The Price of Discontent (1)
Early morning.
"Huff, huff!"
Hwang Jiwoo was running around the outer edge of the training ground, and nearby, Explosive Dragon was handling magic while watching her.
Now Hwang Jiwoo was doing stamina training too.
That was because of Baek Jinwoo's policy of valuing a player's stamina and self-management.
—Jiwoo, keep it up!
Explosive Dragon, who had grown fairly close to her by now, waved and cheered her on.
Even at this very moment, Explosive Dragon's quest timer was still ticking.
As mentioned last time, all she had to do was make contact before an hour passed.
"Ugh, huff... huff!"
Had about 10 minutes passed since she started running?
Hwang Jiwoo collapsed to the ground, drool hanging from her mouth.
'I can't do this!'
Her heart was pounding like mad, and her breathing had climbed all the way to her throat, making it hard even to breathe.
—Uh, uh? Jiwoo? Are you okay?
Explosive Dragon, who had been watching, shot to her feet.
What Baek Jinwoo had ordered was a full hour of running!
That was far too much for a woman who had never known even the first letter of exercise in her daily life.
Especially in Hwang Jiwoo's case, hadn't she spent most of her life lying in bed because of her constitution?
'I'm dizzy.'
Her eyes were clearly open, yet everything in front of her vision was pitch-black.
Her head swam, and it felt as though the whole world was spinning round and round.
"What a pathetic stamina level."
It happened at that moment.
A man who had appeared from somewhere suddenly pressed an inflated bag to her mouth.
It was Baek Jinwoo.
"You're hyperventilating. Breathe slowly."
"Huuff, huff! Y-yes..."
Feeling something touch her mouth, Hwang Jiwoo exhaled into it in a daze.
"I said breathe slowly. Think of it as inhaling for 7 seconds and exhaling for 11. Even if it's hard, slowly!"
It was a way to deal with hyperventilation.
The person has to regain their senses and slow their breathing on their own, but until then, the bag lets them inhale the air they just exhaled.
A temporary method!
Still, if you use this too long, it can lead to hypoxia, so caution is necessary.
Maybe it was because of his trustworthy voice?
Hwang Jiwoo quickly came to her senses and tried to breathe slowly.
"Tsk, and you want to become a top-tier player, yet you collapse after running just 10 minutes."
"Gasp! Hooo...! I'm sorry!"
"It's your first time, so that can happen. Once you get your head straight, you still have to fill the rest of that one hour. Today. Got it?"
"I understand."
"Okay. Rest in the shade for a bit, and once you've recovered, come over to me. I'll take a look at your summons."
"...Yes, sir!"
She wasn't the only one in the training ground.
If you added together the national-rank players and their summons, HunGyo, and Baek Jinwoo's summons, the wide outer field almost felt completely packed.
HunGyo seriously controlling his summons.
And then—
"Hyaaaap!"
"Come onnnnn!"
Seeing the rankers running with huge tires hanging off them in clusters, she could feel an enormous invisible wall.
"What kind of speed is that? Aren't you going to run properly?"
Baek Jinwoo even climbed onto the tire of Hong Ari, who was lagging the farthest behind out of the four.
"Aaagh! You bastard!"
"A bastard? Is that how you talk to your teacher? You're doing 10 extra laps today."
"Kyaaaak!"
Even while screaming, she never said she couldn't do it. She just kept running like her muscles were about to burst.
Hwang Jiwoo stared blankly at that sight.
Where even is this place?
Who even am I?
Even in that frantic moment, Hwang Jiwoo envied them.
'I want to... train over there proudly too.'
Then what did she need to do?
She couldn't just sit here resting.
'Jinwoo said it.'
That she absolutely had to finish the remaining hour.
"Hngh."
Hwang Jiwoo staggered to her feet.
Her heartbeat still hadn't settled down properly yet.
'I can't waste this rare 100-day opportunity like this.'
A giant.
To become the best, you can't do things in the same ordinary way as everyone else.
The reality is that even if you grit your teeth and train like your life depends on it, you still might not even get into a single major guild.
