Meanwhile, Kim Gyo-jun could not stop his body from trembling.
Yu-jun had merely corrected his posture.
Of course, while doing so, he had injected mana and touched Kim Gyo-jun's body.
But that alone should not have changed his movements so dramatically.
Yu-jun beckoned to him again and gave an instruction.
“Continue.”
Kim Gyo-jun swallowed hard and resumed his sword technique.
His body was less robust than those of other Awakened. It was not that he had neglected his training; he had been born that way.
That was why all his training until now had focused on strengthening his weak body.
But he had felt the difference just now.
This training was nothing like what he had received before. He did not understand how or why, but there was something else in Kang Yu-jun's methods.
“What…… should I do?”
“Let me observe you a little longer. I will decide after I have seen more.”
Yu-jun spoke calmly.
“You only need to trust me.”
Trust.
That alone would be enough.
He was speaking to Kim Gyo-jun, but the words were meant for every trainee present.
Training could not begin unless they trusted him first.
‘That made quite an impact.’
The trainees here had spent a considerable time together. In other words, they knew one another very well.
They knew exactly what kind of trainee Kim Gyo-jun was.
‘They must know that the strike he just made was far more powerful than anything he can usually manage.
No wonder they were so shocked.
“I will train exactly three people today.”
There were twenty people gathered here.
At the promise of training only three, all of them raised their hands, unlike before.
“P-please, take a look at me, sir!”
“I need training!”
“Sir!”
Yu-jun did not answer at once. He examined the trainees one by one.
‘I've more or less chosen them.’
From what he could see, Kim Gyo-jun was the weakest.
‘First, I'll teach Kim Gyo-jun.’
He intended to bring the lowest-level youth trainee up to the highest level.
‘I'll leave a lasting impression on the guild.’
-Awakened Kim Gyo-jun trained.
-Training Score: 5/10
-Points acquired according to Training Score.
It was the same score as before.
But Yu-jun had begun to get a feel for how to use his ability.
‘And I earned one point.’
The last of his Lv.1 skills, the third one, required ten points.
‘I still need more points.’
He already knew what that third skill was, too.
‘I should unlock it soon.’
“Stand in line! I will choose.”
***
“This makes no sense. You are assigning our youth trainees to an outside trainer?”
“I know it is unusual. Do not worry, though. He will teach only three. He will not touch the others.”
Sky Guild currently employed three full-time trainers for its youth trainees.
The guild master had called them together to explain the situation.
He intended to entrust some of the trainees to a freelance trainer under an outside contract.
Naturally, they objected strongly.
“If you know it is unacceptable, why are you doing it?”
The question came from the trainer who led the team of three.
“He corrected Woo Ha-na's weakness. In just one day.”
“……Pardon?”
The youth trainer team leader could not believe his ears.
Instead of replying, the guild master took out a tablet and showed them a video.
It was footage of Woo Ha-na training.
“……Hah.”
“That is Ha-na……?”
“…….”
The trainers watched the video to the end and murmured in shock.
They understood why the guild master had given permission despite knowing it broke with custom.
As though he could see that they understood, the guild master smiled and said,
“He is training the young trainees now. You may go and watch if you like.”
***
The training room.
Sky Guild's trainers watched Yu-jun work closely.
“It really is Kang Yu-jun.”
It had already been astonishing to hear that someone had corrected Woo Ha-na's problem in a day.
Learning that the person was Kang Yu-jun, a Promise Guild youth trainee until very recently, astonished them again.
“Are you sure he is Kang Yu-jun? Not someone who looks like him?”
“Yes, he is. That Kang Yu-jun.”
“Was he not expelled recently? He must have spent his entire childhood training to become an Awakened. He cannot have received professional trainer education too, can he?”
Being a trainer was different from being an Awakened.
To teach an Awakened, a trainer first had to translate everything they had done by feel into words and data, then explain it.
Every Awakened experienced things differently, so a trainer had to use explanations to tap into each one's particular sense of things.
