Chapter 37

Chapter 37: Omen (1)

A stack of papers sat piled on my desk.

Twenty-two sheets in total.

The same number as the total enrollment in the Dungeon Research and Practicum course.

Their identity: the reports the students had submitted after yesterday's exam.

"Hmm......"

The reports detailed what they'd encountered inside the dungeon and how they'd dealt with it.

It would have been convenient to bring video footage the way we had for the last practicum, but electronics were strictly prohibited inside dungeons—hence the paper trail.

The contents varied slightly from member to member.

After cross-referencing them and adding a touch of imagination, the gaps filled in and a rough picture took shape in my head.

Before long, each team's dungeon run played out in my mind as vividly as if I were watching recorded footage.

"C-team... near flawless."

Fitting for the only team to earn the highest score.

An Seri's group had absorbed my lectures perfectly and made them their own.

A flawless run that drew applause from me involuntarily.

—Mentor effect activates. A small amount of EXP gained. (Target: An Seri)

—Mentor effect activates. A small amount of EXP......

.

.

.

Their growth reached me through the Mentor talent.

I couldn't have been more satisfied.

"B-team next, then."

Baek Seolhwa's B-team had emerged not long after C-team.

Slow decision-making in the early stages had cost them time, but in the final stage, Baek Seolhwa had put on a one-woman show and hunted the boss mob with ease.

Warriors were the most advantageous class in one-on-one situations.

Since Baek Seolhwa didn't yield an inch in close combat against the boss, the rest of the team was able to deal damage freely.

—Mentor effect activates. A small amount of EXP gained. (Target: Baek Seolhwa)

—Mentor effect activates. A small amount of EXP......

.

.

.

These kids had handed me a decent chunk of EXP as well.

B-team's final score: A.

FLIP—

The next reports I turned to belonged to D-team.

Score: B. They'd failed to properly apply the strategy in practice and had plenty of rough edges, but they'd managed to wrap things up well enough.

It was a little harsh to say, but this was the team I'd had the lowest expectations for.

Still, they'd completed the exam without incident and brought me a respectable amount of EXP—I wanted to applaud them just as much as the teams before.

The problem was what came next.

"Song Seokhwan's A-team... what the hell happened to these guys?"

I had to wonder if this was really the Song Seokhwan I knew.

39 minutes, 31 seconds. Score: D+.

A dismal record—twice the time of C-team, who'd earned the top score.

"This shouldn't be possible......"

It threw quite a few things off course.

First, the rival my students needed to compete against had effectively vanished.

On top of that, while the Mentor talent had netted me respectable EXP from the other teams through this exam, A-team had given me barely a pittance.

And to cap it off, I'd lost my bet with Lee Yeeun and gotten stuck paying for dinner.

As I'd planned in advance, the menu was Chinese food.

When I poured the sauce onto the tangsuyuk, she got mad too.

At least the other teams' hard work had earned me far more EXP than I'd projected.

I put off the feedback and headed for the training hall.

***

The name "training hall" sounded grand, but there wasn't much to it once you got inside.

Training hall in name only—in practice, it was little more than an open clearing. Exercise equipment and assorted weapons were stacked in the corners.

First, I'd warm up with the equipment.

I grabbed the smallest dumbbell among the many lined up.

"This is... what the......"

I didn't let it show for the sake of anyone watching, but inside, a string of curses fired off reflexively.

Heavy. Fucking heavy.

I barely managed to lift it to waist height, and sweat was already pouring down my forehead.

The muscle-bound hulk working out beside me suddenly looked different.

Even this tiny thing was killing me, and that slab of muscle was doing tricep extensions with a dumbbell far bigger than mine.

I'd been quietly proud of the progress I'd made building my body, but it all felt like wasted effort.

I couldn't even dream of trying what he was lifting. The blow to my ego was real.

Anyway, time to start my workout.

Dumbbells really were a versatile piece of equipment.

Small enough for anyone to keep on hand, yet capable of covering a full range of exercises.

Full body, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, back, legs—I repeated every exercise I knew for two sets each.

—Hey, look at that guy.

—That dumbbell is......

I caught the muscle-bound guys whispering as they watched me work out.

I couldn't make out the specifics, but I could tell it wasn't flattering. No doubt they were laughing at me for using such a tiny dumbbell.

My cheeks burned.

I wanted to bolt right then, but that would've been even more humiliating.

They'd just say I couldn't even handle that thing and ran away. And honestly, even this much had me shaking all over.

