Academy Entrance Exam (5)
The second World Boss to appear in the world. The Immortal Knight. The one who had soloed it. The Grim Reaper. That was me.
So it was puzzling. ‘This isn’t a place where that name should come up. Why is she asking?’
This was the Academy. It wasn’t a battlefield where Gates had opened, nor the blood-soaked Black Tower. This was a cradle of hope and learning. Besides, I was merely a twelve-year-old girl who presumably hadn’t yet learned how cruel the world could be. My cheeks were still plump, my hands small and soft—far better suited to cradling a single flower than anything else. There was no way a proper answer could come from me.
I decided to play dumb for now. I put on an expression of pure confusion.
“The Grim Reaper?”
“Are you truly going to feign ignorance right in front of me?”
The Director of the Academy. Yoo Seoha. I had heard that her martial learning, which touched the heavens themselves, was profoundly refined. Simply standing before her made my legs tremble uncontrollably. It felt like being doused in ice water. I lowered my head even further.
“...At the time, I had lost consciousness and collapsed. I know nothing about it. I was simply caught up in the incident and was fortunate enough to survive. It isn’t a story worth your attention, Director.”
“How bold for one so young. You cannot have lived more than twelve years, yet you speak of luck as if it alone could explain such a thing.”
The Martial God clicked her tongue.
‘Is she suspicious of me? That everyone else died but I alone survived?’
Why?! How could a twelve-year-old possibly defeat a World Boss?
...Well, I had defeated it.
Still. People didn’t normally jump to that conclusion.
‘If it ever gets out that I’m the Grim Reaper...’
Countless people would scramble to figure out how it was possible. And sooner or later, the secret about my eyes would be exposed. Because I wasn’t someone who fit that title.
‘I have no desire to become an eyeless ghost.’
If I didn’t play innocent right now, I might end up saying goodbye to this hellish country on a dissection table.
I plastered an iron mask over my face.
“I apologize, but I have nothing to say.”
The person before me was a national power-class hunter. Even so. What could she do if I simply denied it? Was it a crime to thrash desperately just to survive? Did a visually impaired person have to die the moment they encountered a World Boss? I had nearly died for real.
I couldn’t meet her eyes directly, but I squared my shoulders with pride.
The words that followed carried a sense of transcendence.
She seemed willing to write it off as pure luck.
‘Was she just testing the waters? Whew, that took ten years off my life.’
Honestly, even I would have found it strange. A single child surviving where every hunter had been wiped out? No matter how much of a Martial God she was, curiosity was inevitable. Since the sole survivor and witness was me, she must have asked out of simple interest. The fact that she didn’t press further was a stroke of luck.
“You may leave.”
“Um... Then what about the interview?”
“You have passed. I found it quite entertaining that you dared to display your Intent even before me. Continue to train without end and become an outstanding hunter.”
“Really? I can go?”
“Indeed.”
Wow. A visually impaired student who had only ever attended special schools had just been accepted into the highest academy on the planet.
‘Who would believe this? I can barely believe it myself.’
I pressed down hard on the joy threatening to burst out of me. But the corners of my mouth betrayed me. That twitching seemed ready to reveal everything.
So I bowed deeply, bending until my waist folded completely, doing my best to make my small frame appear the very picture of courtesy and humility. It was the only way to conceal this overwhelming delight.
Afterward, I kept my eyes tightly shut and followed Hahyang-i’s guidance to open the door.
Click.
The moment I closed it behind me, I clutched my chest. A huge sigh escaped.
“Hoo. So that’s... the strongest being in the world.”
My whole body shivered. The baby fat that still clung to me jiggled lightly. I clenched my teeth, but the trembling refused to stop. An unshakable center, like a tree rooted deep in the earth. The profound depth that seeped from her every word and gesture. And an Intent so noble it defied description.
“She’s incredible.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. I wanted to become someone like her. The thought came unbidden. A fierce admiration bloomed inside me. It was a shame I couldn’t see such a person with my own eyes.
