54. League of Spirit (2)
Two weeks?
One day would be enough.
That was what she thought.
Having gathered in Stella Dome’s League of Spirit training ground, Flame crossed her arms, bounced one foot impatiently, and asked,
“…Where’s that Ahjussi?”
Eizel, who had been crouching in the corner and staring holes into a LIOS strategy book, lifted her head.
But since the strategy book was so huge and bulky, all she managed was a little peek over the top.
“He said he had something to do and rushed off somewhere a while ago.”
“Something to do? It’s not the bathroom, is it?”
“Well…”
“It’s not like he went off to build a bathroom, so why is he so late?”
“If it’s Yuseol, I guess that’s possible.”
Beside her, equally crouched down, Ma Yuseong was reading the LIOS rulebook.
That was right.
The rulebook.
Eizel, after hearing she would be participating in the match, had already finished reading the rulebook and reached the point of planning strategies, while Ma Yuseong—who had spent the whole time loafing around—was only now beginning to learn the rules.
“Damn it…”
A pounding headache suddenly overtook Flame, and as she clutched her head, her eyes drifted toward Hae Wonryang, who was busily doing something off to the side.
“…And what is he doing now?”
“He’s sculpting.”
Hae Wonryang had summoned ice and was carrying out a meticulous process of carving it down with blades of wind.
“Sculpting. I know it’s sculpting. What I’m asking is why he’s doing that here…”
“He said Stella Dome is good for practice. Apparently it helps with fine magic control. I tried copying him and gave up.”
“Insane…”
Whether Hae Wonryang knew Flame was staring at him in total disbelief or not, he continued his carving with a perfectly serious gaze.
Perhaps Ma Yuseong had gotten bored with the situation, because he suddenly stood up, rolled the rulebook up under his arm, and went to stand in front of the sculpture, one hand on his chin.
He looked exactly like a critic in an art museum contemplating a masterpiece.
“Waaah, that’s really beautiful!”
But a moment later, Hae Wonryang abruptly shattered the sculpture to pieces with a blade of wind.
“It was pretty…”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“It got scratched. I’ll have to make it again from the beginning. I need to keep practicing mana control until I can produce a perfect sculpture.”
“Oh, so that’s what you mean?”
As Hae Wonryang summoned another ice statue and began carving again, Flame realized with a sinking feeling that her plan had gone wrong from the very start.
“I must have lost my mind…”
Once these uniquely gifted geniuses—who had never once gathered together before—came together, there was simply no controlling them.
And on top of that, Baek Yuseol had not even shown up yet, which only made her resent him more.
“U-um…”
A man who looked to be in his late twenties approached Flame hesitantly.
“Are you still a long way from being ready…?”
“We’re almost done.”
“I see…”
His name was Hwang Seolgu, a teaching assistant at Stella Academy.
But just because someone was a Stella teaching assistant did not mean they were all the same kind.
Some assistants had graduated from Stella themselves, while quite a few were brought in from outside Stella—and that latter group made up a fairly large proportion.
Why?
Because ninety percent of Stella’s graduates went on to elite, prestigious careers.
Great Magic Towers, academic societies, famous mage towers, royal chief mages, high-rank magic warriors.
For that reason, assistants from Stella itself were in the minority, while many others were outsiders trying to build their careers somehow.
And one of those outsiders happened to be the teaching assistant assigned to Team Flame in LIOS.
“Just wait a little.”
“Uh… okay.”
Flame did not have any particular complaint against the assistant.
In the original romance fantasy, Eizel’s team had almost not even had the presence of an assistant at all. It was enough to make her feel grateful that this one at least spoke to them.
Still, when she thought about this team, the whole thing was strange.
The heir to the Full Moon Tower, the thousand-year prodigy mages Eizel and Ma Yuseong, Flame who wielded Light, and on top of that Baek Yuseol.
Even though this was a gathering of once-in-an-era genius magic warriors, the teaching assistant assigned to their LIOS team was this sloppy.
The reason was obvious.
“Ga Yurin, obviously.”
Ga Yurin was a rising prospect for the League of Spirit pro scene, and at the same time the youngest daughter of a prestigious family that frequently produced LIOS champions.
Meaning that while they might be nobodies when it came to magic warriors, the sports industry was practically in Ga Yurin’s family’s grasp.
So there was nothing strange about being assigned such a careless assistant.
The current world had already become a peaceful one, perfectly prepared against Darkkin invasions, and the more peaceful the age, the more power the sports industry naturally held.
“Whew, guess I’ve got no choice. While Ahjussi’s getting here, I’ll explain the basics to Ma Yuseong myself.”
In the end, Flame gave up on practicing and started explaining rules and strategy instead.
Since theirs was a puny little team of only five members, if even one of them was missing, the structure itself fell apart.
And so thirty minutes passed.
Then, for some reason, Baek Yuseol finally appeared, trudging in with mud all over his body.
“Oh, looks like I’m a little late…”
Seeing him wave lazily in greeting, Flame could not even find the right moment to get angry.
“What the hell? Where did you even go?”
“I had to step out for a personal matter. I did try to make it on time, but things got a little tangled…”
Flame folded her arms and glared at Baek Yuseol.
The kind of person she hated more than anything was someone who broke promises.
But Baek Yuseol…
meant something a little different.
His sense of time was not like other people’s.
A minute or a second that felt dull and trivial to others might be a deadly time attack for Baek Yuseol, a chance to change the future—and those same ordinary stretches of time might well be the peaceful daily life he had long wished for.
“Fine. At least you came, even if you’re late.”
And so Flame decided to be lenient about Baek Yuseol’s lateness.
Because he was never the sort of person who wasted time carelessly.
