“S-Spaghetti is twenty thousand...!”
As she agonized, unable to decide what to do, Sin Noda just ordered steak pasta and a side dish.
“Let me guess one thing about you, Ha-yeon?”
“Huh? What?”
“You’re an Academy hopeful, right?”
“Gasp. How did you know?”
Bak Hayeon felt goosebumps rising all over her body.
‘Could he be some kind of stalker…?’
“I have good instincts. I’m also an Academy hopeful. I get the feeling we’ll be seeing each other a lot, so shall we just speak casually?”
“Yes, uh, I mean, sure!”
“Where are you from? A Seoul native?”
“No, Gangwon-do… You wouldn’t know even if I told you the details. It’s the countryside!”
Sin Noda’s eyes widened.
“Your steak pasta and Italian pizza are here.”
The pasta and pizza were placed on the table.
The food they had ordered had arrived.
‘How long has it been since I ate out!’
Bak Hayeon, who had been surviving every day on triangular gimbap and instant noodles because she had no money, could only marvel at the feast before her.
She picked up her chopsticks and began to eat.
“Sin Noda. I’ll enjoy it!”
“Yeah, sure, sure. If there’s anything else you want, tell me. I’ll order more.”
Sin Noda had plenty of money.
Because over the past year, while hunting villains, he had looted corpses whenever there were no witnesses around.
Sometimes it was just picking a wallet, but occasionally he had the chance to crack a safe.
Sin Noda smiled as he thought.
From Gangwon-do, working part-time at that cafe.
And an Academy hopeful on top of that.
There was no doubt about it.
‘The protagonist became a woman. Then what happens to the main story?’
Watching Bak Hayeon eat heartily, Sin Noda’s feelings were complicated.
Sin Noda and Bak Hayeon finished their meal and parted ways.
After returning to her lodging, Bak Hayeon rolled around on her blanket and opened a messenger app.
“Eek. Was that a date?”
Bak Hayeon, who had attended a rural school with only about thirty students total up until middle school, had plenty of male friends but had never once experienced romance.
She told her friends in the group chat about today’s events.
“Hehe.”
To her, Sin Noda was quite handsome.
Unlike friends her age, he was tall and had a solid build.
Bak Hayeon pretended to take a picture of her pasta and uploaded a photo she had taken with Sin Noda.
For some reason, she felt proud.
Recalling her conversation with Sin Noda.
“Huh… We didn’t really say much. Netflix, MBTI, and uh… we talked about heroes too?”
Come to think of it, not even a clichéd “Did you get home safe?” message had arrived.
Bak Hayeon clicked on Sin Noda in the messenger app and glared at the empty chat window.
“W-why hasn’t he contacted me…? Could it be he doesn’t like me? But he’s the one who asked for my number….”
Bak Hayeon tossed and turned all night, too anxious about when Sin Noda’s text would come.
***
The day of the entrance exam.
I woke up early and headed to the auditorium where the Academy entrance exam was being held.
The Academy was comparable to a decent university campus.
The buildings were all modern, built on an enormous plot of land, making for an impressive sight.
Looking around, there weren’t many people yet.
It seemed I had arrived a bit early.
Since I was living alone in an officetel near the Academy, I’d be faster than the others.
Having arrived early, I took out a pack of cigarettes behind the sparsely populated auditorium.
It was a cigarette to relieve the stress from the whole Bak Hayeon situation and the tension over the upcoming entrance exam.
‘Fuck. If the protagonist is a woman, what happens to the romance part of the main story?’
Because it was a game that explicitly carried tags like “Growth” and “Love Comedy,” the main story itself included romance routes.
Some heroines would never join the party unless the protagonist wooed them, and there were even cases where you had to use pretty-boy tactics(?) to open the path.
I lit the cigarette and put it in my mouth.
I sucked it deep into my lungs and exhaled.
It felt like my worries and concerns were dissipating along with the smoke.
“Sigh. I don’t know.”
As I was lamenting the tangled situation, someone butted in from beside me.
“What don’t you know?”
“Huh? Who are you?”
The interloper was a petite girl with long silver hair.
Judging by her casual clothes, she was likely an examinee like me.
“My name is Yang Min-seo. Today I have come to this Academy as an examinee.”
“I’m Sin Noda. Same, an examinee.”
“You. Didn’t answer. What don’t you know?”
Thinking she was a persistent one, I roughly brushed her off.
“I was saying I don’t know what’ll come out on the entrance exam.”
Yang Min-seo furrowed her fine forehead and fixed her eyes on my face.
No, to be exact, on the cigarette in my mouth.
“Smoking is probably not permitted.”
Yang Min-seo.
The granddaughter of a major corporation’s chairman, a noble lady-type character.
Her grade was C, a promising prospect, and she was cute, but.
As you can see, she had a bothersome personality.
And most importantly…
She was someone who died in the next chapter.
‘No need to go out of my way to get close to her.’
“Mind your own business. Are you a teacher?”
“I had my suspicions, but you really are a delinquent! I question how someone like you passed the document screening. This is Hero Academy, Korea’s finest ability user training institution. It is no place for low-class people like you.”
The document screening had been close, to be fair.