That was why trainers needed to take a professional course and turn their experience as Awakened into data.
The trainers had been concerned that Kang Yu-jun had entered their profession straight away, but his explanations were remarkably fluent.
More than that, he made the people he taught understand with ease.
“Impossible.”
“He can assess the kids that quickly?”
“It looked as though he barely glanced at them.”
His natural insight let Kang Yu-jun identify problems quickly and offer appropriate solutions in an instant.
“That is not the important part.”
The team leader, however, was watching something else.
“You can find a solution if you look carefully enough.”
The important thing was helping the other person understand it.
“He is making them understand so easily. That is the hardest part, and he is doing it right now. He is much better than I was in my fifth year. Those kids are not exactly brilliant, you know.”
Not just any fifth year of experience.
By then he had been battered and knocked around in all sorts of places.
Yet Kang Yu-jun's training skills already seemed far beyond his own at that stage.
“Ha. So that Kang Yu-jun became a trainer and corrected Woo Ha-na's problem?”
Of all Sky Guild's youth trainees, Woo Ha-na had been the hardest to train.
She also had the highest potential among them.
If a trainer could bring it into full bloom, it would be a major achievement on their record.
But bringing out that potential had been extraordinarily difficult.
Woo Ha-na experienced her ability in a way unlike other Awakened.
Different Awakened might perceive their abilities differently, but there was usually some overlap.
With Woo Ha-na, there was nothing that truly overlapped. At times something seemed familiar, yet even then it was different.
The challenge was to explain things in a way Woo Ha-na could understand. That was where a trainer's ability was tested.
“How on earth did he do it?”
The team leader muttered, half frustrated and half fascinated.
He had trained Woo Ha-na himself, so he knew her problem well.
Correcting it had been the difficult part.
Woo Ha-na had known about her problem too, but she had not known how to solve it.
Kang Yu-jun had done just that.
In a single day.
The Woo Ha-na before him now was not the same person he had known.
Just look at that explosive mana circulation.
Once the sensation took firm hold, she would be able to leap straight past the tower's tenth floor.
It meant she could lay the groundwork for a rapid rise to a higher grade.
And it had all begun with Kang Yu-jun's training.
GRIND.
“What is different?”
Something clearly was, but he could not tell what.
“I need to watch more.”
This was no time to sit there feeling jealous.
Kang Yu-jun must have studied under numerous trainers during his years as a Promise Guild youth trainee.
Perhaps that experience had allowed him to achieve such results despite having only just begun his career as a trainer.
“I cannot simply hand them all over to him.”
***
“Woo Ha-na is being assigned to Team 3.”
Sky Guild Sales Team 3.
The guild's Sales Teams were responsible for conquering the tower.
They were divided into Teams 1, 2, and 3.
Teams 2 and 3 were development teams where Awakened newly entering the tower could gain experience and adjust to it. Team 1 was the climbing team that advanced up the tower in earnest.
In short, Sky Guild's young trainees aimed to gain experience in Teams 2 and 3, then rise to Team 1.
Woo Ha-na was no different. She wanted to reach Team 1, which could climb the tower.
“Woo Ha-na?”
Lee Deok-bae, the leader of Sales Team 3, frowned.
“They are putting her on Team 3? I have not heard that they corrected her weakness yet.”
Her Acceleration ability was considered to have tremendous potential. If she could use it properly, she would be ideal at the vanguard.
She could help greatly by throwing monsters into confusion at the front of the formation.
And if they had to complete a speedrun, one of the tower's missions, there would be no one better than Woo Ha-na.
But Woo Ha-na had a serious weakness.
“Have they fixed it? They are not promoting her just because she is old enough, are they?”
The deputy team leader shook his head.
“I did not understand it either, so I checked. They say it has been fixed.”
“That chronic problem? As I understand it, she has been ready for ages, but they have kept her back for years because they could not solve it.”
Lee Deok-bae had visited the training room recently to check on the youth trainees' progress himself.
