Chapter 11

Chapter 11

The peaceful forest of Jewel Island.

Renia, a female student from F class, was crouching down to match eye levels with a carbuncle.

“C…cute!”

With glistening, bright eyes and looks resembling both a rabbit and a kitten, the carbuncle had all the requirements to look absolutely adorable.

“Kyaum!”

On top of that, its delicate lips were busily munching on some clovers. Renia, a transfer student from Australia, was completely smitten with the carbuncle.

“I always wanted… to raise a pet like this at least once… ugh, if only Gaon wasn’t a dorm school…”

As Renia began petting the carbuncle, it raised its fur and displayed strong signs of aggression.

“Kyauuum!”

“Ah~ sorry! I won’t touch you then, hehe! You’re mad, huh?”

Renia laughed awkwardly as if she found even those actions adorable. There was an issue regarding her and carbuncle’s little moment of happiness, however, and that was that Renia was taking a test at that point in time.

“Oh, right, the exam! But how am I supposed to hurt a cutie like this carbuncle…”

Right when Renia was thinking deeply about the situation she was in—

Tap tap!

—Shin YuSung, who was using a technique called Physical Enhancement, appeared like a flash of light and flicked the carbuncle on its forehead with his fingers.

Flick!

“Kyaahk!”

The carbuncle fell down on its back with a terrifying cry. Renia was horrified.

“What?!”

As she stared at the scene with a surprised look, Shin YuSung gave her a quick glance, then took the jewel out of the carbuncle’s forehead.

He then brought the jewel near his wristband named [Pocket].

Swoop!

A light emitted from the wristband, and—as the light faded—the jewel disappeared along with it.

“So I’ve hunted down a rank 1 as well,” Shin YuSung muttered casually.

Tap tap!

Shin YuSung disappeared with the jewel without so much as a backward glance towards the carbuncle.

“As expected of the Demon of the Arena…” Renia quietly mumbled under her breath.

Shin YuSung wasn’t going to go easy, even on something like the adorable carbuncle, in pursuit of his goal.

* * * *

A luxurious cruise.

Kim EunAh was lying down on a sunbed as if she was on vacation. She was wearing a school uniform and had both sunglasses and a parasol—an odd combination. She was watching a monitor with interest.

“…It really is amazing.”

The upper-level classes could watch how the exam was progressing for the others while waiting for their own to start. Even though K Channel had deployed a large number of drone cameras, Kim EunAh was only observing one person from the lower-level classes.

[Camera 1 – Shin YuSung]

The disciple of the Fist King, Shin YuSung.

Her interest had been initially piqued because of the pedigree behind his name, but that wasn’t the case any longer.

‘…How is he using Physical Enhancement for such a long period of time?’

The thing Kim EunAh was most curious about regarding Shin YuSung’s fighting was his Physical Enhancement. Physical Enhancement was not a technique a regular hunter considered part of their main repertoire. The reason for this was because of the large amounts of mana that had to be consumed while Physical Enhancement was temporarily boosting one’s physical capabilities.

‘…But he’s using his mana all willy-nilly?’

However, her assumption was nothing but her suspicion. The secret behind Shin YuSung’s Physical Enhancement technique was in the core of the training method that the Fist King had perfected over several decades.

The principle was simple.

The Fist King had only taught Shin YuSung one phrase.

[Focus your mana on the part of your body you want to enhance, and only for an instant!]

It was easy enough to say but not simple at all. One needed a lot of concentration to enhance only one part of their body in the middle of a fight.

Ironically, Shin YuSung managed to do something most S-rank hunters had failed because of his F-rank Trait.

F-rank Trait. [Heightened Focus].

[Heightened Focus], the Trait that Shin YuSung hadn’t even learned the name of, had perfected the Fist King’s teachings with just 12 years of training.

Kim EunAh could only chew on her thumbnail and come to the most obvious conclusion.

‘…Does he have a large pool of mana?’

Kim EunAh rested her chin on a pale hand and stared at the monitor as if trying to bore a hole in it. She evaluated every aspect of Shin YuSung.

‘Physical Enhancement is high S-rank. Mana pool is also S-rank. But his Trait is F-rank… how does a guy like this even exist?’

An opponent like this was a first for Kim EunAh. All of the battles that she had fought up to this point had been reliant on Traits. Due to that, she assumed that his strength had nothing to do with his own skill, but the effectiveness of his Trait.

‘…On top of that, I can’t get a grip on what his effectiveness is. The reason I lost to Adela was because of how effective her Trait was against mine, after all.’

“This is fun, like I thought it would be,” Kim EunAh unconsciously said out loud.

Kim EunAh wanted to completely demolish Shin YuSung. Even though she had lost to Adela, who used ice, she felt that she had an advantage against someone like Shin YuSung, who used his body.

‘…He seems perfect for riling Adela up, too.’

With a playful laugh, Kim EunAh took out her phone. She opened an app that had been created at Gaon.

‘…He probably won’t come to the sparring arena if there’s no reward for him, right? He’ll have 100SP when he finishes this exam, so…’

After thinking about it for a good while, Kim EunAh started to type something into the app.

