The Duel (6)
"Would you not reconsider the expulsion?"
Mok Jonghwa kept his stride perfectly even, turning only his head to cast Gwak Seung-jae a sidelong glance. Then he faced forward again and spoke as he walked.
"And why exactly should I do that?"
"You did witness the duel, did you not?"
"I did. A thoroughly pathetic, trash excuse for a duel."
A low simmer of fury ran beneath Mok Jonghwa's words.
Gwak Ji-cheol, who had been trudging along with his eyes glued to the ground, hunched his shoulders.
Gwak Seung-jae did not so much as glance at his disgraceful little brother, but he carried on the verbal defense all the same.
"I will not claim Ji-cheol performed well, but I wonder whether this was not simply beyond anyone's power. A perfect game against your golem, President — among first-years, how many could manage such a thing?"
A third-year's golem, and long-range bombardment through [Earth Cluster] on top of that. To evade every last bit of it without a blemish and hold one hundred percent health from start to finish was a feat that would strain even second-years, never mind first-years. Had he stood in Kim Ho's position, Gwak Seung-jae himself would have conceded at least a few clean hits. In other words, Kim Ho was precisely the caliber of combatant for whom such a thing was possible. Judged on this duel alone, he rated as a rising prospect — or better.
"It was a match Ji-cheol was bound to lose. Isn't expulsion excessive punishment?"
"Even granting that, nothing changes the fact that the brat smeared filth across Emerald's name."
"And was that filth truly of his making alone?"
Raging without any sense of his place and getting flattened for it was unquestionably Gwak Ji-cheol's fault. But traced back to its root, the affair owed just as unquestionably to Mok Jonghwa, who had rammed the matter through with reckless force. Mok Jonghwa inwardly admitted as much himself. Still, it rankled to have his own dirty laundry dragged into the open, so he stopped wordlessly where he stood and glared at Gwak Seung-jae.
"Does the Student Disciplinary Committee now involve itself in the Emerald Magic Tower's affairs?"
"No. This is personal counsel and nothing more."
"And this counsel amounts to asking me to close my eyes to my junior's blunder? They say Gwak Seung-jae handles every matter by the cold blade of impartiality, unclouded by private feeling — that reputation appears to have gone stale."
"My stance is the same now as it ever was. I ask only that you render a fair judgment, President."
Gwak Seung-jae's face remained flat and unmoved. Meeting that expression, Mok Jonghwa found himself thinking that venting his anger would accomplish nothing, and little by little he let the fury ebb.
Mok Jonghwa was no fool, either. Surviving to one's third year at Dragon Slayer Academy and climbing to the presidency of a club could not be managed on luck alone. Whatever his occasional eruptions of temper, he could tell his own interests when he saw them.
The Gwak family was a long-established house of earth-attribute mages, one of the pillars propping up the Emerald Magic Tower. Gwak Ji-cheol had been a son of the tower from birth, his name inscribed on the club register before he ever enrolled. Had he inflicted serious damage on the Emerald Magic Tower, that would be one thing — but casting him out over a matter of this size would invite a reckoning Mok Jonghwa could not answer for.
"So what is it you want from me?"
"We ask you to give him a chance."
What sort of chance, and how much of one, Gwak Seung-jae left entirely to Mok Jonghwa's discretion. Pressed harder, he might have forced a complete reversal of the expulsion — but that would trample on the club's rights, and counsel had to stop at counsel. Besides, it remained true that Gwak Ji-cheol had crumpled Emerald's honor, and Gwak Seung-jae believed the price was rightly owed.
After a moment of low rumination, Mok Jonghwa's mouth opened.
"Two months. I'll watch his ranking for the next two months and decide then. Any complaints?"
"That will be sufficient."
"Hmph."
Mok Jonghwa swept his eyes once over the Gwak brothers, then walked off and left them where they stood. Half of it was to leave the two of them time to talk; the other half was that he couldn't stomach the sight of either of them.
