You Have Just Crossed Death
Saturday morning.
Professor Hwang Ye-rim had been savoring a rare late sleep-in at the faculty residence when her tablet erupted with a frantic alarm.
“Ugh…”
She rubbed her eyes, still half-asleep, and checked the screen.
Multiple patients have appeared in the infirmary!
“……On a weekend morning?”
She threw on her coat and hurried to the infirmary, only to find the place already a complete mess.
Students lay on every bed, blankets pulled over their heads, trembling violently.
“What on earth is going on here?”
Hwang Ye-rim grabbed the nurse on duty.
“They all came in as a group. No external or internal injuries visible. Doesn’t look like qi deviation either.”
“Pulse?”
“Unstable. Heart rates spiking, breathing irregular. Looks like severe psychological shock.”
Hwang Ye-rim’s gaze darkened.
In the middle of the Academy, and in a group no less—what could have put them in this state?
She approached the bed of the student who seemed least affected. His eyes were unfocused, but at least he could still talk.
“You. What’s your name?”
“21st batch…… Yoo Sang-cheol.”
“A freshman? What happened?”
“Well, I went to class, and…”
Class?
Hwang Ye-rim’s brow twitched.
“Which class?”
“Saturday special lecture. Special Instruction Studies.”
“Ah.”
She knew that one. The most talked-about course in the Academy lately—taught by that contract professor.
“And how was the class?”
“The professor drew a line. With a sword, right on the floor…… and told us to cross it.”
“A line?”
“Yes. He said if you crossed it you were qualified to receive his teaching, and if you couldn’t, you never had to show up again…… But then all of a sudden—”
Yoo Sang-cheol’s pupils trembled finely.
“I thought I was going to die.”
“…….”
“I mean it. It wasn’t just scary—I genuinely felt like my head was about to get cut off right there. I really tried to cross it, you know? But my legs wouldn’t move and my whole body locked up…… h-hic.”
His voice cracked under a surge of resentment.
Hwang Ye-rim wordlessly checked his wrist again. The pulse was still unstable, but calmer than before.
His body isn’t broken.
His dantian was fine. No sign of severed meridians either.
“The professor didn’t lay hands on you himself?”
“N-no. He just…… stood there.”
That made it even stranger.
He hadn’t struck them. Hadn’t injected qi to rattle their vessels. Just with presence alone, he had sent this many students to the infirmary in a group?
Was that even possible?
And besides…
Hwang Ye-rim sent a faint thread of true qi through him and her pupils widened slightly.
The qi flowing through his vessels is unusually clean.
Almost like the state after consuming a spiritual herb or elixir.
Impossible!
Nah, must be imagining things.
She rose and checked the pulses of the other students. The results were identical.
For real?
Hwang Ye-rim wore a blank expression.
He had purged impurities from their vessels with presence alone?
Not completely clean, but still far beyond common sense.
Just what…… is happening here?
Training grounds.
Kang Hyun looked down at the five who had crossed the line and were now gasping for breath.
“Pathetic.”
His gaze settled especially on Cha Yu-sik.
Hadn’t the boy claimed he should be able to subdue at least one student here with ease?
Well?
Did he have his answer now?
“…….”
Cha Yu-sik couldn’t lift his head. Not so much from shame as from the certainty that if he opened his mouth, he would vomit on the spot.
Crazy.
When he first faced the killing intent, he had still been able to force himself to endure. But that had only been the beginning.
One step. Two steps.
The denser the killing intent became the closer he drew to the line Kang Hyun had drawn.
When I crossed it…
Cha Yu-sik had felt the vivid sensation of his own head being cleanly severed.
Honestly, I thought I was dead.
Even now he couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe he really was already dead? Maybe he was just hallucinating after dying?
“Y-you……”
Cha Yu-sik finally forced the words out.
“What the hell are you?”
“What else? A contract parachute hire.”
“That’s not what I’m asking and you know it.”
Cha Yu-sik bristled, but Kang Hyun answered with pure indifference.
