CHAPTER 107 - Bad luck

Inside the Cube male cadets' dorm at night, Hajin was just getting to his room.

"*Sigh...* I'm dead tired..." Hajin said as he went to his bed, only to find Evandel fast asleep on his bed. "I guess it's time to go to the couch."

Dragging his feet to the couch, Hajin fell on the couch, turning on his smartwatch.

"Mm?" Looking at the log of his laptop on the smartwatch, Hajin noticed something that was both familiar and unknown to him.

[An incredible luck applies, warding you from certain death!]

[Narrow Escape from Death (3/9) - A special stat, accumulation of luck, becomes partially unlocked!]

[You obtained 165 SP!]

"This again?" Hajin rubbed his chin, before suddenly remembering something. "Oh, right, it must be from this morning when I tripped from the rubble, oh well, I guess this is a good thing."

Turning off the smartwatch and falling on his back on the couch with the head resting back, he started to think about what happened today.

"He sure isn't good..." He let out a sigh. "I guess Cristopher is human too. Just… How did things get to that point… *Sigh...*"

After sighing, he just decided to close his eyes.

Meanwhile, in the forest right outside the dorms, Cristopher was sitting on the branch of a tree, leaning on the tree while looking up at the night sky.

Under him, on the same tree, Olivia was trying her hardest to walk up the tree, while controlling three knives to move in different patterns, and just like the previous times, she just fell down the tree after the fifth step.

"Why is it so goddamn hard!?" Olivia, sitting on her butt, started to complain. "I was able to run up the goddamn tree at great speed, while the hell can't I even walk!?"

"You're focusing your Magic Power in two different tasks, if you focused on Magic Power control instead of raw power, you would probably be able to do this easier."

Without taking his eyes out of the sky, he answered her.

"Yeah, yeah, I know! How many times have you told me that!?"

"Then stop whining and get to it. I told you that vertical movement was just the start."

"This isn't normal training..." Olivia said with a sigh, but after a couple of seconds, she just stood up and started to train once again.

While all of this happened, Rachel was currently trying her best to control Laky's power to freeze the grass around her feet.

But as much as she wanted to focus, she couldn't, she just couldn't take her eyes from her master's, who just sat on the branch looking at the sky. It's not the first time that she has seen him like this. He usually looked at the night sky, but this time it felt different.

She knew, deep inside, that he couldn't be in a good state after what happened to Angelica.

{Maybe she was his girlfriend after all...} Rachel thought for a moment, remembering the morning of that day.

"What is it?" Cristopher asked.

"!?" Flinching, Rachel averted her eyes.

"Mm? Is there a problem Rachel?"

"N-No… There's no problem master..." Rachel blushed.

"Good, keep working."

"Yes..." She nodded and closed her eyes to start focusing again on her training.

"Hey." Olivia, with her butt on the ground again, asked. "Weren't you going to keep training?"

"..." Cristopher smirked. "You know, you're right. I know the perfect training."

"..." Looking at his smirk, Olivia flinched. "H-H-Hey… Could we forget what I just-"

"No, no. You're right. I have to keep training." He said, jumping down from the branch and approaching Olivia. "Stand up."

"No… No… I'm fine sitting down here, really." She smiled, crawling back to the tree and sitting there leaning on the trunk.

"Stand up, or it will be worse." Cristopher's smirk deepened. "Move. We're just going to train like the last time. You try to hit me with those knives of yours, and I stop them."

"Stop… Them? Aren't you going to evade them?" She tilted her head.

"No. I'm going to stop them while training my energy. That way I kill two birds with one stone. I train myself, and help to train you." He said with a smile.

"O-Ok..." She nodded.

"C-Can I train with you too?" Rachel, who stopped training by herself and approached them, asked.

"Mm? No, it's better for you to keep doing that. You need to learn how to make Laky and Heli's powers flow out from you to the exterior, and also increase your control on them."

"But..." Rachel looked down, trying to protest, only to be stopped by Cristopher.

"You just have to focus on that, after I finish, we can spar a little bit."

"Okay..." Rachel went back to train by herself.

"So? Let's start."

***

In the freshmen girl's dorm, Yoo Yeonha was currently talking to Shin Jonghak on a call.

"So, will you tell me what happened this morning?" Yoo Yeonha said.

[Why are you so interested in what happened?] Shin Jonghak answered from the other side of the call.

"Well, it's just that all of you went to look for that guy and never came back to class. I was just curious to know if something bad happened." Yeonha said while taking notes on her laptop.

[We fought a Djinn. Some crazy girl that was obsessed with Cristopher.]

"Huh?" She let out a surprised voice.

[What?]

"No… Nothing. So? What happened there?"

[...]

"Jonghak?"

[We fought against her, and won.]

"Really?"

[Yes.]

