Enrollment (4)
I ignored Yeon Hajin's searing glare and checked his condition.
Wasn't it his own fault for keeping the fight going even after the protective barrier shattered?
Why take it out on me?
I had a few choice words ready, but as a mature person of character I wasn't about to bicker with a patient.
"Arm."
Yeon Hajin wordlessly held out his arm. I took hold of his left forearm, blood still welling from the cut, and cast the lowest-grade healing skill.
Saaa—
Hazy golden mana rippled and seeped into the wound. It began to close, slowly…
Because it was lowest-grade? Yeah, a little sluggish.
I watched the recovery for a moment, then pulled a pistol from my inventory and leveled it at Yeon Hajin.
"H-hey, hey! Wait, are you insane…!"
Yeon Hajin freaked out at the muzzle pointed straight at him, but instead of explaining I simply pulled the trigger.
Bang-!
Shrrrk—
The golden round left the barrel, struck his body, then unfurled into a deep gold that wrapped around him completely.
"Oh."
Mana sank in and the wound started closing far faster than before.
"What the hell is this…."
While Yeon Hajin stared blankly at his own recovering body, I fired again.
Bang-!
Hmm. Still a little short?
One more.
Bang-!
Three shots later, every one of Yeon Hajin's wounds had fully closed. Satisfied, I left the dazed boy behind and turned to Baek Woohyun.
"Want me to do you too?"
"Please."
Unlike Yeon Hajin, Baek Woohyun accepted the offer without hesitation. The speech pattern was a little off for a high-schooler, but as a mature person of character I wasn't about to nitpick the way a friend with a painful past talked.
"Hang on a second."
After a brief moment of thought I asked Baek Woohyun for patience, then pulled an automatic rifle and a semi-automatic sniper rifle from my inventory.
Bang-!
One round with the pistol.
Bang-!
One with the automatic rifle.
Bang-!
One with the semi-automatic sniper.
Three shots from three different guns later, I had a rough feel for how attack power and skill amplification rates interacted.
Yeah… the automatic rifle's kind of pointless.
If I'm going to spray with the auto, a single sniper shot is just better, isn't it?
The auto's rate of fire is nice, but all it does is burn mana; everything past a certain point is pure overheal. Even supply-grade weapons and lowest-grade healing already do this much—once I get proper guns and higher-tier heals it's only going to get worse.
"…Cadet Baek Woohyun. Cadet Yeon Hajin. What exactly is going on here?"
While I was still mulling over the weapons, the instructor arrived. I stepped back naturally and watched; both Baek Woohyun and Yeon Hajin looked completely unsurprised, as if they'd known this was coming.
Well, of course. Those two knew full well that fighting after the barrier broke meant discipline.
The brief glance Yeon Hajin shot my way was probably just my imagination.
After all, I was a completely unrelated third party in this whole mess, right?
If anything, I was a model student who had gone out of her way to help injured classmates.
"Both of you, come with me."
I watched them get led away from a distance, then left myself.
Plenty of gains all around.
I'd roughly confirmed how my skill worked, gotten a read on both of their combat strength, and planted the image of a capable healer in their heads.
That third point mattered most. As a pure healer with no attack skills of her own, even knowing about dungeons with hidden pieces meant nothing—I couldn't clear them alone. But after leaving this kind of impression, joining those two whenever they headed into a dungeon should be smooth sailing, right?
"Heheh."
"Ughya—"
Once the day's work was done I threw myself onto the bed in my pajamas. Lying there, I lifted a hand and watched the light of the room lamp shatter between my long, outstretched fingers. Looking at that, I turned over the possibility I'd glimpsed earlier.
If Baek Woohyun wasn't on his second run right now…
World-ending, the Union Church—all of that aside—most of the original-work information I knew would become useless in no time.
If I wanted to get strong, I had to hurry.
I needed to grab every advantage I could before my starting capital ran dry.
The original story?
I never intended to preserve it in the first place.
Reproducing the original would only prove to myself that this world was nothing more than a lump of text.
I sorted through the useful original information in my head and laid out my goals.
According to Academy Battle Mage, there were essentially two ways to survive until the end.
Stop Baek Woohyun from destroying the tower, or join Yeon Hajin's harem.
Stopping Baek Woohyun… hmm.
No idea.
It had been a hard problem even before, and now I wasn't even sure whether this was the second-run Baek Woohyun from the original. I couldn't jump to conclusions. Besides, there was a more immediate problem than Baek Woohyun.
The Union Church.
Even if I somehow kept Baek Woohyun from destroying the tower, if I failed to stop the Union Church from merging this world with the outer ones, it was still a bad ending.
So I needed to help Baek Woohyun foil the Union Church's schemes and save the world—while also making sure he never destroyed the tower…
First things first: thwart the Union Church's plots. If I blocked their schemes and protected the world, Baek Woohyun would have no reason to smash the tower and end everything.
…He wouldn't smash it, right?
Worst case, I could just hop onto Yeon Hajin's dimensional transfer.
I had zero intention of becoming Yeon Hajin's lover. But staying moderately friendly should be enough, shouldn't it? He wouldn't abandon a friend, would he?
So what I needed to do right now boiled down to two things.
