The Swordsmanship Club (3)
The second-year senior led the way, introducing himself as Mak Daewoong.
I'd had my suspicions ever since Dang Gyu-young first gave me the heads-up, and sure enough, Mak Daewoong seemed to have business with me beyond simply escorting me to the clubroom. The fact that we'd ended up in a deserted back alley said as much.
Deliberately playing the clueless junior, I glanced around and asked, "This isn't where the Swordsmanship Club is, though?"
"Of course it isn't. Taking you to the Vice-Captain comes later."
"Then what happens now?"
At that, Mak Daewoong curled his lips into a sinister smile and began letting his menace seep out. "You'll pay for coveting what isn't yours. Did the Swordsmanship Club look like an easy mark to you?"
"I wouldn't say easy... but shouldn't we at least talk before I start paying up? That seems to be what your side wants, too."
"Not all of us share that sentiment."
"Still, I'd think the Vice-Captain's wishes would take priority."
"Not where I'm concerned."
Discipline around here is looser than I thought. To think he could brush aside an order from the Vice-Captain so casually.
Somehow, it made sense that the other side had set the board up this way. They must be planning to use this chance to snap the pride of Mak Daewoong's faction in two.
For my part, the situation wasn't half bad. If a single fight got the Black Snake Gang replay returned to me—kept private, no less—then I was coming out well ahead on the deal.
"So, were you planning to get your own hands dirty?"
Though, to be fair, a senior laying hands on a junior was a violation of academy rules. Mak Daewoong must have known it too, because the smile hanging on his lips deepened.
"Of course. Someone else will be dealing with you."
He tipped his chin toward the space behind me. Two first-years had appeared from who knew when, walking toward me slowly from front and back.
I looked between the two of them, but neither face rang any bells. So I asked, "Gentlemen, shall we introduce ourselves first?"
"Cheolsu."
"Minsu."
Cheolsu and Minsu each offered a single clipped word. Better than being flatly ignored, but the names reeked so strongly of aliases that it didn't amount to much.
Just as I opened my mouth to probe further, Mak Daewoong's command cut the conversation dead. "That's enough. Begin."
"..."
"..."
Blades slid from Cheolsu and Minsu's sheaths as if poured out. A clean, utterly silent draw.
I watched Cheolsu and tossed a compliment his way. "Nice form."
"Much obliged."
Cheolsu accepted it flatly and advanced slowly, sword hanging loose at his side. Once the distance had closed to a certain point, his hand blurred for an instant—and it felt as though a streak of light were cleaving my vision in half. It was an astonishingly fast draw, the kind most people would struggle to so much as react to.
Of course, I'd begun moving on the prediction alone, before the blade ever left its sheath, so a half-step sideways was enough to evade it. Then I immediately twisted my body, because Minsu's attack was already arriving from behind.
The instant their first strike failed, both men retracted their swords and thrust again. One aiming to split my heart from the front, the other to cleave my spine from behind.
Do they really need to come out this bloodthirsty?
Every single strike was hunting a fatal vital point. If any of them landed, I wouldn't be getting a taste of pain—I'd be ascending straight to heaven. I still had a world to save and far too much left to do for that, so I triggered Thief's Step and kept my footwork flowing.
Sword strikes grazed past me by hair-thin margins. They mapped my front and back, thrusting and slashing again and again, and when the misses kept piling up, Mak Daewoong muttered as if to himself from the sidelines. "He certainly dodges well... Speed up."
"..."
"..."
At his order, Cheolsu and Minsu fell back a few paces and traded a glance. Before long, something in their presence shifted, and they came at me again.
Swish-swish-swish-swish!
They still boxed me in from front and back and chained their attacks together, but the tempo kept climbing. I was starting to see what the man pulling their strings was after.
Overwhelm me with speed. That's the play.
And it wasn't a bad calculation—dodging was slowly becoming a chore. Of course, that was their speed against me without Overheat. If I truly wanted, I could pin them down at an even more overwhelming pace.
But—there was no need to show them everything just yet. My entanglement with these two was not going to end today. So I chose the second-best option.
Fwoosh!
A dark cloud billowed up out of thin air. I wound it around Root, then casually brought it up against the tip of Cheolsu's oncoming blade. The moment steel met the dark cloud, the blade skittered away, its arc bending sideways.
"...!"
Cheolsu retracted his sword instantly—a rapid recovery, as if he'd anticipated this very thing—but the momentary break in his offense was unavoidable. In that gap, I turned my attention to Minsu, whose sword was stabbing in from behind me.
Bang! Bang!
Compressed mana detonated twice. I had stored two Point Explosions through the Memorize engraved on Root and released them in the span of an instant. Caught by the unexpected counter, Minsu's body locked up for a moment. Before he could even react—
Bang!
—compressed air burst outward and hurled him far away.
One of them cleared off the board, at least.
I was turning back to face front when I snapped my head aside—
Shwip!
—and a streak of light skimmed past my cheek. Even reduced to a one-on-one, Cheolsu's ferocity showed no sign of ebbing. If anything, it had turned sharper.
Not bad.
I shifted my tactics: rather than dodging Cheolsu's attacks outright, I began nudging them aside with the dark cloud, one by one. And I didn't forget to slip a Point Explosion into the mix now and then.
Bang! Bang!
Cheolsu's reactions were excellent this time as well. The instant he sensed mana gathering, he'd move his body clear, all the while keeping up a relentless stream of attacks. But Point Explosions kept erupting from angles he never saw coming, and the damage was accumulating, little by little.
"...You're a nuisance."
"Why, thank you."
Dozens of exchanges flew back and forth in a short span. And through it all, a thought kept nagging at me.
No matter how I look at it, I've seen this guy somewhere before.
I'd felt déjà vu when we first met, but I hadn't been sure then. Now, the longer I crossed blades with him, the clearer the source of that déjà vu became. An ordinary alias. An ordinary face. An ordinary weapon. And yet a sword style steeped in killing intent...
Unable to hold my curiosity any longer, I spoke up. "Mind if I ask you something?"
"What."
"Is your surname Jang, by any chance? Jang Cheolsu?"
"...!?"
Cheolsu flinched, his thrust halting mid-extension. Seeing that only cemented my certainty.
"Jang Sam??"
"...No."
"It is Jang Sam, right??"
"I said no."
"Then that Minsu over there—Wang Pil??"
"I told you. No."
But his composure had visibly unraveled, which meant I'd hit the mark dead-on. Jang Sam and Wang Pil—the pair I'd been matched against in the two-on-two PvP assessment. Back then they'd been running a point-shooter-and-goalkeeper act; today they'd come back playing Cheolsu and Minsu.
"Hey, good to see you. Never thought we'd run into each other again like this."
"..."
The fight gone out of them, Jang Sam stopped attacking. Wang Pil, who had been closing in from behind, looked much the same. At that, Mak Daewoong barked out another order, his expression souring. "What are you standing around gawking for? Fight."
"..."
To Cheolsu and Minsu—no, to Jang Sam and Wang Pil—Mak Daewoong was both an upperclassman and a senior clubmate. They were in no position to defy him. So they reset their stances and moved to resume the fight—
Grrrrrumble—
—when a wooden door suddenly erupted from the ground. In the Dragon Slayer Academy, a wooden door meant one thing and one thing only: Gwak Seung-jae's signature magic.
Mak Daewoong's brow knotted, and he spat at the Gwak Seung-jae stepping out of it, "You just have to turn up everywhere, don't you."
"If you have nothing to be ashamed of, what does it matter where I stand?"
"..."
Mak Daewoong, evidently not so proud after all, held his tongue. Gwak Seung-jae swept his gaze slowly across the scene. "Three from the Swordsmanship Club and one unaffiliated first-year... I can roughly guess what went on, but I'll give you the chance to explain it with your own mouth."
Mak Daewoong had been briefly flustered when the door first shot out of the earth, but he soon slid back into his leisurely manner and began stacking up his excuses. "Our dear juniors here wanted to test their skills against one another, so I was observing. As any senior would."
"Test their skills... in a two-on-one?"
"Any reason two-on-one wouldn't do?"
"No reason at all. Though one ought to at least mind the venue."
"And what's wrong with here?"
Gwak Seung-jae answered in a tone flat as a plank. "Someone who should know better keeps trying to weasel out of it. I'll spell it out—consider it a lesson in the rules for you juniors as well. Any duel held outside the Training Center or the Arena is a violation of academy regulations."
"Ah, there was a rule like that. Slipped my mind."
Mak Daewoong let a sly laugh roll off his tongue. Caught red-handed, sure—but he hadn't personally broken a single rule. All he carried was the moral burden of a senior who'd failed to stop his juniors from dueling outside the Arena.
Gwak Seung-jae's eyes passed over each first-year in turn as he spoke. "Disperse. Next time, it's penalty points."
"Yes, senior."
Jang Sam and Wang Pil bowed their heads and withdrew, and Mak Daewoong, after glaring at me a moment longer, turned his back as well. With the Swordsmanship Club trio gone, Gwak Seung-jae's gaze naturally settled on the one person remaining: me.
His eyes asked, Why aren't you leaving? so I busied myself stowing the dark cloud and Root away as I replied, "How did you know to come here, if I may ask?"
"I received a report."
Figured it would be something like that.
Gwak Seung-jae had appeared far too conveniently for it to be coincidence. For all that his detection abilities were of a caliber even the third-years acknowledged, they wouldn't reach somewhere this out of the way. Which meant someone had been watching the whole affair and filed that report. And that someone was surely one of the Vice-Captain's people within the Swordsmanship Club.
The timing was perfect, too.
Had Gwak Seung-jae rushed over the instant the fight broke out, Mak Daewoong's side would have grown suspicious. Instead, the report had come in after I'd held out for a good while—but not so late that anything actually went wrong. In the end, not one of the first-years who fought got hurt, and Mak Daewoong and whoever stood behind him walked away with nothing. On top of that, the Vice-Captain's faction now held a ready-made pretext to press Mak Daewoong on why he'd disobeyed orders. Three birds with one stone.
They really don't hand the Vice-Captain's seat to just anyone.
I was admiring the clean execution and about to take my leave when Gwak Seung-jae called me back. "Kim Ho."
"Yes, senior."
"How is Jicheol doing?"
His little brother again. Was it possible that the Disciplinary Committee and the boy were the only two things Gwak Seung-jae cared about? In any case, it was a perfectly reasonable question, so I gave him a condensed account of what had happened over the past few days of mentoring—with only a slight embellishment of the part where I'd punted the kid around until he could properly deflect an Ogre's attacks.
"—and that's why he's come along quite nicely by now."
"I see."
"He should be posting his score tomorrow. Feel free to look forward to it."
If he performed the way he had in our practice sessions, I expected a respectable score—not a record-breaker, but solid. Gwak Seung-jae studied me for a moment before he spoke. "Honestly, I'd written it off as all but impossible. So the boy can manage it after all. Thank you for your help."
"Helping each other out—that's just how it works."
"As I said before, I can promise little. But this debt, I will not forget—I will repay it, whenever that may be."
"That's more than enough."
"I'll be going."
With that, Gwak Seung-jae vanished beyond the wooden door.
Grrrrrumble...
The door sank back into the earth, and I set off once more for my original destination, the Training Center. But before I'd gone far—
The Training Center feels awfully far today.
—something else stopped me in my tracks. Because up ahead, Jang Sam and Wang Pil were waiting for me.
I had no reason to avoid them, so I walked straight up and asked, "What now? I told you—it's against the rules."
The Disciplinary Committee had only just come and gone, and they wanted to start something again? But Jang Sam slowly shook his head.
"We didn't come to fight."
"Then what?"
"...There is something I want to ask you."