54. League of Spirit (6)
Stella’s in-school League of Spirit player corps trained in a cutting-edge, top-tier environment, managed by former pro coaches, a systematic medical system, and strategic analysis specialists.
Considering Stella constantly produced the best players in the world, that was only natural—
but even so, there were only a few teams in the entire world with a system like this.
At best, perhaps the Adolevit royal family’s Team Phoenix and the Scarlven imperial family’s Emperor Goldens could be considered comparable.
“Did you find out?”
Stella’s League of Spirit pro-track admit.
Second-year pro League of Spirit department student, Ga Yurin.
Unlike magic warriors, who were divided into classes from F to S, other kinds of mages didn’t really have anything that could properly be called a “class,” because there was no real need to divide them into grades or sections.
But if the League of Spirit department did have classes and rankings, then wouldn’t Ga Yurin unquestionably be rank one in S class?
Just as Ma Yuseong and Eizel were called once-in-a-generation geniuses among magic warriors, among League of Spirit players, that role belonged to Ga Yurin.
“Ah, Flame Team?”
The coach, who looked tired as though he had just come back, set down the chart.
“I analyzed them.”
“Tell me.”
At Ga Yurin’s blunt, clipped tone, the coach’s expression nearly crumpled, but he forced himself not to show it.
“Well, they were unusual. Very unique and interesting enough to watch.”
“Are they a threat to me?”
When Ga Yurin narrowed her eyes, the coach casually held out the chart.
“No. Not at all. They’re just unusual. They’re not your opponents. Want to see for yourself?”
“Fine. My eyes are more accurate than yours anyway.”
The chart contained everything about “Flame Team”—their strategies, combat strength, movement routes and style, spell trees, item builds, and meta.
“Mm…”
The first one she checked was Flame.
Her spell tree was indeed unusual, fitting a mage who handled light and plants, but that much was nothing special.
Among the players participating in League of Spirit, there were many who used magic even stranger than light and plants.
“Baek Yuseol is a little unusual, but…”
“The strategy team is already working on a countermeasure. They said they could finish an item build that handles him perfectly in thirty minutes. That’s how easy he is to deal with.”
Which made sense. Baek Yuseol always fought with monsters around him.
Since he had to strike ten times with his sword for the item effect to activate, and the enemy wouldn’t just stand there like idiots and let him hit them, that kind of attack pattern was nearly impossible otherwise.
Baek Yuseol also had no magic that could lock down his opponent’s movements, so he had to rely wholly on items. If they simply restrained Blink with terrain-control spells, they would be able to counter him in an instant.
“Baek Yuseol isn’t really the issue. The one who’s most annoying is… just as you expected, Ma Yuseong.”
“Mm…”
Seated in the middle lane, Ma Yuseong had shown fortress-like defense and flame-like offense. It was enough that one might as well call him an amateur player already.
His item tree also followed a textbook-standard build without anything awkward about it, and according to the record, wherever he had learned it, he had taken techniques that players used these days and modified them into something even better in his own style.
But that was as far as it went.
If raised well, he would grow into an excellent player, but for now he was still just a baby.
And on top of that, the reason they had managed to win in the end against the level 12 AI was apparently because of Baek Yuseol’s suicide attack.
It was laughable.
“They’re trash not even worth worrying about.”
“But don’t let your guard down. For some reason, these kids make me uneasy. Especially this guy, Baek Yuseol…”
“I’ll judge that for myself.”
Ga Yurin cut off the coach and walked into her practice room.
“Haah…”
The coach rubbed his forehead and shook his head.
“I’d almost rather Flame Team beat Ga Yurin…”
The undefeated myth.
Ga Yurin was a genius among geniuses who had risen in triumph without allowing even a single defeat, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that among current teenage amateur players, there was no one who could match her.
That was why the coach worried about her.
Because she had never lost, she knew no fear.
Ha, honestly.
No matter what, Flame Team beating Ga Yurin?
That wasn’t just unlikely—it was ridiculous.
To begin with, Flame Team’s level wasn’t enough to be Ga Yurin’s opponent.
“What am I even thinking.”
The coach shook his head and casually tossed the chart into a corner. It didn’t look like he’d ever need to see it again.
On Saturday, Flame Team’s practice ended after a total of five matches.
Against the level 12 AI, they went 2 wins and 3 losses.
They had won two in a row, but the last three had been spent experimenting with each person’s item tree development, build, and ideas, and ended in defeat without even a proper teamfight taking place.
To begin with, the first match had been won because of Ma Yuseong’s solo carry, and the second because of Baek Yuseol’s suicide attack, so it wouldn’t even be wrong to say they had been meant to lose all five but stole two of them.
And after Sunday passed, Monday came.
They had not practiced on Sunday.
The reason was simple: Baek Yuseol had strongly insisted that they should rest a little on the weekend.
The truth was, they weren’t pro players staking their lives on League of Spirit, so Flame agreed immediately. She, too, had wanted to lie around on Sunday and take a nap.
“Do you know how the human body moves? Through muscles, of course. For muscles to contract and relax, they require oxygen and nutrients.”
The professor’s question—something no one could possibly not know—was unbearably dull to Baek Yuseol.
He scribbled something in his notebook with his pen and occupied himself with something else. He had long since given up on studying anyway.
The notebook contained a summary of past Korean League of Spirit strategies and item trees that he had extracted from the Jikbakguri Glasses, and on another page it was densely filled with the episodes that would occur in the future and matters related to the Twelve Divine Months.
“Humans breathe to supply oxygen, consume food and digest it to convert nutrients into energy, and circulate that energy throughout the body through the blood vessels. That is precisely why you feel weak when you are hungry, and why you become short of breath when you exert yourselves.”
