Compensation
Wham!
"Say that again. What did you just say?"
Pinned by the collar in Kang Jihun's grip, I thought to myself.
Great. Twisted myself right into this. All because of this damn mouth of mine.
I can't stand watching something that doesn't make sense. If someone says something wrong, I have to correct them. If they do something wrong, I have to pick at it until I'm satisfied. Kang Jihun was no exception. Protagonist party or not, nobody escaped my nitpicking.
And now he'd gone beyond ruining the mood and straight into assault. How was I supposed to just take that?
"Hey, let go of her first and then talk."
Elaine grabbed Kang Jihun's arm. Of course, he wasn't about to let go.
"……Shut up. Anyone who butts in from this point on is dead."
His eyes burned. I stared into them with genuine curiosity.
Damn, the graphics are insane.
No matter how far virtual reality had come, it still couldn't be identical to reality. There was always a touch of that anime feel mixed in. Watching Kang Jihun's red hair rendered strand by strand was genuinely refreshing.
Whoosh—
"Hhk—!"
My vision flipped upside down. Kang Jihun had thrown me.
"This bastard keeps staring at me like he's looking down on me!!"
"Hey, Adriel!"
Elaine bolted toward me in a panic. But before her feet had even fully left the ground, I landed soft and snug in someone's arms.
"Oops. That was close."
"……?"
The man who'd caught me was a guy in his thirties wearing a pair of round glasses. Still holding me, he flicked the hand gripping his staff — and blue lightning cracked through the air, slamming straight into Kang Jihun.
CRACK-ZZZT!
"Ghh…… uurrgh!"
Blue sparks raged endlessly around Kang Jihun's body. His face twisted as he clenched his teeth, trembling violently in place.
Paralysis magic!
Lightning-attribute spells were typically used for capture. They could kill, sure, but without water-attribute magic backing them up, their power dropped off hard. Even then, for a single target, you still had to carefully control the intensity.
The man set me down gently and stroked his chin with interest.
"He holds up surprisingly well. That friend of yours is from a prestigious hunter family, correct?"
Is he asking me?
I glanced around before answering.
"Yes…… well. Probably."
"As expected — better than I'd hoped. I was a little worried I might accidentally kill him. Haha."
Chuckling smoothly, the man swept his cloak and approached Kang Jihun. Jihun glared at him with bloodshot eyes, and then—
He's looking at me.
Stubborn little bastard. That part was exactly like his original concept. Once he locked onto a target, he bit down and never let go. In the original story, that habit got him beaten like a dog by the protagonist, then completely demolished in a verbal fight on top of it. After that his personality did a full one-eighty — but that feral fighting style never changed.
And this time…… it looked like he'd picked the wrong target again.
"Where are you looking? That friend over there is just my afterimage."
Thwap—!
Still joking, the man grabbed Kang Jihun's head and forced it around. But Jihun's eyes rolled right back and locked onto me again. The man might as well have not existed.
"……."
The amusement drained from the man's face.
Rain Lightning
Shhhhhrrrk—!
Countless water droplets charged with electricity bloomed into existence and wrapped around the two of them like a sphere. The droplets stretched into needles and surged toward Kang Jihun all at once.
CRACK-ZZZZZT—!!!
"GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
Finally, a real scream. His whole body convulsed, limbs thrashing like a live fish on a deck. Honestly, given how stubborn he was, I'd expected him to hold out again — so this was a surprise. It meant the skill was that powerful.
Within seconds, Kang Jihun's eyes rolled back and his head lolled completely limp.
Thud!
The man released his head, and the water droplets and sparks vanished in an instant. Kang Jihun's body crumpled like a boneless octopus.
Wiping his hand with a handkerchief pulled from his breast pocket, the man said,
"To the infirmary."
White-uniformed attendants appeared from somewhere, lifted Kang Jihun with telekinesis, and floated him away.
"……."
Silence settled over the room.
Given the circumstances, this man was clearly an academy instructor — one of the people who would be in charge of us going forward. And he'd just used magic that powerful to half-kill a student. Not just any student, either — the one rated strongest among the incoming class. This went past fear and straight into worrying about what the future held.
"You there, student. Are you all right?"
The man asked me. I nodded calmly.
"You don't seem as startled as I expected. And you don't appear to have any mana, either."
The surrounding students started murmuring. From the words I could catch, they'd assumed I was an ability user. The way I'd stood up to Kang Jihun so boldly, they'd been looking forward to a fight.
The man seemed to have thought the same at first. He nodded, then shrugged.
"Well, as long as you're unharmed, that's what matters. Next time something like this happens, call one of us teachers. For reference, I'm Alked — I'll be handling your elemental magic classes. Looking forward to working with you~"
"Pfft. Did he just say 'you~'?"
"Dude, shut up. He can hear you, you idiot."
"What, I can't even laugh now?"
"Look at him — the guy's clearly a psycho. Know your place before you open your mouth, dumbass."
You're not wrong.
The classic type who smiled while killing people. Mild and goofy on the surface, but once he got angry, endlessly cruel. I'd run into that kind in the military and in civilian life more than once.
I returned to my seat and sat down quietly. Elaine leaned over, worried.
"Are you really okay?"
I nodded, then opened my mouth.
"Hey, I've got a question."
"Hmm?"
"How many teachers like that are there at this school? Or more precisely — including the teachers, how many people that strong are around?"
"Hmm……."
Elaine seemed to think for a moment, then the corner of her mouth lifted. Her bright eyes locked onto mine.
"You really don't know anything, do you?"
"Yeah. I came from pretty far away."
"Ahahaha, from far away, huh. I see. Then you'll need a friend to kindly explain things and show you around, won't you?"
"……."
I let out a sigh. I'd been trying to ignore it, but at this point there was no getting around it. I couldn't exactly go through the academy completely alone, either. And more than anything, she didn't seem like a bad person.
"Fine. Let's be friends."
Elaine beamed.
"Great! Yes! One more secured."
"One more what?"
"Nothing. Anyway, to answer your question……."
Elaine chattered away beside me until the student representative's speech began. There was some useless fluff mixed in, but overall she neatly organized exactly the information I'd wanted — the academy's financial scale, the teachers' abilities and ranks, the security forces protecting the place, and so on.
Incredible. And forces of that caliber still got completely wiped out?
The more I listened, the more absurd it became. With that kind of manpower, they could handle five A-class gates erupting at once. And this was a place that raised young prospects — if anything went wrong, outside support would arrive fast. For the academy to end up in ruins meant even that support force had been hit.
What the hell was it?
I hadn't dug deep into the story, so I didn't really know. Maybe it was something that never even appeared in the game. But one thing was certain.
I have to stop it.
In the original, dozens of rankers died during the academy incident. Then came the powerful gates that followed. The surviving hunters rushed in, foreign support arrived, but they still couldn't stop the Breaks — and localized battles erupted all over Seoul. The setting of Gate Apocalypse was everything after that: a South Korea where Breaks kept erupting nonstop from sheer lack of manpower. The wealthier regions barely took damage and their defenses stayed solid, but anywhere even a little removed from the city centers grew dangerously unstable. The protagonist party's role was to stabilize those unstable regions.
"Ha…… why am I even worrying about this."
Why else? Because of Kang Jiye and Yena. If the number of hunters plummeted, public safety would naturally fall apart, and Kang Jiye would push her body even harder. She might even die.
This is exactly why I didn't want to get close to anyone.
Build connections and suddenly there was so much more to care about. People might say I could just look the other way — but I didn't have the mental fortitude to ignore the misfortune of people around me and keep living just fine. That was why I'd never tried to build relationships with others in the first place.
"No point stewing over it. Move early and rest later."
I muttered to myself and started laying out a plan — ways to discover gates in advance, and ways to eliminate them as safely as possible. All while moving as little as I could myself, of course.
And before long, one conclusion presented itself.
I need to make Party Bears.
Pecia was, after all, a gate boss. And a boss was a concept that couldn't exist without subordinates. Among those, the Party Bears were the basic magical beasts of the amusement park. Not only were there a lot of them — they didn't stand out and could blend into daily life, making them perfect for gate surveillance.
"Pecia, Teacher Alked is calling for you."
Just as the outline of my plan was starting to take shape, Elaine finished the student representative speech and came over.
"Me? Why?"
"Hehe. I pulled a few strings. Go eat well."
"……?"
"The Joel Family Head wants to apologize to me?"
Kang Jihun was the one who'd gotten beaten and was lying down — so why was the apology coming to me? If anything, it wouldn't have been strange for them to chew me out over what I'd done to their kid. And if they were a prestigious hunter family, covering up an incident like this should have been easy as pie.
But in answer to my confusion, Teacher Alked wagged his index finger left and right.
"Rumors that a child of a prestigious hunter family laid hands on a powerless girl are already spreading everywhere. No matter how powerful you are, social condemnation is unavoidable."
"……Ah."
"Moreover, this whole affair started because you stepped in to protect Student Elaine, did it not? There's no way she would sit quietly and let the matter be buried."
"Huh? ……So you're saying Elaine can stand up to the Joel family?"
"Not so much stand up to them as already put them on notice that she will not let this slide."
Oh ho. Being student representative was more impressive than I'd thought. I never imagined it could offset pressure from a prestigious hunter family.
"Well, even without that, this is an academy. If we can't instill culture in our students and cultivate their abilities, we at least shouldn't permit injustice based on someone's background."
I nodded.
"A fair point."
"Isn't it? So I'll ask. Will you speak with the Joel Family Head?"
"……The Family Head, huh."
I sighed inwardly. Why would I want to meet that man? All I had left was the aptitude test and then going home. Apology or not, what I wanted was peaceful time in my bed.
I looked at Teacher Alked for a moment, then asked,
"Could I just accept the apology and leave it at that?"
"Hmm? What do you mean by that~?"
"I mean, we treat it as if the apology was received, and I don't make an issue of anything after that."
Honestly, this had gone past mere annoyance. Barely an hour had passed since the incident. In that short time, video footage had already spread and the head of a prestigious hunter family had already moved. For things to turn this fast meant it was a pretty big deal. Apology or whatever — I had zero intention of getting tangled up in something this complicated.
"……You mean you'll just let it go entirely?"
"Yes. Is that not allowed?"
Teacher Alked looked surprised.
"It's not that it's not allowed. But this is a chance to take a big bite out of a prestigious hunter family, you know? With one compensation payment, you could cover a full year of tuition~"
"A full year of tuition?"
"Yes. And for reference, that includes all room and board expenses."
"……Hmm."
Money, huh. Honestly, I did need money right now. Making Party Bears required cloth and cotton woven from mana thread, and given the numbers involved, that would take a considerable sum.
But was this really something worth extracting that kind of money over?
Obviously no. Honestly, I'd been the one who provoked the already-agitated guy. And more than anything, I was completely fine — no physical or mental harm whatsoever. Taking money here would be outright fraud.
"Um…… then."
"Yes?"
"Never mind. Could I make a quick call? I feel like this is something I should say directly."
If I wasn't careful, this could be misinterpreted as a threat. For something like this, you had to bow low and speak politely to avoid trouble later.
Teacher Alked blinked, then said,
"Sure thing~. I'll connect you."
He called somewhere, exchanged greetings, and before long the Bluetooth activated and I was given the go-ahead to speak. I addressed the empty air.