‘Even if it felt like my eyes would burst, maybe I should have checked her status window?’
I immediately shook my head. That was dangerous. Who knew what might happen? The hunter world didn’t give children any special treatment. I had to be careful. There was no one on my side. Hunters would do anything to grow stronger.
Yet at the same time, something was awakening within me. Amid the mixture of fear and reverence, a realization took root. Unlike me, she possessed a tremendous narrative yet never displayed her Intent outwardly. Nevertheless, she was overwhelming, and from that I learned one thing.
‘Intent isn’t solely about projecting it outward.’
To me, Intent had only ever been a tool for reading external information. A sense used to detect flows, read the air, and predict danger. I had always thrown it outward like a drowning person desperately reaching from underwater. It was the only way I could hide my eyes.
But the Martial God turned her Intent inward and embraced it in silence.
‘If releasing Intent outward expands the senses, what happens when you hold it inside?’
A thought I had never once considered. Yet the moment I recognized that possibility, my Intent stepped into a new dimension. The instant I understood, I grasped the method.
Hummm.
The sound vibrated from deep within. My Intent began connecting with me in an entirely new way. Every corner of my body awakened one by one. It felt as if each cell was igniting, as though my body was dismantling and reassembling itself. I instinctively understood what it meant.
Intent was tuning the body.
‘This is... the Human Body Blueprint?’
A Human Body Blueprint shrouded in black mist. What floated before me was unmistakably my own body. Small and delicate. Yep, that was definitely me. Yet it felt different from when I had peered inside myself before. I wasn’t seeing it with my eyes. This was vision through Intent.
‘Is it because my Intent stat is still low?’
Not everything was clearly visible. It felt like whatever I sought kept slipping away between blurry, heavy shadows. However, I realized that within the clearly revealed sections, my Intent could move freely.
‘If I expressed my Intent as a number, it was ten, right?’
The Intent stat listed in my status window was 10. That explained why so many areas remained veiled in black fog.
It seems you have realized the realm where mind and body become one. Congratulations on your achievement.
“What is this? What’s the benefit of doing it this way?”
“Heroes often refer to this phenomenon as ‘opening the core.’ It would be better to move according to your senses and see for yourself.”
A reasonable suggestion. My body was itching to try it, so I tested it immediately. I was a growing child; there was no way I could resist a good stretch.
‘One, two, three, four.’
Following the count in my mind, I stretched out. It felt like muscles and joints I had never paid attention to were waking up one by one. I never knew moving exactly as I intended could feel this refreshing.
I laced my fingers behind my back and slowly arched backward. I even had enough flexibility to speak while my waist touched my hips.
“Whoa, amazing. I can even do this pose.”
When I extended my legs into a perfect split, there wasn’t the slightest pain in my groin. What was this balance and flexibility? It was insane. At this level, I could become a ballerina.
‘Not just flexibility—my reaction speed seems improved too. My senses feel sharper overall.’
Had my strength, agility, and vitality stats gone up as well? It was a shame I couldn’t feel those changes immediately.
But it wasn’t all upside.
‘When I open the core using Intent, the amount of Intent I can project outward decreases.’
The total volume of my Intent was still meager, so there were clear limits. It felt like trading external vision for physical performance.
‘I have even more reason to level up now.’
But it didn’t end there.
‘What if I manifest the narrative I possess?’
When I had infused my narrative into externally projected Intent, it had become bullets condensed from darkness. But what would happen if Intent fused with my body manifested that narrative instead?
Shhh.
In an instant, my entire body turned black.
“Oh my.”
It wasn’t that I had undergone a dark transformation and become one of the Four Heavenly Kings of an evil organization, nor had I changed races to become Black. This was assimilation with darkness.
“Whoa. I disappeared. Can you see me?”
[For someone who only ever shoved Intent into strange devices and fired it out, this is a rather sinister method indeed.]
Achilles apparently couldn’t see me with his eyes either; he simply sniffed around. It was stealth.
