Chapter 113: The Thing Wriggling in the Depths (3)

On the screen, Yong Taeha, the genius of the Yong household, raised his sword. The opposing cadet was Sophia Vorkova.

Yu Jitae was watching the footage of an individual spar session from a week ago.

The two of them immediately kicked off the ground as soon as the bell rang. During the first clash, Sophia stabbed forward with her rapier which Yong Taeha parried by slightly tilting the angle of his longsword.

His counterattack that followed straight afterward was sharp. Raising the sword up to eye level, he aimed it at her head.

After watching up to this point, Yu Jitae could see the winner.

Sophia blocked his sword, but her movements were too big. Using the force that bounced his sword away to his advantage, Yong Taeha spun the sword and struck the other side of her head. She blocked it yet again, but her movements were again, too big.

The flow of the battle was completely in Yong Taeha's hands and his delicate level of control was two steps ahead of Sophia's. The following attacks were natural like a gentle wave and although Sophia somehow managed to block it with her remarkable reaction speed, her movements were too big.

Of course, her movements being too big was in relation to the standards of a superhuman ranker. Sophia definitely was strong and was blocking well for a cadet.

But if the sword shook for even 1 cm, the joints would be stiffened for around 0.03 seconds. Yong Taeha was able to manipulate that time efficiently, and knew how to accumulate it. He stabbed, slashed on and on. Once he had the fight under control, there was nothing to stop him and Sophia was pushed back again and again.

It was slightly different per every iteration, but Yong Taeha generally ended up in the two-digit ranks after around 15 years. There was almost no-one in the entire world that was more talented than him in swordplay.

Even now, it was being displayed in full. A young child was imitating an adult's movement rather decently.

Sophia's rapier rapidly shot forth aiming for the stomach. She was aiming for a slight gap in Yong Taeha's control over the fight.

By adjusting the distance, he dodged it by a hair's breadth, but that was when the rapier suddenly ignored the laws of physics thanks to Sophia's blessing, [Refraction] and soared up with an impossible angle and speed.

Yong Taeha immediately kicked off the ground and pulled his head back by bending his body back into an arch, but the rapier still managed to graze past his chin. His HP bar dropped by a bit.

Up to here was okay.

But what happened after that was the true highlight. When the same situation was about to unfold yet again, Yong Taeha tilted the longsword slightly as the rapier came piercing at his stomach. Once the rapier was caught between the cross-guard and the blade, it was no longer able to [Refract].

It was but a small movement, but contained a massive effect.

Doing this much with an incomplete and immature body was decent even in the Regressor's eyes.

And as one could expect, below were countless comments of cadets that were shocked by his decision.

– It's insane. Guys, did you see Yong Taeha twist his sword at around 00:48? Try watching with 0.1 play speed.

– What... in the world… geniuses really are made different.

– I've watched that part more than 30 times now. How does he make it look so easy… his battle sense is insane.

A sparring session was the process of endlessly giving and solving problems. Ideally, one had to easily and efficiently solve the problem thrown out by the opponent, while drowning them with difficult problems.

In that regard, Yong Taeha was incomparable to others of his age group.

In the end, Sophia got smacked three times by the wooden longsword and fell outside the arena. She appeared upset and he could hear her swearing.

"Ahh, can you just stop?"

That was when he heard Sophia's voice in real life and raised his head back up.

Inside the preparation room of Colosseo, the team, 'Yeorum and the Losties' had gathered from daybreak without even attending class, and were in the middle of a heated debate.

"What's with that bloody C-47 corridor? I said we can't."

"Just power through it. Why go around."

"No you idiot. How many times do I have to say it. We can't power through it!"

In response to Yeorum's grunts, Sophia got angry.

"That tiny corridor apparently has more than 20 FG-type monsters so how could we ever power through it? Are you a tank? A bulldozer? If you just run like that, we would be licking our fingers for 30 minutes. Is that what you want?"

"Right. So you're saying we should go around to the A-9 corridor?"

"Yeah. It's a big road so that would be a lot faster as long as we run fast."

"I seeee, is that why it still takes 20 minutes? Aigooo unni~. Everyone knows that A-9 is an empty road. Do you think there won't be any other parties there?"

They bickered and argued, as they both refuted each other about the path they should take.

"Considering your damned appearance, you need to be smart at least."

"What about my face? Don't you know what the related searches for my name are?"

"'Yu Yeorum's Lackey'?"

"What did you just say, huh?"

Right when they were about to get even more heated up,

"…Um,"

Kim Ji-in opened her mouth.

When she was glared at by two pairs of eyes, each sharp like an angry feral cat, Kim Ji-in slightly looked away and continued.

"I think D-19 looks alright too…"

"What?"

She explained her line of thought despite being scared and soon, the feral cats calmed down.