"Phew."

Only after finishing the very last set did I put the dumbbell down.

Still, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

I was toweling off my sweat-drenched face when someone called to me from behind.

"Professor?"

A familiar voice. I turned to find Baek Seolhwa in training clothes.

"Seolhwa? What are you doing here— Oh."

Midway through speaking, I realized what a stupid question that was.

Baek Seolhwa of the Sword Department coming to the training hall wasn't strange at all. If anything, me being here was far more out of place.

Baek Seolhwa glanced down at the floor beside me for a moment.

Need I say more? The dumbbell I'd just been using sat right there.

A tiny dumbbell that looked pathetic next to everyone else's.

There was no room for excuses—I was standing here drenched in sweat, heaving for breath.

I was secretly embarrassed at how pitiful I must look in front of my student.

If she laughed at me, I'd find the nearest hole in the ground and vanish.

But Baek Seolhwa's reaction was nothing I'd expected.

"Whoa. Professor, you warm up with that?"

Her tone was closer to awe than mockery.

What was this? Some new form of bullying?

Baek Seolhwa walked over, gripped a dumbbell with both hands, and strained to lift it.

"Ugh, it's so heavy. How do you work out with something like this?"

Only then did I finally piece together what was happening.

I walked over to the dumbbell rack and picked up one of the bigger, heavier-looking ones.

I'd barely put any effort into it, but the dumbbell moved absurdly easily.

The dumbbell I'd looked down on for being small was actually fucking massive.

...What in the world.

I couldn't help but scoff at my own stupidity.

Looking again, the expressions on the muscle-bound guys beside me took on a whole new meaning.

I'd assumed they were mocking me, but it was the exact opposite. What I'd thought was poison turned out to be honey.

"Hm."

Baek Seolhwa suddenly started running her hands over my body.

I flinched and pulled back, but it was a futile resistance.

"What are you doing?"

"Just— let me check for a second."

My brazen student's hands darted to various parts of my body in an instant.

Starting at the neck, she worked her way down, examining carefully.

"Oho."

For reasons unknown, she looked satisfied.

An expression Baek Seolhwa rarely showed.

She checked my palms last, and whatever she found must not have been to her liking—she reverted to her usual blank face.

"That's strange. Your body is perfected, but there's no trace of sword training......"

Judging by her words, she'd momentarily assumed I was a swordsman.

That assumption wasn't far off—I had picked up a fair degree of swordsmanship.

However, since that proficiency had been gained through a talent, there wouldn't be any physical traces on my body. No calluses on my hands, for instance.

"Professor, what kind of training have you been doing?"

"Nothing like that. I just did some light exercise."

"That's a lie. How do you build a perfected body from just that?"

Perfected body? That was a term I'd never heard before.

It probably wasn't a proper noun for a talent or trait—more likely just a literal way of saying my physique was exceptional.

It might have been a perk granted to a created character.

"It's not hard. Repeat a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run every day, and anyone's body will shape up."

"That can't be right. If it were that easy, no swordsman in the world would ever struggle."

It was meant as a joke, but Baek Seolhwa didn't seem to get the reference.

It was possible that the training regimen commonly known as the "X-Punch Man Workout" didn't exist in the game world, or it was possible that Baek Seolhwa specifically didn't know it.

Either explanation was plausible.

"So have you never trained with a sword, Professor?"

"I haven't handled one much, but my skill is fairly decent."

"Hmph. You don't know what you're talking about."

Baek Seolhwa snorted and flatly rejected my claim.

"Swordsmanship isn't something you can build overnight. Maybe it works that way for the spell-slingers—some genius pops up out of nowhere, gains enlightenment, and masters magic, right? We don't have that luxury. Skills dull if you rest even a single day, so you have to hone them constantly. Even the greatest genius has to stack it up slowly, one layer at a time."

Baek Seolhwa rattled it all off in one rapid burst.

For someone as taciturn as her to speak at such length, she must have found my words truly absurd.

"Seolhwa, you don't yet understand how frightening a true genius can be."

"I've been called a genius myself, you know."

Genius.

The criteria varied from person to person, but if a child ranked in the top five of her age group nationwide, wouldn't most people bestow that title readily?

Unfortunately for her, I wasn't among that "most people."

When I simply smiled without a word, Baek Seolhwa bristled.

"Why are you smiling?"

