51. Memory (2)
If you played RPGs, it was very common to do setup work before starting a boss battle.
The most representative examples were “doping” and “buffing,” the essential preparations needed to defeat a boss monster that was otherwise too overwhelming to handle.
In some games, the preparation phase could get absurdly long—dozens of people gathering just to buff a single player before a solo raid, bringing out top-grade food and potions to help with the doping.
Fortunately, perhaps, Aether World had fewer such processes.
In Aether World Online, doping was simple. You drank a basic potion, maybe ate a meal on top of that, and raised your condition. That was all.
It was quite different from other RPGs, where you entered battle after loading yourself with buffs in advance.
For mages, there was only one thing they needed to prepare once battle began: Cast Magic.
Beyond that, all they had to do was focus entirely on magic.
That held true even for “the character Baek Yuseol.”
While playing the game, Baek Yuseol had never once done something like advance preparation.
“Ugh…”
But now, Baek Yuseol had reached a point where advance preparation had become absolutely necessary.
Back then, Baek Yuseol could rise with a sword in hand and fear neither dragon nor strongest mage, yet now he was in the miserable position of being unable to do anything unless he meditated before fighting.
First of all, [Taeryeong Divine Art].
That technique explosively increased attack power by strengthening the Mana Leakage Body and sharply boosting the mana circulation rate inside the body, and it required at least ten full seconds of meditation.
On top of that, using [Hyper Focus] required at least one full minute of meditation as well.
The truth was, even one minute was already a huge reduction thanks to the fact that after returning to Stella, he had spent the entire day absorbed in training.
When he had first managed to reproduce the skill, it had taken nearly ten whole minutes.
It really was strange.
In that life-and-death moment with Cheolribeon right in front of him, Taeryeong Divine Art and Hyper Focus had activated simultaneously without any advance preparation.
So why wouldn’t they work now?
No matter how hard he tried to reproduce that same state by recalling the situation from back then, it simply would not happen.
Was the difference between real combat and practice really that great?
Or was the problem perhaps that bob-haired heroine staring at him from nearby?
That really did seem like the correct answer.
Flame was the culprit.
There was no other explanation for why his concentration differed this much.
She was kneeling neatly about thirty steps away, staring straight at him.
She did not even look away.
She did not move.
And since she just sat there like that, even Baek Yuseol—who ordinarily paid no mind to other people’s eyes on him—found it extremely burdensome.
“…Hey.”
Unable to focus any longer, Baek Yuseol spoke at last, and Flame’s eyes went round.
“Oh, huh? Was I bothering you?”
Baek Yuseol had been about to answer yes, but looking at her panic because she had already gotten guilty on her own made it feel weird to actually say it.
“No, well, not exactly that….”
“Should I move farther away?”
“Yeah…”
Then she really did move twenty steps farther and knelt down again.
The same situation repeated itself.
Her gaze was still just as burdensome, so shifting into Hyper Focus remained difficult.
“Um… can I talk to you?”
“…You already are. What is it?”
“No, I mean, maybe you should take a break.”
“How long have I even been at it that I’d already need a break?”
“What time do you think it is?”
“…What?”
The instant he had woken up in the hospital room, he had run straight to the training grounds, practiced Hyper Focus, then gone back to Lee Hanwol belatedly to report his return, then gone back to the dorm to sleep.
And now the next day, early in the morning, he had come right back to the training grounds and had been practicing Hyper Focus for what felt like only a short while.
“Is it lunchtime?”
“No. I need to go back to the dorm.”
“What? Why?”
“If I’m not back by ten, the dorm supervisor loses her mind.”
“…It’s ten already?”
Flame pointed to the clock in the corner of the training grounds.
9:48 PM.
Twelve minutes left until the dorm supervisor’s explosion.
“Huh…?”
What was this?
He felt like he had only just started practicing Hyper Focus, but somehow the time had flown by.
“You didn’t even eat. What were you planning to do if you actually collapsed?”
“No… the time passed that much already?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“Not at all.”
Baek Yuseol stared at the clock with a hollow, almost dumbfounded expression, then suddenly turned his head toward Flame.
She had definitely been there right before he started practicing too.
Every time he entered Hyper Focus, he completely forgot she existed, but whenever he snapped out of meditation, he always found her presence there.
