"I have no ill feelings toward you, Lee Seoha."
"I know. I expected something like this."
From the moment I learned that four people would spar at once, I knew this would happen.
The three of them would join forces to eliminate me, the top contender, and then fight each other fairly among themselves.
'Did they swallow their pride to win? Well, that's what it means to be a Seongmu Academy cadet.'
They were all guys who had been called geniuses in their own territories, always taking first place.
Joining forces to attack me would feel shameful to them.
But at Seongmu Academy, they teach you to abandon pride on the battlefield.
In battles against Rakshas, the first priority is victory, the second is survival.
"Don't resent us, Lee Seoha. You're just too strong."
"Haha, thanks for the compliment."
"Attack!"
The boy ranked seventh shouted as he charged at me, while the other two split off to either side.
Attacks coming from three directions.
A combined assault was a valid choice.
Perfectly reacting to an attack from behind would be difficult even for my grandfather.
But that only applies when someone else is holding the front.
'One Sword Style, Dragon Flash.'
I swung my wooden sword toward the seventh-ranked boy.
'Crap!'
He hurriedly took a defensive stance, but my wooden sword struck his side.
"Aaagh!"
With a scream, the seventh-ranked boy rolled across the ground.
Immediately after, I dodged the female cadet's attack from the right, struck the back of her neck, then turned to face the last one.
The boy who had halted his attack in front of me raised his hands after seeing the seventh-ranked cadet screaming in pain and the female cadet unconscious.
"I, I surrender."
"Good choice."
First comes victory.
Second comes survival.
Just then, my grandfather's laughter echoed from afar.
"Wahahahaha! Well done! Well done!"
Standing beside him, Han Baeksa's face looked like he had just bitten into a pile of shit.
"Wahahahaha! Well done! Well done!"
Lee Gangjin clapped toward his grandson, who had won so brilliantly.
"Did you see that? He took down three of them so cleanly! Hahaha."
"…I see. As expected of the top-ranked cadet."
Han Baeksa, who had been wearing a shit-eating expression for a moment, soon burst into loud laughter.
"It seems his performance in the entrance exam wasn't just a fluke. I never imagined he'd show such excellent movement."
"..."
As Han Baeksa lavishly praised his grandson, Lee Gangjin's expression hardened instead.
What was this old man thinking, praising him so much?
"Oh, it looks like our Yeongsu's match is ending too."
The preliminaries for Group Eul had just finished, and Han Yeongsu advanced without a single scratch.
"Your grandson is certainly strong, Ironblood, but our Yeongsu isn't bad either. The semifinals should be quite entertaining. I'll be looking forward to it."
Lee Gangjin glanced at Han Baeksa suspiciously and muttered,
"That old man… he's plotting something."
Still, he had no intention of directly helping his grandson.
Whatever Han Baeksa was plotting, as long as it didn't endanger Seoha's life, it was something Seoha would have to overcome himself.
Even if he fell for Han Baeksa's schemes and lost the Seongmu Tournament, that would still be a valuable experience.
"Let's see what he does."
A tiger pushes its cub to the edge of a cliff.
Thus, the preliminaries ended and the semifinalists were decided.
Group Gap: Lee Seoha, current rank 1.
Group Eul: Han Yeongsu, current rank 11.
Group Byeong: Han Sanghyeok, current rank 9.
Group Jeong: Ju Jiyul, current rank 3.
With the semifinalists decided, Han Baeksa waited for Han Yeongsu, checking the bracket, and said,
"Hm. Looks like Yeongsu will be facing that Cheongsin brat."
"Yes, Father."
"I watched him fight today. If they face each other normally, Yeongsu will lose."
He didn't want to admit it, but Seoha's current skill was several levels above.
He had hoped Seoha would be eliminated in the preliminaries, but that was already past.
Han Baeksa spoke to his son, Han Myeongho.
"Bring Sanghyeok. It's time for the boy to make a decision."
"Yes, Father."
Han Baeksa watched his son go to fetch Sanghyeok.
'The gods can be so heartless.'
His second son, Han Myeongho, was obedient but lacked talent.
In contrast, his younger brother Han Gyuho had possessed the talent to lead the family—no, to elevate it once again to the highest position—but he was not obedient.
And Sanghyeok was the spitting image of that father.
'If I'd known he had that much talent, I would've raised him sooner.'
When Sanghyeok had lived in Unseong, he had only been taught basic martial arts, so it had gone unnoticed.
If he could be made obedient now, he could be used again as a tool of Unseong.
'First, we need to win.'
Unseong had to remain the greatest noble family at all times.
That was why the legitimate heir, Han Yeongsu, had to grow by steadily achieving everything possible.
After the preliminaries ended, I waited for Jeong Doyun.
As soon as the matches were over, I confirmed that someone from Unseong had come and taken Sanghyeok away.
If Unseong was plotting something, I was certain it would be related to the Seongmu Tournament.
The Seongmu Tournament wasn't just a symbolic event to select the strongest prospect.
That was because of the prize: the Wish Token.
The winner could directly state a wish to His Majesty the King, and most wishes would be granted.
But now, there was me—a powerful favorite to win.
They would try to use Sanghyeok somehow to eliminate me.
Still, whatever they were plotting, Jeong Doyun would uncover everything, so there was nothing to worry about.
'There's no way he'll fail.'
Because it was Huam.
The Intelligence Division was broadly divided into two parts.
The publicly known, legal Royal Intelligence Bureau that gathered external information, and Huam, which collected information on various noble families from the shadows and uncovered their weaknesses.
