Chapter 34: Midterm Exam (4)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 34: Midterm Exam (4)
Several more days passed.
The students were abuzz over a recent announcement: the highlight of the midterm exam, the Individual Match.
The selection process for opponents had begun today.
The rules were simple. Each student would fight a total of three matches, and they could choose their opponents.
If you challenged someone, a one-on-one duel was set.
Students who weren't challenged, or who didn't challenge anyone, would be randomly and fairly assigned an opponent.
Because of this, I wasn't particularly concerned. There was no one I wanted to challenge, and I didn't expect anyone to challenge me.
So, the immediate tasks I needed to focus on were simple: raising the specs of the main characters.
And preparing for the Mine attack.
First, raising their specs. There were two key members I needed to level up this time.
Yu Hana and Cheon Yeo-wool.
Kang A-rin was already plenty strong as she was.
She didn't need my intervention right now. In fact, if I meddled unnecessarily, I might just ruin the flow of events.
As for Seong Si-woo, I’d put him on the back burner for now.
I was training with Yu Hana in swordsmanship every day, and her progress was accelerating.
And right now, I was…
“I’m not doing it! No, I can’t.”
“Hey. Just… please, try reading it again, slowly.”
It was 11 PM, and I was bickering with Cheon Yeo-wool in a cafe. I had already let Yu Hana know I’d be busy.
The trouble started when I saw her wrestling with a problem after class today.
Even after the lesson ended, she hadn't left her seat, just sat there with her head down, practically banging it on the desk.
Normally, she would have vanished somewhere by now.
‘Ugh… this is hard.’
Cheon Yeo-wool was like this in the original story, too.
She could grasp everything else with sharp intuition, but when it came to anything theoretical, she was utterly clueless.
Still, I found her earnest struggle admirable, so I helped her solve a few problems. That’s when she started clinging to me, begging for help.
And that’s how I ended up getting dragged to this cafe tonight.
The problem she was grumbling about involved designing a low-level Holy Method circle.
It was certainly more difficult than creating other types of magic circles. Holy Methods required you to configure a separate circuit for divine power in addition to mana.
“Look, since there are two circuits, there have to be two power sources. If you just cram them into one, they’ll get mixed up.”
I explained, sketching a simple diagram in my notebook.
But Cheon Yeo-wool just scowled, glaring at the problem.
That wasn’t going to solve it.
Then, suddenly, her eyes shot open and she exclaimed.
“Ah!”
It seemed she finally understood.
The problem was, it had taken two hours to get her to this point.
‘What am I going to do with her…?’
When we finally finished the problem, Cheon Yeo-wool let out a heavy sigh.
“Ughhh, I don’t get why I have to learn how to draw a Holy Method when I can just cast it by holding out my hand…”
I gave her a look that screamed, ‘Are you serious?’
That’s because you’re a genius.
Cheon Yeo-wool could cast Holy Methods intuitively, or perhaps instinctively, without needing to design a circle.
But by designing one, she could control the flow of divine power with greater precision, making the effects far more powerful.
That’s why I was making her study.
“Buuut… Hae-in, how do you know all this so well?”
Cheon Yeo-wool looked at me with a knowing expression.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, her gaze angled upward.
“Did you study Holy Methods, too?”
A hint of playful mischief laced her voice.
I was at a loss for words.
‘I studied it to teach you.’
I couldn’t exactly say that.
In the end, instead of answering, I reached for her forehead.
Thwack!
“Oww!”
With a crisp sound, Cheon Yeo-wool’s head snapped back slightly.
“What’s it to you?”
She clutched her head. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes sparkling.
It was a strange reaction, one that made me want to keep teasing her.
“Let’s just hurry up and finish so we can go home.”
I casually flipped the page and scanned the next problem.
But then.
“…?”
I felt a sharp gaze from somewhere.
I instinctively lifted my head and looked forward.
And soon, I spotted a man bursting through the cafe door, panting.
Yohan.
He was gasping for breath, glaring at us.
His eyes were sharp and filled with displeasure.
I shifted my gaze slightly to the side.
A window seat at the far end of the cafe.
‘Well, look at this.’
One of Yohan’s cronies was sneaking glances at us.
He acted nonchalant, stirring his coffee as if his gaze had landed on us by pure chance.
He must have been the one who tattled.
‘The Saintess is with some other guy late at night.’
Something like that, probably.
“Hah…”
A deep sigh escaped from beside me.
It was Cheon Yeo-wool.
She let out a short breath, then pressed herself even closer against my side.