'Let's run again.'
Hwang Jiwoo squeezed her eyes shut and forcibly moved her feet.
She felt the urge to collapse on the spot dozens of times, but she didn't give up.
The passion filling the training ground made that possible.
* * *
A few hours later.
"All right, attack me with the combination you originally used."
Click!
Baek Jinwoo spoke as he summoned his Combat Sheriff (C-rank).
To deal with just Hwang Jiwoo, even a summon specialized for the weekday dungeon was enough.
"Yes, sir!"
Hwang Jiwoo deployed all five of her summons at once.
They were all miscellaneous Ice-element summons of E-rank or F-rank.
Even back during 「Battle of Summoners」, whenever those popped up, he would just use them as materials.
And those were what had shown meaningful control to HunGyo?
How would this turn out?
Baek Jinwoo smacked his lips in anticipation.
And soon after—
Flap!
With a beat of the E-rank Ice Butterfly's wings, the surrounding space began to freeze.
The sheriff's movement speed slowed, but the marksmanship of a sheriff seasoned by countless Monday Dungeon runs was beyond imagination.
Baaang!
A bullet fired from the muzzle pierced straight through the body of the F-rank Ice Fly.
Puhak!
With blood bursting out, the Ice Fly was reverse-summoned!
Baek Jinwoo hadn't controlled the sheriff separately or anything.
He had simply left it on autonomous mode, and yet it had already taken one down.
'Is that it?'
Just as Baek Jinwoo was about to feel slightly disappointed—
'Huh?'
The Combat Sheriff's movements started to become strange.
It staggered slightly.
Bang, baaang!
Two more bullets were fired, but instead of piercing the Ice Butterfly, they merely grazed past it.
'Oh?'
And then—
Thud, thud, smack, smack, smack!
The E-rank Ice Heron, which had flown up into the sky, started landing hits on the slowed sheriff, and the damage output was far greater than expected.
"Hoh."
Baek Jinwoo let out a sound of admiration.
For a bunch of trash summons, the linkage was impressive.
'This feels slightly innate, doesn't it?'
At the very least, he could now understand why HunGyo had said that.
Her control itself wasn't bad enough to fall behind even the rankers of South Korea, and thanks to the Fiery Body trait, the movement speed reduction effect and freezing damage hit even harder.
Also, when a summon aimed while thinking, 'It should slow down about this much', it would end up slowing down even more than expected, throwing the summon off.
That meant she had a clear grasp of her own constitution and also possessed the sense to make use of it.
There's definitely merit here.
Baek Jinwoo nodded.
If she were raised properly as a specialist Ice-attribute player, she looked like she might have the potential to compete even on the world stage.
Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack!
Now that its attacks were landing, the delighted heron pecked even more fiercely.
But do you know what the greatest weakness of the Ice element is?
Its damage output is disastrously low!
The sheriff belonged to the lower side in terms of HP, but the heron's attacks didn't leave even a scratch.
'Let's end this now.'
Baek Jinwoo took back control of the Combat Sheriff, which he had left on autonomous mode.
He started controlling it directly.
Bang!
And immediately blew off the heron's head.
Hwang Jiwoo only had exactly three summons left.
Bang!
One shot, one kill!
Bang! Bang!
At close range, the sheriff unleashed consecutive fast zoom shots, and all of Hwang Jiwoo's summons were reverse-summoned.
No matter how much potential she showed, she still couldn't stand on equal footing with Baek Jinwoo.
Whether that was now, or later.
"...A-amazing."
Hwang Jiwoo exclaimed in admiration.
A scene that vividly showed why he was the captain of the national team!
Baek Jinwoo, who had been nodding slightly while thinking for a moment, opened his mouth.
"Hmm, okay. That's enough for today. Get some rest. I'll give you feedback tomorrow."
"Yes, sir!"
* * *
—My lord.
After Hwang Jiwoo disappeared, HunGyo, who had been watching the battle, approached.
"Yeah."
—What do you think?
"She's definitely usable. I think I get what you were thinking."
—Is that so?
