The Art of Proof (11)
"Honestly, as the coach, I know it’s strange for me to say this, so I should apologize to all of you in advance. But really... this is beyond what I expected."
"It’s fine. Honestly, we feel the same way."
"In the end, what’s good is good. If I’m being honest, I just want the season to start already."
Coach Park Yong-bin grinned brightly, saying he wanted the season to begin as soon as possible. The rest of the team were smiling too.
The atmosphere in the practice room was warm and cheerful, almost buzzing with anticipation. That was because every scrimmage we’d played so far had turned out far better than anyone expected.
"I never got this feeling when I played alone, but scrims make the game itself feel different somehow. Is that because it’s a team game?"
Kim Seung-chan, one of the players, spoke with a satisfied smile, as if he was still savoring the aftertaste of the match. The others nodded in agreement.
I watched them with a faint smile of my own.
If they felt comfortable and their efficiency as a team improved, that meant my own power was growing stronger as well.
In other words, the unity and synergy between the teammates working with me were becoming sharper. In a game where coordinated movement mattered most, my ability to strengthen the connection between people was undeniably broken.
"No, it’s a little different. It’s a feeling I’ve never had in any other team game. Not even with guys I’d played with for over a year."
But then Im Chan-gyu, who had been keeping quiet, suddenly spoke up with a serious expression. The room went still at once, every eye turning toward him, and then he looked at me.
"I only feel it when I’m playing with hyung. Like... something I can’t quite put into words."
He seemed to already be sure. Looking into those young eyes of his, I could only give a bitter smile.
Im Chan-gyu had apparently sensed, on instinct, the influence my power had over him. The hostility he’d once shown me was almost gone now, replaced by something else entirely.
"Of course Hajin’s been doing incredibly well. He’s the most important piece in the mid lane, and he keeps shutting down opponents with championship experience every time."
"Th-that’s true, but this feels different..."
"Why don’t we go get some rest for now, boys? It’s late. You still need to eat."
At that moment, Park Yong-bin stepped in and cut the conversation off. Im Chan-gyu fumbled awkwardly, his mouth opening and closing, but I didn’t really want to stand around in the practice-room hallway and drag this talk out either.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
After dinner, before we returned to the dorms, Im Chan-gyu came looking for me again at the smoking area on the rooftop of the company building.
"We could’ve talked about it more at the dorm."
"The others would be there, though... and besides, I thought you said you quit smoking."
"A lot of the managers, coaches, and staff smoke. Breaking the ice is surprisingly easier when you smoke together. I picked it up in the army because of that."
"Ah..."
I snorted and flicked the extinguished cigarette into the trash can. Whatever he’d seen in my words just now, Im Chan-gyu’s eyes were shining.
He couldn’t possibly be thinking of taking up smoking too. He’d just started high school.
"So what did you want to say?"
"That’s..."
After dragging him over here in the first place, he still just worked his mouth without getting the words out. Well, earlier he’d already said he didn’t know how to put it, and he was the type to act on impulse more than think things through.
"I know what you’re thinking. But we still haven’t seen results. It won’t be too late to talk after we’ve got them. The season hasn’t even started yet, and there are still more people who don’t believe in us."
At my mention of the people who didn’t believe in us, Im Chan-gyu’s body gave a slight shiver.
I’d told him not to read the internet, but that wasn’t exactly easy to do. Even so, the public opinion surrounding us online was still terrible. At least for now, the only one getting less heat was Im Chan-gyu, the prized young prospect. As for me, and the coaches who had brought these players in, the backlash was vicious.
"So don’t let that shake you."
"...I feel better. I’m not really sure why."
After hearing me, he gave a dry laugh. Watching him, I realized exactly what he was feeling.
The influence I scattered around wasn’t limited to the game alone. Harsh public opinion online, a shrinking heart, doubts about what lay ahead...
The anxiety those things created had been weighing on him, and he’d filled that void with my power. It was certainly a burdening power, but now I found myself welcoming it.
Come to think of it, Im Chan-gyu and the other players were my side as well, in the end. And I had a duty to take care of my own people.
"How can you stay so calm?"
"I have a duty not to lose. When the price is this high, I can’t afford to betray it."
