Unequal Talent
“Uncle, what on earth is that...?”
Song Minwoo muttered in disbelief as he stared at what he was seeing. Instructor Jong Junhyeok answered with equal bafflement.
“That’s impossible...”
Jong Junhyeok had assumed Lee Taehoon was passionate, but talentless. Yet he had been wrong. The movements before his eyes were those of someone who had fought monsters hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times. A battle that could shred a body to pieces with the slightest mistake, a battle that survived on fractions thinner than paper—yet not once had that paper-thin margin ever widened. Taehoon’s razor-edge combat seemed less like a struggle and more like art.
“Uncle! Isn’t that bastard cheating somehow? How else does that make sense? He couldn’t even lift a thirty-kilo dumbbell properly a minute ago, and now he’s slamming a Dark Hound into the ground! That’s insane!”
“I told you to call me Instructor, not Uncle. And mind your manners...”
“No! That’s not the point right now!”
Song Minwoo pressed him for an explanation in a panic. He couldn’t accept it. The man in front of him looked gaunt to the point of emaciation, a guy who didn’t seem better than him in a single way, and yet the battle he was witnessing defied belief. Cheating had to be involved.
Jong Junhyeok explained to Song Minwoo.
“There’s no cheating. Dozens of mages are supporting the magic unfolding here. Do you think the Flote Academy entrance exam is child’s play?”
“Then what is that, damn it...?”
“If you have eyes, use them properly. He reversed the monster’s force against it.”
“Reversed it?”
Song Minwoo clutched at his racing heart as he listened.
“For reasons I don’t understand, the Dark Hound had both of its eyes temporarily blinded after Lee Taehoon’s opening attack. In that moment, it had no choice but to rely on hearing and smell. Taehoon used that. He kicked the ground hard to announce his position to the Dark Hound, and the creature lunged at him beautifully. Using the full acceleration of its charge, Taehoon simply changed its direction. He redirected the path the Dark Hound was already driving straight down, and then, like some kind of wrestling technique, he lifted its body into the air and slammed it into the ground.”
“How is that supposed to make any sense?”
“Normally, it wouldn’t. If he’d been even a fraction too late or too early when he launched the Dark Hound, he would have been crushed and killed under its body. If he’d used too much force, the beast might have corrected its posture in midair. If he’d used too little, the direction wouldn’t have changed properly and he’d have been trampled instead. He used the minimum force at the perfect timing to redirect the creature’s acceleration somewhere else. What he just showed us was, quite frankly, the height of art...”
Jong Junhyeok murmured in awe.
“That isn’t cheating. That’s technique. No—there’s no way a kid who’s only just trying to enter the academy has had the chance to learn combat technique by fighting monsters. Doing something unfamiliar for the first time and pulling it off with such mastery... yes, that’s the only way to put it. Talent.”
“Talent...”
Song Minwoo suddenly found the sword in his hand looking cheap and pathetic. Up until now, he’d coasted through life thanks to being born into a good family and blessed with a superior body, so everyone else had seemed beneath him. He could do whatever he wanted—sword training, anything physical—and his body adapted quickly to almost anything. Pull-ups, volleyball, table tennis, swordsmanship—whatever he touched, he reached the level of a gifted prodigy, and everywhere he went he was counted among the very best, praised for his exceptional talent in the sword. But what was it he was seeing now?
“Fuck... this isn’t fair... You can do something like that just by instinct...?”
For the first time in his life, Song Minwoo cursed the body he had been born with. What if Lee Taehoon, who could produce that level of performance with such a lousy body, actually trained his strength too? What if he honed his swordsmanship further—what the hell would that become? It was unfair. He remembered the words he had once thrown at Taehoon.
“I’m seriously trying to look out for you. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than someone with no talent clawing their way forward with all their might.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
He remembered Taehoon’s dismissive reply.
How ridiculous must he have seemed to that bastard? How pathetic must he have looked? The talentless fool was not Taehoon, after all, but himself, and that realization painted the world in humiliation.
