“It has been a long time!”
“It has, Guild Master.”
The Sky Guild Master’s office.
A fairly young man sat across from the Guild Master.
He had short hair and an intense gaze.
A powerful aura radiated from his body.
“Things are a little noisy, are they not? We had an internal evaluation recently.”
“An internal evaluation. That brings back memories. It feels like only yesterday that I laughed and cried over a single evaluation.”
Im Seok-jae, an A Grade Awakened.
He had come from Sky Guild’s youth program and had raised the guild’s standing in many ways while he was there.
He was a major reason so many youth trainees now joined Sky Guild.
“You were always the undisputed first-place trainee. Thanks to you, many others joined us too. Several years have passed already. An A Grade Awakened—you have truly made a success of yourself.”
One could say that effort was enough to reach B Grade.
But A Grade was different.
For A Grade, hard work was a given. A person also needed innate talent to reach it.
That was why the public regarded A Grade as a great success.
“Time passes quickly.”
People had thought there must be a reason someone as capable as Im Seok-jae had chosen Sky Guild.
Of course, it was not long before he transferred to another guild.
Sky Guild’s finances were the reason.
As soon as Im Seok-jae was called up, he transferred elsewhere, leaving Sky Guild an enormous transfer fee.
The guild had therefore maintained an excellent relationship with him.
“How have you been lately? You do not look well.”
Their friendship made his visits natural, but he did not always come without a reason.
Whenever something troubled him, he would sometimes visit Guild Master Lee Hyeok-jun for advice.
“I have been struggling in several ways. I need to clear the thirty-fifth floor, but I have reached my limit.”
“Your limit?”
“Yes. Using my ability is difficult, and so is the physical side of things.”
Im Seok-jae went on to explain his condition.
Guild Master Lee Hyeok-jun clicked his tongue as he listened.
“They call the thirty-fifth floor the first major hurdle. It certainly is harsh.”
There were stretches of the Tower where the difficulty rose sharply.
The thirty-fifth floor was one of them. Its difficulty jumped so steeply that people called it a speed bump.
“If I cannot clear the thirty-fifth floor, I will remain near the bottom of A Grade. If my luck is bad, I could even be demoted to B Grade.”
At present, he could be considered one of the lowest-ranked A Grade Awakened.
But he did not intend to remain there.
To rise into the upper reaches of A Grade and enter the rankings, he needed results.
Clearing the thirty-fifth floor was, of course, one of them.
“If you know a good trainer......”
“Does Lightning Guild not have capable trainers?”
Lee Hyeok-jun tilted his head.
Lightning Guild ranked thirty-fifth among guilds.
Surely it had trainers worthy of that standing.
“Yes, it does. But they have not been able to solve my problem. To be honest, they are not a good fit for me either. I have trouble understanding them. I understand it in my head, but my body will not follow. It is agonizing.”
Im Seok-jae sighed.
“It has been nearly a year like this.”
His face had certainly looked grim on his recent visits.
The Guild Master had not imagined he was dealing with a problem like this.
“Hmm? Did you come here because you had heard, then?”
“Pardon? Heard what?”
“We signed a contract with a new trainer. It is a short-term contract, but...... he is an extraordinary trainer. Woo Ha-na changed completely under his guidance.”
Guild Master Lee Hyeok-jun immediately played a video for him. It showed Woo Ha-na’s debut in the Tower.
Im Seok-jae knew Woo Ha-na because he visited Sky Guild often.
“......!”
After watching the video, he asked in surprise.
“Is that really Ms. Woo Ha-na?”
“Surprising, is it not? You have taught her yourself, so it must be all the more surprising.”
At the Guild Master’s request, Im Seok-jae had once taught Woo Ha-na.
That was why her transformation startled him so much.
She had had a problem that seemed impossible to fix, and now it was completely gone.
“Who on earth trained her? Who is this new trainer?”
“So you truly did not know before coming here?”
Lee Hyeok-jun spoke, then looked as though something had occurred to him.
