Replay Analysis (1)
At precisely midnight, the appointed hour, I delivered the items I had been commissioned to make.
Bong Jaeseok and the seniors, who plainly hadn't believed I would actually finish by midnight, looked genuinely startled. Then their expressions shifted into looks that wanted to devour me whole, and they began whispering among themselves.
"Hey, word is he's not joining our club?"
"Says he has no intention of it."
"Isn't that because you haven't been actively wooing him?"
"Just leave him be. Don't go poking at him and turning nothing into a sore."
"Even so... smack."
They kept smacking their lips whenever their eyes drifted back to me. If they kept hovering any closer, they looked about ready to spirit me off bodily, so I deliberately played busy and threw myself into crafting with the materials I had brought along.
After investing a full night in it—
The framework was in place.
On the workbench sat a small, heart-shaped core component. When I test-fed a stream of mana into it, the assorted odds and ends scattered across the bench stirred faintly, filling the air with a soft clatter.
It was still a half-finished thing, too incomplete to show its true effect, but with a few more days of patient work it looked like it would be done.
PvP classes, with Lee Sudok as the instructor, always proceeded under a heavy, sunken atmosphere. Today that atmosphere bore even more weight—because Lee Sudok had uttered 'that word.'
A word like a swamp from which no student of Dragon Slayer Academy could ever escape.
"Homework."
The students sent him desperate, pleading looks, as if praying he would admit it was a joke. Honestly, he was human too—surely he would play a mean prank on his students every now and then? Unfortunately, Lee Sudok was a man to whom jokes and pranks were utterly foreign.
He continued his explanation in the same flat tone he had maintained all class.
"Just as important as repeated training and live combat is replaying the battles you have already fought, move by move. I expect this week's PvP assessment gave you plenty to look back on."
Until now they had known only how to cultivate their own individual strength; team play like 2-on-2, where you had to move in sync with another person, was unfamiliar ground. This PvP week had therefore handed them all manner of novel experiences. Coordinating had bred its share of unintended mistakes. Some had surely suffered absurd defeats against opponents they could clearly beat, simply because their teamwork was off. And others must have tasted the thrill of bringing down an opponent who normally gave them trouble by pooling strength with a teammate. Whichever it was, all of it was well worth reviewing.
"Watch your replays and take time to think. What were your allies' strengths and weaknesses? Your enemies'? What strategies did each side employ, and could a more effective one have existed? Choose one of your four matches, write a report on it, and submit it. The deadline is next Friday."
It was only Thursday, and quite a few students had yet to finish this week's quota of four matches, so the deadline seemed generous enough. Of course, it only looked that way—there was no telling what homework next week might bring. Best to finish it as quickly as possible and be rid of it.
"Brother Kim."
Perhaps he had been thinking along the same lines, because Go Hyeon-woo came over the moment class ended.
Seo Ye-in, too, was gazing at me with blank, expressionless eyes. She said nothing, but the message came through all the same: let's do the homework together.
Perfect timing.
I had already promised Go Hyeon-woo that we would go through the rest of his PvP replays together. Seo Ye-in had no direct stake in the matter, but I expected that analyzing as a group and talking it through would help her report as well.
I rose unhurriedly from my seat.
"Then let's be off. Somewhere quiet."
We bought ourselves a drink apiece at the campus store and settled in on the second-floor terrace—the very spot where I had negotiated with the Emerald Magic Tower and the Nature Club a few days before. Below, a fair number of students came and went, but the upper level remained as deserted as ever.
The three of us crowded around one side of a large round table—me in the middle, Go Hyeon-woo and Seo Ye-in on either side.
"Here you are."
Go Hyeon-woo set two replay crystals down in front of me.
Seo Ye-in propped her chin on the table and stared at the crystals without stirring a muscle. Through the straw caught between her lips, the iced tea she had just bought rose and fell. She had entered full spectator mode.
I took a sip of my own iced tea and picked up the first crystal.
"Let's watch them in order."
The replay began to play.
Everyone in the first match sat in the same 600-to-700-point range as Go Hyeon-woo. His teammate was a mage; their opponents, an archer and a warrior. All of them were archetypes that hardly needed describing. The warrior, for one, fought in a sword-and-shield style much like Baek Jun-seok's from a few days prior—if you pressed me for a difference, it was that his armor was leather rather than plate.
Which would make him a touch lighter on his feet than Baek Jun-seok, I supposed.
[3]
[2]
[1]
[Start!]
— Bang!
The match began, and Go Hyeon-woo clashed head-on with the enemy warrior. Barely a few exchanges in, he was already establishing overwhelming dominance. It was so predictable I could have called it without watching a single second. The problem erupted the very next instant.
Go Hyeon-woo's teammate, the mage, went and pulled a stunt. With the melee classes trading blows at the front, he was obviously supposed to hold a fixed distance—yet, out of what confidence I couldn't say, he bounded straight forward. Then he summoned white orbs into both hands and began hurling them one after another.
That's rather reckless.
