I had seen it before. Of course, not in reality, but in dramas or films.
“······Hmm.”
Only now did several more facts fall into place. Kim Hajin, despite being a cadet, frequently left Cube. That fact had spread as a nasty rumor, but the truth behind it had been this dazzling.
“······Impressive.”
Yoo Yeonha murmured in admiration.
To find his past, he did not forget his past.
Because his strength was not a tool meant to draw attention, he revealed it only when necessary, and only in secret.
That belief, faithful to its essence, and the firmly established direction of his life—though they did not align with Yoo Yeonha’s own values—were things even she had no choice but to acknowledge.
“More importantly, are you still far from uncovering the rest of his past? His birth, for example.”
—Yes. We are making efforts, but we’ve hit a wall. Other than those, there are absolutely no traces left.
“Try harder.”
She was dissatisfied inwardly, but for now, she let it pass.
“What’s next?”
—They say an incident occurred in Colion.
“In Colion?”
Yoo Yeonha’s brows rose.
Yoo Yeonha had plans to form a partnership with the Colion Family in the future.
The objective was artifact smuggling.
The Italian mafias possessed many so-called “black artifacts” that had not been reported to the Central Government. This was because the Central Government and Italy’s guilds would slap “export prohibited” labels on artifacts excavated by the mafia, then try to buy them for next to nothing.
Yoo Yeonha coveted those artifacts.
“What sort of incident?”
—One of their executives was assassinated. However, they believe the assassin was most likely dispatched from Korea, so Colion has requested that we track them down.
“······Tracking, is it.”
Yoo Yeonha pondered. Considering Team 3’s capabilities, finding an assassin was not that difficult a mission.
“What do you think? Do you believe you can find them?”
—It doesn’t seem impossible.
“Oh? Is that so? Where does that confidence come from?”
—We just obtained a rather useful rookie.
Yoo Yeonha’s brow furrowed. She was deeply suspicious by nature, and could not trust anyone she had not personally selected.
“······Is that so?”
—Yes. I’ll send you the file.”
With displeased eyes, Yoo Yeonha opened the file.
===
[Kim Hoseop]
—17 years old, 168 cm, 78 kg
—Graduate of an agent military academy
—Talent [Hyper-Speed Network]
□Connects a computer to the brain, displaying exceptional ability in information searching and tracking.
□The higher the specifications of the computer and internet connection, the faster the search speed.
===
* * *
Late Tuesday night. I trudged out of the dorm.
“Oh! Hey, Kim Hajin! Over here, over here~!”
The person who had called me out shouted loudly and waved her hand.
When I stopped nearby, Chae Nayun came running toward me with a grin.
“Hey, hey. Is this it? The summary notes?”
“Yeah. So stop texting me now.”
I had brought the summary notes Chae Nayun had been so desperately wanting. It wasn’t anything special; I’d hacked Yoo Yeonha’s personal database and gotten them from there. Yoo Yeonha had a pathological habit of saving everything she wrote down.
“Ah~ you little punk. Thanks. I’ll definitely pay you back later.”
“You don’t have to pay me back, so just study properly.”
I quietly looked at Chae Nayun. For some reason, Chae Nayun these days was pitiful. I simply wanted to help her. I didn’t even know what was right anymore.
In the past, just thinking about “that day” that would come someday had made it impossible for me to look her straight in the face. But now······ I just had to make sure I didn’t get caught. Just like when I assassinated the mafia member this time, as long as I didn’t get caught after killing him, it would be fine.
Maybe because of thoughts like that, I kept······
“Okay. Hey! Seriously, thanks! I’m going to study right away!”
Chae Nayun suddenly smacked my arm a few times. Then, hugging the notes I’d handed her as if they were a sacred treasure, she ran back to her dorm.
“...That hurt like hell.”
I rubbed my arm while watching her from behind.
Would it kill her to hit a little more gently?
*
Cube during written exam week was so desolate that time seemed to pass remarkably quickly.
