Chapter 65 : Chapter 65
Chapter 65
After the meeting ended, I stopped by a classroom in the Hall of Justice alone.
I gathered the materials that would be used for the next lecture, then went straight down to the first-floor lobby.
Outside the windows, darkness had already settled.
It was still too early for dinner, but the moment the sun set, Seoul grew as dark as dawn.
I walked toward the exit.
The moment I passed through the huge glass doors and stepped outside, a familiar voice called out.
“Ji Seokhyeon.”
The voice came from the building’s exterior wall, right beside the glass doors.
Lee Eunho was leaning against it.
“Lee Eunho… I did not expect you to be waiting for me.”
“We are in different divisions, and I do not want to waste time looking for you.”
“And what is this about?”
“Park Oseok.”
“……”
Lee Eunho approached me, then stopped with about two meters between us.
That distance let his expression show without restraint, and the only word that came to mind was cold.
It felt as if I were facing the Lee Eunho described in the original work.
“I have been thinking for days about what you said back then, that you would not look for the thief.”
“I already told you the reason.”
“You did. But no matter how many times I traced it back, I could not understand it.”
“……”
“You knew, did you not? That even if I faced the thief then, I would not obtain information about the Gangneung incident thirteen years ago.”
A blatant leap.
But I listened.
“That means you had some awareness of Park Oseok and the identity behind him.”
“You are overestimating me.”
“I am not overestimating you. I am overestimating your Demonic Eye. It is an unknown power that can see mana. As an executive committee member roaming the 4th Scholastic District, it would have been nothing for you to distinguish Park Oseok.”
“……So you are saying I found Park Oseok and whoever was behind him, and stayed silent?”
Lee Eunho nodded.
“Your reasoning, inferring the double consonants, was excellent. But it only revealed the thief’s trick. It could not reveal the true culprit behind it.”
“……”
“And yet you said you would not chase the thief. The bastard who dragged up something from thirteen years ago. …Did you think I could accept that choice?”
He continued, his voice heavier.
“What are you hiding from me?”
“……”
“What do you know about Park Oseok’s backer?”
Lee Eunho was agitated.
On the surface he looked calm, but the way he was pressing down on his lower lip made it obvious his nerves were razor-tight.
I clenched my teeth as well.
How was I supposed to untangle this misunderstanding?
Thrown off by a development that did not exist in the original work, I let a careless remark slip.
“It is a misunderstanding. Completely. Lots of people know you are from Gangneung. He must have overheard it and tried to take revenge on you.”
“No. You said it yourself. You received a letter. Setting me aside, how many people could possibly know you are from Gangneung? I think there are none besides me.”
“……”
I realized it too late.
A hasty excuse had turned poisonous.
“So you will not say it plainly. Fine. It does not matter even if you do not answer. I will find the truth in my own way.”
“What did you say…?”
“I am saying I will chase anyone who knows about that incident. Whether it is an escapee, a mafia, or a Demonic Being…”
Barely ten weeks.
It had not even been three months since I met the protagonist, Lee Eunho, but the eyes he showed now held sincerity without the slightest lie.
The Gangneung incident from thirteen years ago was one of Lee Eunho’s core purposes as a character.
An incident so important it left him with an obsessive compulsion to protect those around him.
In the original work, he approached the Gangneung incident gradually, across multiple episodes.
But what he was saying now meant something was wrong, deeply wrong.
Because he was saying he would cling to the thirteen-year-old incident more than the episode right in front of him.
And with a radically uncompromising stance.
“……”
For a moment, I wondered if the disappearance of sub-episode announcements might be related to his change of mind.
In other words, it meant I could not stop Lee Eunho.
So what was I supposed to do?
How was Ji Seokhyeon, an extra—no, a sub-character—supposed to accept the protagonist’s choice…?
It was hard to stop a boulder once it had already begun rolling down a cliff.
If I interfered carelessly, it might fall somewhere worse.
And if I were unlucky, I might be crushed beneath it.
After a brief struggle, I reached a decision.
I would wait for him at the place where the boulder would finally stop.
“You will regret it.”
“What?”
“The truth can be cruel.”
“That means…”
Lee Eunho dragged out his words, then suddenly let out a hollow laugh.
Like someone who had lost his mind.
After laughing for a long while, he abruptly wiped his expression clean and spoke.
“I still remember the screams from that night. I do not know about you, but… no matter what the truth is, could it be more cruel than that?”
“……”
***
That dawn, the 3rd Outdoor Training Ground.
