Week 8 Mentoring, Conquest Battle (6)

After a few more rounds of the toss-Seo-Ye-in-around game, we stepped outside, where Ahn Jungmi was waiting to receive us.

"Kim Ho-nim, Agassi. Thank you for your hard work."

Her bearing was as courteous and businesslike as ever, but her eyes were churning with an admiration she couldn't quite conceal.

A perfect game against the Ogre. Not a single percent of damage conceded. Even against an Ogre under Enfeeblement, it was a rousing result — one you could fairly call the best record of any first-year so far.

Of course, the score was one thing, but there was another reason Ahn Jungmi was so moved.

"That was truly excellent teamwork."

Seo Ye-in, who until now hadn't spared her partners so much as a glance, had meshed with me flawlessly. While I charged the crystal, she made short work of the bothersome goblins, then hammered the Ogre's legs to keep it pinned. And when it was her turn to charge, she leaned fully on my support to slip past every one of its swings.

"So that's why you recommended Featherwalk, Kim Ho-nim."

The Featherwalk–Wind Force combo in particular had shown astonishing synergy — in a single motion she'd be whisked clear of danger and set down somewhere ideal for shooting. Seeing it perform beyond all expectations, Ahn Jungmi, who had worked so hard drilling Featherwalk into her, had to be all the more delighted. In every respect, she must be thinking, approving the temporary pairing had been the right call.

Well, that much is settled.

The temporary pairing with Seo Ye-in had carried one more purpose: fixing this lazy young lady's chronic lack of motivation.

I spoke as if it were an afterthought.

"Shame we never got the Ogre down, though."

"......"

Seo Ye-in stared at me. She must have been wondering — if we'd kept fighting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after that last critical shotgun hit, could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠we actually have brought it down?

Before long, she gave my sleeve a slow tug.

"Again."

To spell out what she left unsaid: let's go back into the dungeon together and have a proper bout with the Ogre.

But I shook my head, unhurried.

"Let's stop here for today."

Much as it pained me, Seo Ye-in was only ever a stopgap partner. Gwak Ji-cheol would be coming around soon enough, and the practice would have to continue with him. Besides, scoring our points and heading back out had been the whole arrangement with Dang Gyu-young in the first place.

"......"

The hand gripping my sleeve went slack. On that expressionless face flickered something half disappointed, half sulky.

I answered with a wry smile.

"It won't just be today. You know this is on the midterm, right?"

"......"

"The Ogre comes back too."

"......!"

And this time, even after the crystal finished charging, the Ogre wouldn't disappear.

When Seo Ye-in looked up, suddenly interested, I made my proposal.

"Practice plenty in advance. Dodge a lot, hit it a lot."

The more she drilled her evasion, the easier it would become to seize openings for her own attacks — and the better she got at striking vital points, the faster she could carve down the Ogre's health.

Seo Ye-in nodded.

"Okay."

I could feel the motivation that had been scraping the floor all day sprouting back to life. And Ahn Jungmi, who had watched the whole exchange from the side, couldn't suppress her amazement. She held a conversation with me through eye contact alone.

— So that was your masterstroke...!

— I did say I'd find a way, didn't I.

— Thank you.

— We'll call that debt settled.

Thanks to Ahn Jungmi's little piece of performance art, we'd sailed through the cookie-shape challenge, and this was my thanks in return. Besides, if Seo Ye-in threw herself into her mentoring with actual drive, that was nothing but good for me too — two birds with one stone. As for the fruits of the training, the midterms would tell.

Having posted a perfect game in the conquest battle, I'd also breezed past the sub quest's ceiling of 90% achievement.

Wind Cutter was a wind-attribute attack skill that carved into enemies with a blade of sharpened air. Simple as it was, it chained neatly with all manner of wind skills — a dependable, no-frills pick.

Shooting Star was a non-elemental attack skill that bludgeoned enemies with a huge, star-shaped mass of mana. The big star itself was just a projectile, but on impact — or even mid-flight — it split into a spray of little stars scattering in every direction. With no telling where those little stars would fly next, it was quietly nasty to face.

