Full-Scale Training (3)
"Alright, everyone—here are your new summons. The purchase costs have been deducted from each of your national support stipends, so bear that in mind as you come up and collect them one at a time. Everyone gets at least one, except Hwang Juwon, Oh Seon-young, and Hwang Jiwoo."
Sorry, but those three already had perfect summon compositions. There was no need to touch them at all—they only had to keep building on what they had.
"Ohh, there's one for me too?"
Kang Geonho stepped up first, carefully accepting the Black Knight in exchange.
A summon I've never seen before.
He studied it with eyes caught between astonishment and curiosity. Combing the summon market every day was practically his daily routine, so how on earth had Jinwoo gotten his hands on something he'd never once laid eyes on?
"I'll put it to good use."
What could it be?
The moment he read the information on the summon he'd accepted with such careful anticipation—
Crazy!
He freaked out on the spot.
An A-rank Black Knight?
In a flash, he understood exactly what Baek Jinwoo had been thinking when he tracked this summon down. Every weakness he'd quietly chalked up to himself all this time could be firmly shored up with this one Black Knight alone.
Whoa!
Kang Geonho clenched both fists tight. He could already see it: Paladin and Black Knight fanning out on opposite flanks, tearing the enemy to pieces.
From here on out, I'm grinding these two like crazy.
At the same time, he sensed that something had truly changed. Unlike the national team consulting days of old, it felt as though he'd finally stepped inside Baek Jinwoo's fence. Honestly? It was warm in there.
Kang Geonho wasn't the only one stunned.
"Wow, this is a Phoenix! I've wanted one of these for ages—how did you even...!"
Hong Ari, too, accepted the Phoenix with an expression overflowing with emotion.
Fwoooosh! Flames wrapped around her body, yet she didn't feel the slightest heat.
A perfect upgrade over the firebird I've been using.
With this alone, she could become ten times stronger than she was today.
"Thank you. Really—truly, thank you."
When Hong Ari threw composure to the wind and beamed, everyone around her did a double take. She was normally prickly and hopeless at expressing herself, so a reaction like that could only mean she genuinely loved it.
Well, fair enough. A Phoenix would warrant that kind of face.
One look and you can tell it's a superb summon. Whoever owned it before probably refused to let it go without a fight.
Wow, look at those wings. "Beautiful" doesn't even begin to cover it—it's awe-inspiring.
The guild members gazed at Hong Ari cradling her Phoenix with undisguised envy.
Three summons remained!
"Next up—Ahn Gijeong."
"Whoa, is that the Poison King?"
For Ahn Gijeong: the A-rank Poison King! Until now he'd been running B-ranks like the Seven-Star Sword and the Black Widow—poison-attribute summons and nothing else. And the Poison King of Murim was precisely the summon that multiplied every stat of a poison-attribute lineup several times over.
"Something this precious... With this, the World League might actually be worth a shot. Thank you."
Ahn Gijeong bowed his head deeply and withdrew.
Next, Ki Jaehyeok!
"Boss! No way—is that the Goblin Master? Gwaaahhh!"
The goblin devotee threw his arms around the Goblin Master and started stroking it all over, cooing. It was the reaction of a child unwrapping the one gift he'd always dreamed of.
"How long were you planning to run two hobgoblins? Time to switch to the Goblin Master."
"Thank you, Boss! I swear my undying loyalty!"
Next, Kang Jiho!
"Mine's the Mad Demon!"
The A-rank Mad Demon was another child of Murim. For Kang Jiho, whose mainstay was burst-damage summons like the Snowflake Berserker (B-rank), nothing could have suited him better!
And just like that, all five A-ranks had found their owners.
"Okay."
Baek Jinwoo smiled.
"That wraps up the A-ranks... And finally—Song Yeonhee?"
"Yes! Here!"
"What I have for you is something separate, so wait right there. The rest of you, take this time to bond with your new summons under Hungyo. Today is individual training."
"Yes, sir!"
Whoosh! Everyone scattered to every corner of the training grounds with their summons in tow. Some were itching to test their new summons right away; others simply wanted to feel what commanding a summon was like at all. After days of nothing but grueling, tedious conditioning, this was their very first summon training. Of course they were buzzing with excitement.
In a quiet corner outside the training grounds, atop a table, five varieties of dolls had been laid out before Song Yeonhee. Marionettes—known in ages past as gwiroe, the puppets of old.
"Song Yeonhee."
"Yes!"
"Let me be blunt with you."
Thump. Baek Jinwoo dropped into a chair and spoke with uncharacteristic gravity.
"Honestly? Out of all the national team members here, you've got the highest potential after me and Hwang Jiwoo. And the two of us are kind of broken, so let's put it in world terms—your ceiling is high enough to crack the future world top ten, easily."
"..."
Song Yeonhee's face went blank.
Wh-what did he just say?
World top ten?
Really?
For reference, Kang Geonho—Korea's number one—couldn't even scrape into the world top 100.
No, wait. More importantly.
What exactly was he basing this "potential" on? Could anyone really speak with that much conviction?
"There's just one condition. If you want to get there, you'll have to throw away every summon you've used until now."
"...I'm sorry—what?"
Korea's rank 60. Climbing that far, Song Yeonhee had grown genuinely attached to her summons. And now he wanted her to discard them completely?
"I'm not telling you to abandon them. I'm saying that from now on, these five will be your mains."
Baek Jinwoo gazed at the dolls with a faraway, nostalgic look. Each was called the Fire Puppet, the Water Puppet, the Wood Puppet, the Metal Puppet, and the Earth Puppet. They really were adorable little elemental dolls. All of them, B-rank.
