Fine, I'll Give It a Shot
Becoming an instructor at Origin Academy was not something you could throw around lightly.
The name alone carried that kind of weight.
It was the academy where the finest talents from across the entire world gathered—a place that existed to raise the superhumans and heroes who would lead the future.
"If you would join us, Mr. Ryu Seojun, it would be an honor beyond words."
The headmaster shrugged, coaxing me in a gentle tone.
I still hesitated, humming under my breath. It was a fine opportunity—but honestly, it was also a heavy one.
Me? An instructor?
A great school is made by its teachers, not its students. Gifted pupils don't go hunting for instructors so much as outstanding instructors draw those pupils to them. Origin Academy was no exception to that rule.
The thirteen instructors numbered one through thirteen were all heroes who had carved out monumental achievements destined to be recorded in history forever.
There had been a loathsome dragon of the stars—a calamity of the Destroyed Kingdom that had driven an entire continent into terror. The monster that had reduced a brilliantly flourishing nation to a Destroyed Kingdom in a single stroke became a cold corpse before one woman's wrath.
As the one who shattered a star, she seized the epithet Star-Shatterer. As the martial artist who slew a dragon, she earned the title Dragon-Slaying Practitioner.
That was the renown and the feat of Origin Academy's Number One Instructor, Sayulcheon.
She was simply the most famous of them. The rest were hardly lesser lights. The Number Four Instructor was venerated as a saintess of a chaotic age who had stabilized an entire nation through faith. The Number Seven Instructor was a mage who had defied the heavens and newly established modern magic as a proper academic discipline. Listing every one of their accomplishments would fill pages of a book.
"Doesn't Origin Academy already have someone in charge of alchemy?"
I offered a reasonable objection. There was already someone seated in that post—wouldn't it look ugly if I stole their place?
"There's no rule that each field may have only one instructor. The more excellent educators we have, the more opportunities our cadets receive."
The headmaster laughed easily and dismantled my counterargument without breaking stride. Then he started persuading me all over again.
Rather than preaching about why I ought to become an instructor, he laid out what I stood to gain by accepting. I'll give you this. Oh, you don't need it? Then take this as well. No—that looks stingy. Just take everything.
Room and board, of course, plus every kind of condition and privilege piled on thick. Negotiation terms kept pouring out until I had to wonder whether every academy instructor received this kind of treatment—or whether this offer was special just for me.
"Is there truly no way you might reconsider?"
With that, the headmaster closed his case. His black pupils, set in blue eyes as hard to read as the deep sea, held my gaze. People called someone like him a cunning old snake, didn't they?
Part of me wanted to shove back my chair with righteous conviction and shout, Are you trying to buy me with money?!
But a wise civilized man always moves with prudence.
"How could I refuse? Fine—I'll give it a shot."
I made a decision that was, socially speaking, perfectly rational and correct. I was absolutely not dazzled by the terms of the offer and falling for the headmaster's devilish temptation.
"As for room and board, please wait a few days in the academy's night-duty quarters. We will finish every related procedure with all haste."
The headmaster and I clasped hands in the friendliest of atmospheres. Whether this would become one of those new-concept postmortem photos the poor kids liked to joke about, or the true starting point of an excellent deal, was still anyone's guess. Either way, that was a problem for later. Future matters belonged to future me; present matters belonged to present me.
"We'll settle the urgent matter of your identity today."
"An ID can be issued that easily?"
"Of course."
That part made me tilt my head. Identity, after all, was a guarantee that a person was recognized as a member of a region or nation—and that they would share in rights and duties such as welfare and taxes. And I was hardly an ordinary case. Even ordinary immigration from one country to another demanded complicated procedures and time. For someone with a perfectly intact identity, that was already true—and I currently had no identity at all, only proof that I had come from the Destroyed Kingdom.
Yet he claimed he could resolve my status problem in a single day. Seeing how firmly he answered, it didn't seem impossible. I was just intensely curious about the method.
"Instructor Sayulcheon will take full responsibility for that part."
"Ah."
The headmaster's next words made me understand at once. If Sayulcheon—famous under grand titles like Star-Shatterer and Dragon-Slaying Practitioner—personally guaranteed my identity, the whole tangle of complicated procedures could be skipped outright. And since I would be serving as an instructor at Origin Academy, Arca's immigration office had no reason to reject my review. It was essentially the same as saying another hero-class figure of continental renown was coming to Arca.
"We shall meet again. I look forward to your classes, Instructor Ryu Seojun."
A café in Arca's bustling district.
Sitting by a second-floor window and looking down at the street, I let out a dry little laugh.
"…It really was over in an instant."