"What it means to be a genius, you see, is to shine brighter than anyone else. Seolhwa, have you ever looked at someone and felt the wall of talent?"

I didn't name anyone specifically, but she'd know who I meant.

The freshman valedictorian, Park Seohu.

Baek Seolhwa flinched, but spoke as if she didn't care.

"...I win more often than not when we spar, you know?"

Her words lacked conviction.

In the game as well, Baek Seolhwa and Park Seohu were the opponents who'd sparred against each other the most. As she said, Baek Seolhwa had won the majority.

Except Park Seohu had never once fought seriously in their sparring matches.

Baek Seolhwa had to know that too.

In a real fight, could she win even one out of ten? Even that wasn't certain.

"But Professor, you're a mage. Are you here to work out?"

"No. I came to train with the sword."

Baek Seolhwa's eyes went wide. Then she quickly grabbed two wooden swords and came back.

"Then let's do it together."

I had no reason to refuse, so I nodded in agreement.

Baek Seolhwa handed me one of the wooden swords.

At the very least, my level wasn't so hopeless that I'd suffer the humiliation of being embarrassed by my own student.

"Let me warm up a bit too."

Baek Seolhwa took her wooden sword and stood before a training dummy.

She was only warming up, so she swung with light force—yet even that produced a tremendous sound from the dummy.

The feeling was different from watching her in class.

Back then, I'd observed with the detached eyes of someone watching a game character, so it hadn't struck me deeply. But watching as an equal, swordsman to swordsman, my jaw dropped.

It wasn't merely a matter of being strong.

The distribution of force, the precision of each motion—it was movement closer to art than combat technique.

She reduced the training dummy to a rag in an instant.

"Phew. I'm ready."

That wooden sword—practically a lethal weapon—was now aimed at me.

Honestly, it was a little terrifying.

"I'd appreciate it if you held back a bit, seeing as I'm a mage."

"We'll see how you do."

WHAM—!

The words were barely out of her mouth before Baek Seolhwa brought the wooden sword crashing down.

Fast. And heavy.

I didn't even know how I blocked it.

My body just defended on instinct.

WHOOSH!

Baek Seolhwa's wooden sword erupted into a wild dance.

It was like watching a chain-sword technique from a martial arts novel.

The blade's trajectory twisted at random.

A horizontal slash would snap to a right angle mid-swing, or a thrust at the torso would suddenly redirect into a vertical strike at the foot—movements that defied all logic.

SMACK!

What was even more baffling was that I was keeping up with it.

The swordsmanship I'd absorbed through the Mentor talent—my body remembered it and moved on its own.

My mind couldn't follow, but pure instinct told me how to move.

"As expected, Professor... Then I'll go all out without holding back."

Wait, what?

She'd been going easy on me until now? My sword-hand trembled faintly.

Baek Seolhwa's renewed offensive was even more ferocious than before.

SHING!

It had gone past chain-sword territory—now it felt like phantom swordsmanship.

A blade clearly heading right would suddenly come from the left. She'd thrust, but a slash would arrive instead.

What kind of swordsmanship is this?

This was essentially just magic at this point.

"HAAH!"

WHOOOM!

This one was dangerous.

Baek Seolhwa swatted my wooden sword upward and immediately thrust at my face.

My heart nearly stopped.

Thankfully, I twisted my head aside in time to dodge.

"Have you been holding a grudge against my classes? You're really trying to kill me."

"Of course not. Consider it a display of affection—I'm giving my all."

At this rate, if her Affinity went up even a little more, my head would be flying off.

There was no winning like this.

They say the best defense is a good offense.

Tormenting a student wasn't exactly my style, but I had no choice.

"Hmm?"

SHING!

A clean vertical slash.

But Baek Seolhwa simply stepped back and dodged it with ease.

My swordsmanship was purely derived from the Mentor talent.

Multiple students had contributed, but the single greatest influence was, naturally, Baek Seolhwa.

If she was the root of my swordsmanship—

FWIP—

Then anything she could do, I should be able to do as well.

"Huh? Wait—"

My vertically swung sword bent like a serpent mid-stroke, transforming into a thrust.

Baek Seolhwa clearly hadn't imagined I'd use the same technique as her—her reaction was late.

The opening led straight to the outcome.

SMACK!

My wooden sword struck the hand gripping her sword with force.

Baek Seolhwa had no choice but to drop her weapon.

"Ow!"

She sank to the ground and stared up at me with a dazed expression.

My decisive victory.