Chapter 43: Place of Exchange (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 43: Place of Exchange (1)
For a few days, Gaon was on a temporary break.
Retaking the midterms was out of the question, and with so many facilities destroyed, resuming normal classes was impossible.
My watch buzzed nonstop. I didn’t even dare to look at the notifications.
Interview and broadcast appearance offers poured in. How the hell did they get my contact info?
My head already hurts just thinking about what will happen when they eventually find out I’m Mukgui.
“Ugh, this is exhausting.”
I had to make the most of my time.
My ten-year plan had completely crumbled, but I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing.
So for the past five days, I’d been running dungeons nonstop, starting with the easy ones.
They weren’t critically important items—just things that were good to get in advance.
A few were for me, and the rest were for the girls.
I tossed them into a corner of the room and opened my notebook.
It was the new plan I’d been revising in my spare time.
I’m the type who plans better by writing things down rather than just organizing them in my head.
The moment I put my scattered thoughts into words, a clear path forms.
The foundation of my original plan had been simple.
“For Seong Si-woo, by Seong Si-woo, a perfect all-in strategy.”
That wasn’t an option anymore.
Since it was impossible, I had to distribute the resources.
The first priority was, of course—
‘Me.’
I had absorbed a Fragment and even consumed Iano’s Elixir.
Most of the fortuitous encounters that should have gone to him were now rightfully mine.
I had to become his replacement.
The problem, however, was that I couldn’t use all of those opportunities.
Some of them were inherently incompatible with me. This wasn’t something I could solve through effort.
‘Mana.’
Seong Si-woo was born with an immense mana capacity. I supplemented mine with the elixir, but it was fundamentally different.
If mine was refined and trained, Seong Si-woo’s mana simply overflowed.
Therefore, the exceptional opportunities meant to support his massive mana capacity never even had a chance of going to other supporting characters.
In the end, those with traits similar to Seong Si-woo’s… no matter how talented they were, no matter how high their potential—
They had to be excluded. Since everything had to go to him, there was nothing left to give them.
So, I now had to find someone to receive the opportunities that would fall away from me.
A target for a sort of trickle-down effect.
I reviewed the options I had previously excluded. Among them, the most striking individuals.
Beings with large innate mana capacities who were overshadowed by Seong Si-woo.
And the selection didn’t take long.
‘Yoon Chae-ha.’
A student at Carlos Academy, not Gaon.
A person I had excluded from consideration from the start because her traits overlapped with Seong Si-woo’s.
But her specs were solid.
Her talent for magic was top-tier, and she had the will to grow on her own.
She was the type of person who would naturally rise to the top ranks over time.
However.
I decided to make her grow faster.
As one of the new main characters.
Just then, Gaon also played a new card.
While the academy was temporarily closed, they announced a program faster than expected under the pretext of supplementing the lacking curriculum.
‘Place of Exchange.’
It was a program usually held for first-years around this time of year, but this year it was moved up as an exception.
A student exchange system between the world’s number one academy, Gaon, and the nation’s number two, Carlos.
After passing a minimum qualification check, students could freely cross over to the other academy to take classes.
The official reason was for the mutual educational supplement of both academies. In reality, however, it was closer to a marketplace where the two academies traded talent that suited their tastes.
Usually, Gaon was overwhelming when it came to cold weapons and close-quarters combat, but Carlos was no slouch in magic specialization.
In fact, students majoring in magic often listed Carlos as their first choice.
Carlos students talented in martial prowess quietly made their way over to Gaon, and vice versa.
In a way, it was a win-win system where they absorbed each other’s weaknesses and turned them into strengths.
And that. That was what was important.
In the original story, the powerful option that was Yoon Chae-ha might or might not have come over.
‘The condition.’
Seong Si-woo had to surpass a certain threshold of attention and achievement.
But meeting this standard was incredibly difficult.
If he surpassed it, she would become interested in him and transfer to Gaon.
It was purely interest, with no room to develop into affection.
However, if he failed to meet that high threshold of attention and achievement, she wouldn’t become interested and would remain at Carlos until graduation.
Therefore, in the original story, she wasn’t a conquerable target.
But Seong Si-woo was dead, and I was the one who did everything.
And those achievements seem to have drawn quite a bit of attention.
In other words, all I had to do now was watch.
“Will she come?”
The probability seems to be around 80%... I hope she does.
I turned my head and looked at the corner of the room.
It was filled with shining jewels.
I smiled.
‘I have a lot to give you, friend.’
So come.
*
Carlos Academy, first-floor club room.
Her sun-kissed blonde hair glittered even more brightly in the light pouring through the window.
A dazzling radiance.
Joo Seo-jun found himself squinting without realizing it.