Normally, trainees joined Sales Team 3 when they reached the right age. Sometimes, though, promising Awakened were brought into a Sales Team earlier to gain experience.
He had visited because some useful members of Team 3 were being promoted to Team 2, leaving vacancies.
He had planned to check the trainees and request the promotion of any who looked suitable for Team 3.
“She still had the same problem when I saw her.”
That had been only a short time ago.
It seemed too soon for anyone to have solved her chronic problem.
But if the guild said she had been promoted because it was fixed, there was no reason to argue yet.
“Well, she is here now.”
He could observe her and judge for himself.
At that moment, Woo Ha-na entered.
“Good day! I am Woo Ha-na!”
Everyone on Team 3 welcomed her.
“Welcome, Ms. Woo.”
“Thank you, Team Leader! I will work hard!”
“You can take part right away, can you not, Ms. Woo? We have a tower raid today.”
“Yes, I can!”
Woo Ha-na answered boldly.
She was full of confidence.
She had received her second training session from Yu-jun only yesterday.
“Good to see that enthusiasm. Let us go.”
***
The Tower of Clouds.
Countless Awakened crowded into the enormous tower.
South Korea had spent decades trying to conquer its highest floor, yet the highest floor cleared so far was only the forty-fifth.
When the forty-fifth floor was first cleared, people had hoped that South Korea might be the first to reach the top, not just in East Asia but in the world.
But those hopes ended at the forty-fifth floor.
The team that had first cleared it had become part of the establishment, now known as Masters.
Of course, that did not mean they had given up trying to advance.
Several top guilds continued attempting the next floor.
Most guilds and Awakened, however, repeatedly cleared the lower floors. It was safer and more profitable.
“All right. Let us go in.”
RUMBLE—.
On the tower's first floor. From there, they could travel conveniently by something like an elevator as far as the ninth floor, said to be the last of the Tower of Clouds' lower floors.
RUMBLE—.
Sky Guild got off on the fifth floor.
The fifth floor was a classic one.
The leader of Sales Team 3, standing at the front, addressed the group.
“Everyone, listen up! We are not here to do anything spectacular today. We are here to gain experience. This fifth floor is one of the easiest in the Tower of Clouds. The mission is simple.”
DING—!
At that moment, the same notification appeared before every member of Sales Team 3.
Each floor of the Tower of Clouds gave its visitors a mission. They had to clear it to proceed upward.
The fifth floor's mission was…….
-[Eliminate all monsters!]
It was a straightforward monster elimination mission.
That made it a popular floor for Awakened climbing the tower for the first time or needing experience.
“You saw the mission? Today we are clearing the fifth floor. No one is to push too hard. This floor may be meant for beginners, but it has plenty of dangerous monsters. Get caught by the wrong one and you will come away with a fracture at the very least. And there is a small chance…….”
The team leader spoke firmly, his voice a warning.
“Some people die. Surely none of you want to die on duty on the fifth floor?”
Dying on the fifth floor, of all places, rather than on a higher floor, would be truly humiliating.
Everyone took the leader's words to heart.
“A little tension is good. Just do not get too nervous.”
Most of Team 3's members were on their first tower climb. The others had very little climbing experience themselves.
Naturally, they all looked nervous for one reason or another.
Only one person seemed at ease.
She was already certain she could show what she was truly capable of today.
“First, then.”
The leader of Sales Team 3 placed the newcomers at the front.
“Vanguard, advance.”
***
Sky Guild's training room.
“Team Leader?”
The leader of Sales Team 3 came in breathing hard and went straight up to a trainer.
The most junior trainer approached him in alarm.
“W-what happened? Was there an accident in the tower……?”
“H-how on earth did you train Woo Ha-na?”
He demanded an answer without preamble.
The junior trainer looked bewildered and asked,
“Why? Did something go wrong?”
“No, that is not it…….”
The leader of Sales Team 3 shook his head in frustration and shouted,
“Woo Ha-na should go straight to Team 1, not Team 3! She is completely ready. Who on earth is this Kang Yu-jun who trained her?”