To be fair, those white orbs belonged to a close-range school of magic; he did need to close in to throw them. But given how poorly mages fared in melee, the standard practice was to take out some insurance before approaching the enemy—a self-buff to reinforce his body, a defensive spell draped over himself, a summoned beast at his side, something. This mage had simply charged out with nothing at all. Either he trusted Go Hyeon-woo to cover for him, or he had grossly underestimated the opposition.
And the other side was hardly about to let a golden opportunity like that slip past. The instant the warrior batted an incoming orb aside with his shield, he ignored Go Hyeon-woo entirely and charged the mage. He absorbed a fair number of attacks along the way and lost a hefty chunk of health, but his thinking seemed to be: give flesh, take bone. The mage had been hovering so close that two long strides put the warrior right in his face.
— Shff!
One flash of his blade carved away nearly half the mage's health, leaving him teetering on the brink of death,
— Thunk.
and an arrow buried itself square in the center of his chest. A single shot from the archer, who had been watching the whole situation unfold. The mage was ruled fully combat-incapable and vanished from the arena.
"Oh dear."
"..."
I gave Go Hyeon-woo a look brimming with admiration. Impressive, managing not to curse in a situation like that.
Go Hyeon-woo caught the meaning behind my gaze, and a wry smile touched his lips. Thanks to his teammate's catastrophic trolling, barely minutes into the match it was already two against one. You could safely call the game more than half lost.
Yet Go Hyeon-woo kept his composure and kept his blade moving. He held the advantage in his exchanges with the warrior, and he had already dealt some damage of his own, so a sliver of hope remained.
The two melee classes fought on. Go Hyeon-woo soon began to dominate again, but every time he deflected or evaded one of the archer's arrows, he was forced back onto the defensive. Press and pull, locked together—until he abruptly unleashed a furious assault to pry open a gap. He had resolved to commit his ultimate technique first.
Gathering his momentum, he unleashed the technique—and his blade's arc slowed as a soft wind gathered about it.
The moment he focused that wind on the enemy archer, her health plummeted in chunks, and she did not last long before being ruled combat-incapable. Had the arena's protection system not kicked in, it would have made for a horrific sight—her body shredded to ribbons.
As expected.
As I had confirmed in his other matches, the wind raised by [Clear Stream] served as blade aura in its own right. That was precisely why I judged him to have set one foot into the domain of magic as well.
— ...!
The warrior could not contain his shock at watching his teammate fall in the blink of an eye. And down upon that stunned figure dropped a single strike steeped in Clear Stream.
— Crack!
"You won."
"They were no difficult opponents. Their coordination flowed well, but in exchange it betrayed a certain fixed pattern."
The enemy's teamwork itself had been excellent. They were simply so anxious not to interfere with one another's movements that it ended up constraining them instead—which was why, to Go Hyeon-woo's eyes, they had looked so predictable. Of course, that weakness stood out only because they had not yet fully mastered their coordination; the more they honed it, the trickier they would become to deal with.
The first match had gone to Go Hyeon-woo, composed and methodical from the first second to the last.
Still, there was something I needed to check before moving on.
"Let's have a look at your weapon."
I rewound the replay to just before the match ended and zoomed in on Go Hyeon-woo's weapon. The E-rank weapon he had bought with points: the [Longsword of Flying Sand]. Judging by the crack running along its blade, its durability was all but spent—yet it had somehow avoided shattering. The [Sturdy Clip] I had crafted for him yesterday seemed to have lent a hand, if only a little.
"That's the first time you've held up after using Clear Stream, isn't it?"
"It is."
Go Hyeon-woo's face was bright as he answered. With the problem that had always plagued him finally on the verge of a solution, he could hardly help but feel hopeful. Of course, it was still too early to draw conclusions. I would think on it after watching the final match.
"Good. Now for the next one."
Go Hyeon-woo played the next replay.
One look at the participants, and my eyes gleamed.
Right on schedule.
[Go Hyeon-woo — 785 pts | Bukgung Han-seol — 932 pts]
VS
[Jeong Su-ji — 693 pts | Park Nari — 998 pts]
Go Hyeon-woo's win rate to this point had been remarkably high. In the Placement Exam he had gone undefeated except for a single loss to Jo Byeok; in the first week's PvP, three wins out of three; and in this third week's PvP, the replay we had just watched was his third victory in four matches. His score had climbed steeply as a result, closing in on the 800s, and I had figured he would start running into the 900-point tier before long—and sure enough, one had appeared on each side.
Bukgung Han-seol was a martial artist, same as Go Hyeon-woo. Her rare surname and the pair of empty hands she carried instead of a weapon marked her as a master of fist-and-palm arts. Across from them, meanwhile, stood the decidedly familiar duo of Park Nari and Jeong Su-ji. Park Nari was a druid and Jeong Su-ji a wood-and-earth mage—both ranged classes. Two melee classes against two ranged, then.
Except the ranged side could hardly be called helpless in close quarters—
— Grrrrowl,
not with the tiger crouched at Park Nari's side, baring its savage fangs: Beomi.