We weren't sitting across from each other to begin with. Yeo-wool had already moved over to sit next to me on the same sofa.
Now, we were practically glued together.
Seeing this, Yohan’s expression grew even more menacing, and his breathing became ragged.
“Are you two dating?” I asked nonchalantly.
Only then did Cheon Yeo-wool look at Yohan.
Her expression hardened.
No, it was worse than that.
She looked as if she’d just bitten into a bug, like someone trying and failing to swallow rotten food.
Then she answered firmly.
“Are you crazy?”
“A stalker, then?”
“That’s closer to the truth.”
Cheon Yeo-wool’s voice was ice-cold.
She stared at Yohan with a frosty expression. A muscle in Yohan’s jaw twitched.
“Then why is he just standing over there? Why can’t he come closer?”
“I filed for a restraining order.”
“Ah… you did?”
So she’d already gone to The Cult and filed a restraining order. Normally, such a request would have been dismissed as absurd and she would have been reprimanded, but this just went to show how much Cheon Yeo-wool’s influence had grown.
The Saintess and the Hero.
Their relationship was a bit complicated.
In the past, from a young age, the Hero and the Saintess were educated in a specific way.
‘The Hero protects the world, and the Saintess must assist and obey the Hero.’
That was the ‘doctrine’ that had been passed down to them for ages.
But times had changed.
Factions had formed even within The Cult: those who wished to maintain the old ways, and those who desired a new reformation.
Yohan, however, had not yet escaped that ideology. He still believed that he was the Hero, and that the Saintess belonged to him. A being who must never leave his side.
I watched Yohan with an indifferent gaze.
He was glaring at me like he wanted to kill me.
He must be furious that the Saintess he believed he should possess was with another man.
In the original story, his target would have been Seong Si-woo, but now it seemed I was the one in his sights.
In the end, Yohan stood there for a few seconds, unable to do anything, before bottling up his rage and turning away.
‘If this is how it’s going to be…’
With his obsession for Cheon Yeo-wool surfacing earlier than it should have, the range of choices Yohan might make had also expanded.
I had a feeling about something.
*
After my one-on-one tutoring session with Cheon Yeo-wool, I returned to the dormitory.
My index finger throbbed slightly. I’d lost count of how many times I’d flicked her forehead.
‘It was almost like she was getting them wrong on purpose.’
I sighed, flopped onto my bed, and began to think.
I had said there were two immediate tasks.
First, the growth of the main characters.
This part was proceeding much more smoothly than I’d expected.
Then the second: preparing for the Mine attack.
‘I’ve done as much as I can.’
As things stood, I was in a relatively comfortable position.
I had already acquired a Fragment far earlier than in the original story’s timeline.
Originally, it was a piece of good fortune one could only obtain in the mid-to-late stages of the story, after overcoming countless hardships.
Of course, the fact that I was the one who absorbed it was a variable… but what’s done is done.
I had given Yu Hana the Dongbaek Sword and Cheon Yeo-wool the Cross.
On top of that, members of the Vanquisher were also here for the midterm exams. Even if the first attack on Gaon were to happen now, there was a high chance we could fend it off more easily than expected.
I had prepared as much as possible, and favorable variables had emerged.
And above all—
This attack was, at the end of the day, more like a tutorial.
‘Mines.’
They weren't so much a single species as they were beings whose threat level varied wildly from one individual to the next.
Many of those who bore the name ‘Mine’ were, in reality, nothing more than grunts.
And the ones attacking Gaon this time were of that same ilk.
It was just a show of force, a performance to prove that Gaon was by no means a safe zone.
No high-ranking Mine executives would be making a move in this raid.
They weren't at a stage where they would risk an all-out war against the forces stationed at Gaon.
The problem, however, was that to create more definitive chaos—they would use the ‘Magical Beasts’ they had been holding captive.
Stopping that was, in essence, the core of the mission.
I opened the Auction on my smartwatch.
The Stone Sickle—no, the Harpe—I ordered would arrive tomorrow.
With this, my preparations for the Magical Beasts were also perfect.
I turned off the watch again and lay down comfortably.
Tiriring—
Just then, a notification chime I’d never heard before sounded from my watch.
‘What’s this?’
I moved my finger to open the notification window.
A moment later, a dry laugh escaped my lips.
“Well, well.”
[Individual Match Designation Notification]
[Rank 2 Yohan] -> [Unknown Jung Hae-in]
[Individual Match Designation Notification]
[Rank 42 Seong Si-woo] -> [Unknown Jung Hae-in]
It seemed my prediction that I wouldn't be challenged…
…had been spectacularly wrong.