And then, the long-awaited Point Explosion. A non-elemental skill that fixed on a single point in empty air, compressed mana there in an instant, and detonated it for damage.

There was a second reason this skill was a core piece of Spiral Explosion:

Defense penetration.

Depending on Point Explosion's rank, it could ignore a set proportion of an enemy's defenses and deal its damage straight through. That property would carry over, untouched, into the Spiral Explosion it would later feed.

So there was nothing to deliberate.

The rest could wait until Spiral Explosion was complete. One piece left now — one more skill to learn.

Of course, that opportunity was still a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠good while off, so in the meantime—

I'd better start raising its rank.

By milking the mentoring events for all they were worth, naturally.

I headed back to where my group members were gathered. Gwak Ji-cheol had regained his senses, but he was still sprawled in a corner. Song Cheon-hye and Hong Yeon-hwa had finished their first attempts and come out as well, and the mood around them was, at a glance, rotten. The reason was easy enough to guess: their first runs had fallen short of expectations.

Still, I figured I'd hear it from the source, so I called over the one standing nearest.

"Lamp Fairy, oh Lamp Fairy, come here a moment, would you?"

"!!"

Ever since our last wager had brought her tally to three Wish Tickets, I'd taken to calling Song Cheon-hye "Lamp Fairy" instead of her name. She knew it, too — her face flared scarlet in an instant, and she darted a wary glance around us. For a Disciplinary Committee member, word getting out that she'd wagered against another student would be bad enough. Word that she'd lost and lost and lost again, stacking up three Wish Tickets, would be far worse.

So Song Cheon-hye hurriedly hauled me off into a corner.

"I told you not to call me that."

"I call people what I feel like. If it bothers you, win a wager."

"You have plenty of other nicknames for me. Why does it have to be Lamp Fairy?"

"Oh? Don't like it? Want me to change it? Using a Wish Ticket, I mean."

"......On reflection, Lamp Fairy is perfectly fine."

She folded on the spot. Me, spending a Wish Ticket to pin some ridiculous nickname on her and bellowing it in front of everyone? The mere thought of the fallout was horrifying. Realizing she had no winning move on this front, Song Cheon-hye pivoted the conversation with practiced speed.

"Why did you call me over, anyway?"

"What's with the mood? Things not going well?"

"......As you can see."

"You two were trying to take the Ogre down, weren't you."

"How did you know that?"

When Song Cheon-hye started and shot the question back, I answered like it was nothing.

"You two are about evenly matched, and you've got a rivalry going."

Which meant that rather than coordinating, they'd probably just tried to beat the thing down and compare who dealt more damage. Taking it out was also less of a hassle than running laps around the Sanctuary charging a crystal — and there'd be bonus points on top.

So the two of them had unleashed their magic in a competitive frenzy, and yet—

"It was strangely tough. It should have been under Enfeeblement, too......"

"Not going down as easily as you expected, huh?"

Something in my tone made Song Cheon-hye narrow her eyes.

"You say that like you saw it coming."

"I happened to form a hypothesis."

Call it a hypothesis all I liked — it was really just experience. If she heard the whole thing and then asked, But how could you possibly know that?, explaining would be twice the bother. Better to lay the groundwork in advance.

"Enfeeblement does drop its rank, but it doesn't seem to lower every stat evenly."

"......!"

Take speed and destructive power: every attack-related stat had plunged hard compared to the original Ogre. But its high defense and sheer toughness remained nearly intact. In other words, dodging its swings had become a great deal easier — while actually felling the thing was as hard as ever.

Song Cheon-hye must have felt the same dissonance herself, because instead of dismissing my words as absurd, she seemed to be cross-checking them against her own experience.

"I'd want to verify it further, but it's entirely plausible. So — you're saying the Ogre can't be taken down?"

"Hmm. That depends on how you go about it."

This week, at least, the ways to kill the Ogre were extremely limited. Its intact toughness was one problem, but the real snag was the unexpected time limit. Just like the run Seo Ye-in and I had just scored on, the moment the crystal finished charging, the Ogre would vanish mid-battle.

