Week 12 PvP (1)

After our stop by the tailoring club, Seo Ye-in and I returned to the Training Center.

It was to resume Wind Barrier practice. But before that, it seemed cleanest to hand over what needed handing over, so I sent Go Hyeon-woo a message.

"Brother Kim."

"Ah, you made it."

Go Hyeon-woo had come straight over to our training room. The moment he arrived, his gaze dropped downward, darting back and forth between the upgraded Cloud Walkers on my feet and Seo Ye-in's. Then a contented, fatherly smile settled on his lips.

"A most fine sight, indeed."

"Yes, there's a pair for you as well."

I didn't bother reacting to that, simply handing back the armor Go Hyeon-woo had entrusted to me.

It had originally been nothing but big and heavy thanks to its bronze upgrade, but that had since been swapped out for the Multicolored Scale enhancement. With the weight and bulk slashed dramatically, it now offered more than enough freedom of movement for a martial artist like Go Hyeon-woo—light enough to be worn beneath his uniform like a T-shirt.

He was plainly delighted with his new armor.

"I always seem to receive far more than I deserve from you, Brother Kim. My thanks."

"No need to thank me. It's all coming out of your share of the loot."

"Haha, as it should be, no? I am quite satisfied with your way of doing things, Brother Kim."

We shared a light laugh. Just then, Seo Ye-in—who had been standing off to the side with a drowsy look on her face—suddenly began tugging gently at my sleeve. And when I met her eyes, she said, shortly:

"Now."

"Now?"

"Jackpot."

"The box?"

— Nod.

Go Hyeon-woo wore a baffled expression, apparently unable to follow the exchange, but between Seo Ye-in and me, communication had been fully achieved.

Now. Jackpot. Box.

String those together into a single sentence, and you got:

'Open the ingot box right now and it'll be an absolute jackpot.'

The "later" from the Magic Engineering Workshop meant right now.

So I held out the [Ghost Captain's Ingot Box], and the moment Seo Ye-in took it, she flipped the lid open.

— FWOOOOOSH—!

Thick fog erupted from the box and swallowed the training room whole. Go Hyeon-woo and Seo Ye-in, standing right beside me, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were visible only as hazy outlines. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A damp, briny sting hung in the air, as if we'd been carried off to the middle of the ocean.

'With an effect on this level...'

The jackpot was as good as confirmed. And sure enough, once the fog cleared, the item it revealed did not betray my expectations.

A metal of deep blue-black hue, with a strange, otherworldly grain.

A metal that crystallized, on the rarest of occasions, inside the body of the kraken—a deep-sea boss monster. Even a minuscule amount was worth a staggering fortune, and this was a fully processed ingot, no less. Forge the next component from this and fuse it with Deep Root, and...

'A+ is guaranteed, no question.'

"Hooh... Miss Seo's luck never ceases to astonish me."

Go Hyeon-woo might not have known what Kraketite was, but he had evidently gathered that it was a powerful item rivaling A-rank. Well, it looked extraordinary from the very first glance. As he circled the ingot, admiration spilling out of him in one exclamation after another, Seo Ye-in peered up at me from close range and asked:

"Did it help?"

"It helped a ton."

"...Pillow?"

"Yeah. Sleep on it as much as you want tonight."

The balance on my Kim Ho Pillow was currently deep in the red, but she had produced an honest-to-goodness A-rank material for me—no sense being a stickler at a moment like this. At my approval, her gray eyes lit up and sparkled. Then, some thought apparently occurring to her, she asked again:

"...Butler?"

"That's a no."

"A pity."

Still, a no was a no.

Monday. PvP assessment class.

Lee Sudok looked around at the students and began.

"There are two main purposes behind running the practical assessments in hostile environments."

The first: survival in a hostile environment. The second: making use of one.

"And yet, looking over how the last PvP and dungeon clearance matches played out... hardly a single one of you made use of the environment."

Take the Volcanic Zone, the setting of the last PvP—a treacherous place where rivers of lava overflowed and fireballs rained down without pause. As for instances where that terrain was actually exploited, there was my dropping Kang Hee-chan, Son Hyeong-taek, and the rest into the river of lava with Wind Force, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and Hong Yeon-hwa detonating the falling fireballs midair. But such cases were vanishingly rare; most students had simply rushed their fights, desperate to bring down their opponents before the lava swept them away. With matches ending in a flash, it was dubious whether they'd so much as experienced the first purpose—survival—and utilization went without saying.

The corners of Lee Sudok's mouth curled upward.

"So this week, I've prepared something to make you use the environment a little more."

......!

The students visibly tensed, eyes darting. Not once, in all the time he had announced he'd "prepared" something, had anything pleasant ever come of it.

Shortly after, this week's rules and environment rose onto the blackboard.

The rules themselves were ones we had each experienced before. A two-on-two battle to bring down the enemy team. Random matching, with teammates decided by pure chance. What mattered was the new environment: the Cloud Stairs.

'My favorite map.'

Before explaining further, Lee Sudok produced a clump of cloud from somewhere and held it in his hand. Something between smoke and cotton—soft and billowing, yet undeniably solid.