“Come to think of it, were you not at Promise Guild too? Then you would know him.”
“Ah, yes. Only very briefly when I was young.”
“It is Kang Yu-jun, our new trainer. You know him, do you not? He was at Promise Guild when you were a youth trainee.”
“Pardon?”
Im Seok-jae sounded baffled.
“Trainer Kang Yu-jun. He is the one who taught Woo Ha-na.”
“......Pardon?”
Why on earth was Kang Yu-jun here?
And a trainer? What did that mean?
“He changed careers. He is a trainer now.”
Memories began flashing through Im Seok-jae’s mind.
“He was teaching youth trainees until recently, but now I am thinking of putting him in charge of first-team Awakened. He asked to teach them himself.”
“First-team Awakened?”
Im Seok-jae had heard that Kang Yu-jun had been released from Promise Guild.
It had happened only recently.
If he had switched to training, he could not have much experience unless he had prepared for it beforehand.
Was he already capable of training first-team Awakened?
“Surely not.”
Then memories from his childhood suddenly returned.
He recalled how he had overcome a wall back then.
“You said you needed training, did you not? In that case, this works out well. Why not try a session with Trainer Kang?”
“I will go and see him first.”
***
“You say ten minutes will do?”
Yu-jun’s confident words had startled everyone in the training room.
He could break through a wall in ten minutes?
“I am sorry, but I am not a youth trainee, Trainer.”
In fact, even a youth trainee could not overcome a wall in ten minutes.
“Will you accept?”
But Yu-jun simply asked again.
Would Kim O-jung accept the training?
Kim O-jung was at a loss for an answer.
Was this confidence, or was it reckless bravado?
Ten minutes was an absurdly short time.
How could Yu-jun be so confident?
“......”
Kim O-jung frowned.
He had nothing to lose.
And he wanted to find out what gave Yu-jun such confidence.
Watching him, Yu-jun brushed back his hair.
‘I know my reputation isn’t good. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the limit of my ability.’
How far would his new skill and his insight take him?
His eye for talent was something he had been born with.
Now he also had the Awakened Training System and its skills. He wanted to know how strong an Awakened he could teach now, and how much stronger he could make that person.
“All right. I accept.”
After some thought, Kim O-jung agreed.
“Please train me.”
Yu-jun smiled lightly and studied him.
-Awakened Scan begins!
“Then let us begin your training.”
***
Kim O-jung remained silent.
Yu-jun had seemed quite confident, so after asking for training, O-jung said nothing else.
Normally, he would have needed to explain several things himself.
How he preferred to be trained.
Whether he learned better through theory or instinct.
And why he felt he had hit a wall.
Usually, they would discuss all these topics before drawing up a curriculum.
But Kim O-jung told him nothing.
Of course he did not. Yu-jun had claimed he could break through the wall in ten minutes.
That meant he could see through everything just by watching, did it not?
It was childish of O-jung, but he distrusted Kang Yu-jun that much.
As a trainer, Yu-jun’s greatest achievement so far was teaching Woo Ha-na.
He had taken a youth trainee whose standing was declining and swiftly made her an Awakened fit for Sales Team 1.
But perhaps Woo Ha-na, rather than Kang Yu-jun, was the remarkable one.
A trainer played an important part in improving an Awakened’s abilities, but perhaps Yu-jun had only given a slight push to walls that were already crumbling.
That thought dominated O-jung’s mind.
So he kept his silence.
Then Yu-jun spoke.
“Would you use your ability for me?”
Kim O-jung’s ability was Petrification.
It could harden parts of his body and had many uses.
WHOOSH—!
In an instant, Kim O-jung petrified his entire body and threw a punch. It was the powerful blow that had carried him to Sales Team 1.
Everyone admired the sound of air splitting around him.
Yu-jun watched Kim O-jung’s movement in silence.
For an instant, the blue light was vivid, but a crack appeared for a fleeting moment.
It vanished almost at once.