So after closing and opening my eyes a few times, before I knew it, Friday had arrived.
“Hey~”
1:30 p.m., after the last written exam ended.
Chae Nayun appeared in front of me again with a bright expression like this. She had practically been living in the reading room lately, so it seemed she’d done fairly well.
“Thanks. I did well on the test because of you.”
“······Really?”
“Yeah. I think I got about four or five more right? That makes a huge difference, right?”
“It does.”
Starting next week would be practical exam week. Because of that, I was a little nervous too. After all, this time I was planning to drag my ranking up to somewhere around the 200s.
But more important than the exams was what came afterward.
“The incident” that would happen after the practical exams.
“Oh, right. Hey, once the practicals are all over, want to go there? My treat.”
“······Where’s ‘there’?”
“‘Hanjeonggak.’ It’s a super famous Korean restaurant in Ganghwa-do. You know it too, right? It’s almost on the same level as that restaurant in Paris. Kim Suho and you······”
Hanjeonggak. It was a top-class restaurant I had recorded in my settings book as well. I was curious what it tasted like. After all, I would be able to experience the pinnacle of Korean cuisine.
However.
“I’m not going.”
“What? Why?”
“Just because. I don’t have time, so go with Kim Suho, just the two of you.”
“······Huh, what’s this? Are you jealous?”
Jealous? For some reason, I found it hard to just let that word pass. My brow furrowed on its own.
I glared at Chae Nayun and snapped back.
“Are you insane?”
“No, well. If not, then forget it? I was just trying to repay you for that Paris restaurant······.”
“I’m not going.”
I cut her off firmly and returned to the dorm.
“Hey, even so, just the two of us is a no-go. If my dad finds out, I’ll get in trouble~”
Chae Nayun spouted that nonsense until the very end.
* * *
The weekend passed, and Monday came again.
Practical exam week began.
The first exam of practical exam week was team play.
It was what they called multi-person combat, and while the rules were roughly similar to the duels from the first semester, the difference was that it was a duel between teams.
“Attack team, Rachel’s team! Defense team, Yohei’s team!”
The first match of the first day was our team, Rachel’s team.
Our opponent was Yohei’s team. The team leader Yohei’s full name was Miyamoto Yohei, a top-class samurai from Doya Class. Apparently, Yohei’s distant ancestor was the famous Miyamoto Musashi or something.
For the record, that part was not something I had set.
“Prepare!”
There were many spectators in the arena. Of course, compared to the previous midterm exam, it was practically an empty field, but quite a few cadets had still come to watch. The clash between Rachel and Yohei was bound to be a fairly big match.
“Take your positions.”
Rachel said. We took the positions we had prepared in advance. The warriors, Rachel and Jin Hoseung, stood at the front, while the supporter, Lee Bokgyu, took a stance to protect me and Tomer.
Holding a cadet-use handgun, I said to Lee Bokgyu,
“You don’t have to protect me. Just protect Tomer.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll go take the mage’s head.”
It seemed the time had come for me to slowly start showing off my strength.
My strength was, to put it bluntly, an extremely vicious case of being strong against the weak and weak against the strong.
Now that I had even acquired a weapon called “Curved Shot,” the mage hiding in the back was nothing more than prey.
“Hey, still······.”
While Lee Bokgyu was worrying, the referee shouted loudly.
“Duel, st—art!”
End
Compared to the individual matches, today’s match differed from the terrain itself.
The arena, 130 meters wide and 250 meters long, transformed immediately after the match began into mountainous terrain sprouting with rocks and vegetation. Various obstacles blocked the space between the two teams, but to me, it was actually a good environment.
“Jin Hoseung and I will charge. The rest of you, follow slowly and provide support.”
Rachel said.
However, before she could move, I grabbed a nearby tree and jumped up.
“Um, Hajin?”
Rachel’s flustered voice rose from the ground.
I smiled and waved my hand.
“Go ahead first. I’ll support you from above.”