Raise favorability with Baek Woohyun and Yeon Hajin.
And get strong enough to stop the Union Church.
The favorability side didn't worry me much. With a face like this, the idea that I couldn't earn a guy's goodwill never even crossed my mind. No need to kill my personality or suck up either.
How could anyone not like a beauty like me when I was being friendly?
Impossible unless you were a eunuch or gay.
If anything, I should worry about favorability climbing too high and getting hit with confession attacks.
It would be way too sad if someone smashed the tower or left me out of the transfer just because I turned them down.
Getting stronger, on the other hand, had a longer to-do list.
1. Raise shooting proficiency.
Watching Baek Woohyun and Yeon Hajin fight today made it clear: healing with a gun on a real battlefield was a lot harder than it looked. At my current level, even if I somehow entered a dungeon I probably couldn't land a single clean heal.
2. Increase my mana.
My mana pool right now was pathetic. Burning through seventy percent of my total mana in roughly one second of automatic fire was ridiculous no matter how you spun it. I had to expand it somehow.
3. Level up.
All I had was lowest-grade heal for now, but leveling would unlock purification, buffs, and higher grades of healing. Whatever else happened, I needed levels if I wanted to become a healer worth anything.
4. Obtain an attack skill.
I could already shove raw mana into a gun and fire basic shots, but that wouldn't scratch any monster or person worth worrying about. As a healer I didn't need some flashy offensive kit, but I at least needed one attack skill that Amplify Shot could apply to.
5. Obtain movement and survival skills.
I'd be diving into dangerous dungeons and dealing with ambushes from outfits like the Union Church. Surviving those situations meant I needed mobility or defensive options. In the end, the only person who could protect me was myself.
6. Obtain better weapons.
Amplify Shot scaled with the gun's attack power. Higher attack power directly meant higher heal output—the growth path of a healer. Nothing extravagant; one solid sniper rifle and one decent pistol would be plenty…
7. Make money.
Really just an extension of the weapon problem. Weapons cost money, and right now I barely had any. In a few months living expenses would start getting tight. Tuition, dorm fees, daily costs, and whatever spare cash I could scrape together for weapons and gear—I needed a lot of it.
Shooting proficiency only had one answer: training. Later I'd ask Instructor Jin Soyoung for after-school special sessions.
Most of the rest could be solved by tagging along with the two protagonists and vacuuming up hidden pieces. If a healer wanted to join, those two wouldn't turn me down. Favorability would climb as a bonus.
So the direction going forward was simple.
Keep practicing my shooting, and farm while following the protagonists.
I was pretty sure Yeon Hajin was scheduled to enter an unregistered gate tomorrow. Perfect timing.
The next day.
Following Jin Soyoung's instructions, we arrived at the academy armory.
"Each of you pick one main weapon and one secondary, then come to me."
First period of Combat Techniques. Students chose their weapons according to Instructor Jin Soyoung's orders.
From here on, training would be tailored to whatever each person had selected.
I headed for the nearly empty gun racks. Weapons borrowed from the training grounds had to be returned when you left; the ones we were choosing now were issued as personal property. Of course, the cost was already rolled into tuition.
From the racks I selected a semi-automatic sniper rifle as my main weapon and an automatic pistol as my secondary.
◈ Durability is excellent.
◈ Durability is excellent.
Leave it to supply gear to have literally no selling points except durability. Pitiful grades all around.
…Even if it's included in the tuition, isn't this a little too stingy?
I felt the need for real weapons all over again as I carried both guns over to Instructor Jin Soyoung.
"Hmm?"
When I held the guns out, Jin Soyoung gave me a puzzled look. The "Yu Haneul" she knew was a healer type, after all.
"I have a skill that amplifies other skills when I fire them through a gun."
Skill, skill, skill.
Even I thought the explanation sounded like garbage, but luckily Jin Soyoung understood perfectly.
"…You have a skill like that?"
I planned to spend every day shooting heal skills out of guns, so even if I wanted to hide Amplify Shot I couldn't. Without it I was just ordinary Extra Healer #1 anyway, so I'd never intended to keep it secret.
I cast a plain lowest-grade heal on Jin Soyoung once, then loaded the same skill into the pistol and fired. Whether student shots simply weren't a threat, she could have stopped the round and chose not to; a moment later the brightly glowing bullet struck her and scattered into gold motes.
Having felt the difference between the two heals firsthand, Jin Soyoung looked at me with clear interest.
"Any aptitude for shooting?"
"No. Yesterday was the first time I ever pulled a trigger."
A few hours of practice had taught me how to shoulder a rifle roughly, but I knew full well I was still at the crawling stage.
"Hmm…."
Under her appraising stare I added one more line.
"So I'll be counting on lots of guidance and instruction from you going forward, Instructor."
For reference, in the original Yeon Hajin had said almost the exact same thing to Jin Soyoung and gotten worked like a dog.
"Hah. Think you can handle it?"
Knowing that history, her return question felt extremely vicious.
Part of me wanted to take it back right then and claim it had been a slip of the tongue, but…
"…Yes."
If I wanted to survive in this world, I had to give it everything I had.
Getting put through the wringer now still beat dying later because I wasn't strong enough.
…Probably.