"What are they?"
"Controlling them is absurdly hard. But if you can master that control, they're broken—summons that can perform above A-rank, maybe even touch S-rank territory."
"..."
"Can't picture it? Then let me show you."
Baek Jinwoo rose to his feet and took hold of the Fire Puppet's control strings.
Okay, here goes.
He'd used this summon a few times back in Battle of Summoners, too. When it was first revealed, its absurd performance had everyone screaming that it was broken and would be balance-patched into oblivion any day.
But what good is broken if nobody can actually use it?
To command even one of these puppets, you had to control five strings in total: head, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg. Unlike other summons, which moved with a degree of autonomy, every action this doll took—from attack to evasion—had to be micromanaged by the player. So after a handful of tries, people quietly dropped it. No matter how well you raised one, if the player's hands were trash, it could never perform.
Swish. Baek Jinwoo's fingers began to move with liquid grace.
This is my first time doing it in reality, though.
And yet—why? It felt like he could control it just fine.
Swiiiish! The Fire Puppet glided smoothly into motion and began to dance, spitting flame.
Its target: a scarecrow forged of iron.
Huh. This is actually going well?
If he was honest, it felt easier in reality than it ever had through a phone screen. The Fire Puppet darted all over the field, striking with fire here, there, everywhere—or twirling in place, spraying flames in every direction. Baek Jinwoo was having fun already.
Shall I try one more?
He went ahead and seized the Water Puppet as well. Controlling two puppets at once doubled the difficulty—ten strings now, not five.
Kwagagaga! With the Water Puppet's attacks piling on, the field began to swirl into chaos.
...This is...
Song Yeonhee, watching, clicked her tongue in disbelief. In her eyes, Baek Jinwoo looked like a puppeteer with at least twenty years of deeply ingrained experience.
Is that even possible?
Ten strings descending from the sky moved like flowing water.
KRA-KA-KA-KLANG! The firmly anchored iron scarecrow rang out like it was being torn apart.
And he wants ME to do that?
No matter how she turned it over, she had no confidence. From the look of things, those two wouldn't be the end of it, either... She had a feeling she'd be controlling all five puppets at once...
"Watch closely. I'm only showing you this once."
Baek Jinwoo moved as though possessed. In a blink, the Wood Puppet joined in—then the Metal Puppet. Four marionettes, filling the field of view on every side!
Fwoosh! Fire blazed. Splash! Water geysered upward. CRRRUNCH! Tree trunks erupted from the ground and bound the scarecrow fast. Vwooom! The puppets were wreathed in golden light.
"Fire and Water are your damage. Wood handles binding and healing. Metal is your defense."
Baek Jinwoo lowered his stance and drew the strings taut. It looked like the gentlest of tugs, but every single pull carried fine, deliberate micro-adjustments. To Song Yeonhee, Baek Jinwoo was simply a genius. The hopeless, no-answer-for-it kind of genius!
"And Earth flips the ground—or bends gravity—to steal the enemy's balance right out from under them."
At last, Baek Jinwoo took control of all five puppets. He had become something like a graceful liquid, moving as smooth and natural as water flowing from high ground to low. And then, the next moment—
"The truth is, these puppets have a hidden condition."
KWAGAGAGAGA! Suddenly, light energy erupted skyward from every puppet while dark energy plunged down into the earth.
"When the Five Elements gather, a new attribute unlocks—Yin-Yang."
Back in the day, Baek Jinwoo had confirmed this exactly once and then scrapped the whole thing. He was playing a game to relax, and trying to micromanage this every session nearly snapped his fingers off. The stress had been unbearable.
"Now watch."
Baek Jinwoo yanked his right arm skyward and ripped his left arm down. In the same instant, the yang above and the yin below surged toward each other and collided, unleashing a colossal explosion.
KWAGAGAGAGAGA!
"Raised properly, this damage output rivals the breath of an S-rank dragon."
The iron scarecrow was already shredded to pieces. Devastating hardly covered it.
Song Yeonhee couldn't believe her eyes. Even as a ranker, she could gauge roughly how much damage an attack carried at a single glance. And the Yin-Yang fusion strike she'd just witnessed? It was so immense that calling it the first thing of its kind she'd ever seen in her life wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
"Phew. That's taxing."
Baek Jinwoo shook out his hands. Thud-thud-thud! The puppets that had been frolicking in midair sank to the ground in an instant. He was hardly a practiced puppeteer, and going full throttle from the very first pull had left his fingers numb and aching.
"Song Yeonhee. Starting today, you're going to practice this. So—think you can manage?"
"...Can I really do something like that?"
Something this impossible?
"Yes. Without a doubt."
You wouldn't know it, but she carried a rare constitution—a blend of the Heavenly Heart Body and the Limitless Body. Hungyo had said it himself: not a genius to be weighed against the legends of old, but more than enough of one to stun an entire era. Someone like her could surely handle this much.
"This is the fastest road for you to become a world ranker. So—will you do it? If not, no harm done. I'll just go find someone else."
"Wha—hold on, wait!"
Song Yeonhee thrust out her hands as if to steady herself.
Good heavens. She'd just watched that absurd display of power, and his pitch was "if not, no harm done"? Absolutely not. No way.
She was a ranker, too. Her hunger to climb into the upper echelons burned fierce. And already, she could see it flashing before her eyes: the image of five puppets moving as one living organism—striking, defending, healing, disrupting—before finally annihilating everything with the power of Yin and Yang.
"I'll do it."
She made her vow.
"I will master it. No matter what."
From this moment on, she was no longer a summoner. She was a puppeteer.