Week 3 PvP Assessment (3)

Baek Jun-seok's plan was simple.

Whatever attack came at him, he would stop it with his shield and answer with a counter from his one-handed sword. He had confirmed in the previous match that he held the advantage in close quarters, so this straightforward tactic would be more than enough.

Go ahead. Hit me if you can.

Defense was the one thing Baek Jun-seok trusted without reservation. His overall combat power might have lagged a step behind ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the other students, but when it came to planting his feet and holding the line behind a shield, he yielded to no one. Attacks at Kim Ho's level wouldn't leave so much as a scratch on him.

That punk surely knew it too, which meant he would try to slip past him one way or another.

Yet contrary to every expectation, Kim Ho came charging straight at him.

No prelude to any attack skill — he simply closed the distance to point-blank range. To Baek Jun-seok, it looked for all the world like a man baring his neck and begging, please, kill me.

The instant he raised his one-handed sword to strike, Kim Ho laid a hand on his shield — lightly, almost as if resting it there.

- WHAM—!

A colossal force bore down, and Baek Jun-seok's arm was wrenched backward along with his shield, his upper body swinging wide open.

"What the—"

Before the shock could even register, Kim Ho was already inside his guard, one hand clamping around Baek Jun-seok's wrist, the other settling on his waist.

In the next instant, Baek Jun-seok's body left the ground, spun once through the air, and was hurled down into the floor.

- THUD!!

Slammed down while carrying the crushing weight of full plate armor, the impact that racked his entire body was enormous. Baek Jun-seok was knocked out of the fight on the spot.

The shield of mana protecting Hong Yeon-hwa quietly dissolved away.

"……!"

Suddenly left all alone, Hong Yeon-hwa couldn't even think about casting her next spell. The sight unfolding before her eyes was simply too shocking. Her pupils shook violently.

H-he…… wasn't…… a defense type……?

She had built her entire strategy on the assumption that he was a supporter versed only in defensive magic — and he had seen straight through it, charging in head-on and flattening Baek Jun-seok instead. What skill, what trait, could possibly let him hoist a man in full plate into the air as casually as tossing a stuffed doll?

New information about Kim Ho filed itself away in Hong Yeon-hwa's mind. The owner of monstrous defensive magic that took no damage — not even one percent — no matter how wildly she bombarded him with fire. And a martial master of terrifying caliber, able to send Baek Jun-seok flying with a few flicks of his hands.

And, and……. Was there something else he was hiding on top of all that?

There had been a time when she'd told herself she could close the gap someday. Now that gap felt farther away than ever.

"……."

"Gah!"

The moment Kim Ho took a single step toward her, Hong Yeon-hwa hastily scrambled two steps back. She would have loved to put far more distance between them, but a prickling sensation at her back stopped her at two — Seo Ye-in, no doubt, with her muzzle already trained on her.

"……."

Kim Ho came no closer. He simply watched her with the same frosty gaze as ever, and though not a word passed his lips, she could almost hear a voice as cold as those eyes.

"You know what you're supposed to say, don't you?"

"Try anything pointless……."

"And I'll make you just like this guy here……."

Hong Yeon-hwa's face drained to a deathly pallor. The moment she showed the slightest sign of doing anything but surrender, she would be thrown to the ground like Baek Jun-seok, or take a magic bullet to the back of the head.

Trembling like an aspen leaf, she forced the words out.

"I-I surrender……."

Even after the match ended, Hong Yeon-hwa stood rooted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to the spot in a daze for a long while.

The kid's completely checked out.

I cast a pitying glance at Hong Yeon-hwa. I hadn't expected to be matched against her twice in a row, of all things. Her score had been high to begin with, so it would take a heavy cut; back-to-back losses would cut it deeper; and her morale had taken the deepest cut of all.

Not that I'm cutting her any slack.

I had my own quest to clear, after all.

There was a good chance this week's quest reward was an [Accessory Selection Ticket]. The longer my win streak, the higher-grade the ticket, so four straight wins was the target. I couldn't afford to hand over even a single loss.

She'll probably dust herself off and bounce back on her own, though?

From what I'd seen fighting the two of them, Hong Yeon-hwa's mental fortitude was honestly quite solid. The first match had ended in a farce — the terrain was windy to begin with, so even as I kept cutting off her spellcasting with [Wind Force], she hadn't noticed a thing. She'd probably just cursed her own rotten luck.

That alone should have been enough to rattle her form, yet in the second match she'd actually performed better. She'd read my and Seo Ye-in's characteristics and switched up her approach with real flexibility. If not for the ambush nobody saw coming — Wind Force — her team probably would have won.

Anyway, with mental fortitude like that, she'd recover just fine if left to her own devices.

Or not.

More importantly, what matters right now is…….

"……?"