“Then were you really sitting there the whole time?”
“Why? Because of what I said earlier, that thing. About joining the League of Spirit?”
“Yeah.”
“…You could’ve just done it tomorrow. Did you really have to waste an entire golden Sunday in a boring place like this?”
He had asked that because he genuinely found it baffling and ridiculous, but Flame answered without much change in expression from before.
“I don’t know. It didn’t really feel like wasted time.”
“…Really.”
“Yeah. I mean, who knows how many more chances I’ll have to watch you like this? You’ve been way too reckless lately.”
“What have I done…”
“Ahhh, but I really do have to go back now. I have no intention of staying here and getting chewed out by the dorm supervisor.”
With that, Flame rose, shook out her body, stretched, and left the training grounds all by herself.
Baek Yuseol watched her back for a moment, then let out a long sigh.
“League of Spirit…”
He had heard the situation recently.
After being forcibly entered into the competition against her will by Crown Prince Scarlven, she had apparently been trying to recruit new members to change her team composition.
Somehow, she had managed to persuade Eizel and Ma Yuseong, so their current number was three.
If Baek Yuseol joined, that would make four.
The minimum number required to officially form a League of Spirit team was five.
Since they were already suffering from a lack of members, he now understood why Flame had stayed all through Sunday in a boring place like this, putting in that much effort just to get even one more person.
“It can’t be helped, I guess.”
Baek Yuseol had tried to avoid meddling with the League of Spirit as much as possible.
There were several reasons he disliked “LoS.”
First: if five humans gathered together, then at least one of them was guaranteed to be trash.
Like a certain famous line from a manga character, he was already sick and tired of team games, and one-on-one matches suited him much better.
Second: that trash had been Baek Yuseol himself.
In one-on-one combat, his personal control was unquestionably excellent—good enough that he had firmly remained among the highest-ranked players.
But in team games, Baek Yuseol was different.
He lacked communication with teammates.
Because of his habit of trying to play the game alone, he always avoided properly participating in group combat and acted independently.
Thanks to that, there had been times he carried the whole match.
But more often, he simply trolled.
For Baek Yuseol, who was far more used to acting alone than cooperating, team games had been pure poison.
But what about this time?
Baek Yuseol was still not confident in cooperative play…
yet if the team members were Flame, Eizel, and Ma Yuseong, then that was a different matter.
That did not mean he suddenly felt confident about cooperating with them.
It meant those three protagonist-types had such absurd individual specs that cooperation itself was not even strictly necessary.
A team like Flame’s, which centered more on individual action than coordination, might be at a disadvantage against other teams that worked together better—
but what covered even that weakness was their overwhelmingly superior physical ability.
‘Mm. I can probably just join, do the bare minimum, and ride along.’
With Flame coming at him this insistently, turning her down felt a little bad.
And besides, she was the only…
friend with whom he could share his hometown.
“Mm, maybe this works out.”
He had needed a chance to test the Hyper Focus he had been practicing in real combat.
If it was the League of Spirit, then it would make for an excellent training ground.
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Morfran Forest.
The Adolevit Red Magic Tower’s guardian outpost.
As she looked up at the towering, barren magic tower that had been built solely to manage Morfran Forest, Hong Biyeon moistened her red lips with her tongue.
‘This is my first time actually coming here.’
This place was the last remaining trace and legacy of House Morf, the ducal family that had been destroyed ten years ago.
Because it had been tainted by powerful dark mana, the Adolevit royal family periodically took charge of purifying it.
‘It doesn’t feel particularly good.’
And it was not because of the dark mana.
If anything, there was strangely little dark mana in this place.
A soft mountain breeze was blowing.
The air was clear, and birds could be heard chirping here and there.
A squirrel that had been hiding acorns met her gaze, then panicked and scampered up a tree to hide.
For a place so tainted with dark mana that it required purification every year…
it was strangely peaceful.
“You have arrived, Princess Hong Biyeon. I am Kaizen, ritualist of the Holy Federation Purification Unit. It is an honor to serve you.”
The purification work was usually handled by the royal family’s first princess, Hong Si-hwa, but for some reason this time Princess Hong Biyeon had come instead, and public opinion had been buzzing.
