. I was attached to the garrison at Sangsan."
...Wait. Then this kid was the Jo Ga-ju — the founder of the Jo Clan Spear Technique?
"Is your primary weapon, by any chance, the spear?"
Jo Ga-ju's brow twitched.
"You have a keen eye, sir."
In the future, the Jo Ga-ju standing before me would create a spear art known as the Jo Clan Spear Technique, and that technique would be recognized for its excellence by the Imperial Army and disseminated as the army's standard spear form. Later generations would come to regard Imperial Army spearwork as a genuine threat — and the prevailing consensus was that this was entirely because the Imperial Army trained in the Jo Clan Spear Technique as a baseline.
A man who would leave his mark on history, you could say.
And this Jo Ga-ju was already locked in for elimination? Granted, the achievements that would etch his name into history were still far in the future — but people were people, and even now he had to be considerable talent...
"Hmm."
On second thought, it wasn't entirely implausible. Jo Ga-ju was, after all, the founder of the Jo Clan Spear Technique.
Creating a superior martial art worthy of leaving a name behind was hardly easy work.
Even dedicating yourself solely to creating martial arts wouldn't be enough. The idea that he'd become an Embroidered Uniform Guard, juggle official duties with martial creation, and still invent a technique that would go down in history — that strained credibility.
Whatever it was, Jo Ga-ju apparently had some disqualifying flaw the Embroidered Uniform Guard couldn't overlook.
I pulled my gaze from him and swept it across the other trainees.
I didn't have any special gift for reading people, but looking at a person still gave you a feeling. Even setting martial arts aside, every one of them looked like they had something going for them — and yet they were already locked in for elimination. Remarkable.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard really was something else.
It meant their standards were high enough to discard talent of this caliber over a mere disqualification.
Like a top student in their entire school still failing to get into Seoul National University — even soaring, extraordinary talent apparently couldn't help itself before the Embroidered Uniform Guard's towering threshold.
"I only came by today for a light look at your faces. Good to meet you, Jo Ga-ju."
"Sir!"
My heart felt lighter, at least. I'd expected to clutch my chest at the sight of a hopeless collection of pure problem cases — but overall, they looked perfectly normal.
"Tsk."
I'd braced myself for a parade of talent that was formidable in an entirely different sense.
I'd needlessly dredged up those buried dark memories to steel myself and only managed to give myself an internal injury.
Still — Jo Ga-ju.
I'd run into a named character in a place I never expected. My thoughts naturally drifted toward my knowledge of the future.
Historically, Jo Ga-ju might well be classified as a great man — but he wasn't a critical figure who decided the direction of a playthrough. So my memories of him had naturally gone fuzzy.
I should dig out the setting book after all this time and take another look at the Imperial Palace arc.
That was the plan, but first I needed to learn that martial art from the Imperial Palace archives. I had no Peak Realm techniques prepared at all, so I'd intended to pick out a few useful ones from the palace library — but any martial arts obtainable only from the Imperial Palace archives, I had to acquire first.
More than anything, having a few free days was a windfall. It felt like getting unexpected leave.
With a few days until the trainee selection wrapped up, I could do a bit of sightseeing in Luoyang and visit the Imperial Palace archives. Perfect.
With those thoughts, I finished my first day on the job.