Chapter 113: The Thing Wriggling in the Depths (3) (1/2)

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?”