As I spoke, I drew a stiff card from my pocket. In my hand was an Arca identity card—issued through a process so streamlined it barely deserved to be called a process at all.
"Identity problems are best settled quickly. So I applied a little force."
"Honestly, I'd been worrying a lot about what to do with my status. This is a relief."
I sipped the green grape ade I'd ordered. Across from me, Sayulcheon—the woman who had erased my identity problem in a flash—was drinking a café latte. The quiet leisure of a cup of coffee. That phrase fit the moment perfectly.
"By the way—how is the sword you brought from the Destroyed Kingdom?"
"Ah, that sword?"
From the day we first met, Sayulcheon had shown an enormous interest in the blade Albedo had left behind. On first meeting she had outright tried to take the hilt, and even after I arrived in Arca she had made all sorts of attempts to check on it or examine it. She only mumbled something about remaining wary of a potentially dangerous object—but watching her study that sword, anyone could see it had nothing to do with caution.
More like a sword lover who'd found a new and unusual blade and was buzzing with excitement. In crude terms, a sword otaku. In more refined language, a sword-obsessive—a blade maniac.
"I'm just leaving it on the bedside table, honestly. Neglecting it."
Sayulcheon went rigid, as if she'd just heard something absurd.
"I'm an alchemist, not a swordsman."
I didn't know how to handle a sword. If I'd ever set foot in a kendo dojo it might have been different, but the only martial art I'd ever learned was a brief stretch of taekwondo in elementary school. And yet the sword I'd received from Albedo cut far too well. Even a complete amateur like me swinging it carelessly could produce considerable force, and it sliced ordinary objects like tofu without any concern for weight distribution or blade angle.
On top of that, it had no scabbard. From the moment Albedo carried it, that sword had existed as a blade alone—as if a sheath were a luxury. Given the nature of the Destroyed Kingdom, crawling with enemies and monsters in every direction, keeping it constantly drawn might well have been more practical than sheathing it.
"If I go swinging it around and testing things and some dangerous situation crops up, that would be a disaster. So for now I'm just storing it."
"No—such a wasteful thing…"
Ordinarily, common sense would call that a sound judgment and praise me for it, wouldn't it? Faced with Sayulcheon's peculiar reaction, I simply took another quiet sip of green grape ade. Cool sweetness spread through my mouth with a light fizz of carbonation.
"To simply neglect a sword like that is utterly! Foolish conduct!"
As if someone had flipped a switch, the voice of the woman who had been quietly drinking her coffee rose. It was the same reaction I'd once gotten from a train-obsessed friend when I needled him with, Aren't all trains basically the same in the end?
Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she offered me a rather outrageous proposal.
"Instructor Ryu Seojun. Will you not learn the sword from me?"
"Pardon?"
An alchemist swinging a sword? No matter how I turned it over, the picture looked wrong. The idea of turning a sword's owner into a swordsman just because the blade was too good to waste was bizarre from the start.
Of course, I had no intention of cutting myself off from martial technique entirely. But I had only ever considered tactics of real-time weapon transmutation and shape-shifting through alchemy—never even a shred of a thought about walking the path of the sword to its end. Skills are better in quantity, but the one you make your mainstay is better kept to a single focus.
Still… it's not a bad offer.
What I lacked right now wasn't one or two things. My basic stamina and physical ability were pitiful, I hadn't even learned an ether cultivation method, and my combat sense was abysmal. But if I could train under Sayulcheon herself under the pretext of learning the sword, I could solve all of that in one stroke.
If I'm lucky, I might even pick up the martial arts she uses.
Ether cultivation methods branched in many directions. Among them, Sayulcheon's method—refined into the form called "martial arts"—already enjoyed worldwide renown. In the game it had been treated as a class-exclusive skill, so I couldn't learn it. But now that this was reality, an alchemist could learn both magic and martial arts.
I don't plan to train everything to the absolute limit, but if I can at least get it to a usable level, it'll help me someday.
And if I could build a personal rapport with Sayulcheon along the way, all the better.
"If I can learn the sword directly from Instructor Sayulcheon, it would be my honor."
"Then it is decided."
Satisfied, Sayulcheon and I rose from our seats and headed straight for the training grounds inside the academy.
And then I was worked so savagely I nearly begged her to kill me.
A hundred laps of the field to build basic stamina—I only finished by running myself half to death. Only after expanding that foundation so I wouldn't tire so easily, and after building a body of solid muscle, would I even begin basic swordsmanship and cultivation practice.
…Should I quit while I still can?
If you ask who is crushed beneath a disaster of his own making—lift your head and look at me. That was how violently the regret came welling up.