Chapter 3―2. The Fruits of Training (2)
Seo Yoon dismantled the training system one stage at a time.
Her pace was solid, and her responses to each monster type were textbook-perfect.
Stage 8 cleared. Time elapsed: 11 minutes 25 seconds.
Proceeding to Stage 9.
"Hah… hah…."
She was starting to wear down now, Seo Yoon's breath coming in ragged gulps.
Stage 8 had pitted her against three steel ogres.
Their hides were so tough that elemental magic was considered the standard counter — going at them with daggers and dirks burned through stamina at a brutal rate.
Matching for these stages is absolutely vicious.
Then again, what else would you expect from a program built by the Director of the Technology Bureau?
Still, she'd smashed through every one of those brutal stages, and now she'd finally reached Stage 9.
What would it throw at her this time?
Initializing training.
You will be given 35 min—
"Training halt."
Training suspended.
Stages cleared: 8 of 8 attempted.
Calculating score...
Congratulations. Overall evaluation: B.
Bzzzt―
The moment Stage 9 was about to begin, Lee Jun froze the system.
He'd been watching from outside the training hall, yet somehow he was already inside now.
Standing directly between Seo Yoon and the robot, no less.
"Boss…?"
Seo Yoon tilted her head at his abrupt intrusion.
But only for a moment — the instant her tension drained away, she collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
"Good work out there. You had that manual memorized cold, didn't you? And you adapted on the fly to every situation beautifully. At this level, you could go for A-Class right now."
"But the evaluation just said B…."
"Ah, the people who built this thing have impossibly high standards. Even among S-Class hunters, hardly anyone actually pulls down an S."
A program cobbled together by the very top of the S-Class ranks.
There was no way its benchmarks would be normal.
And Lee Jun hadn't been flattering her.
Seo Yoon's skill level genuinely warranted an A-Class promotion right now.
Her runaway mana held her back, but in terms of pure ability, comparing her to A-Class wouldn't be strange at all.
What's actually strange is… how fast she's growing.
Teach her something and she understood it instantly; putting it into practice never took her long either.
But calling it talent… something about it felt slightly off.
He'd seen more than his share of prodigies — the sum total of every kind of gift — over the years.
Measured against them… he couldn't say exactly what it was, but she was different. Alien, somehow.
Is she hiding something?
Truthfully, everything he'd observed so far already defied convention far too often.
Supposedly the Information Bureau Chief's position had been buried in the deepest secrecy up in the snowfields… but hiding it from Lee Jun was another matter entirely.
Or to be precise — she couldn't hide it from the Director of the Technology Bureau.
Well, it would be possible if she'd recorded everything by hand in paper ledgers… but who would go that far?
And she has no home… her registered information with the Association hasn't been updated in ages.
But that was the extent of it.
She was from the snowfields to begin with, so it shouldn't be a major problem.
Lee Hyeon-ah had a pathological aversion to personnel matters that might make noise publicly.
Someone like her would never have picked up a person who'd cause trouble later.
Even if Seo Yoon was hiding something, now that he'd invested in her management, he had no intention of throwing her away.
There were oddities, sure — but if Lee Jun's hypothesis was right, none of it was impossible.
He'd just casually ask her about it sometime later.
And right now, none of that was the important thing.
Stage 9, the one that had just appeared.
Armed with a gun — it was Evrah.
And he distinctly remembered extracting all of Arcana's data before this started.
So he's watching, is he.
The Director of the Technology Bureau.
That ornery old monk of a man had apparently taken an interest again.
Except this time, his interest was in Lee Jun — not in Seo Yoon as his opponent.
The old man had probably reasoned that if he left the system running, Lee Jun would come marching in.
And that prediction had landed dead-on.
Lee Jun was standing inside the training hall right now, after all.
I'm curious too, it's been a while….
But right now he was here to oversee Seo Yoon's training.
At her current level, fighting simulated S-Class hunter data was simply beyond her.
Granted, these robots only replicated their combat methods and physical capabilities.
Compared to the real thing, they didn't capture even a quarter of it.
More than half of every Arcana member's combat power lay in their skills and unique abilities, after all.
But still — no good.
Even setting that aside… the humanoid robots carrying the Director's AI were absurdly capable.
You could mass-produce them and field them as combat units without a second thought.
As Lee Jun shut the system down completely, he stared pointedly at the spot where a CCTV camera would be.
That much should get the message across.
If you don't want a dressing-down, you'll leave the system alone from now on.
"Seo Yoon. We'll stop the assessment here for today."
"Understood, sir."
She sat quietly on the floor and nodded.
Having seen what he needed, Lee Jun turned to leave the training hall.
He'd gauged her level, and learned she was growing even faster than he'd imagined.
Which meant it was time to draft a new manual to match….
"Um, Boss…?"
"…?"
Deep in thought, Lee Jun stopped mid-stride at the sound of Seo Yoon's voice behind him.
She rarely let her words trail off like that.
Wondering what was wrong, he turned back to find her still sitting on the floor.
"What is it?"
"My legs… have given out."
She couldn't bring herself to say more, just sat there in silence.
Apparently too embarrassed to ask him to help her up.
Lee Jun walked over to her with a smile.
"Come on, up you get."
"Ah…."
He extended a hand toward Seo Yoon, still seated on the floor.
She hesitated a moment, then took it.
"…Yes. Thank you, sir."
Fwish―
The moment she gripped his hand, Lee Jun pulled her up.
The one thing he hadn't accounted for… was that the strength had drained from her entire body, not just her legs.
Seo Yoon came stumbling toward him with far more momentum than he'd anticipated.
"……"
"……"
Close.
Her black eyes shimmered deep and bright.
And within them… some unnameable emotion was pooled.
