“That was...... a correction?”
“Yes. That’s how I train people.”
Im Seok-jae’s pupils trembled.
He had never experienced training like this.
He had worked with countless trainers, but this was the first time a correction had taken effect immediately.
Seok-jae pressed a hand to his forehead.
Everything had happened so suddenly.
Of course, he had trusted Yu-jun enough to terminate his contract with his previous trainer.
But he had never expected this much......
“I didn’t think we’d fix everything in one day......”
“Huh? It isn’t fixed.”
Yu-jun corrected his misunderstanding.
“It only looks fixed.”
Smiling, Yu-jun told him to try once more.
HUM-.
The VR machine started up again.
The twenty-fifth floor. In the midst of the monsters charging at him, Im Seok-jae swung his fist again, recalling the sensation he had just felt.
He focused on his shoulder and on the mana flowing from it.
His waist, his shoulder, and then his arm.
“Smash.”
A powerful blow shot out.
But it was not his full strength.
“......What is this?”
SWISH-.
The VR machine shut down, and Im Seok-jae looked bewildered.
He felt the same discomfort as before, and the Super Strength he had just shown was gone.
“......But I did the same thing.”
“The same thing?”
Yu-jun clicked his tongue.
“You did it without my training. That isn’t the same thing.”
Yu-jun intended to raise his value sharply here.
‘Seok-jae must be unsure what to think right now.’
Something that had never worked before had become possible with a single word from Yu-jun, a new trainer?
‘Of course he’s confused.’
Yu-jun needed to make good use of that uncertainty.
‘If I had a reputation and a record of results, it would feel natural to him.’
Yu-jun had yet to build much of a reputation.
All he had was experience teaching promising young Awakened.
So he needed to say something that would reach Im Seok-jae, a first-team Awakened.
“It looks easy. It looks effortless. But it isn’t easy.”
Yu-jun looked him straight in the eye.
“If it were, you would have fixed it long ago.”
Im Seok-jae nodded.
Yu-jun was right.
If it were easy, he would not have spent months agonizing over it.
People at Lightning Guild would not have pointed fingers at him for falling into a slump, and he would not have lived in fear of losing his position as the main damage dealer.
The look in Seok-jae’s eyes as he regarded Yu-jun changed completely.
He had seen potential in Yu-jun when he watched him train Awakened Kim O-jung.
But he had not imagined Yu-jun could change him, an A Grade Awakened, so quickly.
‘But the correction still isn’t complete.’
Yu-jun looked at the deep-rooted crack in him.
Until now, applying a correction had made blue light appear, if only briefly.
‘The crack is still there.’
In Im Seok-jae’s case, however, it had not disappeared.
‘The path from his heart to his shoulder is blocked. I’ll have to keep working on it to open it up.’
Yu-jun would have to touch his shoulder as he had earlier.
But that would not be easy.
‘Training him the way I did before costs a great deal of mana and stamina.’
Yu-jun had very little mana to begin with, and he had only just Awakened, so he could not easily keep up that training.
‘But I can’t let this opportunity slip away.’
Im Seok-jae was Lightning Guild’s main damage dealer.
‘If I fix his problem, I can make an impression on other Awakened who have the same issue.’
It was a chance to build a solid reputation.
“......”
Seok-jae nodded as if spellbound.
“When did you say the Tower clear was?”
Lightning Guild’s regular Tower raid was a week away.
“But there’s no rush. I won’t be able to go on that regular raid anyway.”
“Wouldn’t that put your position as main damage dealer at risk?”
“It would. But they won’t cast me aside after missing it once.”
“Then let’s get you ready over the next week.”
“......What?”
Seok-jae looked startled.
“You mean......”
“Yes. I mean we’ll get you into condition to fight as the main damage dealer in the regular raid a week from now.”
“!”
Seok-jae shook his head vigorously.
“No. There’s no way we can fix this in a week.”
“Isn’t that why you hired me?”
Yu-jun smiled.
“I’ll make it happen.”
***
DING—!
-Awakened Im Seok-jae trained.
-Training Score: 4/10
Yu-jun continued training Im Seok-jae.
‘That’s a low score.’
Seok-jae’s Grade was high, so this was the best Yu-jun could do in his current state.
-Training session complete!
The problem was that the mana in Seok-jae’s heart, the core of all his strength, was not reaching the various parts of his body properly.
‘The flow of mana isn’t getting from his heart to the other parts of his body.’
For him to produce explosive power, the mana in his heart had to spread properly through his whole body. It was not flowing smoothly.
‘I need to raise his Training Score.’
Seok-jae’s Grade was too high.
‘And my level is low.’
SWISH-.
Before the regular raid, Yu-jun intended to remove as much of Seok-jae’s crack as he could and bring out at least a little blue light.
‘A week is enough time. If I can draw out the blue light somehow by then, he can get results in the regular raid.’
That would let Seok-jae use his full strength a few times without Yu-jun having to guide him through every movement.
‘The Lv.1 skills I’ve unlocked aren’t enough.’
Training Im Seok-jae, an A Grade Awakened, was certainly demanding.
‘The crack is too large and too deep.’
With Lv.1 skills, it was difficult to remove his crack and turn it into blue light.
‘But if I commit to it, I can do it.’
Yu-jun grinned.
When he had played the Infinite Tower, he had encountered plenty of people with worse problems.
The game let him train virtual Awakened over and over, and he had taught and trained a great many of them.
‘I can see a way.’
Yu-jun repeated the training.
Despite Training Scores in the fours, Seok-jae was very satisfied with it.
It was different.
