The First Joint Mock Battle Simulation (3)

Professor Ma Jin-tae tapped his wristwatch a few times as he watched Kwak Ki-tae stride toward our group with far too much enthusiasm. "The mock battle simulation will begin immediately this afternoon," he announced.

"It's currently eleven in the morning, which leaves roughly two hours. Use that time to talk with your party members and prepare for the training. That's all. Dismissed!"

Having said only what was necessary, Professor Ma turned on his heel and hopped down from the platform without a backward glance. Only the five members of our party remained on the drill ground. Between us swirled a silence more suffocating than any battle... and an absolutely maddening amount of noise.

"Kyahaha! Wanna see the new bomb I made? Its power is seriously killer, though it does have one tiny downside—if you set it off in a tight space, your own allies might get blown up too!"

Kwak Ki-tae, completely oblivious, was pulling mysterious round objects from his coat and rambling on. Meanwhile...

"H-hiiiiik...! Stay away! Don't come near me!"

Song A-rin had retreated to the opposite side of Ki-tae, using her staff—which was nearly as tall as she was—as a shield in pure panic.

"W-wait a second! Ki-tae, that thing isn't actually going to explode, right? Just put it back in your pocket for now... and A-rin, you calm down too!"

Yoon Jung-woo was stretching both arms out, sweating bullets as he tried desperately to mediate between the two.

And at the pinnacle of our party, leader Han Seol-ah stood with her eyes tightly shut, pressing hard on her temples to endure the oncoming headache.

Is this party really going to be okay...?

I observed the total chaos for a moment before cautiously taking a step toward Han Seol-ah.

"Um... Leader Han Seol-ah? Since the simulation is happening right after lunch, shouldn't we at least come up with a rough plan?"

At my careful suggestion, her silver eyes—still fixed on her temples—slowly turned toward me. A chilly gaze pierced my face.

"A plan?" She let out a small, derisive snort. "Just do exactly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what I tell you. After all, none of you have even tasted what it means to be Rank 1, right?"

Her words were sharp and direct, laced with thorns. I wanted to argue, but the report card proved it was an undeniable fact, so I could only scratch the back of my head and laugh awkwardly.

"Y-yeah, that's true..."

"And you." Han Seol-ah's pale finger pointed straight at my chest. "You're only here to plug the holes in our party, so don't get too full of yourself."

"...Huh?"

Her ice-cold declaration left my mouth slightly agape. It felt like I'd been slapped across the head. In that instant, every piece of unease that had been swirling in my mind clicked perfectly into place.

Ah... I see.

The reason she had ignored all the other Rank 1 students and picked me first wasn't because she'd recognized some incredible hidden talent in me. The first party to pick always ended up automatically taking the very last student—the 160th-ranked straggler. It was a complete unknown, a potential dud that could ruin everything. And sure enough, our party had ended up with Kwak Ki-tae, a "real bomb" that threatened even his own allies.

Seol-ah had needed the perfect "patch-up part" that could fill holes in the party on the fly to control all those variables. She'd secured me first—someone who could handle any weapon at least at Rank 2 level—to prepare for the worst, then taken the reliable shield soldier Yoon Jung-woo and the dedicated healer Song A-rin to protect herself.

She just gathered support personnel who could polish her performance.

The brief thought flashed through my mind, and a strange sense of emptiness washed over me from deep in my chest.

As I stood there in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠daze, Yoon Jung-woo—who had read the worsening atmosphere—clapped his hands sharply and jumped in.

"Right! How about we grab some food first? Koreans run on rice, after all! Let's talk slowly while we eat!"

Thanks to his tear-jerking attempt at team unity, we somehow managed to move to the academy cafeteria.

Today's lunch menu was stir-fried pork and soybean paste soup. But the moment our party squeezed around a four-person table with an extra chair dragged over, the meal became pure hell.

"I actually know quite a bit about chemistry, you know? If you apply that to food, how much tastier could it get?"

Even in the cafeteria, Kwak Ki-tae's audio never stopped for a second. He pulled out a tube of bright red capsaicin sauce from who-knows-where and dumped it like a madman over the stir-fried pork on his tray. Then he shoved the now-crimson meat into his mouth and literally breathed fire with a loud "Fuuuhaaaat—!"