The professor smacked the blackboard.
“Then here is the question. Do phenomena such as the above metabolism occur in skeletons and zombies?”
Skeletons and zombies meant corpses whose bodily functions had already ceased, yet were somehow alive and moving.
It was an extremely ironic thing.
How were they moving when they had no muscles at all?
“As the answer to that, dark mages implemented dark mana as muscles and the nervous system. In that sense, their abilities can truly be called remarkable, since they reproduced that delicate bodily structure through dark mana… though, ahem, as mages, we mustn’t go around praising them, of course.”
Slowly sweeping his gaze over the students, he spoke in a low voice.
“Even so, their techniques were certainly worth stealing. The idea of recreating the body’s structure through mana was something mages of that era could not even imagine.”
It was such a dreary routine that Baek Yuseol let out a huge yawn.
Dark mages’ dark mana could do many things that ordinary blue white magic could not. So people had tried to steal that technology, failed, and in the process other branches of magic had developed instead.
…Well, it was that sort of lecture.
“The magic of dark mages was so advanced that we could not take it for ourselves, but mages were no pushovers either. We used mana to…”
Just from the way he openly sounded as if he were glorifying dark mages, anyone could tell.
That’s right. That professor was a dark mage.
And not even an experienced one—just a rookie dark mage who had only recently infiltrated Stella.
The fact that he wasn’t getting caught despite making it so blatantly obvious was more amazing than anything else. At this rate, before long he’d probably be discovered by Flame or Eizel, get the hell beaten out of him, then Eltman Eltwin would show up and land the finishing blow, turning him into dust.
Ding-dong—
Not long after, the bell signaling the end of class rang. Baek Yuseol got up with perfect timing, packed his notes and books, rose from his seat, and walked out of the lecture hall.
“Uh, um. Organize this part and bring it to me by next class!”
As the students all rose to their feet at the sound of the bell and streamed out in a rush, the professor quickly threw out an assignment, grabbed his textbooks, then hurried out through the front door of the lecture hall and chased after Baek Yuseol, who was already far ahead, finally grabbing him.
“Wait a moment, Cadet Baek Yuseol. Let’s talk.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
Knowing the other party was a dark mage, a crooked tone naturally crept into his voice.
“Ahem. It’s nothing much… Professor Raidin said he has a favor to ask of you.”
“Ah.”
Not long ago, in exchange for getting Anella transferred into Stella, he had promised to grant one of Professor Raidin’s requests.
This had been made not through a “Mana Oath,” but through a lower-level “Legal Oath,” so it could not be broken.
A Legal Oath?
It was similar to a real-world contract. In simple terms, if you broke the agreement, you’d be disgracefully dragged off as a mage or forced to pay a fine.
It might seem like nothing much, but Raidin held the highly prestigious position of Stella professor, which meant he couldn’t casually break a Legal Oath.
If he did, he would have to step down from his post as a Stella professor.
And it was the same for Baek Yuseol. If he broke it, he would be expelled, so he had no choice but to keep his promise.
“Fine. But I assume he knows excessive requests are off the table. I’m not planning to do some fucked-up thing just for one student’s transfer.”
“Professor Raidin knows that as well. You’re not doubting his judgment, are you?”
He looked like someone who trusted Raidin deeply, but Baek Yuseol could not have cared less.
“Yeah. I’m suspicious as hell.”
The professor’s expression hardened for a moment, but he cleared his throat and regained his poker face.
“In any case, this is the ‘favor.’ Be sure to carry it out.”
The professor handed him a single note, then disappeared down the far end of the corridor. Baek Yuseol glanced around, then quietly checked the note.
[In the League of Spirit school selection tournament, promote ‘Mao Lun White Team’ to the representative team.]
Ordinarily, there was no way a normal student could be expected to grant a request like this.
But Raidin’s view was probably a little different.
Baek Yuseol was not just some ordinary student, and if he put his mind to it, Raidin likely believed he had enough influence to manipulate the tournament standings however he pleased.
“Mao Lun White…”
He had heard of them before.
Weren’t they a team made up of dark mages? He remembered them as a team that Flame defeated in the original romance fantasy novel. Naturally, he didn’t remember where or how they had fought.
“This won’t be hard.”
If it had been a more troublesome request, he would have refused, but if it was a team destined to be defeated by Flame in the future anyway, then it didn’t matter if he raised them up a little.
Besides, if it came to match-fixing, it was the field Baek Yuseol was most confident in, having grown up in the age of rigging.
Unless some lawyer who specialized in games suddenly jumped in out of nowhere, he was 99% sure he could pull it off.
Putting dark mages on top is annoying, but…
There was no helping it.
The important thing was to fulfill Raidin’s “favor” perfectly.
And that wasn’t only for Anella’s transfer.
Unfortunately, Baek Yuseol did not think Professor Raidin was one hundred percent capable of transferring Anella into Stella.
There had been cases in the original game where Professor Raidin transferred in students according to his own whims—
but that was only possible because those students had been dark mages.
Still, if it failed, that would be fine too, wouldn’t it?
Baek Yuseol had already carried out the “favor,” so Raidin would then be forced to pay the appropriate price for it, and if he couldn’t—
then Raidin, who had tried to make Baek Yuseol indebted to him, would instead end up owing Baek Yuseol.
I feel bad for Anella, but…
For the time being, she would be perfectly fine living under thorough protection at Zeliel’s Starcloud Trading Company or Kkotseorin’s Skyflower Cradle.
Read only on MugenCodex.
Since she already looks like a middle schooler anyway, she can just enroll next year as my underclassman or something.
Imagining Auntie Anella happily celebrating the fact that she had become a whole year younger, Baek Yuseol found himself feeling better too.