[Spar Request: Shin YuSung]

[Terms: The loser must pay 150SP to the winner. If the loser does not have enough SP, the remaining balance will be deducted from the loser’s account and will be shown as a negative.]

“Fufu! He won’t be able to refuse this much!”

SP (School Points).

At Gaon Academy, SP was the same as money to the students; it had been integrated into many aspects of the academy—it could buy them privileges like outing passes and could even play a significant part in their exams.

Shin YuSung, who had enrolled in the academy late, did not have a single SP to his name.

“On the other hand, there isn’t much I can do if he gets scared and declines.”

Kim EunAh laughed in a confident manner and turned off the monitor.

* * *

* * *

At the swamp zone in the middle of Jewel Island.

Jin MinAh and Sung IkHyun were fighting monsters back-to-back.

“Why are there so many baby salamanders in the swamp zone? This is totally different from what I learned at the Academy!”

Sung IkHyun was shouting his complaints. Hearing this, Jin MinAh also started to complain loudly.

“Shit! Won’t you focus!? Do you want to get sent to the infirmary and get fixed up by the nanomachines again?”

“Why are you getting so angry! It isn’t humanly possible for us to defeat six of them—that’s too many!”

While the D Class students were arguing amongst themselves, the baby salamanders were slowly closing the gap between them.

“Kyaaaoh!”

“Kyaoh!”

Sizzle!

One of the salamanders started spewing fire. Jin MinAh’s face became pale. She was a sword user, but her thigh had been hit by an attack and was currently bleeding. It was impossible for her to make the same nimble movements that she had made before.

“Aw man, what are we going to do?”

They had killed three out of the nine, but that was the limit for them.

“This is the end. When I open my eyes, I’ll be in one of the infirmary capsules, I guess,”  Sung IkHyun mumbled in despair.

Right when the two students were being overcome with frustration.

Boom!

Shin YuSung appeared.

“So six of them have been left here.”

To Jin MinAh and Sung IkHyun, six baby salamanders were a dangerous number of monsters, but to Shin YuSung, they were nothing more than points to him. As if to prove it, he looked at the other two and casually asked,

“I can kill all of these, right?”

At Shin YuSung’s question, the two looked at each other then nodded at him with dumbfounded faces.

“Y-yeah! We’d be grateful!”

“Hunt as many as you want!”

Shin YuSung was a lifeline to Jin MinAh and Sung IkHyun, who were on the verge of failing the exam.

“He must be strong if he destroyed Ju HaJin, right?” Jin MinAh whispered to Sung IkHyun with a happy expression.

“He’ll get tired after killing, like, three of them? And we can help him defeat the other three.”

“Oh~ and use that as a pretext to take some of the jewels?”

While Jin MinAh was in a good mood and snickering, Shin YuSung rapidly approached a baby salamander.

Tup.

While just inches away from the monster, he slowly stretched out his palm towards the baby salamander. Unlike its name, it was a 2-meter long lizard, befitting its status as a rank 2 monster.

But as Shin YuSung’s hand touched it, a large shockwave blew away the baby salamander’s body.

Battle God Style – Savage Dragon’s Boulder Crushing Palm

Kabooooom!

The shockwave was much too strong for a rank 2 monster. The baby salamander turned into dust, leaving only the jewel embedded into its head behind.

“What the hell.”

“…That’s fucking nuts.”

The two couldn’t say anything as they watched Shin YuSung’s shocking display of his fighting style. They had never seen a student turn a rank 2 monster into dust with their bare fists before.

“Who the hell are you?!”

As Jin MinAh gathered her wits and managed to yell, the baby salamander next to her started to spew fire towards her.

But Shin YuSung would not allow an attack like that to happen. He moved in front of Kim MinAh and stretched out a mana-clad hand towards the flames. The fire was diverted away from Shin YuSung and spread out to either side of him.

“Is that his Trait? Maybe it’s telekinesis? But the rumors say that his Trait is definitely F-rank…”

Shin YuSung had not used telekinesis, unlike Sung IkHyun’s guess. He had simply expelled mana from his palm. Of course, one needed an incredible amount of concentration to expel enough mana in an instant to act as a shield, but it wasn’t a problem for Shin YuSung, who had the [Heightened Focus] Trait and twelve years of training in his belt.

On top of that, because he had the constitution of the nine blocked yin pathways and had been cultivating his mana, Shin YuSung was overflowing with mana.

This sort of illogical, idiotic form of combat was possible for Shin YuSung. No, it was only possible for Shin YuSung.

He was a monster that the Fist King had created.

Baaam!

With his final kick, the last of the monsters were turned into dust. Shin YuSung immediately left the area. Jin MinAh stared at his disappearing back for a long moment before belatedly opening her mouth.

“He took the jewels from the monsters we killed, too, didn’t he?”

Sung IkHyun double-checked the shallow swamp area with his hands, then shook his head.

“…All nine jewels are gone.”

“He sneakily took ours as well. What the hell. Is that supposed to be payment for our lives.”

Even as they had realized this, Shin YuSung was long gone.

____