The situation on the opposite side was the complete opposite.

"......"

Han Seol-ah sat with her tray in front of her, not even picking up her spoon. She had both hands clenched tightly on the table, barely suppressing her boiling anger. The problem was that the colder her mood became, the more freezing mana poured from her body, turning the entire table into an ice rink.

Crack. White frost settled over the stir-fried pork, and the surface of the soybean paste soup—which should have been steaming—began to freeze solid.

Caught between those two extremes, Song A-rin trembled while clutching her spoon. With a fire-breathing mad bomber on her left and an ice witch turning the table into an ice age on her right, the killing intent crushed her. In the end, large tears welled up in her wide eyes.

"H-hiiiiik...! S-Seol-ah! The s-soup froze...!"

A-rin let out a whimpering sob, but Han Seol-ah didn't even acknowledge her. And across from that entire disaster, I quietly set down my chopsticks.

The "hole-plugging tool" fact bomb Seol-ah had dropped earlier had already killed my appetite and my energy completely.

"D-Do-woon... Want some more meat...?"

Only Yoon Jung-woo, sitting across from me, was carefully watching my gloomy expression and subtly sliding his own nearly-frozen stir-fried pork toward me.

I have no idea how that hellish time in the cafeteria passed. But I shook my head firmly and lightly slapped my own cheeks. Moping around depressed wasn't going to improve the situation, and more importantly, it wouldn't help my survival at all.

That's right. Since things have come to this, I just need to prove myself with what I do best.

I forced the corners of my mouth upward and spun my thoughts toward the positive. After all, I was the one who'd gritted my teeth and pushed through with my ambiguous talent to get this far. If a single sharp remark from the top student was enough to break me, I never would have made it into Gaon Academy in the first place.

Time flowed mercilessly onward, and before long it was afternoon. All the first-year students gathered inside the massive dedicated building where the mock battle simulation would take place.

The moment I stepped into the waiting room inside the building, I couldn't help letting out a small gasp of admiration.

"Whoa..."

Even though all two hundred first-year students were crowded inside and buzzing with noise, the waiting room was so enormous that plenty of space still remained. It was practically the size of a sports field. Four massive steel gates stood in a row at the front, radiating overwhelming pressure, and right above them hung large electronic displays waiting in dark standby, ready to show the current situation.

On the left wall, beyond darkly tinted windows that prevented anyone inside from seeing out, was the monitoring room that controlled and evaluated the interior of the simulation chamber.

I was still looking around in awe at Gaon Academy's overwhelming capital and technological prowess when—

"Kyahaha! The firepower was a little lacking at lunch earlier, right? So this time I redesigned it with a slightly smaller blast radius but made the shrapnel scatter everywhere! Pretty cool, huh?"

"No, Ki-tae. Why the hell are you taking that out here...! Put it back in your pocket right now!"

I turned at the maddening noise coming from behind me. Sure enough, our bomb maniac Kwak Ki-tae was proudly showing off a shiny new bomb again with pure... well, pure malicious intent. Yoon Jung-woo had gone deathly pale and was grabbing his arm, trying to stop him.

"Hwaaaaang! Please save me! I feel like I'm going to die from an explosion before we even get inside!"

And at their feet, Song A-rin was clinging to one of Ki-tae's ankles like a cicada, trying to physically block his madness. She was being dragged along, pouring out thick tears. It really felt like our party was going to run out of stamina before we even entered the simulation.

I turned my gaze toward Han Seol-ah, who stood alone amid the total chaos. Leaning lightly against the wall, her expression looked far more serious than it had in the cafeteria. Her sunken silver eyes were staring into empty space, probably running tens of thousands of mental simulations about the unknown battle ahead and focusing intently.

Right. She's the leader, after all. I should be the one to approach first.

With renewed determination, I walked over and stopped in front of her.

"Hey... Seol-ah."

"...?!"

Caught deep in thought, her shoulders stiffened at my call. A flash of panic crossed her eyes as she looked at me, but she quickly returned to her cool expression and glared.

I smiled awkwardly and slowly extended my right hand.

"It's true that I didn't consider my position and got ahead of myself. I'm sorry. Still, I really want to be genuinely helpful to you and to our party. Let's forget about what happened earlier and do well together. I'll be waiting for your orders. I'll follow them properly."