"All the terrain of the Cloud Stairs is made of clouds like this one. They serve well enough as footing."

Next, a crude, sketch-like diagram appeared on the blackboard: cloud platforms floating in tiers at regular intervals. The little figure in the drawing stood on the lowest cloud, then leapt upward to the tier above, and the one above that. And as the figure kept climbing higher and higher, the clouds at the very bottom scattered and vanished one by one.

"The cloud platforms will disappear in sequence, starting from the lowest, as time passes. Furthermore—"

Lee Sudok tightened his grip, and the cloud in his hand burst apart with a pop.

"—they can also be destroyed by dealing a certain amount of damage."

In short, participants would have to keep climbing, hopping from cloud to cloud without pause. Linger at the bottom, and the ground beneath your feet would dissolve and drop you into empty air. And while ascending, you could also harass your opponents—striking at them directly, or at the very clouds they stood on. Which meant long-range classes held a considerable advantage this time around. Whether you won by beating your opponents down or knocking them off, victory went to whoever survived until the end.

"Um... sir?"

At that, one student cautiously raised a hand. Lee Sudok flicked his eyes for him to go on, and out came the question everyone had been wondering.

"What... what happens... if you fall off the bottom?"

The smile on Lee Sudok's lips deepened. As if he had been waiting for exactly that question.

"You'll find out. What happens when you jump out of a plane without a parachute."

......!

"Be sure to savor the thrill."

With that, Lee Sudok ended the class. But even after he was gone, a frigid silence hung over the classroom for a long while.

I was someone who cleared every sub quest at the highest possible completion rate, but this one, more than ever, demanded a three-win sweep. If things went as expected, a powerful reward would be handed out for the first time in a long while.

'Copy Slot.'

So the moment class ended, I headed straight for the Arena. It was random matching anyway, so there was no need to arrange teammates or draft strategies in advance. The other students apparently felt the same, because despite it being only the first day of the PvP assessments, a sizable crowd had already flooded the Arena.

I scanned my student ID at the terminal, waited a short while, and a match was made. Staring at the names floating up on the scoreboard, I thought:

'So it really does pair us up like this.'

With our scores in a similar bracket, I'd figured the possibility was real enough—but I never dreamed it would actually come to pass.

I stepped onto the teleportation magic circle and entered the arena, and all at once I was standing in the middle of the open sky, dizzyingly high up. So high that whatever lay below was hard to make out. Beneath my feet was the same clump of cloud Lee Sudok had shown us—though this was no mere handful, but a platform wide and thick enough to stand on and shuffle a step or two across. Those platforms stretched upward, spaced far apart yet seemingly without end. A staircase of clouds, in the most literal sense.

And my teammate, revealing herself nearby, was—

"Kim Ho...!"

—none other than Cha Hyun-ju, the girl with whom I had been diligently stacking up bad blood.

In the crystal PvP, I had sent her flying into the distance two matches running. When she launched a preemptive strike at me during the midterm, I had blown her attack to pieces and tossed her into the lake. And the next time we crossed paths, I had Seo Ye-in snipe her. With that colorful history between us, it was hardly surprising that Cha Hyun-ju was glaring at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me like she wanted me dead.

Still, with us on the same team, we couldn't spend the whole match just snarling at each other. With perfect nonchalance, I opened negotiations.

"Similar scores, so we end up on the same team. Let's pool our strength for at least this one match, shall we?"

"Pool our strength? Cut the bullshit."

"Wouldn't it benefit us both to set personal grudges aside? This is still a PvP assessment, after all. Points are on the line."

"Not my problem."

Where I was trying to keep things civil, Cha Hyun-ju just kept snarling. I'd half expected this, given how she had stubbornly stuck to her daggers win or lose right up until recently, but she genuinely didn't care about losing points.

I tried again.

"So what is it you want to do, then?"

"You want to win? Go ahead and try. Three against one."

Cha Hyun-ju answered with a scornful snort. In other words, she was declaring she would team-kill me.

'Three against one, huh.'

This wasn't going to resolve itself easily. Figuring I should at least size up the enemy team's strength first, I shifted my gaze straight ahead—and found both of them more or less familiar.

One was Jeong Su-ji of the Emerald Magic Tower. Her skill was on par with Gwak Ji-cheol's, but her style leaned harder into suppression and harassment. Of course, how much of that skill would hold up on the clouds remained to be seen.

The other was Choi Jeongpil, from my own class. Not that being classmates meant much—all we knew of each other were faces and names. Judging by what I'd observed at the placement exam, he was a close-combat class. One hand axe gripped in each fist—no doubt about it.

......

......

With all three of their gazes fixed on me alone, the countdown began.

Cha Hyun-ju, it seemed, was the type to mean every word she said: the instant the match kicked off, her bow was trained on me. The sudden infighting left the enemy team even more flustered than I was. An arrow could have sprouted from my chest at any moment, but I held my composure and asked:

"So you have absolutely no intention of cooperating?"

"None!"

"I see..."

As I nodded, a bitter look on my face—

— BAM!

—right in the middle of it, compressed air detonated, and the brand-new shoes went flying clean off Cha Hyun-ju's feet.

"Then get lost."