Chapter 121: Week 7 Mentoring, PvP Assessment (6)
For the crime of wielding malicious wind magic, my sentence was a trip to the Infirmary with Hong Yeon-hwa in tow.
The bump on one side of Hong Yeon-hwa's forehead had been prominent enough as it was, and it just kept swelling bigger by the minute — though thankfully, a round of ointment and a deluge of recovery magic at the Infirmary smoothed it away in no time.
Still, the spot must have felt tender, because Hong Yeon-hwa kept gingerly rubbing the place she'd crashed into me.
Watching her, I spoke up. "Let's head back to the Arena."
"O-oh, okay..."
"If you're really not feeling up to it, rest. I'll give our mentor a heads-up."
"No. I'm going. To the Arena."
Hong Yeon-hwa shook her head hard.
She wasn't genuinely under the weather, after all — but if she dared sit this one out, Hong Ye-hwa's Flame Back Smack would come crashing down on her without mercy.
And so we made our way back to the Arena to finish out the mentoring session, where I noticed something right away.
The kid's gone right back to being a shrinking violet.
Over the past few weeks of mentoring together, she'd been slowly chipping away at her fear of me — but that sparring match just now seemed to have reset her terror gauge to zero.
“...”
She didn't dare walk at my side, keeping instead to a diagonal position just over my shoulder. Her stride was shorter than mine to begin with, and with her constantly stealing glances at my face, her pace naturally kept slipping. Each time she drifted a little behind, she'd scurry up close to walk over my shoulder again, and each time the distance widened, she'd come pattering after me.
After this repeated a few rounds, I slowed my steps and tossed a question back over my shoulder. "Planning to walk like that the whole way?"
"Huh? Oh, n-no? It's not that..."
Only then did Hong Yeon-hwa shuffle up beside me and match my speed. Though the constant fidgeting and nervous glances in my direction hadn't improved one bit.
I let it be, and we walked on in silence — until, even in the middle of all her fidgeting, Hong Yeon-hwa put on the expression of someone with something to say.
“...”
More precisely, she was simply so bad at hiding her feelings that they leaked right through.
Once again, I opened my mouth first. "If you've got something to say, say it. If something's on your mind, ask."
"Well, um..."
After a moment's dithering, what came out of Hong Yeon-hwa's mouth was:
"...How was it?"
A question with an enormous amount left unsaid, compressed into two words.
Unpacked in full, it meant: Did I handle that Crystal PvP all right just now? From your side, as my opponent — how did it look?
I gave her my honest impression. "Not bad. That Fire Pillar — did you modify it yourself?"
"Y-yeah..."
"Never seen anything like it before."
"I only started using it recently. Um, back at the Blacksmith Workshop, a while ago..."
Hong Yeon-hwa had first used the small-scale Fire Pillar about two weeks prior, when she'd unleashed flame magic on the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron at the Blacksmith Workshop. It was a technique she'd devised to concentrate and sustain her heat output as efficiently as possible, but the more she used it, the more inspiration struck, until she'd begun researching a combat application as well.
By now it had been refined to the point where you could reasonably call it an entirely different spell. Which meant a first-year barely a month into her enrollment had already grown capable of reshaping magic to suit her own tastes.
And that wasn't even the most impressive part.
When the duel began, Dang Gyu-young had handed Hong Yeon-hwa the Crystal and sent her off first, so she had been granted time to prepare. Even so, it hadn't actually taken me very long to pin down her location and close the distance.
Yet in that short window, Hong Yeon-hwa had carpeted the area with magic circles, turning the whole zone into a minefield. An astonishing casting speed, even factoring in that they were small-scale Fire Pillars.
"There wasn't a single safe spot to step. At that casting speed, I'd wager you could lay them down mid-combat, too."
"Probably. With a little more practice..."
She had, after all, only begun using them in real combat since last week's defense-assault match, so there was still plenty left to polish and proficiency to build.
I nodded. "Well, overall, I thought it was excellent."
“...”
Hong Yeon-hwa, evidently not having expected to be praised, looked half astonished and half proud at the acknowledgment. Then, gauging my mood yet again, she asked in a voice that crept in under the radar:
"Um... if you could tell me my weaknesses too... for reference..."
Stretched out in full, that meant: if you pointed out my flaws and where I could improve, it would give me something to work with.
Once again, I answered honestly. "For one, the coverage of your magic circles is lacking. I'd have spread them wider. Packing them in dense does make your defense rock-solid, but it constrains your own movement just as much."
“...!”
Perhaps she'd been sensing the very same problem — an exclamation mark practically floated above Hong Yeon-hwa's head. She'd gone to all the trouble of laying down circles and fortifying the area into a fortress, but the moment I shoved her out of it a few times with Wind Force, most of those circles turned worthless.
Forced-movement skills were a special case, admittedly, but depending on the situation, a caster will often need to abandon her own position. Say a long-range sniping shot comes screaming in, or an area-of-effect spell comes down on the whole zone. If your circles are laid out wide in anticipation of moments like those, you'll have far more room to maneuver afterward.
I moved on to the next problem. "And you're too hasty. You trigger the circles far too quickly."
"That... what do you mean?"
"You laid the circles all out, then fired one off every single time I tried to set foot in your territory."
"Well, yes, but..."