"Well, there was no way for you to win." Yeonha nodded, by the way, where did she meet him? I mean, from what you're telling me, they must know each other from somewhere, right?"

[I don't know. And I don't care. I just went there because the instructor ordered me to. I'm going. I have to train.]

With those last words, Jonghak ended the call.

"*Tch...* Fine!" Yeonha leaned back on her chair with a frown, looking in front of her.

On her laptop, she had a list of all the members of her new organization, Falling Blossom.

She smiled, before covering her face so no one could identify her. The reason is that she's going to have a meeting soon. A meeting with the three team leaders from her organization.

Right now, Falling Blossom only had 21 members, divided into three teams, each one with a respective team leader that will attend this first meeting to establish how they will work.

Clearing her throat, she started the call, and soon enough, the three team leaders of Falling Blossom appeared on the screen, all three of them bare-faced.

"It's nice to meet you all." She said with a neutral voice that couldn't be differentiated from a guy or a girl's voice.

While this was the first time she got to see these three team leaders, she made sure to contact only people that had great potential. Even if, right now, they weren't the best members out there, she was sure that soon enough, they would become her greatest weapon.

[It's an honor, master.] From behind the screen, all three answered.

"Well, let's start this meeting." Satisfied with their polite answer, she started. "Team 1's top priority should be to find out the plans of rival guilds, namely Creator's Sacred Grace and Desolate Moon. Team 2 should..."

The three teams that would be operating under Falling Blossom would have different jobs. One will become her spies, gathering as much information as they could on rival guilds. The second team will be her Hawks, taking care of finding new dungeons and new monsters over high-intermediate rank for her guild to hunt and profit.

Finally, the last team will become her Shadows, who will take care of any personal job she may have. Like right now.

"I command you to thoroughly dig up the following members' backgrounds. However, it is strictly forbidden to hurt them or to be discovered."

The Shadows were in charge of everything personal to her, from background investigation to even kidnapping or, in the worst cases, assassinating.

After letting them know their task, she immediately gave them five targets. However, three of those five were merely a distraction.

Her real targets were only two of them.

[Kim Hajin - 17 years old.

- From Seoju Orphanage.

- When he was 9, he was discovered by periodic orphanage inspection and entered Agent Military Academy.

- Currently, 17th ranked cadet in Cube. (Freshmen year)

- Supplied Essence of the Strait with information worth hundreds of millions of won.]

[Cristopher D. Lamas - 17 years old.

- From Locket of Hope Orphanage, a special orphanage reserved for foreign orphans.

- Discovered at the age of 7 by periodic orphanage inspection and entered Agent Military Academy.

- Currently first-ranked cadet in Cube. (Freshmen year)

- Unknown Gift, nasty temper, suspected to be the strongest cadet currently attending Cube.

- Knows multiple languages, confirmed Japanese, English, Korean and French.]

[Understood, master.] After reading the list of investigation targets, the leader of the third team nodded.

After nodding to them, she hung up the call and immediately went to bed.

***

6:30 AM on the road going towards the cafeteria, Kim Hajin was walking to get something to eat for him and Evandel after doing his morning training.

"Where are you going so early in the morning?" While he was yawning, someone approached him, a sweet fragrance scent invading his nose.

"Mm?" Looking up at his side, he found Yoo Yeonha wearing a stylish and comfortable tracksuit. "to the cafeteria." He answered shortly.

"Hmm." Nodding, she started to walk alongside him. "You and your friend broke records. Going all the way up to the first and 17th ranking."

"Hm? Oh, right. Things just turned out like that, I suppose. I don't think I'll get any higher than that, though" Hajin shrugged.

"And here I thought that you were someone that didn't care about rankings." Yoo Yeonha said with a smile.

"..." At her weird talk, Hajin just looked at her silently.

"Anyways, have you thought about your future?" She suddenly spoke, changing the topic to what she really wanted to know.

"The future...?" Hajin thought for a moment. He had too much on his plate right now to even think about a word that has little to nothing to do with him right now. "I still have a lot of time to think about that."

With a shrug, he just answered something random.

"A lot of time? It's only a year and three months. Once we're in our third year we'll be too busy with things like Hero internships and deployments." Yeonha said with a small frown.

There was a reason why third years didn't have time to spend in the clubs, after all, they were no different than active heroes, working with Guilds and being deployed to control monsters' rampages.

"What about Essence of the Strait?" Yoo Yeonha suddenly asked in a clear attempt to coax Hajin.

From her point of view, she had obvious reasons to coax him into Essence of the Strait, it was going to become her Guild at one point, and she was sure that Hajin was an excellent resource, more important than even Shin Jonghak or Kim Suho, and surely more stable than Cristopher.

It was even a guaranteed success if Hajin chose to go there, after all, while it was still the second-ranked guild, it won't be for much.