“Does it matter? I said I would teach you how to become strong, and the condition was that only those prepared to die should come.”
He slowly swept his gaze over the five.
“And.”
His voice dropped low and heavy.
The five students flinched and looked up at Kang Hyun.
He rather liked those eyes.
“Yes. Now you’re finally wearing gazes worth something.”
They were completely different from the fifteen pairs of eyes that had frozen in terror and refused to move. A vicious determination to do something—anything—now burned in them.
At the very least, these are the ones who won’t just kill themselves the moment they see Asura.
In other words: ones worth teaching.
“Then I suppose I should keep my promise and teach you how to become strong?”
Kang Hyun pulled an unopened bottle of whiskey from his coat.
“Tomorrow morning, six o’clock. Be here at the training grounds.”
“……T-tomorrow’s Sunday……”
Kwak Do-jin, who had crawled across the floor, muttered in a hoarse voice, but Kang Hyun paid him no mind.
Come or don’t. That was their freedom.
It wasn’t even an official class period to begin with.
“Ahhh.”
Kang Hyun took another long pull from the bottle, wiped the liquor from his lips with the back of his hand, and said,
“The booze tastes sweet today.”
Then he simply vanished outside the training grounds.
Until his back was completely out of sight, not one of the five remaining students opened their mouth.
Even though it was the weekend, the rumor spread like wildfire.
The commotion in the infirmary had made sure plenty of students found out.
“Yo, you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“That Saturday special lecture that just opened.”
“Special Instruction Studies? The one the contract professor’s running?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
“Every kid who attended got carried to the infirmary.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Dunno. Professor beat them up or something?”
In the old days, word without feet traveled a thousand leagues. These days a single finger could cross ten thousand with ease.
Posts began appearing on the student-only community, AcaNet.
Solid information was scarce; most of it was pure speculation and trash talk. Still, the noise was loud enough that it reached Jin Myeong-hoon’s ears.
He straightened his clothes and headed straight for the Dean’s office.
Knock knock.
“Come in.”
“Dean.”
“I figured you’d be coming.”
Seo Il-hyun was calmly sipping tea. That unflappable demeanor only made Jin Myeong-hoon more frustrated.
“If it weren’t for you, Dean, that course would have been canceled from the start. Why are you going this far?”
“Calm down and sit. Anyone watching would think you and Professor Kang have a blood feud.”
Jin Myeong-hoon’s brow furrowed even deeper. Instead of sitting, he stood ramrod straight and raised his voice.
“I’m asking purely as Head Professor. A single mudfish that suddenly swam in is throwing the Academy’s order into chaos, and sitting still would be dereliction of my duty.”
Seo Il-hyun simply watched him.
My friend. That man is no mudfish. He’s a dragon.
“What order exactly has Professor Kang disrupted?”
“I couldn’t even count them on one hand. Drinking on campus. Sending students to the infirmary. I even heard he kicked out fifteen students—said they weren’t qualified.”
“Hmm.”
The Dean set down his teacup and spoke quietly.
“Professor Jin. Let me ask you one thing. Did Professor Kang lay a hand on the students?”
“Pardon?”
“Or did he swing a sword and injure them?”
“……I heard he released killing intent.”
“These are students of the National Hunter Academy—supposedly the finest elites in the Republic of Korea. If those kids wet themselves and collapse from a single wave of a professor’s presence, is that Professor Kang’s fault?”
“That’s……”
“If anything, they should be ashamed that their true colors as greenhouse flowers have been exposed. In a real fight, in front of dungeon monsters, are they going to collapse while whining about regulations and abuse?”
Under Seo Il-hyun’s pressure, Jin Myeong-hoon could only bite his lip.
“The unauthorized expulsion is the same.”
Seo Il-hyun rested his chin on his laced fingers and continued.
“Sorting those who can be taught from those who cannot is entirely the instructor’s prerogative. And the seventeen I forced in were problem students on the verge of expulsion that the rest of you had already given up on, weren’t they?”
“…….”
“I’ll give him a warning about the drinking. But Professor Jin.”