“Hmm.”
A short sigh escaped my lips.
Yoo Seoha slowly unfolded the documents while still seated. Her dark eyes swept across the text. They said the eyes were windows to the soul. Hers possessed such depth that it felt as though one’s very spirit would be sucked inside. Within them swirled the principles of all creation.
Before this absolute being, a hunter who had once been part of the Tower’s frontline conquest team bowed his head. Meeting the Martial God’s gaze was a terrifying thing.
“To be honest, I was quite surprised when you said you would conduct the interview personally, Director.”
S-class Hunter. The Flame of Roaring Energy. Park Hangyeol. He continued speaking with careful deference.
“It has always been customary for the professors to lead the interviews. For the Director to involve herself directly... I took it to mean this was an exceptionally special case.”
The oppressive interview conducted by Korea’s greatest hunters. No matter how many world-class prospects gathered, many were crushed by the atmosphere and couldn’t even speak properly. Some even lost consciousness from the pressure and had to be carried out.
Yet the Martial God herself had decided to conduct the interview. And only for the top scorer of this entrance exam. Every Academy official had been left bewildered. It was unprecedented. The Director was the busiest person in the world—why would she spare time for a single Academy student?
What could possibly happen if the Martial God interviewed someone? It would be fortunate if they didn’t die of a heart attack. Still, no one could question her decision. After all, the inhuman person before them was the one who signed their paychecks.
Yoo Seoha closed the documents and looked at Park Hangyeol.
Park Hangyeol looked momentarily flustered. She still had that mischievous side.
“Of course not. I was simply curious.”
“At the very least, I believed the disciple of that ferocious one would naturally take first place.”
“You mean Manshin’s disciple?”
Yoo Seoha nodded. Her deep gaze and calm voice could not hide the sharpness contained within.
“That Manshin would raise a successor was something I found difficult to believe. That is why I came to confirm it with my own eyes. Yet not only has the first-place position changed hands, but a mere twelve-year-old child dared to scatter her Intent before me.”
Flutter.
The documents she tossed unfolded themselves in front of Park Hangyeol. Such divine technique spoke of truly transcendent martial prowess. Clicking his tongue in awe, Park Hangyeol read the floating papers.
The information on the girl who had swept the entrance exam with overwhelming scores spread before him.
‘All 100s? Seriously? Even that bastard Kim Seokhun gave her 100 points on the practical?’
Perfect scores in both written and practical exams. An unprecedented feat. Muttering that even a parachute candidate couldn’t achieve such scores, Park Hangyeol suddenly paused.
Come to think of it, he had been the one who recommended this child.
‘I knew there had to be something since she was the only survivor at the site where the World Boss had rampaged through.’
The thought repeated in his head as if trying to convince himself. At first he had assumed she had simply obtained a good skill or been lucky enough to survive. After all, she was disabled.
‘She had only just awakened. The reason I brought her to the Academy was because I believed she must possess a high-grade skill.’
He didn’t know exactly what skill she had received from the System, but it had to be something that allowed a disabled person to survive the Immortal Knight. S-class, Ex-class, transcendental—whatever they called it.
Hunters who relied solely on high-grade skills or equipment without actual ability usually became useless in the later floors of the Tower. But Park Hangyeol knew better. Being born with such a skill was itself a form of ‘talent.’ Just like the [Heavenly Martial Body] possessed by the son of the Sword Saint—skills with exceptionally high growth ceilings existed.
He had thought that if she performed well on the entrance exam, all the better. If not, it would be good experience, and she could apply to other academies. There were plenty of options both domestically and overseas.
“...However.”
Park Hangyeol looked at the documents once more and let out a deep sigh. First place in both written and practical, and on top of that, she had caught the interest of the Martial God herself. This wasn’t something that could be achieved simply by luckily obtaining a high-grade skill.
“Hangyeol.”
“Yes, Director.”
“I hear you were the professor who recommended that girl.”
“......”
“Do one thing for me.”
Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck.