Week 9 Midterm Exam (6)
I had a dream.
I was lying in a grassy field, staring blankly up at the sky, when a cat with fluffy gray fur appeared from somewhere. Its face looked terribly sleepy, yet somehow familiar.
"……."
The cat padded right up beside me and gave my head, my cheek, my shoulder a few light taps with its front paw. When I kept gazing at the sky without reacting, it climbed onto my chest and curled itself into a ball — the attitude of someone claiming their reserved seat.
I let it be and went back to watching the clouds drift by, and when I opened my eyes again, a cave ceiling was staring back at me.
So it was a dream after all.
It didn't seem to carry any special meaning, so I could write it off as a meaningless dream — well, a cat dream, rather.
But when I lowered my gaze a little, a scene remarkably similar to my cat dream was spread out right in front of me.
Seo Ye-in, fast asleep, leaning against my chest. Her sleeping bag was pressed flush against mine, too.
"What are you doing here?"
The cave was plenty big. She had to come all the way over here of all places.
I gave Seo Ye-in's sleeping bag a gentle shake.
"Hey, Miss Seo. Wake up."
"……."
"Miss Seo. It's morning."
"Five more minutes……."
So she wanted five more minutes of sleep. Leave her alone and that would balloon into fifty in no time.
Deciding I'd better be the one up first, I laid Seo Ye-in — who was still clinging to my chest in her sleep — flat on her back, then carefully lifted her sleeping bag aside.
I'd noticed it yesterday when I carried her on my back: she weighed about as much as a feather.
"……?"
The moment she was separated from me, however, Seo Ye-in's eyes fluttered open.
She was still closer to asleep than awake — to put a number on it, roughly 0.2 eyes-open. In that state, she gave me a weak, drowsy tug.
"Sleep more……."
"Time to get up. Eat."
I broke the last remaining tree fruit into small pieces and popped them into her mouth one at a time. She chewed them slowly, gradually, and by the time she reached 0.4 eyes-open, she managed to sit up, and at a full 0.6 she was on her feet, helping me break camp.
We stepped out of the cave and set off, each carrying a calorie bar, and it was along the way that Seo Ye-in asked a question.
"Where to?"
"To get supplies."
Just like yesterday — moving fast to claim the supply drops before anyone else could.
We circled around the lake, kept walking, and arrived at our destination. Then I looked up at the sky and said,
"Should be here any minute."
"Jet plane."
As if it had been waiting for those very words, the jet made its appearance over the island.
It swept in a full circle through the empty air, scattered its supply crates, and vanished. One of them, trailing a parachute, was descending straight toward us.
At least one is guaranteed.
Since we knew the time and place in advance, we could secure a minimum of one crate before anything else, with zero chance of clashing with other participants in the process. The others were either still asleep or, having only just spotted the jet, scrambling into motion now.
This supply crate was on the small side. Inside was a whistle crudely carved from an animal skull.
◈ Effect: Summons all goblins within a certain radius when blown
◈ Uses: Single use — extremely powerful
I slipped the whistle into my subspace backpack and held out my hand to Seo Ye-in.
"Let's go. On to the next crate."
"Jump."
— POOF!
Hands clasped, we sped off to the next location. Sprinting and chaining long jumps with Wind Force along the way, a supply crate soon came into view at the far edge of my vision.
Slowing our approach, we both stopped at the same moment and said the same thing.
"It's trapped."
"Trap."
The lid was closed, but faint traces remained around the crate of someone having come and gone. Another person might be fooled, but neither Seo Ye-in's sharp eyes nor mine could be. If someone had deliberately staged it to look untouched, there was a very good chance a trap had been dug beneath it.
Without a word, Seo Ye-in pointed at a spot in front of the crate, and I picked up a hefty rock and hurled it right there.
— WHOOSH!
The instant the rock made contact, wooden vines snapped shut around the spot. It was a trap, just as expected.
And then, bursting out from the brush where they'd been lying in wait—
"Got you, you sneaky punks!"
—came Shin Byung-cheol, a chopstick-like tool in each hand, and Go Hyeon-woo with his golden shamanic sword drawn.
They froze halfway out of hiding, though — because the thing caught in the trap wasn't a person, but a big fat rock. Then, sweeping their eyes around, they locked gazes with Seo Ye-in, who had her mana rifle trained on them.
The mana rifle spat a torrent of blue fire.
— RATATATATAT!
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up, time out! Let's settle this with a conversation, a conversation!"
Shin Byung-cheol turned tail and bolted in a flailing panic. Go Hyeon-woo positioned himself protectively in front of him and swung his sword in a rapid blur —
— KAKAKAKANG!
—and the mana bullets shattered and scattered. As he batted them away, Go Hyeon-woo sent a few streaks of sword qi flying back at us, but I deflected them with Wind Force and a well-placed storm cloud. In the meantime, he too took cover behind a tree.
"Haha, to run into you two again during the midterm — I hardly know whether to call it good fortune or bad."
"Call it both. Since we've met like this, shall we have a go?"
"My heart yearns for nothing more, I confess, but the situation regrettably does not permit it."
With that, Go Hyeon-woo held out his shamanic sword for me to see. Despite its fairly high durability and its automatic repair function, cracks had already spiderwebbed across the blade. It seemed to have taken damage deflecting Seo Ye-in's mana bullets one by one. If the fight continued as it was, there was a real chance the thing would break apart entirely.
"At present, this is the only weapon I have to speak of."
"The rule is two items each. That's a handicap for you. What's the other one?"
"The pen you made for me, Brother Kim."
The Sturdy Pen — an item crafted by combining a Sturdy Clip with a pen of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron, carrying an option that supplemented weapon durability. Clearly his plan was to make thrifty use of it and keep his shamanic sword from shattering.
"What did you get from the supply crate?"
"Something called a Twin GPS."
Go Hyeon-woo stored his shamanic sword and produced a pair of palm-sized terminals to show us. GPS devices that let each unit track the other's location.
"Fancy that, of all things."
"You seem to know what it's for, Brother Kim."
"Simply put, it's a cooperation item."
To be more precise, an item meant for cooperating with another team.
The midterm was fundamentally run in pairs of two, but there was no rule saying teams had to do nothing but hack at each other on sight. Depending on overlapping interests, cooperation was entirely possible — and the Twin GPS was how two teams could keep track of each other's positions.
Go Hyeon-woo nodded slowly.
"So that's what it is. I had been wondering why Shin Byung-cheol and I would have any need to move separately, but now I see its purpose."
"Pairs should always stick together."
A battle could break out anywhere, at any time, so keeping at least a two-person unit was the wise move.
Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol emerged from behind the trees and approached us. And with the handing over of one half of the Twin GPS, an unspoken alliance took shape.
"Your crystal?"
"Grabbed one somehow. Before dawn."
Shin Byung-cheol answered the question by producing a green crystal. It was still uncharged.
I showed him Red Crystal No. 2 and made my proposal.
"Then we should go charge them together. More guards is always better."
"Oh, genius."
Yesterday, while I charged the crystal, Seo Ye-in had to drive off every other team that swarmed in all by herself. But with four people total, one could charge while the other three watched the perimeter. Stability went way up.
And so the four of us set out together for the Sanctuary.
A tower rising like a lighthouse — about four stories, a touch taller than the windmill. I pointed at the top and asked Seo Ye-in,
"How about that one? Too high?"
"Fine."
That height was acceptable, then. I lifted her with Wind Force, and she settled onto the tower's roof and vanished into optical camouflage.
Next, I gave Shin Byung-cheol a nod.
"Charge first. We'll hold the line."
"Oh, bless you. Then I won't be shy about it."
Shin Byung-cheol sprinted straight for the tower. I could hear him laboring up the stairs, and then—
— VMMMM—
a powerful light began pouring from the top of the tower.
It meant someone was charging a crystal, and enemies would come flooding in from every direction before long. Go Hyeon-woo and I hid ourselves along the routes they'd most likely use and waited.
The first guests were a man and woman — the boy in heavy plate armor, the girl a healer. They advanced with their eyes glued to the tower the whole way, which suggested they'd been through this a few times before.
Just as they predicted, light flashed from the top of the tower, and—
"Hup!"
— CLANG!
—the incoming sniper shot was blocked as the heavy-armored warrior threw up his shield. The impact made him stagger for an instant, but he quickly pulled himself back into a heroic stance. No doubt angling to look good in front of the healer girl.
"Just the one gunner, then. Let's go take her."
— RUSTLE!
But the one taken down first was the girl.
Go Hyeon-woo, lying in ambush, had simply swept his sword across in a single motion. The girl crumpled and was ejected from the dungeon.
"There were two more of us, you see."
"Wh— what—?!"
— VWWEEENG—
A whirlwind gathered around the gaping heavy-armored boy. On pure reflex, he thrust out his shield and cast a defensive skill, his whole body shrouding in blue mana as the barrier hardened into something far more solid. A decent reaction speed, and the skill itself looked to sit somewhere between D-Rank and C-Rank.
But it won't be enough.
— POOF!
"Gwaack!"
The compressed air detonated, and the heavy-armored warrior's spine folded like a shrimp's. He looked up at me with eyes brimming over with disbelief — as if asking how I had pierced his defense so effortlessly.
How would he ever figure it out? The fact that this seemingly simple wind magic carried an Ignore Defense effect.
Any halfway-decent defensive mechanism got bored straight through, exactly like this, dealing its damage. With his guard wide open, Go Hyeon-woo's shamanic sword came down on him.
— RUSTLE!
Both were now combat-incapacitated and vanished, but the spot where they'd stood was left completely bare. Apparently they hadn't been carrying any items at all. They could have at least left behind a calorie bar.
I exchanged a glance with Go Hyeon-woo.
"Let's welcome the next guests."
"Ambushing has its own pleasures, I find."
As we waited with our bodies hidden in the brush, the next guests made their appearance.
Two boys. Faces with I am a warrior practically written across them, each gripping a sword in hand.
They too approached cautiously — the difference being that they caught on to our ambush quickly. Staring straight at the brush where we hid, they abruptly loosed their sword qi.
— SHRAAK!
We had no choice but to slip out of the brush and evade.
Then one of the warriors looked at me, and his eyes hardened with intensity.
"Kim Ho. Class 3."
"You know me?"
I don't know you, though?
A smile as deep as that gaze settled across his lips.
"I've been looking for you. Funny to run into you in a place like this."
"Why were you looking for me?"
He offered only the smile, no answer. And then, behind him, four more warriors emerged, one after another.
A sword hung at every single one of their waists, and something clicked into place.
"So the Swordsmanship Club sent you."