Yoo Hyeonseong belonged to the Royal Intelligence Bureau, but at the same time, he was the head of Huam.
Of course, he told me he was only in charge of a department within the legal Royal Intelligence Bureau.
Jeong Doyun was one of Huam's captains.
In terms of skill, he was top-notch.
As I waited in the small backyard of the lodgings, Jeong Doyun's voice rang out.
"Excuse me."
Dropping down from the roof, Jeong Doyun looked around and said,
"May I report here?"
"Yes. Please do."
"As expected, Han Sanghyeok has had his weakness seized."
Just as I'd expected, Sanghyeok had been cornered.
"I've uncovered the full details, but should I give you a brief summary of the key points?"
"No. Give me the full report. Don't leave out a single detail."
If his weakness had been seized, then that weakness had to be eliminated.
I needed to know exactly what happened during the break, and what they intended to make Sanghyeok do with that weakness.
"Understood. Then I'll start from the break."
Jeong Doyun began to speak.
"So…"
During the break.
Sanghyeok trained at the Cheongsin household, waiting, but ultimately failed to meet Seoha and headed to Unseong.
It was because his birthday had passed and he had turned fifteen.
By the laws of the kingdom, fifteen marked adulthood, allowing one to inherit a parent's estate.
Sanghyeok could now legally inherit the weapons and assets his father had left behind, and he intended to demand them properly.
Thus, despite being pointed at and called a traitor from the moment he entered the city, Sanghyeok silently sought out Han Baeksa and got straight to the point.
But Unseong was more petty than the thoughts of a fifteen-year-old child.
"You want your inheritance?"
"Yes. I'm fifteen now, so I'd like to receive the inheritance my father left me."
Han Baeksa sneered at Sanghyeok.
"You're gravely mistaken. Those aren't your father's belongings—they belong to Unseong."
"At the very least, please return my father's diary. You can't claim that as family property as well."
"Drag him out immediately."
"Grandfather!"
"I am not your grandfather."
Sanghyeok struggled, but all he received was a beating. He tried to endure defensively, but he couldn't fight back against the family's warriors.
After being thoroughly beaten, Sanghyeok was thrown into the stable.
"Haa… I thought I could at least get the diary…"
From the start, he had no interest in money or weapons. He never even thought he would receive them.
All he wanted was his father's diary.
The diary his father had told him to read someday when he grew older.
"…How do I get it?"
As he muttered to himself, the stable door opened.
"Why did you come back just to get beaten like this?"
Joo Eunhee entered the stable.
She was a girl his father had brought into the family, the only person in Unseong who could be called Sanghyeok's ally.
"Noona? How did you know I was here?"
"You were getting beaten so hard the dust was flying. How could I not know? Stay still. Let me apply some medicine."
As she quietly applied medicine to his wounds, Joo Eunhee chuckled softly.
"Still, you did well. I heard you met a good friend and went to Cheongsin?"
"Is that what people are saying?"
"No. They're saying you cowardly latched onto Cheongsin and betrayed Unseong. But isn't that proof you're doing well? The people Unseong curses are usually good people."
"That's true."
"You came for the diary, right?"
"Yeah. I thought they'd give it to me since it's legally mine."
"So naïve. Don't you know your family by now?"
Joo Eunhee smiled wryly and continued.
"Do you remember the valley behind the mountain? Where you used to go fishing with your dad."
"Yeah, I remember. Why?"
Han Gyuho had died of illness when Sanghyeok was seven.
Until then, Sanghyeok had been treated like a young master, training and going out with his father.
After his father's death, he had been treated no differently from a servant.
"There's a small cave there. It's there. The diary."
"Huh?"
"I stole it, knowing you'd come."
"…How?"
"That's not the point. Your father asked me to make sure the diary reached you. I couldn't protect it and it was taken from me, but I could just steal it again."
When Han Gyuho died, the young Joo Eunhee hid his diary in her room.
Eventually, it was taken by Han Baeksa, and from then on, Joo Eunhee waited for a chance to steal it back.
"No, that's not what I meant. With Grandfather's personality, he would've hidden it. How did you steal it?"
"There are ways. Kids don't need to know. Hurry and go get it, before a mountain beast carries it off."
"Okay. I'll go right away."
"Don't come back. Once you get it, run. Or they'll take it again. Got it?"
"Yeah. Got it."
Sanghyeok looked at Joo Eunhee for a moment, nodded, and left.
He had no intention of simply running away as she suggested, but there was no time to argue.
Watching his back, Joo Eunhee muttered,
"At least you met a good friend. That's a relief."
Not long after Sanghyeok left, warriors kicked open the stable door, followed by a pale-faced Han Baeksa storming in.
"Han Sanghyeok!"
Despite Han Baeksa's shriek, Joo Eunhee calmly organized the medicine.
Since Sanghyeok had come, it was only natural to assume he would check on the diary his father had hidden.
Han Baeksa spotted Joo Eunhee and ground his teeth.
The lowly woman his son had brought in.
"It was you."
There was no evidence, but he was certain.
That Joo Eunhee had stolen the diary.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, sir."
"Where is Sanghyeok?"
"I don't know. He's not a member of Unseong, so how would I know? I came to give him some taffy, but he was gone, so I was just feeling confused."
Smiling, Joo Eunhee pulled out a piece of taffy from her pocket.
"Would you like some too, Family Head?"
At this point, what was there she couldn't say?
She spat out everything she'd wanted to say all this time, feeling utterly refreshed.