Hong Yeon-hwa still didn't quite follow, her expression tinged with puzzlement, so I elaborated.
"Wait a little longer. Drag the opponent in a little deeper, then spring it — far more effective that way. And much harder to read."
"Oh...!"
Hong Yeon-hwa had unleashed a Fire Pillar the instant my foot so much as touched a circle, every single time — which made responding to her, and predicting her, equally easy. All I had to do was keep orbiting the perimeter, feinting in and pulling back, and whittle her circles down bite by bite.
But if she had deliberately held the trigger just a little longer — if the Fire Pillar had gone off only after I'd pushed deep into the heart of her circle-strewn fortress — dealing with it would have been a far trickier matter on every count.
Then again, her impatient temperament might be the biggest problem of all.
Given how Hong Yeon-hwa fought — attack, attack, and attack again, a relentless barrage until the enemy dropped — building a fortress and then reacting to the enemy's moves would have quietly made her itch all over. My guess was that sheer impatience had her firing off a Fire Pillar the moment I showed the slightest opening. Then again, maybe she'd been so spooked by me that she rushed the trigger just to keep me from getting anywhere near her.
Either way, the conclusion was the same: a mage who builds a fortress has to run it with a spider's patience, like the spider sitting at the center of its web.
Hong Yeon-hwa stared blankly at me for a while, then mumbled while looking down at the tops of her feet, "...I hadn't thought that far. Thanks for the feedback."
"Let's go run it again. Keep everything we just talked about in mind while you do."
"Okay. I'll give it a try."
Hong Yeon-hwa nodded without hesitation.
We returned to the Arena and resumed the interrupted duel, focusing on three things: widening the placement range of her Fire Pillar circles, laying down new circles in the lulls of combat, and running the whole operation slowly, on a grand scale.
As for me, to keep Hong Yeon-hwa from short-circuiting again, I restrained myself on Wind Force this time and relied mainly on Twister. I needed to Rank Up Twister anyway, so I had nothing to lose by it.
The next day.
The moment class let out, I was about to make a beeline for the Arena when Shin Byung-cheol called me over. "Hey, someone from another class came looking for you."
"Who?"
"Uh, Cha Hyun-ju's here?"
The reason Shin Byung-cheol's face looked a little odd was probably that he knew exactly who Cha Hyun-ju really was. After all, he was the very one who'd first let slip to me that 'we've got a promising young archer on our side.'
Then he asked, "How'd you even end up tangled up with her?"
"Turns out she was my PvP opponent yesterday."
"Who won?"
"I did."
"And that's why she came looking for you."
Shin Byung-cheol bought it on the spot. Of course, quite a lot had actually happened for me to wave it off with a simple 'she came because I won.' If I had to name the single most decisive factor, it was probably blasting her away into the distance with Wind Force — twice, no less.
Shin Byung-cheol dropped his voice to a murmur. "Watch yourself. That girl's personality is seriously rotten."
"Worse than Song Cheon-hye?"
"Song Cheon-hye's practically cute next to her."
"Yeah, I can see that."
Tzing!
As if they'd overheard every word, a razor-sharp surge of killing intent shot in from outside the classroom. Shin Byung-cheol raised both hands in a gesture that screamed I did nothing wrong~ I'm a harmless little animal~ and retreated backward.
"Good luck, boss. You got this."
Leaving Shin Byung-cheol's well-wishes behind me, I stepped out of the classroom to find a girl — presumably Cha Hyun-ju — waiting. When we'd faced off in yesterday's PvP, she'd worn a mask that left only her eyes barely visible; now it was the reverse, a pair of oversized glasses hiding the upper half of her face.
The half of her face visible below the frames was genuinely pretty, but the glasses lent her overall impression a remarkably plain cast. People jokingly call glasses a 'beauty seal,' but with her it was no joke.
A perception-blocking artifact.
And one far more powerful and seamless than a crude contraption like the Anonymous Badge, at that. Most people would walk right past without ever realizing it carried perception-blocking magic at all.
So how, then, had I recognized at a glance that this girl was Cha Hyun-ju?
Tzing...
Because of the killing intent she'd been beaming at me — and me alone — without pause since the moment I'd appeared. The closer I came, the sharper it grew, until it practically bared fangs. Someone's thoroughly furious, I see.
I held Cha Hyun-ju's glare for a few seconds, then — feigning a startled jump — hollered loud enough for everyone nearby to hear:
"Well, if it isn't none other than—! The pride of the Guild Alliance! The genius archer hiding her true strength! Cha! Hyun—!!"
"Shut it. Please, shut it."
Cha Hyun-ju hastily clamped a hand over my mouth. She swept sharp glances around to see whether anyone had caught it, but the other students had only glanced over for the instant I was shouting before drifting on their way, evidently indifferent.
Cha Hyun-ju drilled another glare into me, then stalked off ahead, tossing a single word over her shoulder. "Follow me."
"Yes, ma'am."
I obediently trailed along wherever she led, until the foot traffic around us had thinned out considerably.
"You."
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Know why I called you here?"
"Can't say that I do?"
The reason was so obvious I couldn't possibly not know it — but she deserved the chance to say it herself.
Cha Hyun-ju faced me and enunciated every syllable, crystal clear. "I don't accept losing like that. Fight me again."
She had come seeking a rematch with me — a revenge match.
[122] The Support Ate It All