"Weren't you thinking of that old Infinite Freeze combination?"
—As expected of you, my lord.
The Infinite Freeze combination.
It was a setup that had once been popular in 「Battle of Summoners」.
It used an A-rank Ice Bird and a Lich to lower the field's movement speed and attack speed as much as possible.
Then, with Frost Cat, which had Ice resistance, and two damage dealers that received Ice buffs, it was a combination that dealt sustained damage...
Even Baek Jinwoo had used it briefly in the mid-game, it was that good a setup.
'It did become useless later, though.'
Its weaknesses were clear, after all.
As mentioned before, Ice damage hit like absolute garbage.
It was usable up through Advanced normal dungeons, but from Top-grade onward, it fell off badly.
Even against bosses, you'd have to pound away at them half the day just to bring one down.
But what if you added the Fiery Body constitution and Rund's endgame rune?
That would completely make up for the lacking damage.
And if that happened?
Yeah, that would definitely be broken.
Players with decent control and a good eye for forming combinations were not common.
'Hmm.'
Should I raise her well and bring her into Yoobaek?
Ah.
Yoobaek was a one-man management outfit.
Or else...
'Should I just create a guild while I'm at it?'
For now, that was something he needed to think about a little more.
Yoo Jia's opinion mattered now too.
* * *
Quite a bit of time passed.
Even during that time, national team training continued.
"Hm."
"Hong Ari... and why are the Carpe Diem kids so strong?"
People inside were slowly starting to talk.
Among South Korea's national team members, excluding Baek Jinwoo, Kang Geonho had always been the strongest.
But at some point, in the matches between Kang Geonho and Hong Ari, Hong Ari began winning more and more often.
And it wasn't just Hong Ari.
Gi Jaehyuk and Kang Jihoe were also strange.
The movement of their summons themselves had completely changed.
Baekho executive conference room.
"Brother Hoe."
With a look that said he couldn't understand it at all, Kang Geonho called out to the guild master.
"Yeah?"
"What the hell is going on?"
"That's what I'm saying. We all got consulting together, so why are only they showing results?"
Quite a lot of time had passed since the four disciples had started commuting back and forth to Yoobaek, but it still hadn't been revealed to the world.
Naturally, the national team members could only find it strange.
They had clearly invested the same time and the same effort, yet the gap in skill was widening.
And it wasn't widening by just a little either. It was becoming large enough to be felt directly.
"And there's another weird thing."
Kang Geonho continued, resting his chin on his interlocked hands.
"Since when did Hong Ari start speaking casually to Baek Jinwoo? Jaehyuk and Jihoe are one thing, they were always the type to call people brother and noona. But Hong Ari never even liked talking in the first place."
It really was strange.
Hong Ari, who kept her distance from everyone except Oh Sunyoung, suddenly spoke casually with Baek Jinwoo?
Even considering they were the same age, something smelled off.
"What, did they end up getting involved or something? So she's getting private lessons on the side."
"And Hong Ari, I get it. Feelings can develop, and she's pretty, so maybe that helped them get close... but what about Jaehyuk and Jihoe? Those two are climbing way too fast too. Is it because they're young and absorb things quickly?"
"Hmm."
Park Hoe narrowed his eyes.
It was a serious problem.
Baekho had maintained its place as the best guild in South Korea.
But?
At this rate, it would be overtaken by Arirang and Carpe Diem.
After everything they had done to build up the guild, they couldn't let the crown slip away like this.
"First."
Park Hoe looked at Bok Jeonghee and Seo Sangwon, the other national team members from Baekho seated across from him.
"Find out first whether those three and Baek Jinwoo have some kind of relationship."
"And if they do?"
"We make sure they can't continue."
Park Hoe said firmly.
Baek Jinwoo had received an additional enormous sum of 1 trillion won from the government in exchange for leading the national team.
If, as captain, he violated the requirement to treat everyone fairly and equally and gave special treatment to someone?
"We absolutely have to call him out on it. No matter what reason we have to attach to it."
And if they couldn't...
Then it would only be a matter of time before Baekho's stronghold came crashing down.
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