But she herself, in a way that didn’t quite match her brilliant hair, had her eyes fixed only on the computer screen.
A short silence.
She finally spoke.
“Joo Seo-jun.”
“…What.”
On the screen, a scene of a giant snake and five clones simultaneously striking its neck was playing on a loop.
Without taking her eyes off it, she shifted her body, leaning deep into her chair.
She stretched out her stockinged legs, languidly tapping her toes.
Joo Seo-jun didn’t know where to look.
But she, as if not caring at all, spoke again.
Her finger pointed at the screen.
Her orange eyes blazed as brightly as the sun.
“This. Can you do it too?”
Her eyes could deconstruct and analyze any magic.
But no matter how she calculated, no matter how she broke it down theoretically, she couldn’t analyze this attack.
Joo Seo-jun, having been asked the question, was flustered.
‘Can I do it?’
He watched the video for a moment.
‘This is…’
To instantly disperse mana with this level of precision and strike at the perfect moment was something even most high-level mages couldn’t do.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say he couldn’t do it.
“…I’d have to break it down first.”
“The mana loss rate during flight, the control difficulty based on velocity changes, and the optimal drop point considering the trajectory…”
“And the conclusion?” she cut him off sharply.
“What…?”
“Your conclusion,” she pressed, getting straight to the point.
“…I don’t think I could,” he finally confessed.
“Hmm…”
For a moment, the corner of Yoon Chae-ha’s mouth lifted slightly. Her eyes twinkled playfully.
“Same here, actually.”
She couldn’t understand it even after seeing it with her own eyes.
She couldn’t even begin to fathom how much time and effort must have gone into acquiring such a fine-tuned level of control.
What made it even more unbelievable was that this person was her age.
Yoon Chae-ha casually shifted her gaze.
A poster on the corner of the desk caught her eye.
‘Place of Exchange.’
It was the program the Carlos professors had been announcing for the past few days.
Judging by the name, it seemed like a simple exchange between students—
But the real point was this:
‘If you don’t like magic, go to Gaon.’
Within Carlos, there was a strange tendency to look down on warriors.
Formally, it seemed to offer freedom of choice, but in reality, it was a policy to push martially-inclined students out of Carlos and toward Gaon.
Of course, an announcement was also sent to outstanding magic-specialized talents like Yoon Chae-ha.
However, upon her admission, Carlos had offered her a full scholarship and a connection to the Magic Tower.
The best possible offer, optimized for a mage—something Gaon would never propose.
They must have been certain she wouldn’t go to Gaon.
Yoon Chae-ha’s lips curled into a smirk.
‘How boring.’
To her, the elements Carlos offered held no merit.
And without even blinking, she smiled and stared intently at the poster.
Joo Seo-jun, who had been with her for fifteen years, felt an instinctual sense of dread.
Because whenever she made that face, she always made a reckless decision.
“Hey, you’re not thinking…”
It didn’t take long for his anxiety to become reality.
“I can’t stand this.”
She shot up from her seat and grabbed the poster.
“I’m going to Gaon.”
Joo Seo-jun’s jaw dropped.
She, the 5th-ranked student at Carlos.
And—he, the 1st-ranked.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
He let out a sigh.
“…This is crazy.”
But the answer was already decided.
Yoon Chae-ha smiled as brightly as the sun and looked at the monitor.
Whenever he saw that smile, he could never win.
“Do whatever you want…”
And that was the moment the two of them decided to go to Gaon together.
*
And at that moment, somewhere beyond reality.
To be precise, a place cut off from the world.
From somewhere, a cold wind blew.
A deep, dark space. A silence hung in the air, as if time itself had stopped.
A vast cave.
A man in black martial arts robes closed his eyes.
The moment he inhaled, a vast universe materialized before him.
Stars swirled, and planets drew orbits, creating lines.
An endless stream of meteors, planets scattering without a set order.
Within that great flow, a single, massive light flickered.
A cold star emitted a blue light.
That star wandered endlessly, searching for a new sun.
And—
A sun, hidden and crouched somewhere, became mesmerized as it gazed upon that chilling starlight.
Carefully, very slowly.
It approached the star.
The star, too, welcomed the sun as if it had been waiting.
The sun that could never rise would now confidently begin to trace a new orbit, following behind the star.
The man’s lips slowly parted.
“Yes.”
This was an altered timeline, a changed world line.
The flow that has begun…
Will never stop.
Ruuuuuumble—
The massive stone gate of the cave slowly opened.
From within, demons, their bodies stained black, crawled out.
He slowly rose from his spot. The spear gripped in his hand let out a ghastly hum.
“That’s it.”
The sun accompanies the star.
And that new, unstoppable sun will, without fail, be reborn as a Fire Demon that will devour them all.
