National Team Selection (5)
With the team battles over, it was now time for the individual matches.
Unlike the world league, which ran a long regular season before closing out with a sixteen-team tournament, the domestic selection was a straight round-robin league. Ten matches in all — three points for a win, one for a draw, minus one for a loss. Any bout left undecided after ten minutes was ruled a draw, and the ten players with the highest point totals made the national team.
And this time, Baek Jinwoo had unveiled a different strategy.
While Hungyo anchored the front and held the line, Ramba quietly stacked her buffs onto the invisible Doldori. And then? Once enough stacks had piled up, Doldori would carve through the enemy ranks in a blink — again and again and again.
Do you know what that looks like from the outside?
It looks exactly as though Hungyo himself is the one wielding Doldori's skills.
Caster: Aaah! No upset here! Player Baek Jinwoo takes yet another victory!
Analyst: And you couldn't see that one either, could you?
Caster: Right — I could vaguely make something out, but I have no idea what it actually was! Like you said, could it be a hidden skill of that Training Instructor summon?
Analyst: Whatever it is, it's monstrous!
Doldori had exactly two skills.
Assassinate — Turns invisible for a short time. The first attack deals 100% critical damage.
Whirlwind — Spins the Reaper's Scythe in a full circle, dealing area-of-effect damage.
Assassinate, and Whirlwind. And here lay the heart of Doldori's brokenness: for him, every basic attack was Whirlwind. A zero-second cooldown — effectively a passive. Which meant? The more basic attacks he threw out, the more splash damage kept raining down. Now pile Ramba's stacks on top of that!
'Just deleted.'
The moment Doldori's invisibility dropped, he unleashed basic attacks at the speed of light, and the sheer burst of damage wiped every enemy summon off the field.
'And he isn't even properly runed yet.' Even so, the output was more than enough to send Korea's rankers packing with ease.
Caster: Player Baek Jinwoo's run has been clean and aggressive in equal measure, hasn't it?
Analyst: He hasn't let a single match pass the one-minute mark! All five matches so far, all wins — he's running joint first alongside Rank 1 Kang Geonho.
Caster: And right now! He's been matched against Kang Geonho himself!
Analyst: That's right — what a matchup to look forward to! The two title favorites, head to head!
And at last — the duel against Rank 1, Kang Geonho.
Arriving at the waiting room, Baek Jinwoo stole a glance at him.
'So this is the first time I'm seeing him in the flesh.'
Kang Geonho was the vice guild master of Baekho Guild, in his early thirties.
[Please prepare for the player duel.]
"Looking forward to a good match."
Kang Geonho offered the greeting first, and Baek Jinwoo didn't hesitate to return it.
"Likewise."
As the saying goes, manners make the man. When his opponent showed courtesy, Baek Jinwoo answered in kind.
The two stepped onto the square marble arena and summoned their forces. Naturally, Doldori was summoned already cloaked in invisibility.
[Are you ready?]
[ Y / N ]
Once both sides pressed Y, the wide protective barrier spread across the middle of the field would dissolve. Then it was simply a fight — force all five of the opponent's summons to be unsummoned, and the match was yours!
'Hmm.'
Baek Jinwoo scanned Kang Geonho's lineup: two White Earth Dragons, an Earth Fairy, a Horned Eagle, and even a Great Nature Mage. Rankers tended to have deep summon pools, so there was no telling what they'd bring out each match — they swapped lineups to counter their opponents and changed runes on the fly.
'Well, the composition is well built.'
It was respectable. The Earth Fairy amplified the elemental damage of the White Earth Dragons — bruiser-tanks, those — while the Horned Eagle layered an attack buff on top, and the Great Nature Mage, a healer, rounded it all out with sustain. He couldn't know what runes they carried, but on paper the balance was excellent. If Baek Jinwoo hadn't possessed his EX-grade summons, this era might have given him real trouble?
'But, well.' He did have EX-grade summons now. Four of them, no less.
"Yes."
There was no need to double-check anything. He pressed Y without hesitation.
[3] [2] [1]
[The player duel begins!]
Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh!