Though the signs were not immediately visible, Hong Biyeon could tell right away just from reading their expressions.
‘They dislike me.’
The corner of Hong Biyeon’s mouth curled upward.
It had been quite a long time since she had been treated like this.
Ever since meeting Baek Yuseol, her position inside the palace had grown firmer, and there were now very few people left who could treat her this way.
‘As expected… not a single one of them is on my side.’
Since the purification of Morfran was carried out in extreme secrecy under House Orkan’s lead, the nobles gathered here were all mages belonging to Hong Si-hwa’s faction.
As Hong Biyeon entered the Red Magic Tower, she felt a strangely old nostalgia.
The feeling she had known in the palace when she was a child.
That cold, sharp atmosphere.
When she reached the top of the tower, a rooftop made entirely of windows welcomed her.
There was no furniture to speak of here.
The entire wall space was made of windows, and scarlet magic circles had been engraved across them. For something supposedly based on flame magic, the incantations inscribed there felt ominous enough to leave only a sense of revulsion.
And standing with those windows behind him—
an old man.
Wearing a red pointed hat, the old man opened his narrow eyes and met Hong Biyeon’s gaze.
“…Mage Taeribeon.”
“Welcome, Princess. It has been a long time.”
“Yes… it has.”
“It feels like only yesterday that the little princess could barely summon flame at her fingertips, and now you’ve grown so beautifully. Heh heh….”
That was not praise.
Mage Taeribeon.
He had once been the chief mage of the Adolevit royal family, the one who taught flame magic to the princesses.
He had been warm and gentle with the other two princesses, but toward Hong Biyeon alone, he had been endlessly cold.
Rather than teaching her properly, he had only scolded her every time—telling her that simply relying on talent like that would ruin her, that the way she handled magic meant she might go berserk one day, and countless other verbal abuses.
He had been one of the people who had torn young Hong Biyeon’s heart to pieces.
Step.
Taeribeon chuckled and slowly approached her.
Flinching, Hong Biyeon unconsciously took half a step back, cold sweat running down her skin as she bit her lip.
“Oh dear. If you react like that, this old man’s feelings will be terribly hurt.”
“…Your personality has changed a lot, Taeribeon. Are you planning to pretend to be some kindly old grandfather now?”
“There is nothing in this world that does not change, Princess. I too am only a tiny creature following the laws of nature as I change.”
“Human nature doesn’t change, Taeribeon. That disgusting mask of yours is beyond tiresome, so why don’t you take it off?”
“Heh heh, I understand. I was far too harsh on you in your childhood, Princess. But there is one thing I hope you will know. I only did it for your sake.”
“…That’s revolting.”
She cut him off at once, then turned and spoke to the purification mages waiting behind her.
“That pointless ceremony is enough. I would like to begin the purification ritual immediately. Is everything prepared?”
“Yes, Princess. But may I say one thing first?”
“Speak.”
“Before the purification ritual begins, Your Highness must activate the royal family’s Flame Spirit Formation with the royal crest, however…”
He let the end of his sentence trail off.
The reason was obvious.
Until now, the one who had always activated the Flame Spirit Formation was Hong Si-hwa, and she was a 7-Class mage.
Compared to that, Hong Biyeon was only a 4-Class mage.
To have reached that level at seventeen was remarkable, but to shoulder a family magic on her own was absurdly insufficient.
“I can do it.”
“Mm. Can you truly?”
The nobles looked at her with expressions full of doubt.
“Well… even if she fails, it won’t be the end of the world. We can always call for Princess Hong Si-hwa if needed… so let’s proceed for now.”
Just from the tone alone, she could tell.
They had no faith in Hong Biyeon whatsoever.
Just from the fact that they had not prepared the ritual with proper seriousness, it was obvious that they were convinced she would fail to activate the Flame Spirit Formation.
“Fine. Let’s do that.”
Even so, Hong Biyeon replied as if it hardly mattered.
At this point, she was sick and tired of reacting with irritation or flaring up over every little slight.
‘It’s simple. I just have to show them.’
The person called Hong Biyeon.
The mage called Hong Biyeon.
The princess called Hong Biyeon.
All she had to do was show them who she was, exactly as she was, and prove it.
‘For me now, that’s very easy.’