Once Creator's Sacred Grace failed its campaign in the Tower of Miracles, Essence of the Strait will go all the way to the first rank among Guilds, and will stay there even after Kim Suho joined Creator's Sacred Grace and led it towards new heights.

"I was thinking about becoming a hunter of the Vast Expanse..." Hajin said after a little bit of contemplation. "Though I'm not sure if I could become one."

Vast Expanse was a hunter group founded and named after Kwangwon, a Hero with the same level of power as the Nine Stars.

They were, in essence, a mercenary group, but on a completely different scale as normal mercenary groups. You had to be a multimillionaire, a big Guild, or even a government to be able to contract hunters from the Vast Expanse.

And the freedom they gave, as a mercenary group, was something that would be of great help to Kim Hajin.

"..." Yoo Yeonha didn't speak, even when Hajin turned to look at her, she just walked, contemplating what to say next with a serious face. "I'll change your mind."

After a few moments of contemplation, Yoo Yeonha finally answered with a determined voice.

"If I bring what you've been looking for all this time, wouldn't you change your mind?" She said, staring fixedly at Kim Hajin.

"..." He just furrowed his eyebrows at her.

Looking at his face, she snickered for a moment, before changing the topic.

"So? How is that internship going?" She asked, looking around to see if there was anyone close to them. "I've heard great things from you, after all."

"Oh? The internship? It's good, not that hard work, I just write a few documents, solve some problems and that's basically it. I still think it's a lot of money for doing that." Hajin answered with a shrug.

"You're worthy." Yoo Yeonha nodded at him. "So, I'll assume you'll stay with us for a little while then?"

"Not sure, really. I'll think about it."

"..." Yeonha nodded with a frown, before suddenly looking back, where a group of cadets was slowly approaching them. "Then, I'll see you later, Hajin-ssi." She smiled at him, before disappearing.

***

After classes ended that day, Yoo Yeonha walked towards the dorms thinking about how she could bring both Kim Hajin and Cristopher to her Guild.

Right now there was a good point of connection between Kim Hajin and Essence of the Strait, as the latter was currently working on an internship with her father's Guild.

{The problem is that he doesn't plan on staying with us… Who knows when he will break our internship contract, after all, there wasn't anything about not being able to breach the contract whenever he wanted to.}

She let out a deep sigh, thinking about how Essence of the Strait's Analysis Department was working more efficiently since he got there.

{It's amazing, just thinking how a mere cadet is able to make things run smoother than before...}

While she kept walking through Cube's streets, she could listen to someone speaking. Someone she knew.

"Please! Just don't let anyone else know…" It was Hazuki, who was talking to another auburn-haired girl a few steps ahead of her.

"Hey… I just said it to one friend, and she's closed-lipped, really! She won't tell anyone else."

"You said the same! We agreed on not touching that topic anymore."

Thinking that it was just another gossip from cadets, she decided to ignore it. Or tried to, only to hear something that made her almost lose her footing.

"It was just a slip of tongue, really!" The auburn-haired girl said with an apologetic smile. "I didn't even notice when I told her that Cristopher had a daughter..."

Alerts were ringing on her head unstoppably.

"Shhhh!" Hazuki tried to shuu her, looking around to see if someone heard her. Only to find a dumbfounded Yoo Yeonha behind them. "Ah..."

"..."

"..."

The three girls looked at each other, before Hazuki and the other girl started to walk away, faster, almost as if escaping.

"W-Wait!" Not wasting any time, Yoo Yeonha followed them quickly. "Stop there! Hazuki!"

"I know nothing!" Both girls shouted at the same time.

"I don't believe you!" Yoo Yeonha started running with more force, finally reaching them and grabbing their shoulders. "I told you to stop!"

"W-We know nothing! I swear! Hazuki tried to keep playing the ignorant card, and the same could be said with the other girl.

"Y-Yes! W-We don't k-know a-anything about Cristopher having a d-daughter…!"

Or so she tried.

After noticing what she just said, the auburn-haired girl flinched and quickly covered her mouth with her hands, while both Hazuki and Yoo Yeonha looked at her with dumbfounded faces.

"H-Hehe..." She just smiled awkwardly and averted her eyes.

"Well." A smile appeared on Yoo Yeonha's face. "It seems we three have to talk huh?"

"..."

"..."

Both girls just looked as if they were trying to find a way out of their predicament.

"So, why don't we go somewhere quiet to talk, I know! How about my dorm?" Yoo Yeonha's smile deepened. "Hmm? Don't you think so? Hazuki-ssi? And… You are?"

"I-I-I'm P-Paulina… Paulina A-Aranda..." The auburn-haired girl, Paulina, answered while trembling.

"Don't worry, we're just going to talk, so, let's go." With a smile, Yoo Yeonha guided them to her dorm.