I had been planning to visit Giselle, but I had not intended to start my day like this.
I opened my eyes wide at Jio.
‘Disloyal bastard.’
Strictly speaking, Giselle was not exactly an outsider. However, Heroes had to be careful around beauties.
Moreover, the beauty at present was a master thief, so she was someone who should not be let in all the more.
Snap!
Jio, unaware of what I was thinking, merely narrowed one eyebrow at me.
“Lady, then I hope you have a good time.”
“Thank you. Huhu!”
At Giselle’s alluring laughter, Jio closed the door to my room.
‘Looks like she isn’t playing tricks.’
Fortunately, though I had thought Giselle would search my room, she sat quietly on the sofa without playing any more tricks, just as she had said before.
“So, did you find it?”
Thanks to the information Giselle gave me, I had obtained Laevateinn, so I obediently answered the conversation.
“Thanks to you. But didn’t you come here already knowing?”
“......Knowing what? I don’t know. I was going to follow you, but stopped. So did you find the bracelet?”
Bracelet......?
At first glance, it looked like Giselle was playing dumb, but I did not smell any suspicious intention from her.
‘Even now.’
Giselle was sincere. Moreover, even the Thunderbird could not deceive me, so it was unlikely I had made a mistake.
Suddenly, a sense of wrongness wrapped around my back.
No, it would be strange not to know, wouldn’t it?
There had been a blackout across the entire Academy. A storm had gathered, and dozens of lightning strikes had fallen.
Even if it had only been a brief moment, every direction had ultimately converged on the temple, so even if no one else knew, Giselle should have.
‘Normally, Giselle would have asked me what the hell happened there.’
I briefly turned my head and looked out the window.
‘It’s too quiet.’
I had not been paying attention, but the Academy was strangely quiet. Even though dozens of security patrols had come to the temple yesterday.
‘What happened to that person?’
Rumors spread quickly in the closed-off Academy. However, I had not yet heard any news about the student I saved.
It was strange. As if someone had ordered everyone to keep quiet.
Giselle also caught the awkward current.
“Wait, wait a second! What happened to you there?”
“More importantly, Giselle, how did you know there was something in the northwest temple?”
Giselle spoke as if chewing over her memories.
“The Academy originally has so many restricted areas and closed zones that all sorts of rumors float around. I don’t even remember where I heard it anymore......”
Giselle was now feeling quite uneasy.
“Why? What is it? Tell me!”
“It seems we should end the conversation here.”
Thanks to the primordial method of irritating a person by cutting off a sentence midway, Giselle’s brow narrowed in an instant.
It was a firm expression of refusal.
“......Ask Instructor Wagner. Maybe he already knows everything.”
It was not that I thought Giselle was amazing, but she was still the evaluation proxy for the assigned teacher selection.
‘Nothing good will come of running my mouth for no reason.’
The weight of the instructor’s words and mine were as different as heaven and earth.
“You’re really making me go find him.”
Giselle rose from her seat with an expression that said she could not understand.
Before Giselle left, I asked one last question.
“But why did the instructor call you?”
“He told me to come if I had nothing to do, so I came. No, that’s not it. I just happened to have nothing to do, so I came!”
In any case, I understood that her life was tiring.
***
After Giselle left, I leaned against the windowsill and looked over the Academy’s scenery.
The reason the instructor had called Giselle was probably because.
‘He figured something out long before I did......’
Leaving aside the instructor’s behavior, at present, I had never seen anyone more meticulous than him.
“Something is happening.”
After my conversation with Giselle, I was thinking this.
Someone had deliberately placed Laevateinn, Loki’s divine artifact, in the northwest temple.
The information that there was something in the northwest temple must have passed by word of mouth, just as it had to Giselle.
The students’ interest, seeking to become stronger and do anything to endure in the Academy, would naturally turn that way.
So simply leaving it there would be enough for someone to take the bait, and the person involved could unknowingly create chaos within the Academy.