Longing. Wistfulness. Sorrow. Lament. Resentment.
And just a trace of joy.
Flustered, Lee Jun whipped his head away.
Not so much embarrassment as… something else.
A strikingly similar emotion had stirred in him too.
If he kept looking into those eyes… he felt like something inside himself might be swallowed whole.
"Ahem…."
He collected himself quickly and gently disentangled from her.
Then he asked Choi Jeong-hyeon to help her out of the hall.
"I-I didn't see anything, I swear…."
"…Right."
Somehow, Choi Jeong-hyeon was the most flustered of the three of them.
The tips of her ears had gone bright red again.
And Seo Yoon… wore her usual expressionless face.
That was her, through and through.
I could stand to learn a thing or two about that composure.
Lee Jun sent the two of them out ahead of him and tidied up the training hall at his leisure.
The robots cleaned up after themselves anyway, so all he had to do was set the program and walk out.
As he worked, Silhouette cut in, blunt as ever.
{…Hey. You like her?}
Shut it.
{I asked if you liiike her.}
That's it. No more talking.
Wiping a hand down his face, Lee Jun finished the setup.
"Hah…."
Whirrr―
Cleanup robots rose up from the floor.
He was listening to that hum, turning to leave, when—
BANG―
The training hall lights he'd switched off blazed to life all at once.
"Huh? Why are the lights—?"
Choi Jeong-hyeon fiddled with the switch, bewildered.
But no matter how many times she clicked it, the lights refused to go out.
Lee Jun watched the scene in silence, then turned his head toward a corner of the ceiling.
"……"
So you want me to show you, do you.
Beneath the training hall's lights, a single robot rose from the floor.
Humanoid.
Sword in its right hand — which meant… Kyle's data, most likely.
"……"
It was probably the Stage 10 sequence Lee Jun had programmed as number one, back in the day.
Facing every member of Arcana's data in succession.
The kind of battle you could never… never fight against the real thing.
"…Fine. If you want to watch, I'll show you."
His mind was made up.
Lee Jun glanced back at Seo Yoon and Choi Jeong-hyeon.
Simply watching this training would do them good.
With that thought, he closed the training hall door.
Through the transparent wall, he could feel the weight of two pairs of eyes on him.
"We'll be using this training hall often from now on, so… let me demonstrate Stage 10 for you once. I can't do this often, so watch closely while you have the chance."
The expectation in their eyes was a lot of pressure.
Hah… the Stage 10 clear method is genuinely humiliating, though.
Did he really have to show them all the rolling, the throwing, the bouncing off walls?
"…Ugh, whatever. Who cares."
Shing―
Pistol in the left hand.
Dagger in the right.
Set in his stance, Lee Jun spoke.
Not to the AI — but to whoever was watching beyond the CCTV.
"Begin."
The instant the words left his mouth—
the sword-wielding robot lunged.
KWAANG―
At a speed the eye could never hope to follow.
KWAANG―
The robot kicked off the ground, and the steel flooring shattered.
"…?"
Before the shards of metal could even scatter, the entire training hall shuddered.
The vibration was violent enough that the tremor could be felt even from outside.
"Wh-what just happened?"
"It… swung its sword."
The robot had leapt.
And swung its sword.
With that one simple motion… half the spacious training hall lay in ruins.
But the more shocking part was this:
"Boss… is the Boss all right?!"
Seo Yoon, too, felt a quiet dread creep over her.
Lee Jun couldn't use physical reinforcement or anything of the sort — if he'd taken that hit head-on, there was no way he'd have walked away unscathed.
Yet as if such worries were a needless fuss, Lee Jun was perfectly fine.
In fact, his dagger was already buried in the nape of the robot that had come crashing in.
"…Stubbornly durable bastard, isn't it."
His mutter carried clearly across the hall.
Seo Yoon and Choi Jeong-hyeon… could only stare in pure disbelief.
That's the physical ability of a man with no mana? No aura at all?
"What… did we just witness?"
"…Extraordinary."
The two of them stood in open awe.
And even in that very moment—
the robot rained down attacks without pause, and Lee Jun dodged, parried, and countered in time with each one.
Movements no eye could track, answered at a speed the eye could see.
Just how absurd that was… any hunter would understand.
It meant reading the enemy's every motion in that split second, and meeting it with only the minimal necessary movement.
So that… is an S-Class hunter.
Choi Jeong-hyeon breathed the words in wonder.
Seo Yoon felt the same.
So this is the pinnacle of all hunters… S-Class.
This is going to kill me, I swear to god.
KWAANG!
"Ngh…!"
The robot lunged, slashing its sword in a horizontal arc.
Lee Jun let it slide off his shoulder while driving his dagger forward at the same time.
This position.
Tilt the blade thirty degrees from here, and—
CLANG―
Perfect strike. The dagger should sink home.
No — it doesn't.
Why?
Angle, position, timing — all perfect. So why?
Why was the thing tilting its neck just enough to deflect the blade away?
"…Don't tell me."
CRACK―
The robot hurled the sword it had swung, flinging it straight at the wall.
This was Kyle's favorite trick for fighting in tight quarters.
Throw the sword with a spin, and it would whirl through the air, strike the wall, and ricochet—
"Kgh…!"
Shfff―
Just like that—
it came curving back around behind him.
{Oho, you remember well.}
Of course I do.
I watched you people fight from up close more times than I can count.
But…!
Stage 10 isn't supposed to pull out these kinds of techniques!
I definitely bumped up the difficulty… I definitely did!
CLANG―
He barely fended off the continuing exchange and scrambled away.
Rolling, and rolling again.
Leaping, rolling, slamming into the wall.
Cursing the Director of the Technology Bureau under his breath, Lee Jun blocked the attacks—
no. Took them, one after another.