Securing the high ground was the shooter’s role.
Rachel knew that as well, so she nodded and left it to me.
Soon, Rachel and Jin Hoseung charged forward. I followed after the two of them, leaping from tree to tree.
“······!”
At that moment, a sharp arrow came flying from somewhere.
A single arrow cleaved through the air. I hurriedly bent my waist like a bow. Amid the illusion that time had slowed, the arrow grazed just over my abdomen by a hair’s breadth.
“Wow.”
In my “current state,” where my body felt so light it was almost admirable, evasion of this level was easy. After all, thanks to my constitution, my reflexes had been inflated all the way to 6.3. For now, I was practically a ninja.
I looked in the direction the arrow had come from. The archer fired a second mana arrow. This time, I intercepted the mana arrow with a bullet. The bullet scattered the instant it touched the arrow, but the arrow’s trajectory bent and shot off into the air. The archer furrowed his brow.
However, that archer did not seem to want to deal with me in particular.
“Daeyun! Take care of the shooter!”
After shouting to his teammate in the rear, the archer aimed his bow toward the front.
At the front line, Rachel and Jin Hoseung were charging in without delay.
I also glanced in that direction.
For a moment, I had the illusion that a refreshing and free-spirited BGM was playing in my ears.
“······What the hell is with him?”
Yohei looked that much like something out of a cartoon.
In the middle of the battlefield, Yohei stood with a twig in his mouth and his eyes closed. His bearing was utterly calm and relaxed. Even though Rachel and Jin Hoseung were charging straight at him, radiating fierce momentum, the Japanese sword at his waist still had yet to show itself from its scabbard.
“A ronin resembles the wind, free and unfettered.”
Then, just as they arrived right before him,
Yohei opened his eyes while spouting some nonsense.
His pupils filled with the sight of the two warriors.
Rachel’s rapier and Jin Hoseung’s blade······ Just as the two whirling sword strikes were about to cut Yohei down,
the sword light that had been sleeping in its scabbard until then flashed.
A lightning-fast draw (拔刀).
In response to the two charging warriors, the samurai’s blade surged upward. Yohei repelled the two-pronged attack like a thunderbolt and counterattacked like a ray of light. His sword was lighter than the wind, yet as fierce as a gale.
“······.”
I stared blankly at the sight.
Right now, Yohei was facing two people alone. And his opponents were not some nobodies; one of them was none other than Rachel.
Even so, Yohei was fighting them on even terms. It was thanks to the various buff spells plastered all over him, and the mana being replenished every moment.
Only then did I understand the enemy formation.
Yohei stood alone in the front, the shooter was positioned in the middle, and at the very rear, a supporter and warrior were protecting the mage.
It was what one might call a one-man team.
A strategy of investing everything into Yohei.
The shooter supported firepower from a key position where he could assist both the front and rear, while the mage in the back poured buffs and mana into Yohei.
Indeed, as the defense team, it was quite an efficient strategy.
As long as the mage didn’t die.
And as long as there wasn’t a hyena like me.
I circled around low and headed toward where the mage was.
The mage was being protected by two people.
However, perhaps because I had no knack for stealth, the warrior discovered me first.
A bulky warrior with a sports cut. He threw his axe at me. The axe flew like a boomerang, cutting down every blade of grass around me, before returning to the warrior’s hand.
The warrior noticed the gun in my hand and frowned.
“What kind of strategy is this? A shooter alone······.”
Before he could finish, I fired wildly.
Without the slightest panic, the warrior planted his axe into the ground. When he infused it with mana, the axe grew enormous, and the supporter glued to the mage’s side also raised his shield to block the hail of bullets.
While firing, I identified their blind spots.
The mage was hiding tightly behind the supporter, but if I shot from above, I could land a hit easily enough.
Especially that neck guard.
By its nature, if the neck guard was hit even once, it was an immediate retirement.
Just then, the warrior and supporter exchanged glances.
