99. My Buff is a Drug
99. My Buff is a Drug
August 3rd (Fri) 1:28 PM
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"Well then, let's see which new faces stood out in this exam."
Clap! Clap!
With two claps from the platinum-blonde, green-eyed girl, the entire room began to change.
KUUUURRRR!!
The area around the plush chair she sat in rose up, everything else sank away, and only a massive beam projector remained positioned before her.
A satisfied smile settled on the girl's lips.
"Begin."
The young lady of a noble house born with everything.
There was no better way to describe the existence known as Yoon Eun-ha.
At least, that was how it looked through the eyes of the have-nots who had never become the protagonists of their own lives.
The surname Yoon, combined with a striking appearance of platinum-blonde hair and green eyes, made it clear she was an Awakened who carried the blood of the Yoon Jun family.
The blood of the Yoon Jun family ran thick.
As if the First Family Head's traits contained a hidden function that forcefully passed down genetic characteristics, all Awakened of the Yoon Jun family shared facial features reminiscent of the First Family Head, who had been of Russian descent.
Yet it never erased their individuality — instead shaping each into a distinct, refined beauty. A truly blessed lineage.
Smoothly....
A male student standing at the podium next to the beam projector adjusted his glasses once and began his explanation.
"There are two teams worth noting this time. The first is the case of a party consisting of D, D, and C-rank members who achieved four wins...."
Yoon Eun-ha cut him off.
"Hold on. A D, D, and C-rank team got four wins?"
"Yes, that is correct. Their final match was a loss, but they showed they could hold out against a B, B, C-rank team, so it will likely count as a bonus point in their favor."
Participation in the Combat Tournament Exam went up to B-rank.
For a team of D, D, and C-rank members to hold out against B, B, and C-ranks was, even to Yoon Eun-ha, highly noteworthy.
"Tell me about that in detail first."
"Understood. Please watch the footage first."
Beep.
The male student manipulated the remote and the screen changed.
Footage of Hye-yong, Lanfang, and Park Yuri fighting played back.
— What the hell! That shield's way too tough!
— A shield like that has to drain a ton of energy! Just keep pounding it!
The playback cut off there for a moment.
Right in that state, the screen switched.
Another scene played, showing them blocking attacks with the shield again.
After about twenty of those short clips played in succession, the screen changed again — three photos that looked like they'd been taken from multiple angles of voyeur footage.
Then a screen of annotated explanations appeared.
"The key player on this team is this student."
"Choi Hye-yong. D-rank, Blessing Mage."
"As you just saw, he wields a fairly powerful shield freely, and this appears to be his main ability."
"He uses a gun as a secondary weapon, but does not seem to possess a related trait."
"There are currently no known cases of a Blessing Mage trait and a firearm trait manifesting together."
The video played again.
Footage of Lanfang and Yuri charging out after receiving Hye-yong's buff played, then stopped.
"However, he clearly also possesses body-enhancement type blessings."
The screen switched, this time displaying a photograph of Lanfang.
"This student, named Rian Pang, achieved three wins in 1v1 matches. That places her roughly in the upper middle tier of C-rank."
Next was Park Yuri.
"Her other teammate, Park Yuri, was the same. Three wins, upper C-rank ability."
"It was absolutely not a level that should have let them match up against B-rank melee combat classes."
"But once they went on a rampage under the effect of both the blessing and the shield, they made even two B-ranks look uncomfortable."
"They lost in the end, but anyone watching would say they put up a damn good fight."
"Compared to other Blessing Mages, his timing on shield generation and transition to other blessings is remarkably fluid and skilled."
Yoon Eun-ha looked on with interested eyes.
"Not bad. The shield strength is a little lacking, but I like its activation speed. It could reliably protect someone even in an emergency. If it can just reduce the impact of surprise attacks a bit, my Mana Barrier can easily handle the rest."
"Yes. In terms of casting speed, he appears to be a natural."
"I'm feeling inclined to scout him as my guard......."