Nothing he had experienced before felt like this training.
It was incredibly hard, as though Yu-jun knew him inside and out.
“Hah, hah.”
Seok-jae had already completed his fifth VR training session that day.
VR training was very tiring and just as intense as real combat, so about two sessions a day was appropriate.
He had gone well beyond twice that number. Physically, he was already at his limit.
“Wait, have you...... ever been inside the Tower? How can you design training sessions like these?”
Still panting, Seok-jae sounded bewildered as he looked at Yu-jun.
Yu-jun’s training sessions were extraordinarily efficient.
“No, I just get a feeling for it.”
“......Are you actually a genius? How can you design such brilliant training sessions without ever having entered the Tower?”
Yu-jun swallowed his reply with a wry smile.
‘I’ve been in plenty of times.’
Not in reality, but in the Infinite Tower.
“One more. I think I can do one more.”
Seok-jae felt hope.
Before, nothing he did had let him use his full strength.
He had not even known where to begin looking for the problem, whether it was mental or physical.
Yu-jun had given him a starting point.
So, however hard it was, he could not stop.
“No, I’m the one who’s tired.”
Yu-jun shook his head.
Even that was enough to make him dizzy.
‘And when my stamina reaches its limit......’
-Focus skill Proficiency increased.
‘There it is.’
Yu-jun smiled.
Points were not the only way to improve skills.
‘They level up when Proficiency rises too.’
Raising Proficiency, however, was quite difficult.
‘I’m not training an Awakened appropriate to my current Awakened Training level.’
At his level, he ought to be training mainly C Grade Awakened, or B Grade at most. Instead, he was already teaching an A Grade Awakened.
He could train Im Seok-jae despite that disparity because of the eye he possessed.
His abilities, together with his eye for people, made this otherwise impossible training possible.
-Focus skill Proficiency reached MAX.
-Focus skill reached Lv.2.
‘Normally I’d need to teach three Combat Type Awakened to level it up.’
But he could raise its level this way too.
Focus Lv.2.
Yu-jun began to see things that had been invisible to him before.
‘At last, I can see the source of the crack.’
A crack was, fundamentally, a place where something was wrong.
Focus let him examine cracks closely and identify the problem.
‘As I thought, the mana flow is tangled.’
And it was not merely tangled.
It was tangled in minute ways.
Those tiny distortions overlapped until they reversed the flow itself.
‘No other trainer could see this.’
Each Awakened had a different ability, and the workings of their bodies differed considerably too.
‘That’s why each Awakened needs training tailored to them. It isn’t easy.’
Of course, it was not difficult for Yu-jun.
***
The next day.
Yu-jun continued training Im Seok-jae.
Just one day.
They had trained properly for only a single day, yet Seok-jae could feel that his body had grown considerably lighter.
‘Can this really happen in a day?’
Yu-jun asked the astonished Seok-jae a question.
“About your Super Strength. Until now, you’ve only used it to swing your fists, haven’t you?”
“That’s right.”
Yu-jun handed him a club.
“Try it with this.”
Focus Lv.2.
Im Seok-jae’s Hidden Trait had come into view.
‘I can finally see it. I was wondering why I couldn’t before.’
-[[A Grade Awakened Im Seok-jae - Hidden Trait: Blunt Weapon Master (Unbloomed)]
‘I can see his Hidden Trait.’
A Hidden Trait was a unique ability each Awakened possessed.
‘It’s potential in the literal sense.’
Some people brought that potential into bloom, while others never did in their entire lives.
‘I didn’t know Seok-jae had Blunt Weapon Master.’
Thinking about it, a Hidden Trait suited to his Super Strength was entirely plausible.
“A blunt weapon? I’m not good with those.”
Seok-jae tilted his head.
His specialty was hand-to-hand combat built around Super Strength.
He also had the Physical Enhancement skill, which worked well with Super Strength, so he had followed that path in his skill tree.
Why switch to blunt weapons now?
He was not even accustomed to using weapons in the first place.
‘He could keep developing his Super Strength.’
But if he had a Hidden Trait, it was far better to develop that as the core of his abilities.
In the Infinite Tower, many Awakened had no Hidden Trait at all.
‘But when one exists, bringing it into bloom helps them grow much more.’
“Trust me.”
“......All right.”
After what had happened the day before, Seok-jae trusted Yu-jun completely.
He took hold of the blunt weapon.
A path appeared before Yu-jun’s eyes.
Blunt Weapon Master. Thanks to that Hidden Trait, brilliant blue light poured from Im Seok-jae the moment he held the weapon.
‘This is the right direction.’
But the trait had yet to bloom, so he needed separate training.
‘Once I bring it into bloom......’
The Hidden Trait would take Im Seok-jae to an even higher level.
Starting today, he could look beyond the bottom of A Grade, past its upper-middle ranks, and even toward the very top.
“Seok-jae.”
Yu-jun demonstrated for him.
“Just swing it.”
DING—!
-Word Magic Correction activated!
“Take your stance.”
Yu-jun took out a small staff and corrected Seok-jae’s posture.
JAB-. JAB-.
He pressed firmly on Seok-jae’s shoulder, forcing him into the stance.
Of course, Yu-jun did not have the strength to move an Awakened around at will, so he used Word Magic Correction as well.
SWISH-.
Seok-jae’s posture was corrected in an instant.
WHIRL—!
“......Huh?”
Im Seok-jae was taken aback.
He had always been hopeless with weapons.
But for a moment, the blunt weapon in his hand felt like an extension of his arm.
“A blunt weapon suits you.”