Seo Il-hyun’s eyes grew heavy.
“A word of advice. Mind your own business.”
“Dean.”
“Professor Kang is only a one-year contract hire, is he not? For the Head Professor to get this worked up over a single special lecture by a contract professor is unseemly.”
“…….”
“I trust you’ve understood me. You may go.”
At the clear dismissal, Jin Myeong-hoon’s fists trembled.
At that same hour, in the safe house.
“What are you even planning to do?”
Lee Se-ah, who had brought her tablet at Black’s summons, clutched her head.
“Causing an incident on the very first day of class……”
“Stop fretting and just read me the list.”
“The list?”
“Yeah. Time I found out who these kids actually are.”
“You said you didn’t need to look last time.”
“Last time the list had people mixed in that I didn’t need to bother with.”
“……One moment.”
Lee Se-ah tapped the tablet a few times and brought up the profiles of the five survivors.
Cha Yu-sik, Kwak Do-jin, Yoon Hyun-jong, Han Tae-ho, Seo Hae-in
“Shall I start with Cha Yu-sik?”
“Go ahead.”
“This student is hugely famous even with the general public. He’s the second son of the Cheonrang Guild Master.”
“Cheonrang?”
“Yes, one of the three major large guilds…… His older brother is Cha Du-sik, top graduate of the Academy’s 17th batch. The two of them are currently in a bloody succession war…… and with this suspension, the consensus is that he’s effectively fallen behind.”
“Tsk. Couldn’t kill that temper of his.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Next?”
“Kwak Do-jin. Nickname’s Mad Dog. Twenty-one disciplinary actions, and he just got held back a year.”
“With that many write-ups he should’ve been expelled long ago, right?”
“There’s apparently a story. Looking at the records, all the discipline is from third year…… Up through second year he was an incredibly good student?”
“Is that so?”
The corner of Kang Hyun’s mouth lifted. He was remembering Kwak Do-jin crawling across the floor on pure spite, tears and snot streaming.
If he were just some neighborhood thug, he never could have crawled through that killing intent.
Something fierce was burning inside him—viciousness, rage, something.
“Next is Yoon Hyun-jong. Wow, this student!”
Lee Se-ah’s voice jumped an octave.
“He’s the one whose dantian you fixed and saved, Professor! His father’s the president of a fairly well-known mid-sized company. Taejung Mulsan—they mainly deal in secret manuals, elixirs, and treasures that come out of dungeons.”
“A merchant family.”
“Yes. They rose fast early on with dungeon byproducts, but lately the big corporations backed by large guilds have been eating their market share. Ah, but honestly I’m a little jealous.”
“Of what?”
“You became the benefactor of a rich golden-spoon student. Won’t he bring you elixirs by the armful later to repay the favor?”
“He hasn’t brought any.”
“What an ungrateful student.”
“Enough nonsense.”
“Yes, sir. Next is Han Tae-ho. This one’s a 21st-batch freshman. Almost no information. No family backing either. Still, the fact that he got into the Academy at all means he’s got some skill, right?”
“He’ll be decent.”
If he weren’t…… he never could have crossed that line.
“And the last of the five is…… oh, a girl?”
Among hunters—especially combat types—the ratio of female students hovered around a mere ten percent. The job required brutal physical work, after all.
“Seo Hae-in. Even among her own batch she’s dead last in grades. No disciplinary record or anything…… but every credit is an F. Pure skill issue, maybe……?”
Kang Hyun narrowed his eyes.
He remembered her. The small girl who had crawled across the floor right behind Kwak Do-jin, next to Han Tae-ho, grinding her teeth the whole way.
Not so much lack of skill…
More likely she’d never had a master who could properly diagnose her condition and teach her.
Kang Hyun finished skimming the student records and handed the tablet back.
“Ah, and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Starting tomorrow, we’re moving out of this place.”
“What?”
“We’re relocating to the Academy faculty housing.”
“……Abandoning this?”
“Yeah.”
Now that he was teaching kids and needed to start seriously hunting for a vessel, it would be better to just live on site.