"Hmm… doesn't sound that bad."

"Though I look like this, I got A+ for the guiding courses. Maybe operating suits me the most."

Meanwhile, Soujiro filled in the written document that had to be filled out. Apparently the fingers of a chubby boy were more stable than that of three girls, so the resulting plan document looked quite professional.

Once they finished fine-tuning it among themselves, they showed it to Yu Jitae and Mihailov.

This was Mihailov's suggestion, that they allow the cadets to consider it themselves without having the guardians help from the get go.

The Regressor agreed without saying anything.

"It looks okay. What do you think, Mister Jitae."

It wasn't bad.

"…Looks okay."

Their expressions brightened after he gave his approval. However, they didn't have much time to linger on joy and they had to worry about the next problem immediately afterward.

When they were practising their roles and their positions, Mihailov willingly stepped forward to be the one teaching them, so Yu Jitae had no choice but to train them for the anti-boss war.

"The boss of the underground fissure will abuse its gravitational blessing once it turns into a human type. If it does succeed, you guys will be unable to move while the boss flies around like a fly so the sharpshooter's role becomes very important in order to allow the front-fighters to deal damage."

The front-fighters here meant Yu Yeorum and Sophia. After noticing the importance of their role, the other two became nervous.

The training method itself was simple. Yu Jitae manipulated the mana and artificially added 20 times the gravitational force onto the entire alternate dimensional training room.

In an instant, Kim Ji-in's posture crumbled. Since almost a ton of weight had suddenly been added to her back, trying to keep herself on her feet was the most she could do. Meanwhile, Soujiro fell on his bum.

Watching Yu Jitae's godly manipulation from a distance, Mihailov let out a gasp inwardly. Did he just raise the gravity of an entire dimension without using a blessing? How delicate does his mana control must be in order to achieve that?

'I knew he was a monster but…'

While he was astonished, Yu Jitae walked up to Kim Ji-in who was struggling to stay standing up and opened his mouth.

"This is the best method for short-term improvement. As long as you get used to the gravity once, you'll catch on and it'll be easier the second time."

"…"

Kim Ji-in appeared to have meant it when she said she might loathe herself if she held Yeorum back. Despite drooling and tearing up, she held her ground.

Soujiro also stood back up with difficulty.

"You raise your musket, and you your bow."

The weapons that were usually easy to lift were currently so heavy that their muscles threatened to rip apart. Kim Ji-in clenched hard to the point that her teeth might crack while squeezing everything into her shoulders.

But it all failed. The musket felt like a metal ball with a person attached. How could she possibly raise this with one hand?

Seemingly indifferent to their thoughts, Yu Jitae apathetically opened his mouth.

"Raise your weapons."

Soujiro managed to succeed before her. He was stronger than her as a male, and the bow was relatively lighter than a musket.

After struggling for another 30 minutes or so, Kim Ji-in finally managed to raise the musket and point it at Yu Jitae.

Seeing that, he scattered the mana that was oppressing the alternate dimension.

Collapsing onto the ground, Kim Ji-in held her stomach and began throwing up on the ground. Mihailov dashed forward in surprise and tapped her on the back.

While collecting her breath, and with her drenched bangs covering more than half of her eyes, she asked Yu Jitae.

"…Did Yeorum go through something harder?"

He didn't reply.

"Rest up. We'll start again after 10 minutes."

"Yeorum… Did Yeorum train in something that was harder than what we just did?"

He remained silent.

And after realising that his silence meant a 'yes', Kim Ji-in turned blank for a while. She saw Yeorum, who was still smoking a cigarette in a corner of the alternate dimension, in a different light.

"…This must be why we're no good."

The training session continued and by nighttime, Soujiro and Kim Ji-in were both able to cope with 20 times the gravity to a decent level. However, their mentality had received a great impact and they looked 20 times more depressed than when they joined the group.

While staring at the disheartened kids, Yu Jitae decided on something.

He took them and headed to the commercial district and entered an extremely elegant artifact store. Weapons and armour artifacts lining up like masterpieces welcomed them.

"…?"

"Eh…?"

Confusion replaced the depression that were on their faces. The two of them did not have a decent artifact and were carrying simple weapons that were provided by Lair. It was because they didn't have guardians, and didn't receive any support from households or guilds.

"Choose one."

"Sorry?'

"I'll buy it for you."

"Ehht!? Really? B, but…!"

The Regressor remembered back when Yeorum was dispirited, and also remembered how Bom helped her cast away the depression.

Startled, the kids shook their hands saying that they couldn't receive something like that but once those hands carried artifacts, their expressions changed.

Yu Jitae used 85,000 dollars there in cash and the kids followed from behind while carrying their weapons as if they were in a dream.