Study-wise, well, I had attended a prestigious university, so I crammed and somehow pushed my grades up to the cutoff line, but those damn unexcused absences made things difficult.
I barely met the condition by attending school diligently in the final stretch of my third year.
“Who are you to decide that?”
“Hmph. Your grade is D at best. Even if you barely scrape into the Academy, you’ll obviously fall behind and drop out. Honestly, you should look for a job unrelated to abilities. Being a hero isn’t that easy. Besides, for a delinquent like you, I needn’t say more.”
Come to think of it, wasn’t Yang Min-seo’s skill “Eye of Truth”?
A skill that obtains information on its target.
Seems like she can see my grade.
“Well, you’ll see.”
The cigarette had become a butt before I knew it.
I threw the tobacco on the ground and stomped it out.
I turned my back on her as she was mid-lecture.
I escape uncomfortable situations quickly.
“Wait! I’m not finished!”
A loud noise came from somewhere.
I ignored it and headed to the auditorium.
Laura spoke as if dumbfounded.
[What an insolent wench.]
“It seems this is the first time you and I have agreed on something.”
Inside the auditorium, it was packed with students.
The entrance exam was about to begin.
The large auditorium.
The interior was so immaculate that it was hard to believe the building was ten years old.
The head proctor explained the exam procedure.
“All of you will proceed to your assigned booths according to your examinee numbers to take the exam. Please go to your designated booth and form a line.”
Sin Noda checked his admission ticket.
Examinee number 102216.
It was booth 7.
Upon going to booth 7 and getting in line, the proctor handed out papers.
Documents formatted exactly like the status window.
The numerical fields were blank.
“Copy your status window exactly. Do not attempt to cheat. We will test everything in the next stage anyway.”
Because it is impossible to show one’s status window to others, they evaluate examinees’ abilities through this method.
Sin Noda called up his status window and copied it down exactly.
Excluding “Dragon Heart” and “Succession.”
Sin Noda waited in line.
Waiting was boring.
To kill time, he watched the person in front of him.
The person in front was a handsome red-haired man with a cold impression, Hwang Jae-seong.
A performance-oriented character who occasionally joined the Demon King raid party.
Though there were more times when he didn’t join because he was male.
Those around them whispered upon seeing Hwang Jae-seong.
“Isn’t he the son of that S-rank hero ‘Bloody Striker’? They said he’s in the same cohort as us, and it’s true. Should I ask him to get his dad’s autograph later?”
“O-oh, it’s starting. I heard he’s already close to B-rank. I wonder how strong he is.”
Hwang Jae-seong entered the box.
The size of a small classroom.
Designed to allow vigorous physical activity.
A mechanical voice sounded from inside the box.
“This is a strength measurement. Strike the scarecrow with all your might.”
“May I kick it?”
“Yes, anywhere is fine.”
Hwang Jae-seong’s father, “Bloody Striker,” was a famous hero known for defeating villains with kicks alone.
The proctor assumed he’d learned foot-based martial arts from his father and let it go.
Hwang Jae-seong took his stance.
Soon, accompanied by a sound like tearing air, he unleashed a spinning kick.
The scarecrow broke in a single blow.
The proctor dropped his pen.
“G-greatness, as expected. Truly worthy of being called a promising prospect.”
The students watching from behind all opened their mouths in admiration.
“As expected of near B-rank level….”
“If that hit a person, they’d be dead, right?”
“Is he going to be the top of the class?”
The scarecrow, split in half, transformed into square particles and crumbled.
Shortly after, the particles clumped together to reconstruct a form.
What appeared was a goblin archer.
A monster commonly seen when entering dungeons through gates.
“Next is the agility test. The arrows will decompose the moment they touch your body, so you won’t be hurt. Please dodge at your leisure.”
As the blunt mechanical voice ended, the goblin drew its bowstring.
An arrow flew, tearing through the air.
It couldn’t be underestimated just because it was a goblin.
No matter who looses it, an arrow leaving the bowstring is fast.
Hwang Jae-seong lowered his stance like a goalkeeper, preparing to dodge.
Simultaneously with the arrow’s launch, he grasped its predicted trajectory and threw his body.
He dodged.
The goblin snickered as it nocked its next arrow.
Sschweaak.
The arrow cut through the air, but once again failed to hit him.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four….
He kept dodging like that until he took a hit on the twentieth shot.
The arrow decomposed into square particles the moment it touched his body, causing no harm.
“Your stats indicate C-rank, but your performance is nearly B-rank. Your concentration is remarkable.”
The proctor praised him and proceeded to the next step.
Intelligence and luck measurements were skipped.
Without a linked skill, they couldn’t be measured, which would create fairness issues.
What remained were the skill measurement and final evaluation.
“The skill measurement will proceed alongside the comprehensive combat ability evaluation. Defeat the enemy, but you must use your skill at least once. Examinee Hwang Jae-seong is C-rank, so we will send out a hobgoblin.”
“As far as I know, defeating this allows me to challenge a higher rank. Just send out a B-rank monster.”
“Are you sure? If you lose to a B-rank monster, your evaluation score may be deducted.”
“Yes.”
The goblin archer decomposed, and more particles clumped together, forming a large figure.
A height reaching 2 meters.
Bulging muscles.