Since it passed through rumor after rumor, catching the tail would be difficult as well.
‘But I blocked that.’
However, because of me, the plan had gone wrong, and things had become quiet as if nothing had happened. It was a silence suppressing and holding in the commotion.
A slightly dangerous thought and suspicion came to me.
“There might be a spy among the Academy’s higher-ups.”
Somewhere, there was a rotten smell of schemes being plotted. But because I did not know where that smell was coming from, my head was growing complicated.
***
To organize my cluttered thoughts, I headed to the dormitory individual training ground. Rainbow light slanted through the cracked window.
“Right. I just need to do what I have to do.”
When I was young, Mom had said this to me.
-Wonwoo, when you don’t know what’s what, just do what you have to do. Then the Wonwoo of that time will handle things well!
Back then, I had not understood Mom’s words, but now that I had reached this point, I felt I understood a little.
If I thoroughly did what I had to do, I would be able to prepare no matter what happened.
I operated the Thunderbird’s special ability I had obtained yesterday.
“Lightning Armor.”
The blue lightning energy that stretched like lightning from the Thunderbird’s mark headed toward my hand.
CRACKLE!
From my blue-dyed hand, blue lightning energy rained down, even if only faintly.
“For now, it’s about this much.”
Of course, it was not distinct, so it was a translucent lightning energy like mist.
At the center of the training ground was a thick pillar. I thought it was perfect for testing power.
I curled the hand wrapped in lightning energy and threw a straight punch at the pillar.
KABOOM!
“Oh?!”
Even though I had struck it with my bare fist, I felt no pain in my hand.
Moreover, the faint electric shocks remained in the pillar like blades and gnawed at it.
‘......Then just how strong is the Thunderbird?’
As I handled lightning energy, I found myself comparing her against my will. A stark difference could make one fall into inferiority or collapse under despair.
“This is good.”
However, I felt the possibility and expectation that I too could become like that someday.
‘Can I handle lightning-attribute mana too?’
It was a thought that suddenly occurred to me. Since the Thunderbird was also the Spirit God of Lightning, the lightning of the human realm obeyed her command.
I briefly looked around the training ground.
‘......Let’s try it later.’
I could not find lightning-attribute mana nearby, so I had to leave that for later.
“Then this is done.”
I moved my feet toward Laevateinn, which I had set up in the corner of the training ground. A faint burnt smell still clung to it.
“It isn’t bad.”
The natural texture of wood fit snugly in my hand, and the runes embedded in the center revealed its extraordinary nature without hiding it.
‘I won’t have to suffer the embarrassment of having it break somewhere.’
At a glance, the strength of Laevateinn, which had been scorched by the Thunderbird’s lightning energy, would be beyond imagination.
‘......It’s good, but honestly, it’s uncomfortable.’
Maybe because I had gone around barehanded until now, carrying it around itself felt uncomfortable.
“I wish it were a little shorter. It’s needlessly big.”
Of course, it was a happy complaint.
Crack. Crack!
At that moment, Laevateinn split open and began slowly changing form.
“......But wouldn’t a branch be even worse?”
This time, it was truly the worst, and my complaint was sincere. Because Laevateinn had changed into a branch, just as I had seen in books.
‘I know what you were trying to show me.’
But no sprouts had appeared, and since it was black overall, anyone who saw it would think I was walking around carrying rotten wood.
“It looks like a rotten branch. It sucks.”
Crrrrack!
Perhaps enraged by my words that it was a rotten branch, it began changing again.
“......This is rebellion.”
I thought Laevateinn was rebelling. After all, it suddenly turned into a bow.
“Forget it. Let’s just make it a sickle. A sickle.”
Strangely enough, among countless arms, what I thought of was a sickle.
Some might look at a sickle and dismiss it as a farm tool, but to me, a sickle was the most powerful arm.
“......?”
Unlike when it had changed from a branch to a bow, this took twice as long.
“Is this what they call pouring your heart into it?”