"T, thank you…"

They were okay when they were carrying the weapons in their hands and were fine when he was paying for them as well. But once they began walking down a dark alleyway after exiting the shop, it seemed that memories of her hardships floated back up as Kim Ji-in broke out into tears.

She held onto the musket with her two hands and cried for a long time and Soujiro consoled her while tearing up himself.

However, the Regressor spoke indifferently.

"You have to get up. We're busy."

"Ye, yes…"

Three days was too short for a raid preparation.

***

Grand Conference Room, Colosseo Lair.

Yu Jitae and Mihalov were attending the briefing of the assignment performance, [B+ Underground Fissure Raid].

The professor was still yet to come and there were about 30 guardians gathered in the conference room, with most of them being guardians of top ranking cadets.

The atmosphere wasn't very friendly.

"It's as if they're about to eat each other," Mihailov described the room.

There were 30 guardians in total and most of them were silent. A few of them were openly revealing their killing intent and were glaring at one another.

The only source of sound was coming from guardians who usually remained together while others acted like strangers.

"What's wrong with them."

"You haven't heard it yet?"

Mihailov lowered his voice and touched his moustache.

"The Yong household and the Erfan Guild had a big fight."

"Why."

"Apparently a cadet called Yong Jinyong and Wang Lai from Erfan had a spar but one of them insulted the other. And then they happened to meet each other when they were coming out from their rooms. They started bashing each other and the guardians were grabbing each other by their collars – it was a mess. Lair gave both sides a heavy sanction."

"…"

"Everyone's crazy for school grades."

"You're saying that as if it has nothing to do with you but, I heard you grabbed someone by their collar too."

"Damn. You heard that? I wouldn't have said all that if I knew you did."

RIL also had a fight recently with the Quintom Guild of Japan. A cadet from the Quintom Guild interfered with the assignment of a cadet from RIL as if by coincidence. Due to that, the cadet from RIL missed out on the due date and wasted all the potential points, time and effort that had been invested into it.

However, not everyone was unfriendly.

"Hello. Nice to meet you, I'm Ha Jongkwon from the Ha household."

Some of them abruptly started a conversation with Yu Jitae. They were guardians of cadets that were slightly lower than the peak despite being around the top ranks.

"I'm Yu Jitae."

"Ah, umm, these days our kids are watching Cadet Yeorum's videos a lot."

"Ah, yes."

"I knew she was originally a strong cadet but now she's in a different league altogether. I heard that you were the one that directly trained her, Mister Guardian."

"…Yes, I did."

"Ahh, I think that's truly wonderful. How could you do that in just one month… ahh right. Mister Pan! Come here for a minute."

The guardian from the Ha household called a different guardian from China.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Pan Yong. I'm your fan sir."

"Yes?"

"Ah, was that too sudden? I mean I'm a fan of the Yu household, haha."

"…"

"You know, you uploaded an announcement before regarding Cadet Yeorum's individual training methods, right?"

He did.

"Back then, we were slightly worried actually about whether Cadet Yeorum would be able to grow nicely or not. Well, I guess it would be strange to worry despite never talking to her before but… she threw us all off guard by growing so much stronger right?"

The Chinese guardian laughed out loud.

"Allowing them to be free, while still nurturing them to be excellent. Isn't that something worthy of respect for every guardian out there?"

Mister Pan, the Chinese guardian, gave a clap.

Since Yeorum was consistently in an upward trend in the competition, her name value thus increased which seemed to have naturally spread word about Yu Jitae's story.

Now, there will be conversations held behind his back by people he didn't know, whether that was good or bad.

Even now, there were people throwing glances at him. Some of the thoughts that were behind those gazes weren't so friendly, because Yeorum's 25 consecutive wins was founded upon the defeats of 25 cadets.

Yu Jitae had looked into their names and organisations.

"Ahh, now's not the time for this. Would it be okay for me to introduce my acquaintances?"

Next up, guardians from Norway and Argentina greeted Yu Jitae.

They abruptly walked up and gave an awkward greeting but soon became relaxed as they mingled together with other guardians. Compliments that he didn't care about, like, 'I respect you' and 'You're amazing' were repeatedly thrown out.

By the time he realised it, Yu Jitae was covered by guardians on all four sides.

He didn't think much of it and there wasn't much he wanted to say either, so he just nodded in response to their words.

"Ah, can I ask for a selfie together if you're okay with that?"

"Ah, I would like to ask the same if possible."

Middle-aged men pushed their watches out and since there was no reason to turn them down, Yu Jitae took a photo with them.

"Should we take a group photo?"

For some reason, Mihailov was suddenly tasked with taking a group photo. The middle-aged men laughed and chattered while sharing photos.

The Regressor was slightly dumbfounded.

"…"

When's the professor coming.

.

.

Until the start of the assignment performance [B+ Underground Fissure Raid],

There was 1 day left to go.