“Whew, I ended up late because I had to stop by the Eslen Yellow Earth Festival.”
After brushing off the mud stuck to him, Baek Yuseol slipped one ring into his pocket and fiddled with it.
If Flame found out he had come late just to obtain this useless ring—which had no special function except making mud taste delicious—would she really forgive him?
“It’ll be useful later.”
He had pushed himself to secure it early because it would help with something later, and that had made him late to the appointment, but at least he had wrapped things up cleanly and felt refreshed.
“Then from here on, let’s actually practice properly. Ahjussi, don’t tell me you’re about to say something ridiculous like you’re only going to read the rulebook now?”
“As if.”
Even if he was not fond of actually playing LIOS, Baek Yuseol had watched plenty of online matches, so he was extremely familiar not only with the rules but also with strategies and tactics.
In fact, Flame had come from an Earth where Aither World Online did not exist, so when it came to this particular area, Baek Yuseol might actually know a wider variety of builds and strategies than she did.
Of course, knowing something in your head did not mean you could actually use it in practice.
If it did, every person in the neighborhood would have become a pro player already.
“As for strategy… I’ll just leave that to her.”
Flame’s command ability was quite excellent, so she was far better suited to directing the team than Baek Yuseol, who only half-knew what he was doing.
Besides, Baek Yuseol’s position was that of a melee dealer or assassin, not something suited to the role of commander.
“First, let me explain the basic rules again briefly for Ma Yuseong.”
“Mm.”
As Ma Yuseong nodded like a well-behaved puppy, Flame explained with a satisfied expression.
“When the match starts, the five players are each summoned in front of their team’s Control Tower. We protect ours, and to win, we have to destroy the enemy team’s Control Tower. But it’s not something you can break just by charging at it mindlessly.”
League of Spirit resembled the AOS games that had once been popular on Earth.
In fact, from Baek Yuseol’s perspective, LIOS within Aither World Online had been one of the most popular AOS games on Earth.
Once the match began, every mage redistributed the mana they possessed across the map, infusing monsters with it.
The players then killed those monsters to obtain mana, but they did not spend all of it directly on casting magic.
Using that mana, they could upgrade their wand, robe, boots, and more at the Control Tower, or purchase various items that could completely flip the tide of battle.
“When you upgrade your staff, the power of your spells goes up, and your total mana increases. When you upgrade your robe, your defense goes up. And boots—well, you can guess that one, right? They increase your movement speed.”
Ma Yuseong raised his hand straight into the air like a student wanting to ask a question.
“Then isn’t this a disadvantage for someone like me, who naturally has a lot of mana?”
“Right. But inside LIOS, every mage has to be put on equal footing. This isn’t real combat—it’s a sport. If someone like you who could just steamroll everything with raw mana overturned every match, then how could you call that a strategy game?”
“Ah…”
Strategy, multiplayer, battle arena.
League of Spirit was the place where all of that came together.
If a handful of powerful players started running wild by relying only on their mana reserves, then it stopped being a sport altogether.
“That said, having lots of mana isn’t completely useless. The more overall mana our team has, the slightly faster resource monsters spawn, and the more of them appear.”
“So in the end, having more mana is still an advantage?”
“Yeah, but even though those monsters spawn on our side, the enemy can come steal them too, so be careful.”
“Aah…”
And so players had to kill monsters, gather resources, and slowly destroy the enemy towers one by one.
To do that, killing the enemy players was an absolutely necessary part of the process.
“There’s also a limit on the number of spells you can use. You can bring bloodline magic if you want, and if you’ve learned some legendary spell, that’s fine too—but you can only slot a maximum of seven.”
“Huh, really?”
“Yeah. And the more powerful a spell is, the longer the cooldown restriction becomes, so you also have to distribute some weaker spells that you can use repeatedly.”
“Ugh…”
As she continued explaining the rules, Flame finally realized just how unfavorable this battlefield was for Ma Yuseong.
Now she understood why the original romance fantasy had never mentioned him participating in LIOS.
For someone like Ma Yuseong, who had always sprayed dozens of spells around recklessly using practically infinite mana, constraints like these had to feel especially painful.
On the other hand, for someone like Hae Wonryang, who was used to combining spells carefully with a small amount of mana, this would be a very advantageous battlefield…
“Wait, isn’t this completely Ahjussi’s stage?”
And Baek Yuseol went without saying.
To begin with, he only used a single spell, and he was almost entirely free from mana restrictions.
Inside League of Spirit, there would of course be mana costs imposed on Blink under the rules—but even so, the person who could function most similarly to real combat here was still Baek Yuseol.
“Maybe we really can just trust Ahjussi and go for it?”
Originally she had not really cared that much about winning, but once she thought about Baek Yuseol’s strengths, it felt more and more like they actually had a chance.
That made her feel good.
To begin with, she had not been that desperate to win.
But after meeting Ga Yurin, her mind had changed.
“I have to break that crazy bitch’s arrogance.”
Maybe it was not competitiveness exactly—
but if you let the person who picked a fight with you keep their pride intact, how could you possibly sleep soundly that night with your legs stretched out comfortably?
Meanwhile, Baek Yuseol stared at the rulebook and shook his increasingly complicated head.
“This is bad.”
No matter how many times he looked at strategy, he still did not get it.
Flame seemed to be thinking about how to win through teamwork somehow, but unfortunately for her, that was exactly what Baek Yuseol was worst at.
If it had been real combat, at least there was the option of standing back-to-back and fighting together.
But League of Spirit was a sport where the best way to bring down the enemy was to coordinate everyone’s spells somehow.
“And what exactly am I supposed to coordinate…”
The one spell he could use:
Blink.
From this point already, Baek Yuseol could see only darkness in his future.
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