……
Gwak Ji-cheol was still too dejected to lift his head. He was the sort of brute who feared nothing on earth, yet in front of his older brother his spirit simply wilted. He had displayed that shameful spectacle right before his brother's eyes, and it was his brother's intercession that had spared his club membership — small wonder he had no face left to show.
Gwak Seung-jae spoke in his usual toneless voice. Yet anyone who knew him well would have sensed a warmth absent from his everyday manner.
"This is as far as I can carry you. The rest is yours to bear."
"……I'm sorry, Brother."
"I would rather hear you swear to do your best than hear you apologize."
"……I'll do my best."
"Good. Get going."
……
Gwak Ji-cheol forced strength into his steps and moved off. Once even he was gone, Gwak Seung-jae stood alone for a moment. Then he addressed the empty air.
"Song Cheon-hye."
"!"
From beyond the alley came the unmistakable jolt of a flinch. Song Cheon-hye slowly poked her head out first, then shuffled the rest of the way over.
"……You… knew I was here……?"
"I told you before. You have no gift for hiding yourself."
Song Cheon-hye's face went red with embarrassment. Oblivious or indifferent, Gwak Seung-jae kept up his questioning.
"What business brought you to the Arena?"
"I was just passing by, and… stopped in……"
"I watched you lurking in the stands a good while before it even began."
……
Struck square by that packed stone fastball, Song Cheon-hye flushed a shade deeper still. Thus Gwak Seung-jae's character was the utter antithesis of Song Cheon-hye, who could not be honest even with herself. He followed with a dose of blunt advice.
"You are the Disciplinary Committee. Be neither ashamed nor afraid — show yourself proudly. At the very least, that beats fumbling about half-hidden until you're caught."
"……I will keep that in mind."
Gwak Seung-jae left it there and moved on to the matter at hand.
"What did you make of the duel?"
"It was remarkable."
"If you faced him yourself, could you subdue him?"
"……I could not say with certainty."
"Could not say with certainty, is it……"
Song Cheon-hye's ability stood, beyond question, at the very peak of the first-year class. She was past any meaningful comparison with Gwak Ji-cheol. Yet even she could not swear to a hundred-percent victory — because no one knew what else Kim Ho might still be keeping in reserve. The wind magic he had unveiled this very time was something none of them had ever heard of, let alone seen. And a man like that was idling in the 300-point range, soaking up the label of coward, keeping his head carefully low? To Gwak Seung-jae and Song Cheon-hye alike, far too much of it failed to add up.
"His hands were clean, then?"
"Yes. I checked them thoroughly."
The possibility that Kim Ho was the masked man of that night could not be ruled out either. Had he used [Inferno Fist], the marks would have lingered for days even under a high priest's healing magic — yet his hands had carried not so much as the smallest scratch. Properly speaking, this was the moment to turn their eyes toward other suspects……
But the freshman's gaze kept snagging in Gwak Seung-jae's mind. A haughty look that set everything beneath itself. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the presence he had felt when facing the masked man. And yet that, too, was mere suspicion. To win permission for the [Magnifying Glass], they would need to seize at least one piece of hard evidence.
"My apologies. It seems the greater share of the work falls to you."
"This is work I chose of my own will."
"I leave it to you."
Inwardly, Song Cheon-hye was burning with resolve of her own.
I will catch his tail — no matter what it takes.
Dang Gyu-young and Shin Byung-cheol looked as though they would have happily kept chatting with us a while longer, but regrettably the hour had come to go serve their disciplinary penalties. They would most likely be assigned thankless labor — scrubbing the underground waterways, by the look of it. Annoyance dripped visibly from her expression, but she had chosen that road herself, so there was nothing for it. It was the price of wolfing down a whole hoard of banned items.
……
Seo Ye-in parted her lips a little and yawned over what felt like a full minute. For some reason, she seemed drastically more worn out than before the duel — a duel that had lasted ten minutes at the outside.
"Want to head to the dorm and sleep?"
"Yeah."