The instant the match began, Ramba zipped about, stacking buffs onto Doldori. Vwoooom — Pokryongi began charging her Blast Dragon Wave. Ha! Hungyo dashed forward, sword raised and held at a diagonal, his resolve written plainly across him: whoever came, he would hold the line alone. The Wind Falcon fluttered over and laid a movement-speed buff on him.
Rrrrumble...!
The other side wasn't sitting idle either. The two White Earth Dragons bored straight through the marble floor and dove beneath it, the Earth Fairy's and Horned Eagle's buffs layering over them simultaneously!
"Hungyo — same plan as always."
Hold the back line and endure for one minute. And to manage that?
Shwooo!
As Hungyo lifted his sword high toward the sky, a pristine white radiance swallowed the blade. Sword aura!
The White Earth Dragon's strength in player duels lay in its ability to surface beneath the back line and strike it from below. But Hungyo carried the memories of the old Battle of Summoners. He had fought at Jinugod's side there, piling up experience beyond counting. White Earth Dragons? Strike the ground beneath them, and it was over.
"Hngh!"
With a short, sharp exhale, Hungyo brought his raised sword crashing down. The sword aura split in two and plunged like a pair of bamboo spears — KWAGAGAGAGA! — and, chillingly, both halves found the vital points of the two White Earth Dragons far below with perfect precision.
"Kieeeek!" "Kieeeeeeek!"
Unable to endure the pain, the dragons burst back up through the floor. The moment they surfaced, they shook off the dirt and thrashed like mad things.
"Wh-what the—"
Kang Geonho, watching it all unfold, lost his composure. Striking the White Earth Dragons underground — directly? He had never once seen a summon capable of something so absurd.
'Impressive.'
That summon was remarkable. How stunned he had been, the first time he watched the footage of the team battles — a single summon overwhelming Oh Seon-young, Oh Jimyeong, and Park Hoseop, all ranked inside the top ten! After seeing that, he had never for a moment entertained the thought that he might win.
'Still.' He wanted to give it everything he had. Setting aside the pride of being Rank 1, this was simply the honest heart of a player.
"Great Nature Mage!"
Fwoooosh! The summon — shaped like a druid out of some primordial forest — swept its staff, and a cool breeze washed across the field. The skill was called Forest's Healing, a wide-area heal with one distinctive quirk: it granted a bonus to healing on summons with large surface areas.
"Kieek!" "Kiaaaaah!"
Before long, the two White Earth Dragons, fully restored, roared at Hungyo in fury — but...
...
Hungyo simply stood there, sword in hand, perfectly calm. There was no need to strike first. All he had to hold was one minute. Thanks to Ramba's world-class, fully maxed-out runes, one minute was all it took for Doldori's stacks to pile up to absurd heights.
And —
'I'm out of time.'
Kang Geonho knew it too. Before the match, a Baekho Guild manager had hurriedly walked him through Baek Jinwoo's match records.
'That strange attack pops out soon. I have to finish this before it does...'
But how? There was no way. One look at Hungyo standing there with his sword lowered made his breath catch in his throat.
'An iron fortress.'
The man radiated a solidity that promised no attack in existence could crack him. But he couldn't just stand there gawking!
"Charge!"
KWAGAGAGAGAGA! At Kang Geonho's gritted-teeth command, both White Earth Dragons lunged at Hungyo at once. But — Ha! With a light step, Hungyo leapt into the air and went running along the dragon's hide.
"Kieeeeek!"
The two dragons twisted and coiled, scraping against each other in their desperation to catch him — Tatatat! — but for all their bulk, they fell hopelessly short of the speed-buffed footwork dancing across their backs.
And then —
'One minute elapsed.'
Baek Jinwoo glanced toward the invisible Doldori.
"Krrrk...!"
The Whirlwind Slayer had already drifted to the center of the field. The corner of the reaper's mouth curled into a spine-chilling grin, and — Whirrr! The scythe spun once. Whirrrrr! Twice, three times, four times. Total elapsed time: roughly one second. But in that single second, the HP of Kang Geonho's summons plummeted chunk by chunk — at a speed so fast it felt hollow, almost insulting.