At first, I had not expected much, but as time passed, my expression and reaction slowly changed.
“......Hey, you?”
Surprisingly, Laevateinn changed its shape to resemble the Thunderbird’s sickle.
The sickle’s handle was exactly long enough to fit in one hand, and the rest was a question-mark-shaped blade.
The runes engraved in its center like a constellation proved it was Laevateinn.
‘If that’s what you want.’
I immediately activated the Thunderbird’s special ability. Blue lightning energy spread to my hand. Laevateinn did not reject it and took the blue lightning energy as nourishment.
Each of Laevateinn’s runes glowed blue like fireflies.
CRACKLE-!
Soon, sharp blue lightning energy wrapped around the surface of Laevateinn. As if enchanted, I swung Laevateinn toward the central pillar.
The thick central pillar likely contained high-grade magic stone. Its resistance and hardness could not be compared to concrete.
Slice.
However, the sensation transmitted to my hand was light and smooth, like cutting soft tofu.
“......Laevateinn’s function really was amplification.”
I knew because I had touched the Thunderbird’s blue lightning energy with my bare hand. Her lightning energy had been like dozens of finely honed blades, more than something hot.
***
I tested not only the Thunderbird’s special ability, but a few other special abilities as well, then left the training ground.
“......This is enough for today.”
More precisely, I could not do any more......
At some point, the sunset had settled far off at the end of the horizon.
In the morning, my chest had felt stuffy from the rotten smell coming from the Academy, but now my chest felt light and refreshed.
With a happy heart, I opened the dormitory’s front door.
“......There’s more now?”
In that instant, my heart grew heavy.
Originally, the first-floor lounge of the dormitory had a quiet fireplace, soft sofas, and a comfortable carpet on the floor.
“You have returned, brother!”
However, as the days passed, all sorts of exercise equipment had begun taking its place, and at some point, only the smell of iron had filled the air.
‘Let’s try to understand. I don’t use the lounge often anyway. Right. I can just exercise while I’m at it.’
One had to respect a friend’s hobbies, and a life without muscle would probably be meaningless to Jio.
Still, I did not know what Elena would say if she came here later.
To begin with, this was a shared space for three people, and Jio had cluttered it up, so I felt he might get an earful.
Elena had not joined us yet, but there was also a room for Elena at the end of the second floor.
I expected that after her special training with Teacher Kwon ended, she would come here.
“What do you think? This is an exercise I newly devised!”
Jio had a huge iron bar shouldered behind his neck and was waddling in a duck walk.
As far as I knew, merely squatting and standing back up was supposed to be difficult.
“It isn’t bad?”
Whether I had been influenced by muscle before I knew it or not, I could not deny that it was a tremendous feat.
“As expected, you have an eye for quality.”
Jio placed the iron bar down with a hearty air and said,
“Come to think of it, brother, you were at the training ground, so you likely did not hear the news. According to Choi, tomorrow we are to return to Dormitory A’s classes and attend Teacher Kwon’s lesson.”
Choi......? Ah, Assistant Choi Seoyeon. Setting aside the way he addressed her, Instructor Wagner’s absence. I had thought it might happen, but......
“Well, that can happen.”
It was then.
I looked at the window in an instant.
‘I wasn’t mistaken.’
From far away, I felt Elena’s unique mana.
“She arrives just in time. The golden-haired girl.”
Clouds of war drifted through the individual dormitory of Instructor Wagner’s direct disciples. This place was an independent structure, and there was no one to stop them.
In such a place, the contest of faith between the muscle fanatic and the spirit fanatic would begin.
Dad had said that if people fought, they would someday become friends. It was not that I knew whether that was true, but.
‘The training ground is......’
......I could not let the dormitory be destroyed, at least.
Among spirits, Elena was strong in the water attribute. Simply put, a flood might happen.
Before the shrimp’s back broke in a fight between whales, as the esteemed shrimp, I had to break the whales’ backs.