As always, training with An Hwigom proceeded, and as always, I went flying off the training platform.
“Hah. What, exactly, has possessed you, you wretch!”
Possessed…
Today, I could not deny his words.
My head was filled with Lee Eunho, to the point I could not even recognize how I was moving.
Of course, I was still feeling every ounce of this maddening pain.
At this rate, I would collapse in a wretched heap before the training time even ended.
“…Tsk. Again.”
When I corrected my grip on the sword, An Hwigom vanished from the platform.
And with him came the killing intent pressing down on my entire body…
An Hwigom’s killing intent, which I could never grow used to, scattered every time since the sparring began.
They called it sparring, but it was practically one-sided training in defending against an ambush.
For me, there were only two ways to respond to his attack, which could come at any moment.
I could try to dodge and be struck by the flat of the blade,
or I could be lucky and block his black sword with mine.
Even if our blades met, most of the time I could not withstand the recoil and was knocked away.
Even with an absurd agility stat of 18.2, an unstable stance and untrained technique meant I was facing a mountain I could not climb.
I wished my strength were higher, but it probably would not have changed the fact that I would be humiliated.
“…!”
The black sword sprang out from an angle I did not register.
My shabby stance failed to react in time, met the black sword head-on, and I rolled across the ground again.
“…Hhk.”
“Get up!”
With harsh words, An Hwigom vanished again.
In the unending killing intent, I spat out phlegm tinged with blood.
The hand gripping the sword trembled as if declaring its limit.
But ironically, the healthiest part of my body was my hand.
Because An Hwigom always struck everywhere except the hand.
I gripped the hilt with both hands.
I could probably meet his blade only once or twice more.
Now, how would An Hwigom attack?
From behind again?
Or would he approach from the side and thrust low…?
I ran through possibilities in a short span, but without reading his movement, it meant nothing.
“……”
I steadied my thoughts and concentrated mana into my hearing.
Then I heard the wind.
In an instant, within it, I sensed a wind that felt distinctly unnatural.
It was coming from my right.
Suspiciously, the dust there was trembling in agitation, and the killing intent that had swallowed the training ground was stabbing fiercely from that vicinity.
Before I could finish thinking, I swung my sword with all my strength toward that direction.
If I could only meet his blade once or twice, I would attack first.
But my intention was mocked.
My sword sliced proudly through empty air—
Whoosh—.
“…!”
At the same time, I heard An Hwigom click his tongue behind me.
“Tsk….”
I tried to whip around, but faster than that, An Hwigom’s black sword smashed into my blade without mercy.
CLANG!
I released the sword helplessly.
It trembled noisily on the ground until An Hwigom stepped on the blade with his foot and made it stop.
“Most blades would have snapped and left by now, but this one still refuses to break… It is quite useful as a training sword.”
“Well, it is Hyeonseong-made.”
“So it is a sword beyond your station.”
An Hwigom flicked the blade upward with his toe.
The sword flew at me as if it were an attack.
I barely caught it and took my stance again.
No matter how many times I lost, was beaten, was struck, I had to grip the sword and set my posture.
Because there was still training time left.
An Hwigom’s way was to pour everything into the allotted time.
If I showed even a hint of slackness, the next thing to be kicked would be my body.
“Again.”
An Hwigom vanished once more.
Killing intent scattered again—
“……”
Wait.
Killing intent?
Since the training shifted to sparring, I had never seriously considered why he used killing intent in a spar.
Was the purpose of this training really only to defend against an ambush?
If it was An Hwigom who had hidden the Moon-Shadow Spirit Pill inside those bells, then he surely had a clear purpose.
Then that purpose was—
“…!”
In an instant, An Hwigom’s killing intent surged.
By instinct, it was obvious he would attack within seconds.
The moment his killing intent swelled massively, I used a coin as if fleeing.
[You will consume 1 Remake Coin.]
Without time to marvel at the vanishing light, I entered the Simulated Training state and immediately scanned my surroundings with my Demonic Eye open.
But…
“I… I cannot see him.”
An Hwigom’s mana could not be distinguished.
No—more precisely, his mana seemed to be spread in all directions.
By its color, the mana that had diffused and been released into the surroundings was wind-aspect.
“Did he use the ability Assimilation…?”
It was not Assimilation.
Assimilation drew ambient mana into the body to hide one’s mana presence.
“In this case… is it the opposite of Assimilation?”
It was as if he had expanded his own mana across a set range.
A sight clearly different from killing intent as the simple concept of scattering mana.