You protect the mage, I’ll take care of that shooter. It was probably something like that.
The warrior lifted his axe and charged at me.
This is actually a good situation. In a place like this, with so many obstacles for parkour, that lumbering warrior can never catch up to me.
I leapt back and forth between the trees, keeping my eyes on the mage. Perhaps sensing my gaze, the supporter performed a rather mystical act.
“—Coalition.”
In an instant, the supporter’s kite shield multiplied into several, surrounding the mage and the supporter. Like a hedgehog.
But there were not no gaps at all.
A shield was only a shield; there was bound to be a faint “blind spot” that a shield could not block.
That was what I aimed for.
“Hryaap!”
The warrior swung his axe. The axe, which had suddenly grown enormous, savagely smashed apart the tree I had been standing on. But I kicked off the tree at precisely that timing and leapt upward, spinning widely in midair.
Rustle— At a height of ten meters above the ground, where splinters of wood scattered like dust, my body flipped upside down.
At the same time, I activated Bullet Time.
In the slowed flow of time, I raised the muzzle in that position. My target was within a small gap in the cluster of shields.
The path and speed of the bullet I would fire were all in my hands, so what I had to do was simple.
I twisted the handgun slightly to the right and pulled the trigger.
Whoooosh—
The bullet fired in midair curved strangely.
I saw the bullet’s movement clearly.
The bullet, which should have flown in a straight line, suddenly dropped downward, then burrowed between the shields like a machine with a set target…
“Aaagh!”
The mage’s scream rang out.
Trusting in the shields, the mage had made no effort to protect himself. If he had cast even a single barrier, he probably would not have died in one blow.
But the mage had tried to conserve his magic power, and as a result—
—Yohei Team, Mage Yu Suhwan retired.
He was struck in the neck guard by a stray bullet and was retired.
“Ah, that dirty bastard…!”
Enraged by that, the warrior and supporter charged toward me.
“Come now. Dirty?”
I climbed up a tree. Then, like a monkey hurling banana peels from atop a tree, I fired my handgun.
“Come down! I said come down!”
Whenever he threw his axe, I moved to another tree, repeating the process and provoking his anger.
Meanwhile, up front, the match was gradually being decided.
Yohei, whose mage’s magic support had been cut off, began to be pushed back by Rachel and Jin Hoseung’s joint attack, and the opposing archer was busy dodging Tomer’s magical bombardment.
And the warrior and supporter, who should have been helping those two, were chasing only me…
The outcome was already as good as decided.
* * *
…Ten minutes later.
The winners’ waiting room.
As soon as the match ended, I asked Yoo Yeonha for information on Yohei.
[Among water, wind, earth, and fire, he has the rarest attribute, wind. It’s a talent that allows him to consume his own magic power to move like the wind.]
[Just as wind has many currents and cannot be caught, he can scatter multiple sword strikes at once and flexibly evade enemy attacks. They say the name of his talent is “Path of the Wind.”]
[In other words, both his talent and body are outstanding, but since he lacks magic power, drawn-out battles are his weakness.]
[However, in this match, it seems he tried to compensate for his lacking magic power with the help of the mage. Mage Yu Suhwan has learned “Target Chain,” which transmits magic power and spells from a distance to someone connected to him.]
[If the mage had survived until the end, the battle would have become quite difficult. Yohei’s battle sense is considered next after Kim Suho and Jonghak.]
Yoo Yeonha’s texts were as meticulous and thorough as a report. In particular, each individual’s talent was kept secret from the cadets, yet she knew even that inside and out. If I had something to ask for later, I’d have to ask again.
Just then, the door to the waiting room opened, and Rachel entered.
With her usual expression, Rachel spoke to the team members.
“You all did truly well.”
Though her face remained the same, her voice was filled with joy. Rachel was in an extremely good mood right now. One could tell from her two hands, clenched tightly in excitement.
“Especially…”
Rachel looked at me and smiled faintly.
“Hajin-ssi. You…”