At my polite and sincere apology, Seol-ah's gaze shifted back and forth between my outstretched right hand and my face. After a very brief silence—just as cold sweat was starting to run down my back, wondering if she would ignore my hand—

"......"

She gave a small nod and reluctantly took my hand. A cold yet soft sensation traveled through my palm. Even as she lightly shook the joined hands, she avoided meeting my eyes and slightly turned her gaze to the side. Seeing that strangely embarrassed side profile, I let out a quiet sigh of relief inside.

Thank goodness. Looks like she was bothered by how harshly she spoke to me in the cafeteria after all.

I was consoling myself that the slight resentment within the party had melted away, even if only by a tiny bit, when the clock hands struck exactly one-thirty in the afternoon. Professor Ma Jin-tae, whom we'd seen on the platform earlier, strode out to the center of the waiting room.

"Everyone, attention."

His heavy voice, infused with mana, instantly dominated the vast waiting room. All two hundred students fell silent at once and lined up facing him.

"I will now announce the rules for the first virtual mock battle."

Professor Ma's sharp eyes swept over us. "First, the simulation will be conducted simultaneously by four parties at a time through the four gates visible at the front. The order of entry will be decided by each leader coming forward and drawing lots. Second."

He held up two fingers and continued. "Inside the mock simulation, you are strictly prohibited from bringing any of the 'personal weapons' you normally use."

"What? We can't use our personal weapons?"

"That's ridiculous. How are we supposed to fight without weapons we're used to?"

Complaining murmurs erupted from various places. For elites who had devoted their lives to specific weapons like swordsmanship or spearmanship, having their weapons taken away was no different from having their limbs cut off.

But Professor Ma ignored them and jerked his chin toward the right wall. "Instead, you may freely receive and use 'simulation-exclusive weapons' from the armory beyond that door on the right. Open it."

At Professor Ma's command, the assistants standing by the right side of the waiting room smoothly pushed the massive steel door open to both sides.

"...Insane."

The dazed exclamation that slipped from someone's mouth perfectly represented how all two hundred of us felt. The sight of the armory revealed beyond the door surpassed imagination. Inside the space that looked to be hundreds of square meters, every kind of weapon imaginable was densely displayed, so dazzling it hurt the eyes—all of it the concentrated result of Gaon Academy's enormous capital.

From the most basic longswords and bastard swords to sharply forged Japanese katanas, wide-bladed crescent moon blades, and spears of various lengths, they were all lined up. There were even special weapons like maces, whips, chakrams, smoke bombs, and other hidden weapons. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say every lethal weapon that existed in the world was gathered there.

What was even more astonishing was the quality of those weapons. Even from a distance, the blades forged from special alloys that faintly circulated mana boasted a finish on a completely different level from the standard training weapons the students usually used.

"Oh... these are pretty good."

Even the Rank 1 top students, including Hwang Seong-jae the shield guardian, let out gasps of admiration at the weapons' brilliant appearance.

"Wow, this is crazy. Those look way better than the personal weapons I bought with all my savings."

"The quality of simulation-exclusive weapons is this high? As expected of Gaon."

The sound of students swallowing hard could be heard from the ordinary students.

As the students stared at the overwhelming sight of the armory in a trance, Professor Ma Jin-tae added the decisive line with a faint smirk.

"As I just said, you may use any of the weapons there however you like during the simulation. It doesn't matter what you choose or how many weapons you take with you."

"...Huh?"

It doesn't matter how many weapons you take with you.

The moment Professor Ma's casual remark struck my eardrums, an intense shiver ran through my entire body, from the nape of my neck down my spine, as if every hair was standing on end.

I stared blankly at the endless array of every kind of weapon. Swords, spears, blades, blunt weapons, shields, hidden weapons. The past years I'd spent shedding bloody tears because of my ambiguous talent—grinding through every single weapon until I mastered them all at Rank 2 level—flashed through my mind like a panorama.

I only had one personal weapon, but here I could use all of them however I wanted?

"Then..."

A hollow laugh slipped out between my lips without me realizing it, and my heart began to pound wildly.

That guy... the one who gives people food. A good person......