There were two broad ways around that. Keep stepping outside the Sanctuary's radius to reset the crystal's charge and stretch the clock — or unleash a skill with power far beyond first-year level, something like Inferno Fist.

Put another way: short of those, there was no way to kill it at all.

So the point I actually wanted to make was this:

"Rather than chasing something you don't even know is possible, wouldn't it be smarter to shore up your fundamentals first?"

The contest over who was stronger between her and Hong Yeon-hwa could wait. That race wouldn't even be settled until both of them could dodge properly and charge their crystals anyway.

Perhaps it stung a little, because Song Cheon-hye cleared her throat.

"Ahem. Ahem. Fair enough. Thanks for the advice."

"Talk it through with Hong Yeon-hwa, too."

"I will. Though it looks like you'll have your hands full as well."

Our gazes swung to the same spot at the same moment — toward Gwak Ji-cheol, who had only just managed to drag himself upright.

Song Cheon-hye had only glimpsed a fraction of what I could do, but she seemed willing to grant that I dodged well and ran well. Having cruised to an easy win over Jo Byeok, I'd presumably have little trouble with an Ogre either. Gwak Ji-cheol, on the other hand, was pure dead weight. And under the two-crystal rule, even one spectacular performer couldn't carry the day if the other couldn't pull their share — which was exactly why Dang Gyu-young had called the pairing unbalanced when she set it up.

I shrugged as if it were none of my concern.

"Maybe he'll grow if he takes his lumps for a while."

"GYAAAAAH—!"

Gwak Ji-cheol's scream tore through the cavern. The next instant, a club the size of an adult human came plummeting down at a terrifying speed.

- CRUNCH,

The second attempt ended in miserable failure as well. Gwak Ji-cheol was ruled combat-incapable and ejected from the dungeon, and Dang Gyu-young dropped her concealment and reappeared.

"No progress at all. I wonder if he's just going to spend the whole week lying flat on his back."

"He won't stay down forever."

It was only because his groupmates were so exceptional — in his own right, Gwak Ji-cheol was a solid 600-point tier. Holding mid-rank in a place where future hero candidates gathered meant he at least had a working head on his shoulders. So sooner or later, he'd figure it out for himself: that this couldn't go on. How many more beatings he'd absorb from the Ogre before then, though, was anyone's guess.

Dang Gyu-young seemed to have reached much the same conclusion, settling into a wait-and-see posture. Then she turned to me.

"What about you, then?"

"I've just got to finish what I was doing."

Skill training. My first attempt had ended with Gwak Ji-cheol out cold and a new partner being scouted, but with the sub quest cleared, none of that was necessary anymore. I could simply carry on as things stood.

So I hurled Gwak Ji-cheol's crystal clear to the far end of the cave.

Distance from the Sanctuary severed the link, and the charge drained fast.

Unless that crystal was retrieved and recharged, the conquest battle would drag on without end. Which is to say — we could play tag with the Ogre for as long as we pleased.

"Guooong?"

The Ogre, blissfully unaware of the future bearing down on it, only loosed a dim-witted bellow at the spot where the crystal had flown.

The moment I leveled Root at the beast, mana gathered near its waist in a fist-sized clump, compressing smaller and smaller — down to a single pinpoint of sky-blue light—

- BOOM!

—and burst apart.

"Guuuuuh......"

The Ogre twisted at the waist in pain. Look closely, and a small wound had been left near its hip. That hide — the one Seo Ye-in had only barely punctured after pouring in Magic Bullet after Magic Bullet — had just been pierced by a single F-rank spell.

Granted, in raw power Point Explosion still fell far short of a gunslinger's shots.

But it ignores defense.

"Guuuh......"

Wounding it like that seemed to have branded one fact firmly into the Ogre's mind: I was an enemy. It came barreling at me, club whistling through the air.

I ambled along at an unhurried pace and pointed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Root at it once more. Again the mana gathered, compressed, and exploded.

- BOOM!

[145] The Support Ate It All