Practical Evaluation
"The bracket is as follows."
On the way to the main arena, Cheonghwa quietly fell into step beside me and held up her smartphone screen.
She explained that the practical evaluation running over the next three days would take the form of a tournament—the entire student body watching, match after match, until a single winner remained standing.
"Huh? The notice is already up? I haven't even checked mine yet."
"It was posted on the announcements board a few days ago. However, I deliberately withheld it, lest it interfere with your concentration on your studies, Master."
"Come on. How much could knowing about this stuff ahead of time possibly derail my studying?"
That was what I said, but privately I was grateful. Thanks to Cheonghwa shielding me from every little distraction and managing my condition, that hellish cram session had ended in success.
"Let's see... where's my name..."
I scrolled up and down the screen, scanning the bracket.
"First match is against some kid I don't know... Oh! If things go well, I'll face Jinyul in the third round?"
The moment the words left my mouth, Jinyul, walking beside me, flinched and let out a groan.
"Uuuh... would I even be permitted to face you, Master?"
Jinyul's face had gone deathly pale.
"What, no confidence? Going by your usual level, the third round should be easy for you."
"That's not it... even if I somehow won twice by luck... how could I possibly attack you, Master?"
Ah, so that was the worry. The very idea of raising a hand against her master seemed to strike the girl as something between blasphemy and physical impossibility.
"If you're concerned about restrictions from the amulet, you needn't be," Cheonghwa explained calmly. "All physical and magical damage incurred during this evaluation will be instantly absorbed by the special artifacts installed in the sparring grounds."
"Oh? Really?"
"The pain, however, will be felt in full. It is a combat assessment, after all."
In other words, even if I took a beating, I wouldn't be injured.
It would hurt, sure—but not getting hurt was more than good enough for me.
"Darling, you're on the complete opposite side of the bracket from me?" Elena hung off my arm, giggling.
"Yeah. We'd only meet in the finals..."
Elena didn't worry me in the slightest. She'd be the strongest of any of us.
"You can make it there too, Darling!"
"...We'll see."
The problem was me. There she was, beaming ear to ear about meeting me in the finals, while I didn't have the faintest clue how I'd get there.
"Why so little confidence? You're plenty strong, Darling. Compared to the start of the semester, you've grown by leaps and bounds."
"That's true enough... but hearing it from a genius like you leaves me with a funny feeling."
Strong enough? I still had a long, long way to go. The growth since the beginning was real and remarkable, but my ambitions didn't stop there.
Just then, a murderous tension prickled at my back.
"I'm facing Baek Seolhwi in the third round too."
"Fortuitous. Time someone disciplined that insolent little firebird."
"What the hell did you—"
Yuryeon and Seolhwi were at it again, sparks practically flying from their eyes.
"Both of you, knock it off. You planning to burn out before it even starts?"
I lightly wedged myself between the two growling girls. Their bickering had become such a familiar rhythm by now, but today of all days they seemed sharper-edged than usual.
"Hmph. Just don't get eliminated halfway through."
"Screw you—wait, no, milk you! If you get knocked out first, you're dead?"
Leaving Yuryeon and Seolhwi to spin their heads away from each other in a huff, we finally reached the entrance of the main arena.
The claim that the entire student body would gather had been no exaggeration.
A flood of spectators packed the stands, while massive magical barriers rose in rings across the center of the field. The low murmur of the crowd mixed with bursts of battle cries erupting here and there, giving off a heat that stung the skin.
"Master, how are your weapon and physical condition?"
-Shff!
"Perfect. Sword's clean, gear's neatly organized."
"I'm relieved. It seems Harin took good care of everything."
Cheonghwa smoothed down the folds of my uniform and murmured softly. Perhaps it was the steadiness of her hands, but I felt my pounding heart settle a little.
"Do not be nervous, Master. You are strong. I guarantee it."
"If you say so, Cheonghwa."
Even if it was flattery, it was good to hear. I gave a wry smile and nodded. That's right—I had something to show. Proof that I hadn't spent all this time just playing around.
Just then, a resonant announcement rolled across the entire stadium.
The Practical Evaluation Tournament will begin shortly. All cadets, please proceed to your designated staging areas. Repeating the announcement...
It was really happening. Time to split up.
"Darling! I'll be waiting in the finals! You promise, right?"