Without meaning to, he’d voiced his true feelings, and I answered with my own without bothering to hide them. Of course, he probably wouldn’t understand me completely, so those words were really just meant for me.
The price... was certainly enormous. Even if it belonged to a world different from this one, it was a brutal struggle for survival with countless lives and futures on the line.
***
"Everyone... everyone, run!"
"We’ve lost. We can’t hold them back anymore!"
Forum, the city that had held itself together behind sturdy stone walls. And yet now, all that echoed from every direction were people’s screams and cries.
Wounded soldiers staggered out, shouting at the top of their lungs as they fled. The people who had been holding their breath, praying only for victory, broke down at the sight of them and wept in despair. At the same time, they hurriedly began preparing to evacuate.
"The black... the black grasshoppers. The Black Beetles."
One soldier, watching the people flee in terror, turned back with trembling eyes.
Already there, countless black-armored forces were surging over the walls. A swarm, endlessly killing and dying, as if they would never run out.
In truth, the numbers were only in the low thousands, but even so, this was not a scale a single city in a wavering frontier domain could keep repelling forever.
"Run! As fast as you can!"
Bleeding and limping, he shouted with everything he had left. Since defeat was already certain, he wanted at least one more person to survive.
"You, child. Hurry and run after the adults."
In the midst of all that, he came upon a small child wandering alone. But even with his words, the child had already fallen into panic and could only tremble and cry out for his mother.
In the end, he clenched his teeth and took the child by the hand.
'What purpose could insects possibly have?'
By now, even resentment and hatred had cooled almost completely.
Like the locusts that scorched everything on the surface, the Black Beetles attacked nothing more than anything that lived and breathed.
"Aaaagh!"
Then, in that instant, something slicing through the air came hurtling in and pierced straight through his chest.
"..."
At the moment the other minions, freshly bred and pouring out of the incubation chamber, had just begun scaling the walls, Lark—after cutting down three knights and kicking off the wall with monstrous force—came flying down like a launched spear and looked at the corpse sprawled on the ground before pulling his thrown sword free.
"Aaaah!"
"Kuhk!"
At the same time, the minions that had followed behind him fired their tendrils or bared their teeth, impaling and biting the fleeing people as they drained them dry for nourishment.
Lark could only watch those grotesque scenes and look down at the child collapsed beside him.
"Mom..."
"I want to give you that too. A chance to stay with us."
Seeing the child’s dazed murmur, Lark projected his own self onto him and sheathed his sword. The child’s compatibility was 50 percent—enough to meet the minimum threshold for growth potential.
"But that bastard will be different."
At the same time, Lark tensed the muscles in his legs. Unlike the others, his unusually developed reversed-joint legs were one of the traits that made him known to humans as a black grasshopper, granting him transcendent leaping power.
With a thunderous roar, Lark launched himself upward as if firing his body from a cannon, then dropped precisely into the center of the fleeing crowd.
"H-hyaaaah!"
Lark’s gauntleted feet had obliterated the floor on impact, sending shards flying, and when his eyes fell on the man who had tumbled through the air and crashed to the ground, he silently pulled the mask over his face even lower.
Boiling hatred and rage. The adoptive father who had murdered his mother and abused him now stared at him with a face drained of all color.
'Come on. Please! Attack me like you did back then!'
Deep inside, Lark wanted him to strike at him the way he had once struck a weaker version of himself.
But now, that man was only cowering in terror and crawling backward to get away.
'You piece of trash!'
Furious at that pathetic display of classic strong-against-weak, weak-against-strong cowardice, Lark finally moved first.
'Thank you. My god.'
Revenge. The fastest fuel there was for a fire.
As Lark swung the monster’s leg, loaded with mana, and watched the upper half of the bastard’s body burst apart, along with the ground and wall around him shattering from the shockwave and cracking open, he repeated his words of gratitude.
The compatibility of the adoptive father Lark had killed was an astonishing 61 percent. If essence were injected into him, that was enough to give birth to another special species with a self of its own.
But the Great Lord did not do that. For Lark’s revenge alone, he had destroyed a valuable resource outright. Now that Lark understood what that meant, he could only be overwhelmed by the Great Lord’s affection and consideration toward him.