It was a phenomenon that could only be described as dominating the ambient mana itself…
“Killing intent also releases mana.”
But that was only a transient phenomenon.
What An Hwigom was doing now was closer to declaring a domain.
Sensing, reacting to, and controlling everything that occurred within his domain.
“In the end, I have been playing inside a field An Hwigom seized…”
My agility was 18.2.
In the setting of this world, a stat in the eighteenth range was something only a tiny handful could ever reach, even among the highest awakened beings.
In other words, when it came to bodily senses, I was at main-character level.
And yet I had assumed my inability to counterattack properly was simply due to my lack of training.
It was true I had not focused enough to grasp the intent of training, but…
“The bigger problem was that I was intimidated, from the start, by the fact that that old man is a member of Manyeong.”
Perhaps, from the very moment he offered to train me, I had already been mistaken about what killing intent was.
That first experience had been so intense that I had concluded his ability was killing intent.
Killing intent itself required considerable mana sensitivity.
Even at the start of the semester, Gong Minwu releasing mana meant it required talent.
But the kind of control An Hwigom displayed now, ruling the surroundings, was surely beyond even Lee Eunho’s current level.
“Which means the goal of this training was to learn that release.”
I searched my memory, wondering whether he had passed something to me as he did when teaching Assimilation, but there was nothing.
“That means it is not an ability that requires other conditions…”
For now, I swallowed a potion.
Then I checked my status.
[Durability 10.3] [Strength 3.7] [Stamina 4.8]
[Agility 18.2] [Intelligence 11.1] [Magic Power 8.1]
My current coins were 8,768.
I had already spent a fair amount over the last two days, practicing swordsmanship in Simulated Training.
The results of that training were positive.
If I measured it in time, it was as if I had trained swordsmanship for about half a month.
Twenty-four hours a day, for half a month straight.
In any case, to use what he was trying to teach me, I would need accompanying stats.
If there were no prerequisites like Assimilation, it meant anyone with talent could obtain the power.
“Agility and intelligence are probably directly connected.”
So if I used coins, intelligence.
Intelligence was a concept that raised authority related to superpowers, so it would be more effective than agility, which merely corrected physical senses.
But how much did I need to increase it?
In the first place, with An Hwigom continuing to train me, did I even need to accelerate my progress?
And if I suddenly displayed improved skill, it would not end at suspicion.
Right in front of him, no less.
“An Hwigom’s stated training goal when he began sparring was, until I satisfied his eye.”
Once I understood the essence of the training, there was no need to be impatient at all.
With that thought, I looked not at intelligence, but at agility.
I would keep swordsmanship training going like this.
Since I could not pour thousands of coins into a single day, I would proceed through steady, repeated mastery.
If there was one thing I learned from two days of sword training, it was that agility’s correction was overwhelmingly powerful.
Which meant that if I raised it to the maximum, 20, and trained, I would gain proficiency faster.
“The last coin I used increased agility by 3.8 and cost 7,777.”
To increase agility by 1.8 now, I needed 6,123 coins.
Once a stat exceeded 18, natural growth was impossible, so there was nothing to lose.
The only loss was that, from the start, I had not invested aggressively because I was worrying about the intervention rate.
“Now that sub-episodes have vanished, the tug-of-war between me and the devoted reader has already crossed the line.”
More than anything, I was curious what reaching an agility of 20 would result in.
In the original work, no awakened being ever reached a stat of 20, and the concept of a status window did not exist, either.
The stats I recorded in the setting notes had only been a way to mark relative strength for writing.
It looked as if 18.2 and 20.0 were not very different, but by the setting, stats were distributed on the basis of relative superiority.
“Which means I would become the being with the sharpest reaction speed and senses in this world…”
I ended my deliberation and touched the coin.
[Agility will increase by 1.8.]
[Agility 20.0]
[Remake Coins consumed: 6,123]
[Congratulations! Your status has reached the maximum value!]
[Consumed Remake Coins will be refunded.]
[Remake Coins in possession: 8,767]
“…You bastard.”
It was not something to curse at, but it still felt filthy, as if I were dancing in his palm.
Instinctively, I turned my eyes to my abilities.
Abilities were granted by a combination of stats and attributes.
Sure enough, unfamiliar letters were written there.
<Abilities (8)>
[*Shadow Severance]
For a set time, separates the user’s shadow, avoiding all physical contact.
[*Prodigy]
Uses all objects classified as items with extreme proficiency, and is not subject to the unique restrictions imposed on items.