"Master... please, just survive until the third round. Grant me the honor of falling by your hand..."
"Jinyul, your way of cheering people on is seriously messed up?"
Elena's boisterous encouragement, Jinyul's tear-streaked plea, and Yuryeon and Seolhwi still glaring daggers at each other as they walked away.
I watched their backs recede toward their separate zones for a moment, then drew one deep, long breath and set off toward my own staging area.
My first opponent. A name and face I didn't know—but there was no room for carelessness. When I clenched my fist, a damp sweat seeped into my palm.
Let's do this.
The curtain rose on the practical evaluation.
First Division, Kang Sera.
The second daughter of the guild master of Prometheus, one of South Korea's Top 10 Hunter Guilds.
Diagnosed with S-rank mana affinity from birth, raised drinking mana-amplification elixirs worth hundreds of millions of won like they were tap water—true aristocracy among aristocrats.
That was me.
And for someone like me to be standing in the same arena as that gutter-dweller—a nobody with no family, no background—was, in itself, an outrage. A humiliation.
Found you. My prey.
-WAAAAAAAH!!
The crowd's eardrum-rending roar, the heat of thousands vibrating the air—all of it was nothing but noise to me.
Only one thing entered my field of vision. That insolent man standing tall and unconcerned across the field.
I gripped the custom staff from Ignis Corp so hard it creaked. The artifact worth tens of billions of won resonated with its owner's fury, spewing a furious red glow.
Hwan Yihyeon.
The disgrace of the Academy—the parasite clinging to the side of the noble Saintess, Lady Elena.
In this filthy hunter society ruled by money and violence, Lady Elena was the one untainted, noble light. She was the one absolute idol that I, Kang Sera, respected and revered above all else.
But last week, that horrifying scene I witnessed in the library would not leave my mind.
How that man, in a shadowed corner of the library, had dared to wrap his filthy hands around Lady Elena's shoulders and chuckle away. Worse—far worse—Lady Elena herself, purity incarnate, had actually blushed at the flick of that man's vulgar tongue.
"Unforgivable..."
The words slipped out of me, trembling with rage.
The Saintess was too gentle by nature—she couldn't refuse even the fangs of a cunning beast like him, and so she simply accepted them. He was exploiting exactly that, dragging the Saintess's noble honor through the mud, and worse, coveting her body itself.
Some mongrel who didn't even know his place—daring to trespass on a sanctuary even I would never approach unbidden?
So it had to be me. Kang Sera would step forward.
In this hallowed sparring ground, before every student and every scout in the stands, I would expose to all the world just how pathetic, how worthless a piece of trash he truly was.
"Both cadets, ready!"
The referee's voice split the silence.
I glared at him. He was fiddling with the hilt of his sword, his face utterly devoid of tension. Standard-issue, maybe—or a hunk of scrap iron dug out of who-knows-where. Seeing him carry such a thing made a thousand fires boil up inside me.
Do you even know where you're standing?
This was not your place. A creature like you belonged crawling at my feet.
I had not the slightest intention of feeling him out first. The moment the match began, I would deny him even a chance to counter—nothing but overwhelming firepower to prove that the gulf between elite education and capital was absolute.
-Vwoooom!
The mana circuits throughout my body screamed open. As I raked in the ambient mana from every direction, the air around me scorched hot, and a crimson haze bloomed upward.
Fourth-tier fire magic. A high-order spell that first-years supposedly couldn't even materialize—I deployed it instantly, without a single syllable of incantation, through my family's secret breathing art.
"Uh, um? Your eyes look kind of intense there...?"
He seemed to have caught the vibe, his face turning flustered.
"Ha. Finally scared, are you?"
But it was already too late.
The mana condensed at the tip of my staff had become a searing crimson blaze, swelling into the shape of an enormous sphere.
No ordinary fireball. A hyper-compressed mass of heat that would detonate the instant it touched, reducing a radius of several meters to ash.
The artifacts will absorb the damage, will they?
Don't make me laugh. They can't shield him from the pain. In a hell of burning flesh, I would make him bitterly regret the sin of defiling my idol.
"Match—BEGIN!!"
The instant the referee's arm fell,
I aimed dead center at his brow and unleashed every ounce of my swelling, bursting killing intent.
"BURN!!"