When I stared at her in silence, Seo Ye-in tilted her head. If you charted her current growth as a hexagonal graph, the only way to describe it was as a spike — the "destructive power" corner jutting out all by itself. As the second match against the Hong Yeon-hwa–Baek Jun-seok duo had made plain, the moment her position was exposed, she became acutely fragile.

To prepare for situations like that, it would be best for her to build a well-rounded arsenal of skills and traits — defense, evasion, a means of melting back into stealth, and so on. And since a few of those were better passed down by other gunners, I'd been trying to set up some mentoring for her —

Too much hassle. Sleepy…….

— except the person herself had all the drive of a wet blanket. Besides, these days she could sweep every match just by cocooning herself in her optical camouflage ghillie suit and sniping away, so she'd feel the need for mentoring even less.

What she really needs is to lose to someone again.

A somewhat contradictory notion, coming from me — but a proper defeat seemed like the only thing that would light a fire under her competitive streak.

Wouldn't it be nice if a Song Cheon-hye, or a Beheader Goblin, popped up out of somewhere?

Well-rounded was a word that applied to me as well.

For most skills and traits, C-rank was where the plateau began. From that point on, climbing any higher became drastically harder. No matter how many hidden pieces and shortcuts I had lined up in my memory, I couldn't simply leap over the plateau.

Of course, the slower and steeper the climb, the more each step up — B, A, S — sent a skill's power soaring, so coming to a standstill wasn't an option either.

I had to think long-term. And realistically.

Steady, consistent training over the long haul was a given. But rather than dumping every last resource into pushing a single skill from C to B, rounding out a diverse set of skills, traits, and equipment did far more to strengthen my overall fighting power.

Which was exactly why my next target was a weapon.

Go Hyeon-woo had better come through for me.

He was part of the blueprint for forging that weapon. Just how much I could expect him to deliver down the line would be decided when we fought side by side in tomorrow's PvP match.

"Brother Kim, I have done it."

Go Hyeon-woo's face was bright as he offered his morning greeting, and the aura rolling off him had been honed noticeably sharper than yesterday's — proof that he had achieved a C-rank [Core].

"Good work. Want to head straight to the Arena once class ends?"

"That is precisely my hope. I am ready."

Go Hyeon-woo answered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with easy confidence.

The moment class let out, we set our feet toward the Arena. It was even more crowded with students than yesterday — so many were scanning their student IDs at the terminals that we actually had to queue up.

While we ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠waited for a match to be found, Go Hyeon-woo brought up Seo Ye-in.

"I find myself wondering who the young miss will pair with for her remaining two matches."

"Does she even have friends besides us?"

"None that I know of. To my knowledge, she is always at your side, Brother Kim."

Looking at just the past two weeks, Seo Ye-in had spent the bulk of her time glued to me. Beyond that, her activities amounted to holing up alone in her dorm to sleep, or training at the Training Center — and that was the whole list. I doubted she had a partner in mind beyond the two of us, and the notion of her recruiting someone on the spot was flatly absurd given her personality.

"Truth be told, my own circle is rather narrow as well. I am worrying over how I shall find a teammate."

Go Hyeon-woo's circumstances weren't so different. His face did him plenty of favors — he was popular, and hardly awkward — so he seemed to have gotten acquainted with a fair number of people along the way. But he had spent the entire first stretch of the semester buried in the Special Meditation Room, and so had never built a bond close enough to farm points with.

I waved the worry off like it was nothing.

"If you can't find a partner, just run random queue."

"What is this 'random queue'?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. The system pairs you with someone at random."

"I see. So such a method exists."

Go Hyeon-woo mulled it over briefly, then asked again.

"But would that not put you at a disadvantage, fighting beside a teammate chosen by chance?"

Secure a partner in advance, and you entered the 2-on-2 with a favorable composition from the very start, planned your strategy in advance, and stacked up experience across match after match with the same person. Random queue, by contrast, could hand you two mages or two archers if your luck ran bad — you'd be behind from the composition alone. Add in the lack of time to strategize, forcing you to fight almost entirely on improv, and the fact that you parted ways the instant a match ended, resetting whatever rapport you'd built back to zero.

Naturally, Dragon Slayer Academy was well aware of these flaws.

"That's why random queue comes with a higher average score."

"In other words, in exchange for forgoing any prior coordination, they match you with a stronger partner."

"Right. It balances out well enough."

"Understood."

Go Hyeon-woo nodded slowly.

Just then our match popped, and we turned our heads at the same moment.

"Huh."

"Hmm……!"

Reading the opposing roster, we hummed in unison.

A thought from yesterday flashed through my mind unbidden.

What she needs is to lose to someone again — that's what'll stoke her competitive spirit.

Wouldn't it be nice if a Song Cheon-hye or a Beheader Goblin popped up out of somewhere?

……And the someone who popped up was me?

[49] The Support Ate It All