She nodded at her own unhurried pace, and before leaving, asked me:
"Did the shoes help?"
"They did. Thanks to them, I didn't take a single hit."
Even during the break-in at the Temporary Confiscation Storage, [Thief's Step] alone hadn't been enough to slip Gwak Seung-jae's earthen barrage completely. [Elemental Resistance] had simply swallowed the damage before anyone could notice. Had he gone in relying on Thief's Step by itself this time as well, he would surely have eaten at least a stray pebble or two. That he had dodged everything flawlessly owed a great deal to the sneakers Seo Ye-in had given him.
"……?"
At the talk of shoes, Go Hyeon-woo's gaze drifted naturally downward — and he discovered that Seo Ye-in's sneakers and mine matched. An eyebrow edged upward, and the corner of his mouth climbed after it.
"You two…… since when have you been wearing the same shoes?"
"And what exactly are you imagining?"
"Nothing at all. I merely find it a pleasant sight."
At that, Seo Ye-in — for once — supplied a proper explanation. Though she seemed to be reaching the end of her rope, her words dissolving into drowsiness at the edges.
"Kim Ho gave me a special lecture on Magic Bullets…… so I thanked him with a present……"
"So such a thing had come to pass."
"Mm…… going to go sleep now……"
"Rest well, Lady Seo."
"Sleep tight."
Seo Ye-in raised one hand in a languid wave of farewell, then made her way toward the dormitory.
Go Hyeon-woo and I, meanwhile, had an account of our own to settle. We each picked up a drink from the campus store and stood in the same spot as two weeks before, each holding an iced coffee, just like last time. The only difference was that Go Hyeon-woo, rather than shooting his down in one gulp as before, was pacing his sips and waiting for me to open the conversation.
I drew a single card out of my inventory and held it out.
"Here. Take it."
The moment Go Hyeon-woo accepted it, his eyes sharpened and blazed.
"So this is what Brother Kim spoke of……"
The Season Pass for the Special Training Room. He had spent two weeks feeling the room's effects with his own body, and there was no mistaking it — his internal energy had been stacking up by leaps and bounds each day. But the points he had burned commuting to and from the Special Training Room over those two weeks must have been considerable. Even for the top scorer of the conquest battles, whose point income from replays flowed in enormously, this was about the season when the reserves would start running dry.
With a Season Pass, he could come and go from the Special Training Room as he pleased for an entire semester, at no point cost whatsoever. For a martial artist, it was a treasure beyond compare.
Go Hyeon-woo gazed down at the Season Pass for a long while, his eyes wavering — and then, all at once, he squared himself and bowed to me with full formality.
"Brother Kim has kept his word, and so I shall keep mine. Should you ever have need of my sword — whenever, wherever — I will stand beside you."
"Look forward to it, then. I intend to work you to the bone until I've seen my money's worth back."
"Haha. I shall look forward to it indeed."
We looked at one another and laughed, light and easy. Then I asked:
"Where's your [Core] rank these days?"
"I passed through a wall only last week. D-Rank, as of now."
"That is fast."
Back on the train, Go Hyeon-woo's core had been E-Rank — among the very lowest of the first-years. Even now, in raw mana capacity, he had only just climbed out of the bottom tier. His pace of progress was brisk, but brisk would not be enough.
"C-Rank by sometime next week. Can you manage it?"
"Hm……"
Go Hyeon-woo thought for a spell before answering.
"If I strain harder than I have been, I believe I can just barely make it. But why C, if I may ask?"
"Because C is where the [Core] levels off."
Short of being a mana monster like Song Cheon-hye, most promising talents stalled out somewhere around the tail end of C. In other words, from C onward, one could no longer be decisively outgunned in a contest of raw mana. And from that point on, I would be able to take a far more precise measure of Go Hyeon-woo's true skill — which parts were strong, and which parts needed shoring up.
It was PvP Assessment week next week, after all.
If the schedule held, the week's rules would be perfectly suited for taking his measure.
[45] The Support Ate It All