***
“No way...”
Min Sua was staring at Lee Taehoon with her mouth hanging open as if her jaw might fall off. She had already known he was exceptional ever since the open field.
From the moment he left a sword mark on the boulder with a branch, I thought something was strange... and now he’s catching Dark Hounds with his bare hands? How in the world...?
When he had taken down seventeen Dark Hounds, Min Sua had been certain. She would take first place in this exam. She had assumed she would be ranked first, far above second place, just as she always was. She thought it would be a dull, uninteresting fight. That was why she hadn’t pushed herself to the brink. She had ended the first stage only after making sure she had conserved enough stamina for the second.
If I’d really gone all-out, I could have taken down three more...
But now she regretted that choice. She shouldn’t have bothered conserving energy at all. She should have cut down a few more Dark Hounds. Because now, she was in danger of having her first-place spot stolen by the man in front of her.
Just what in the world has he been doing all this time to be this absurd...
Even Min Sua, who was hailed as an overwhelming genius in swordsmanship, shook her head at Lee Taehoon’s talent. A born fighter. The words “genius talent” suited him perfectly.
Please... please make a mistake...
Huh...?
Before she realized it, she was wishing for her opponent to slip up. A rueful laugh almost escaped her. How miserable and pathetic was that? Simply because her own ability wasn’t enough, she was hoping for another person to fail so she could rise higher. What a wretched thought.
I’m rotten too, aren’t I.
Min Sua steadied her heart again, and this time she decided to cheer him on. The man with such absurd, unfair talent.
***
After slamming the Dark Hound down, Lee Taehoon drew in ragged breaths.
Damn it... I pushed too hard.
Just using the Dark Hound’s own acceleration to smash a single one into the ground had left his whole body aching as though every muscle had knotted up at once. His breathing grew tight, his vision blurred. He felt like he might vomit any second, but he forced himself to endure.
Just how pathetic is this body...!
Was his body in the past really this useless? For Lee Taehoon, who had lived more than ten years as the Sword Saint, this situation felt unbearably foreign. He had expected to be able to slam at least three of them into the ground, but his physical condition was far worse than he’d anticipated. Any more than that was impossible.
I got worked up for nothing.
Because Song Minwoo kept badgering him about talent and whatnot, Taehoon had overdone it just to show him a performance worth seeing. It had surely been the nonsense of a brat who didn’t know any better—so why had he reacted so sharply?
There’s nothing more heartbreaking than someone with no talent clawing their way forward with all their might. Don’t take it the wrong way—just look at reality coldly.
That had been the cause. No talent. Pathetic effort. He had heard those words endlessly before his regression. But Lee Taehoon had overcome them in plain sight. He had ignored everyone who looked down on him, mocked him, or dismissed him, and walked his own road all the way to the summit. And even then, he had died absurdly at the hands of the monster that called itself the Creators.
Clench...
Lee Taehoon thought to himself that he still carried some of that inferiority with him. If he had been born with talent like Song Minwoo’s, if he had been gifted with swordsmanship like Min Sua’s, if his arm had never been devoured by a monster, then perhaps he would not have died so pointlessly in his previous life. He had worked himself to the bone to reach the Sword Saint’s level, but in another sense, he had constantly been reminded that it was also the limit of what he could become.
This time is different.
Lee Taehoon shook off his weakness and picked up the sword lying on the ground. Then he looked around.
There’s still hope. If this exam truly created Dark Hounds properly, then their Core Entity should definitely be here too.
Officially, monsters were said not to act in groups, but that was only true when dealing with different species. Just like Dark Hounds, individual monster packs had something called a Core Entity, a leader that was practically their boss. Once the boss was gone, the Dark Hounds lost their control, panicked, and had to struggle against the mental pressure. In other words, they fell under a status ailment.
Where are you... where?
Lee Taehoon’s eyes shifted as he searched, and then he grinned and muttered,
“Found you.”
His body, in an instant, surged toward the Dark Hound’s Core Entity.