Caster: Just now! What was that just now!
Analyst: Did you see something black flash by?!
The casters strained, but there was nothing more to see. Doldori, having slaughtered every enemy on the field, had already melted back into invisibility. Even a closer look would have caught nothing but a fleeting black blur with a scythe.
[All summons of player 'Kang Geonho' have been unsummoned.]
[The player duel has ended.]
A clean, crushing victory for Baek Jinwoo! Even against Korea's Rank 1, there was no upset to be found.
At that moment, Yoo Jia's expression was, quite literally, radiant — the very picture of José Mourinho, the Manchester United manager, after a comeback victory.
'It really is Jinugod. No more room for doubt. Jinwoo is that legendary Jinugod!'
If not him, who else could put on a performance like that? Three rankers erased in an instant during the team battles! In the individual matches, he was chaining clean victories against every player thrown at him — and even Korea's Rank 1, Kang Geonho, had knelt at his feet.
'Does this even make sense?'
Yoo Jia still couldn't quite believe it. Even if he was Jinugod, he had only properly started recently — how could he already be displaying this kind of power!
Kim Byeongjin, Hwang Taeseop, and Park Chang-seok beside her, meanwhile, were too busy hugging one another and leaping up and down with every win. Park Chang-seok especially — he was grinning so wide the white of his teeth showed. And why wouldn't he be? Baek Jinwoo hadn't just flattened the pride of Lim Huiseu, the man who always looked down on him; he had ground it into the dirt. This wasn't a player who would merely scrape into the top ten — he was on course for a championship of crushing dominance... and the only force in the country that could hold him was Yubaek.
"Yoo Jia! No, wait — Madam CEO now, isn't it? CEO Yoo!"
Still bouncing with excitement, Park Chang-seok wiped his brow and came over.
"Taking Baek Jinwoo into Yubaek on your advice may be the best decision I've ever made in my life."
"Hehe, your eye for talent was right on the mark, Assemblyman."
"What did I tell you? I may not know much else, but I can read people. Kahaha!"
"Now all that's left is for you to ride the wave in the Assembly. Jinwoo entered under your card, after all — the public will remember that."
And if that happened, everyone won. Yubaek would keep backing Park Chang-seok, and Park Chang-seok would support Yubaek with his ever-growing political muscle. From beginning to end, everything was unfolding exactly as Yoo Jia had planned.
Caster: Player Baek Jinwoo is going absolutely insane out there! Seven straight wins! At this rate, that's a flawless ten-and-oh sweep, isn't it?
Analyst: Of course it is. This is the man who cut down the War God Kang Geonho in one minute flat — need I say more?
Even amid all that, Baek Jinwoo kept on winning.
Caster: He takes the eighth match as well! Same method as before!
Analyst: No counter has emerged! Baek Jinwoo! Baek Jinwoo is our hope!
"Ha, hahaha..."
Yoo Jia laughed, hollow with disbelief.
Jinwoo. Just how many more ways did he plan to astonish them? The ninth match, and then the final one — Baek Jinwoo never wavered. He ended each bout the same way, with the same method. Overwhelmingly. As if to say, this is all your level amounts to, he never even bothered to change the formula.
Caster: Ten matches, ten wins! Player Baek Jinwoo has written himself into legend!
Analyst: That makes Baek Jinwoo the champion! National team selection — and team captain, no less!
Caster: Hahaha, at this weight class... I'd say we can look forward to the world league as well. And it seems next year's ranker is already a foregone conclusion!
Listening to the casters' excited voices, Yoo Jia closed her eyes.
'I've found it.'
She felt it instinctively: just as her grandfather had, she had finally found the enterprise she would pour her entire life into building.
Yubaek. Supporting Baek Jinwoo was patriotism — and the shortest road to success. Best of all, it was fun.
After the clean victory, Yoo Jia smiled warmly as she watched Baek Jinwoo walk out wearing a perfectly calm expression. And then she made herself a promise: as she always had, she would give him her full, unwavering support from here on out.