The First Class

Go Hyeon-woo sat cross-legged in the middle of his room. With his eyes closed, the events of the train flashed one after another through his mind.

The scenes, whipping past like a video on fast-forward, slowed to a crawl the moment he came face to face with Han So-mi. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A three-section staff came screaming in with enough force to snap a bone or two, and there he was, pouring everything he had into turning aside each and every strike. The trajectories where staff and scabbard wove together had been beautiful.

Han So-mi was the first worthy opponent he had faced since coming down from the mountain — a disciple of the Sword Empress, counted among the strongest in the entire world. It was true that each of them had held a measure of their strength in reserve, but even had they clashed at full power, he would have been hard pressed to call the outcome in his favor.

'Nine times out of ten, I would have lost.'

The moment they had raised their momentum and met head-on, his own shortcomings had been laid bare. Had Kim Ho not stepped in at just the right moments to cover those gaps, he would have been the one to fall before his iron sword ever broke.

'A master.'

That was the word that had stayed with Go Hyeon-woo ever since the day he first met Kim Ho. The man carried the composure that only the strong possess, and eyes that seemed to see straight through everything.

Which meant...

His gaze, surfacing briefly from his thoughts, drifted to the long object standing in the corner of the room — the sacred relic of his sect, rolled tight in thick cloth and bound round and round with iron chains. Go Hyeon-woo had inherited that relic with a clear goal in mind, and Kim Ho could be a tremendous help in reaching it.

And yet he shook his head, a bitter smile tugging at his lips.

'I can't. Not yet.'

He had no intention of reaching out his hand. Kim Ho was the first friend he had ever made. For as far as his own strength could carry him, he would walk the path himself.

Go Hyeon-woo closed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his eyes once more and began replaying his battle with Han So-mi, move by move. Around him, a faint ripple of energy rose, and a soft breeze began to stir.

'Elixirs really are worth every drop.'

Even after forming [Core (F)], I'd still had plenty of mana left over, so on a whim I had pushed it all the way up to E-rank. And even after that, a fair surplus remained. Scrounge up another elixir or two somewhere, and D-rank would be well within reach.

Bzzt— crackle.

A hummingbird woven from pure electric current took shape above my palm. On the train it had barely been the size of a fly and floundered with every movement; now it was a perfect hummingbird, quick and nimble on the wing. The Hummingbird circled the room once, then dissolved back into my hand.

Glancing out the window, I found that morning had already arrived. A look at the clock showed the alarm was due to ring before long. Too short a window to bother napping — better to simply stay up and let the time run out on its own.

'Come to think of it, there was still that weapon selection ticket.' An item obtained from clearing the tutorial. Since it had come to mind anyway, I decided to spend it.

'No point even thinking about it.' I scrolled straight down the list.

A long staff whittled from wood, its tip set with an emerald no bigger than a fingernail. Why the Staff of Earth, of all things? Because every choice I made was a stepping stone toward the future.

♪♬♩ — The instant the alarm went off, I silenced it and threw my things together. Just as I stepped out of my room, the door next door swung open and Go Hyeon-woo walked out, his uniform as crisp as yesterday's, his sect's sacred relic strapped to his back and an iron sword hanging at his waist. He must have gotten himself a new iron sword at some point.

"Good morning to you."

"Yeah. Let's go eat."

After a simple breakfast, we headed for our assigned classroom. At the sign reading Class 1-3, we stepped inside. I'd figured we were on the early side, but the room was already abuzz with students who had beaten us there — the thrill of the first day of the semester at work, no doubt.

Quite a few familiar faces stood out. Shin Byung-cheol, snickering darkly with a few of his cronies over some scheme or other. Han So-mi, lobbing one inane prank after another, and Song Cheon-hye, wearily playing along despite clearly finding it a chore. Jo Byeok and Geum Johan, it seemed, had been placed in different classes.

Go Hyeon-woo swept the room with his eyes, then asked, "I don't see Miss Seo anywhere. Was she not assigned to our class?"

"She was."

"Then I find myself fretting that she may be sleeping in."

"Leave her be. Wait a while and she'll turn up on her own."

We had confirmed over dinner last night that all three of us were in Class 3. With Seo Ye-in the only one of us missing from the room, Go Hyeon-woo must have been picturing her tardy on the very first day.

From where I stood, it was a pointless worry. Even if Seo Ye-in truly was off wandering the land of dreams, there was nothing we could do about it anyway. It wasn't as if we could storm the girls' dormitory.

What struck me as strange, in fact, was not Seo Ye-in's absence but someone else's entirely.

'So where's our homeroom teacher?'

On the first day of the semester, ahead of the very first class, it was the homeroom teachers who arrived earlier than anyone to prepare. At least, that was how it went in both my memories of the real world and my memories of Dragon Slayer Academy — the flutter of the first day was an emotion the teachers shared right along with their students. And yet not so much as a shadow of one so far? Our homeroom teacher, it seemed, was remarkably thick-skinned about this sort of thing.

As class time drew near, the remaining students streamed in and filled the empty seats. Seo Ye-in didn't appear until just before the bell.

"Good morniiiing..."

She delivered the greeting through a yawn, flapped a limp hand in our direction, and settled into the seat beside me as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

— ♪♪♬♩♩— A melody chimed from the speakers, announcing the start of class. And yet the teacher's desk remained stubbornly bare.

"..."

"...?"

One by one, more students began glancing around in bewilderment.

"Hey, where's the teacher?"

"No clue."

"Wait, who even is our homeroom teacher?"

"How would I know?"

— Thud. Thud. Just then, the heavy tread of boots came bearing down the corridor from its far end. No student alive could amble along that leisurely with the bell already rung — which meant the odds were very good that those footsteps belonged to our homeroom teacher. Half the class seemed to reach the same conclusion at once, and every eye in the room fixed on the hallway.

