The First Duel
Setting up a spar between Yeon Hajin and Baek Woohyun wouldn’t be all that hard. Baek Woohyun might not care either way, but from Yeon Hajin’s perspective, a match against him would be necessary just to gauge Baek’s objective strength—and to measure his own current condition against the gap between the game and reality.
In the original story, Yeon Hajin was the one who challenged Baek Woohyun first. Of course, it hadn’t been on the very first day of enrollment.
I debated which of them to approach first, then headed for Yeon Hajin. Baek Woohyun almost never turned down a fight that came looking for him. If I could just talk Yeon Hajin into issuing the challenge, Baek would almost certainly accept.
And if Baek refused? Yeon Hajin would probably start needling him about chickening out on his own, right?
Just like he had in the original.
“Hey, friend.”
I walked up to Yeon Hajin, who’d been sneaking glances at Baek Woohyun ever since we left the mana recovery room. He turned his gaze on me.
“What is it?”
“You interested in sparring or anything?”
“Sparring? Out of nowhere?”
Yeon Hajin made a face that said he very much wanted to punch someone.
Wait—did he think I was challenging him to a match right now?
The look he fixed on me—something like You? Against me? You dare?—made my stomach twist, but I endured it for the sake of the goal.
“I’m a healing-type, see. But I need someone actually hurt if I’m going to try out my ability, and nobody around here really spars. You interested in a match, by any chance?”
His expression twisted into something bizarre.
…Had this guy always been so expressive?
“…Even if we spar, the protective barrier means we won’t actually get hurt.”
He said it like he was lecturing me.
No, friend. You think I don’t know that?
Of course—to keep student spars from turning into real disasters, the sparring grounds required protective barriers as a matter of course.
But in the original, you two smashed those barriers and kept fighting to the end.
I wasn’t trying to start a fight between them for no reason.
In this training hall, with its fairly solid safety equipment, the only way someone would get hurt badly enough for me to use a healing skill was if these two went at each other.
Ordinary student-level power couldn’t break a protective barrier. Only these two—stuffed full of hidden pieces and fortuitous encounters—could smash one to pieces.
If I got turned down here, my only option would be to camp in the infirmary and leave it to luck.
Not that I expected anyone to show up injured on the first day of enrollment.
“Still, you never know.”
Yeon Hajin started staring at me like I was completely insane, but I could live with that.
At this point in time, neither Yeon Hajin nor Baek Woohyun knew the limits of the protective barriers. In the game Yeon Hajin used to play, and in Baek Woohyun’s first life, the barriers had never broken.
In the original, the two of them had realized they were evenly matched, gradually ramped up their output, and caused an unexpected accident. Of course, even after the barrier shattered they hadn’t stopped fighting, and both had ended up disciplined for it.
“You’ve been staring at that guy over there this whole time. Don’t tell me you want to spar him yourself?”
I pointed at Baek Woohyun. Yeon Hajin’s expression sharpened a little.
“Was I that obvious?”
“A little?”
“…….”
Yeon Hajin suddenly looked like he had a lot to think about.
Well, novel protagonists tended to have massively inflated egos; they rarely stopped to consider how their actions looked to other people. They’d stare daggers at someone and assume the other person hadn’t noticed, or mutter meaningful monologues out loud and expect everyone nearby to simply ignore it.
“If it’s hard to start the conversation yourself, want me to say something for you?”
“…No. I’ll handle it.”
At my prodding, Yeon Hajin stood and walked over to Baek Woohyun.
I watched from a comfortable distance as the two of them talked, feeling pleasantly satisfied—until Baek Woohyun’s gaze suddenly swung toward me, and question marks flooded my head.
What? Had Yeon Hajin used me as an excuse?
There didn’t seem to be much of an excuse to make.
Had he been watching me talk to Yeon Hajin earlier, then?
Well, Yeon Hajin had been pretty obvious about staring.
It would’ve bothered Baek Woohyun too, from his side of things.
While I mentally dumped every scrap of responsibility onto Yeon Hajin, Baek Woohyun looked away from me almost at once and headed for the sparring grounds.
Yeon Hajin followed right behind him.
“Oh.”
Anybody got popcorn?
After a brief preparation period, their spar began.
Baek Woohyun held a sword; Yeon Hajin faced him bare-handed, fists clenched.
It wasn’t that Yeon Hajin was some chimp who valued raw physical strength over weapons. He was a battle mage—true to the title of Academy Battle Mage.
…Or was he? Did battle mages count as honorary chimps?
While I was contemplating the racial identity of battle mages, Yeon Hajin moved first.
The floor froze with his footsteps, and blue flame gathered around his fist.
A reckless charge woven together with spellcasting.
But was closing distance against a swordsman really the right move for a mage…?
Was a battle mage just a chimp or worse?
Yeon Hajin closed in on Baek Woohyun, firing icicles from midair as he came.
Baek Woohyun gave a few casual swings of his sword, and they crumbled without resistance.
After a few more probing exchanges, Yeon Hajin drove his rear foot hard into the ground and closed in; fist and blade met. The tempo of the clash quickened. Sparks flew; mana scattered through the air.
I watched their spar and took the measure of their growth.
They’d stacked a few levels, but neither seemed to have the Runes yet—judging by the shape of the fight.
The Runes were one of the core skills and identities of both protagonists.
Baek Woohyun would obtain the Time Rune; Yeon Hajin, the Space Rune.
Time acceleration and blink—those would become their respective specialties and main skills.
In the story, a few days before midterms, they visited the Temple of Runes and claimed that hidden piece.
I had no intention of stealing their opportunities, but I planned to visit the Temple of Runes myself someday.
…Honestly, I was a reincarnator too. Didn’t I deserve a share? If there wasn’t one, I might just cry my eyes out.
While my mind wandered for a moment, their spar overheated at a rapid clip, and attacks that looked dangerous even from the outside began flying back and forth.
The crowd of onlookers kept growing.
It looked like nearly everyone in the training hall had gathered.
Well, it was a rare spectacle.
I spent a moment studying the wonder, disbelief, jealousy, and every other emotion in the spectators’ eyes, then fixed my attention back on the two still sparring.
Bang—!
Every time sword and fist collided, an explosive crack rang out.
Zzzt—!
The protective fields wrapping their bodies screamed.
Watching the match, I felt a strange sense of dissonance.
On one side: a regressor with abundant real combat experience and hidden pieces obtained through knowledge of previous cycles. On the other: a transmigrator who had bulked up his weight class by vacuuming up hidden pieces with overwhelming information, covering his lack of real combat experience with that same weight class and game knowledge.
In the original, their spar had been evenly matched overall, but Baek Woohyun had held the general initiative. Then, after the protective barrier finally burst, in the very last moment, Yeon Hajin’s gambit had landed and flipped the match—Yeon Hajin’s reverse victory ending.
That was how it was supposed to go….
Now something was different.
At a glance their skill looked similar; Baek Woohyun still held the overall initiative; Yeon Hajin was still quietly building up and preparing a gambit the way he had in the original….
And yet Baek Woohyun somehow looked a little too composed.
Because the spar had been arranged earlier than in the original?
Was that why Yeon Hajin—still short on real combat experience—was getting pushed back?
No. That didn’t hold up. Yeon Hajin was still executing the buildup from the original sparring scene almost perfectly. Meaning his capability was no different from the duel in the story.
The Yeon Hajin fighting right now might write it off as error caused by the distance between game and reality—but I knew the contents of that original sparring section, and I was watching as a third party. I couldn’t miss it.
…Baek Woohyun’s skill was different from the original.
What? Don’t tell me this guy….
Wasn’t on his second run…?
Just as that ominous assumption surfaced, a major variable erupted on the sparring grounds as well.
Zzzzzzzt—!
A massive noise, and a wave of mana barrier energy expanded outward.
The protective barrier had shattered.
“Hey, shit, this is—”
“…Is there no staff here? Somebody go—”
The spectators began to murmur at the sudden turn of events, but I didn’t take my eyes off the sparring grounds. Sure enough, Yeon Hajin and Baek Woohyun exchanged a brief look—then crashed into each other again.
“Uh, they’re not stopping…?”
“…Insane. Hey! Somebody break them up!”
“How the hell are you supposed to get in the middle of that…?!”
The uproar among the onlookers grew louder and louder, but Baek Woohyun and Yeon Hajin paid it no mind whatsoever and only dragged the tempo higher.
Crunch—!
Brutal sounds started ringing out at regular intervals.
Yeon Hajin’s fist was stopped by Baek Woohyun’s arm; Baek Woohyun’s sword split the hem of Yeon Hajin’s clothes.
Just as the spectators’ noise peaked—people shouting that this was going to turn into a real disaster—Yeon Hajin’s buildup reached its end, and his gambit shot toward Baek Woohyun.
Baek Woohyun’s sword shattered at the same moment an eruption of fire burst up from beneath his feet.
And there, I confirmed the conclusion of the dissonance I’d been feeling.
In the original, Baek Woohyun had been swallowed by that eruption and taken a technical loss….
The Baek Woohyun in front of me, as if he’d expected it, slipped past the eruption with quick footwork and took Yeon Hajin’s back.
A dagger in his hand.
In a fraction of a second, the dagger Baek Woohyun had pulled from his inventory was pressed against Yeon Hajin’s throat.
Yeon Hajin let out a hollow laugh and raised both hands.
The end of the spar: Yeon Hajin’s defeat.
Having confirmed that much, I walked over to the two of them.
Baek Woohyun being weird was one thing—but I still had a job to do.
Even if Baek Woohyun hadn’t been burned in that final exchange, and even if Yeon Hajin’s throat hadn’t been cut by the dagger, that didn’t mean either of them was unscathed.
The exchanges that had continued even after the protective barrier broke. Thanks to those, both of them were covered in wounds large and small.
“Oh no, you’re both pretty banged up. That must hurt. Need a heal, by any chance?”
…Yeon Hajin’s gaze felt a little sharp.