‘He’s quite skilled.’
That was why, even when a problem arose, he resolved it quickly.
But that one crack kept the blue light from growing any stronger.
‘He instinctively holds back. His mental strength is low too.’
That meant the problem might be psychological.
-Your eye for talent improves.
-Analytical ability increased!
“You are holding back, are you not?”
FLINCH-.
Kim O-jung stopped mid-attack.
“Were you injured when you were younger?”
“......”
Kim O-jung stared at Kang Yu-jun in surprise.
Yu-jun could not possibly know about him beforehand.
“Can you tell...... just by looking?”
“Your shoulder draws in for an instant. You extend your arm fully, but stop at the very end as though slamming on the brakes. That leaves one answer: you are afraid to use your full strength. Why would you be afraid?”
SWISH-.
Kang Yu-jun reached out his hand.
“You must have felt pain. Perhaps you injured yourself when you went all out.”
“......”
“You know me, Mr. Kim O-jung. Do you know how often I have failed? How many times do you think I have been injured? As a non-Awakened, I was always carrying one injury or another.”
Kang Yu-jun smiled as he spoke.
But there was nothing amusing about what he said.
Confronted with that, Kim O-jung could no longer hide it.
“......You are right. I was injured once.”
Just one use of his ability, one movement of his body, and Yu-jun had seen this much.
But knowing the circumstances did not change anything.
“Because of this problem, I have not been able to perform my role properly in the Tower.”
He found himself confessing it without meaning to.
Yu-jun patted him on the shoulder.
“Do not worry.”
Kim O-jung looked at Kang Yu-jun.
The look in his eyes had changed completely.
One movement. From that alone, Yu-jun had seen through everything about him.
Perhaps he had heard about it beforehand.
But the way Yu-jun had taken command of the situation in an instant left no room for that thought.
‘Ordinary trainers could never solve this in his current state.’
The trainers assigned to the first team had in fact been unable to address it, and Kim O-jung had worried about it every day.
Trauma was the cause. How could that be easy to fix?
But Yu-jun could fix it.
“Straighten your shoulder. Then swing as hard as you like.”
-Word Magic Correction activated.
WHOOSH—!
He had Word Magic Correction, after all.
“......Huh?”
Kim O-jung had an instinctive fear.
If he used his full strength, terrible pain would follow.
No matter how he tried to shake off that fear, it would not go away.
But now it was gone.
He could extend his arm perfectly.
Of all the punches he had thrown, this was the straightest and the one with the most power behind it.
He had driven it forward so hard that the sudden drain of mana left him breathless.
Then he heard Yu-jun’s voice.
“We still have eight minutes.”
As the training began in earnest, Im Seok-jae watched it all from the back of the training ground.
“I thought it might be him......”
It really was Kang Yu-jun.
Im Seok-jae recalled the Yu-jun he had known back then.
At the time, a single piece of advice from Kang Yu-jun had helped him break through his own wall.
The Yu-jun of today was far more formidable than the one he remembered.
“To solve that problem so easily......”
Of course, Im Seok-jae knew better.
The fact that it looked easy only showed how extraordinary Kang Yu-jun’s training ability was.
“Hngh.”
Kim O-jung, still in training, began to cry.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“The training is not over. Do not forget the sensation you just felt.”
When Kang Yu-jun fixed a problem that had seemed impossible to fix, the other first-team Awakened began gathering around.
Im Seok-jae stepped forward then.
If he missed this moment, he might not get a chance to speak with Yu-jun.
“Kang Yu-jun.”
At Im Seok-jae’s call, Yu-jun turned around. He looked surprised, then approached with a smile.
“Who...... Seok-jae?”
Yu-jun stared at him in surprise.
Im Seok-jae.
A familiar face.
But something else stood out even more: the state of his body.
‘What’s wrong with his body?’
Yu-jun could see a huge, dark crack running through Im Seok-jae.
“Is something wrong with your heart?”
Im Seok-jae’s pupils widened suddenly.