Sure enough, the footsteps stopped right outside the classroom door. It slid open, and the instant we laid eyes on our homeroom teacher—

"!!"

"Huurk—"

The entire class froze, literally. The man's face was a far cry from whole: one ear was a shortened, mangled stub shriveled further by burn scars, and blade marks ran clean across the middle of his features. Pile on a pair of eyes as sharp as a bird of prey's, and even the most hardened violent criminal would have paled beside him.

"..."

"..."

Most of the room cowered like mice before a cat, trembling in place, while Song Cheon-hye and a handful of others stared back with frozen expressions and eyes brimming with wariness. Only a few of us — myself and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Go Hyeon-woo among them — showed little reaction, not out of any unusual nerve, but simply because we had no idea who the man was. Sure, he was rough on the eyes, but you had to know who someone was before you could be scared of him.

The man's lips curled into a grim smile. "Judging by your reactions, I seem to be rather famous after all. A pleasure. I will be your homeroom teacher this year."

He wrote his three-syllable name across the blackboard, the strokes as fierce as his face, each one like a slash of a blade.

Lee Su-dok.

Then he singled out a girl in the front row. "You."

"Y-yes?? Yes!"

The girl's face drained white. Paying that no mind, Lee Su-dok pressed on. "Tell me what people call me."

"V-vi... villain hunter... sir."

"Not that one. The four-syllable name."

"Ah... w-well, that's..."

"I won't get angry. Speak. Keep me waiting, and I will."

The girl's gaze wandered, finding nowhere to rest. Apparently it was a word she balked at saying to his face. But when Lee Su-dok bore down on her with a steely stare, she dropped her eyes and, wringing out her voice one syllable at a time, finally forced the words past her lips.

"H-hu... hu... Human... Bu-bu... bu-bu-bu-bu-but... c... cher..."

"Correct."

Looking thoroughly satisfied, Lee Su-dok wrote the four syllables beneath his own name.

Human Butcher.

'So that's how it came to be.'

The world of Dragon Slayer Academy held superhumans who had surpassed the limits of humanity in numbers beyond counting, like grains of sand — and among so many superhumans, there were bound to be the wicked: villains who turned their power toward twisted desires. Lee Su-dok, I could only surmise, had been the one tasked with running such villains down and dragging them in. And the name Human Butcher carried a further implication — that the number he had executed dwarfed the number he had ever captured. If his face alone told the story, the count had probably blown well past a hundred.

"It was not by choice that I stand here; I did so at the Principal's request. And the fact that I have fulfilled every request to perfection is one of the few things I take pride in. See to it that you are not the ones to tarnish that. Sincerely."

As Lee Su-dok ground out the words, the air in the classroom turned several degrees colder. I couldn't have been the only one who heard the unspoken addendum: anyone who fails to produce results will die by my hand before they ever see a failing grade.

"No time to waste, so introductions end here. To the matter at hand — your grades."

Lee Su-dok snapped his fingers, and the writing on the board vanished as though it had evaporated. He began again across the clean surface.

"Written work accounts for thirty percent. Midterms, finals, reports, assignments — all of it lumped together, thirty percent. Inclined as I was to cut it to twenty, that was not within my purview."

In his day it had been twenty, Lee Su-dok clicked his tongue — a genuine pity, he said. True to his word, the weight of written work shifted from year to year: one year twenty percent, the next thirty, and in the worst years it sank as low as fifteen. What never changed was this — in all my hundreds of runs through Dragon Slayer Academy, written work had never once exceeded thirty percent. The academy simply valued other things above what a student could do at a desk.

Next, Lee Su-dok added a line beneath Written Exams — 30%.

"Keep your nose clean and keep breathing, and I'll hand you a full ten percent. Free marks, for some of you. That said—"

He delivered it at his leisure, then tacked on, as though he had nearly forgotten to mention it: "This attitude score is shaved down a little each time you take a penalty for breaking school rules. And should it fall below zero, it will begin eating into your other grades as well. I doubt anyone here would treat the school rules that lightly, but..."

Whether by design or not, his gaze seemed to snag for just an instant on Shin Byung-cheol's little circle. They very quietly looked away.

"I will be watching closely those of you whose prospects look dim. Who knows? We may meet again after graduation."

A shudder ran through the students. They could imagine all too well what it would mean to cross paths with the Human Butcher after graduation. In their hearts, no doubt, each of them was swearing never, ever to break a single rule — though that was easier sworn than kept. There was a reason the school started everyone off with that ten percent.

"Next is practical training — the most important part."

"Practicals are divided into dungeon clearance, in which you clear a variety of dungeons, and PvP assessment, in which you compete against your fellow students. And these are relative evaluations. If you want the points, you will outwork and outperform the ones beside you. Without exception."

In the parlance gamers commonly used, dungeon clearance was PVE and PvP assessment was PVP. Take PvP: students squared off against one another, seizing points and having points seized, and those points set the rankings. Since the maximum one could earn from PvP was thirty percent, the top ten percent took twenty-seven of a possible thirty, and the top fifty percent took fifteen. Dungeon clearance worked the same way.

Lee Su-dok drew one great circle around everything he had written on the board. And at the very bottom, he wrote: 100%.

"This is the grading standard for the first semester of your first year. I will allow questions. Anyone with something to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ask, raise your hand this instant."

"..."

Not a single hand went up. Whether that was because everyone had understood his explanation perfectly, or because raising a hand seemed likely to cost them the hand itself, who could say.

"None? Good. Today, to establish a rough sorting among the students, we will conduct a placement exam. All of you, proceed to the Arena."

[Next Chapter — 11. The Support Ate It All]