At that moment, the female student standing beside the sofa Yoon Eun-ha sat on frowned slightly.
"I am more than sufficient for the role of the young lady's guard."
Some filthy man has no place....
The female student lightly swept her ash-grey hair behind her ear, asserting her presence.
"Of course, I certainly think of you as reliable. But the lesser the danger, the better, no? And I also think it's a good opportunity to get accustomed to men this time, Se-rin."
Get accustomed to men?
If those words had come from anyone other than the liege she served, she would definitely have shot back, "Don't talk nonsense."
The female student, Ahn Se-rin, swallowed what she wanted to say and displayed her loyalty to her liege.
"I am confident."
"Yes, well, even if we don't hire him exactly as a guard, it wouldn't hurt to scout him anyway. Lee Hyun, give me the details."
"Yes."
The male student called Lee Hyun answered and manipulated the remote.
"A point of note is his rank. His rank is currently at least two steps lower than his actual skill, and they say he was F-rank until just recently."
"F-rank? No wonder I'd never heard of him."
"Yes. Rumors say he was notorious as a deadbeat among deadbeats. He also had severe aphasia, making communication nearly impossible."
"It's not likely his abilities suddenly grew."
"We speculate that he had been hiding his true strength and then revealed it. Though cautiously, we assume the aphasia was also an act to voluntarily isolate himself — the intent behind it, we don't know."
Yoon Eun-ha smiled softly.
"That concept isn't bad either. I'm liking this more and more. There's a chance he's still hiding more strength, isn't there?"
"There is more than enough possibility."
"Make a preemptive move before anyone else snatches him up. For compensation, offer something like a guaranteed promising future."
"I will do so. Then, the next team is......."
Hye-yong's existence was beginning to become known throughout the facility.
-
'Ah, tomorrow's the weekend. What should I do?'
First, gotta buy snacks and head in!
Freed from the exam, Hye-yong headed toward the convenience store with a light heart.
But then, a female student leaning against the wall by a corridor classroom blocked his path.
"You're Choi Hye-yong, right? Nice to meet you."
She grinned as she greeted him.
What the hell? She's cute, but I've never seen her before.
"Uh... nice to meet you too."
"I'll skip the small talk and get straight to the point. Miss Eun-ha apparently watched your tournament footage and found it quite impressive."
Miss Eun-ha?
'What, is she the daughter of some bigwig in the Hunter world or something?'
He wondered if he really had that level of skill to draw attention from someone like that, but he accepted it easily enough.
'Well, Blessing Mages are already few in number, and the ones who can skillfully use a shield are even rarer, so I guess.'
But what exactly did it mean that this Miss Eun-ha had found him impressive? Curious, Hye-yong hedged his answer to get more information.
"Uh......."
"...You're not going to say you don't know who Miss Eun-ha is, are you?"
Apparently, not knowing who Young Lady Eun-ha was around here made you basically a spy.
"Ah, of course I know her. I was just suddenly overwhelmed with emotion that such an incredible person found me impressive, so I was thrown off for a second."
"Heh, I suppose that's fair. Anyway, you can be happy. Miss Eun-ha mentioned she wants to scout you, Choi Hye-yong."
Huh, a scouting offer. Were they already making guild recruitment offers? I'm still a first-year.
"If you join our Eunha Group, you can receive benefits like artifacts, skills, and points."
"Not only that, but you'll be able to proceed through future exams comfortably."
"And after graduation, you'll receive priority rights to join a guild operated by the Yoon Jun family."
"You can pretty much consider your life made the moment you accept. How about it? Doesn't it grab your interest?"
"Miss Eun-ha doesn't just scout anyone anytime, so I'd say it's best not to miss this opportunity."
However, Hye-yong didn't particularly feel like joining any guild, even after graduation.
But outright refusing right away felt a bit off, so to at least act like he was considering it, he replied.
"Hmm... can you give me some time?"
"Fine. But answer me by Monday. Let's exchange messenger contacts."
"Alright."
He exchanged messenger contacts with the female student.
[ Han Chae-hyun ]
'So her name is Chae-hyun.'
He filed it away in his memory.
"Enjoy your weekend, and think about it positively."
"Yeah, you have a good weekend too."
Han Chae-hyun grinned and passed by him.
'Hmm, a scouting offer.'
The thought that he was finally starting to get attention felt a bit strange, but the idea that someone wanted to recruit him into their faction didn't feel bad at all.
Of course, he planned to refuse.
Once Monday came, he decided he'd ask Choi Ah-young about it in the morning.
'Just gonna buy some food and head back. I should crack open a can of beer tonight.'
Since the students at the facility were legally treated as adults, the convenience store naturally sold alcohol.
Because men could control their libido and women were infertile, there was no risk of some orgy leading to mass pregnancy, and since you could burn off the effects of alcohol with mana, drunken rampages practically never happened.
So they even encouraged moderate drinking to unwind a bit.
'Already grinning ear to ear just thinking about watching Watcher.'
This "Watcher" thing was basically this other world's version of YouTube.
YouTube was a bit more convenient, but Watcher wasn't bad either.
There were plenty of fun games and Awakened YouTubers, so he was enjoying watching it.
-
"Ahh, the beer tastes fucking amazing."
This was true pleasure.
No, actually, come to think of it, sex might be a bit better.
Anyway, he was definitely in a good mood.
'Seriously, this place is wa-a-a-a-ay better than the original world.'
The manufactured goods here had the touch of cooking-class Awakeneds in them.
There weren't many cooking-class Awakeneds, but it was said that any place of a decent scale had at least one.
Cooking-class Awakeneds who ran ordinary restaurants were truly, exceptionally rare, but even those used seasonings and condiments made by fellow cooking-class Awakeneds, so everything you ate at a restaurant was above average.
So the beer tasted good, and the snacks tasted good.
'There's no weird female-supremacy ideology either. No sanctification of sex or anything. No real internet censorship either. No warning popping up when you watch porn. Now this is a properly run country.'
The Korea Hye-yong had originally lived in was an environment that held far too many infuriating aspects for an ordinary young man in his twenties — to the point you might think it was the generation abandoned by the state!
Sure, if you started comparing it to underdeveloped countries, it was endlessly good, but judged by normal versus abnormal, it was clearly leaning heavily toward being deeply abnormal.
But he had seen on the internet that the Korea of this world had a high marriage rate, a high birth rate, and gender happiness statistics that were almost perfectly aligned.
Had collapsing spectacularly once helped set the order straight?
It was an era where you didn't see many posts cursing politicians, and where you could see more people praising the president online than insulting them.
'Can't I just switch my home base? I wanna live here for the rest of my life.'
Of course, even in a shitty era, if your own abilities were outstanding, that was all that mattered.
Still, Hye-yong liked this world better.
'Once I save the place, they'll let me live here too, right?'
Should I ask Mina about it...?
BWEE-REE-REE-RIK!
Right as that thought crossed his mind, Hye-yong's terminal rang.
'What's this?'
[ Mina : Creator-nim! ]
Speak of the devil, Mina had contacted him.
'Something else up? What's Mina suddenly contacting me for?'
[ Choi Hye-yong : I'm free, so go ahead and call. ]
The moment he sent that message, he was moved into Mina's inner world.
He wondered what sort of concept it would be this time, but it was the same white room and the same suit she always wore.
'Looks like she wants to talk about something serious.'
Let's hear her out first.
"Creator-nim, I have something to tell you."
"What is it? Spill."
"I've sensed the presence of a new Virus. It may appear soon."
"Ah."
Sigh, you again, Virus?
'It's definitely been pretty peaceful lately....'
He figured it had been exactly a month since the last Virus news.
'Well, I just have to kill the Virus and be done with it.'
Good timing, actually.
There was something he'd meant to ask about the Virus before, but time had passed and he'd forgotten.
He decided to ask Mina about various things.