54. League of Spirit (8)
Slightly curly short hair, faint freckles, drooping eyes, and black irises. A small frame and an ordinary face.
Jo Yerin of Stella’s second-year Class D was one of those girls you could find anywhere.
Of course, having entered Stella at all meant that Jo Yerin had once been the most outstanding and radiant student at her hometown school, but here she was neither especially bad at studying nor especially good at it—just Student A.
Perhaps because her personality was not prickly, and because the very act of casting attack magic on others frightened her, being a magic warrior did not particularly suit her.
Still, her parents, teacher, and friends back home all had expectations for her, so she could not simply give up here.
And so the place her eyes turned toward was League of Spirit.
A sport where you could attack others and finish the match without anyone getting hurt.
Jo Yerin had been drawn to that and joined the League of Spirit club, but even there she failed to show anything remarkable, and all that happened was that she got shoved around from one side to the other.
Then one day, while she was practicing alone, merely hoping that someday she might get a team—
‘Cadet Jo Yerin? Here’s your team.’
She ended up being placed on a team called Mao Lun White with strangers she had never even seen before. Two boys and two girls, they said they had not entered Stella through the magic-warrior department, but had transferred in through the technical-subjects track.
“So this is that second-year cadet?”
“She seems kind of slow for someone aiming to be a magic warrior.”
“Leave it. As long as she can fight well, that’s enough.”
All four of them already seemed to know one another, and they openly ostracized Jo Yerin, but because she was used to that sort of thing, she simply thought that as long as she herself did well, it was fine, and didn’t worry about it too much.
But apparently, Jo Yerin bothered them a great deal.
“Hey, you useless idiot! Are you even a magic-warrior cadet? We lost because of you!”
“I told you to get your ass over and back us up faster! Don’t you know you’re always supposed to reinforce the ascending lane?”
“God, what a pain in the ass.”
A barrage of insults at all hours.
That was your own fault. It was on the minimap. If you had noticed and dodged, that would’ve solved it.
In Jo Yerin’s view, there was not a single thing she herself had done wrong, but because she was so timid, she could not say a word.
And even after several months passed like that, their bullying never changed.
[Defeat! Mao Lun White Team]
Even now, after losing in the school selection matches, the arrows of blame came flying straight at Jo Yerin.
“You moron. You couldn’t even block that one properly? How many times have I told you, when I go in, you rush over and back me up!”
“But there was an enemy knight setting up a defensive line in front of me then. You should’ve looked at my situation before going in…”
“So now you’re saying this is my fault? You crazy bitch! You know if I tell the professor in charge, you’re done immediately, right?”
“Th-that’s…”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake. If that guy had transferred in, we’d have had all five and wouldn’t have had to use this useless bitch.”
“Hey, hey. Stop talking about that.”
At the mention of the transfer student, another team member jumped and cut him off. It seemed to be a sensitive subject, though to Jo Yerin—whose mind was already in tatters—it was of no importance at all.
‘Two straight losses already…’
It was already hopeless for them to qualify.
They would have to win out from here just to barely squeeze into the top three, and for a team with no real teamwork, that was impossible.
If her dream of being selected was crushed like this again this year, then for Jo Yerin, the only option left was to give up League of Spirit cleanly.
[Players whose matches have ended are requested to wait in the lounge.]
Hearing the announcement, Jo Yerin trudged out of the arena with her head hanging low. When a shadow fell over her, she slowly raised her head.
At first she could not see well, because her bangs nearly covered her eyes, but then she recognized who it was and her eyes went wide.
‘Baek Yuseol?’
He was taller than she had expected, and his face looked more mature than before. On the name tag pinned to him, it read:
First-Year S Class, Baek Yuseol.
Jo Yerin swallowed dryly.
What was that famous student doing here all of a sudden?
“Hello, Sunbae-nim.”
“H-huh? Me?”
“Yes. Jo Yerin Sunbae-nim. But why are you speaking so formally?”
“Ah, ah! S-sorry…”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
You idiot! Jo Yerin cursed herself inwardly. Even so, she was supposed to be the senior here, and wasn’t it too pathetic to show such a foolish side to a younger student?
“Um… is this the second time we’ve met…?”
She tried, cautiously, to lead the conversation like a senior, but Baek Yuseol tilted his head.
“Isn’t this the first time?”
“N-no. We met once during the first semester. At the cafeteria, I dropped my tray, and you Blinked over and caught it…”
“Ah.”
How am I supposed to remember that? Baek Yuseol swallowed that thought and smiled instead.
“Yes. Then I guess we have met before.”
“Right. But… what brings you here?”
“I actually came because there’s something I wanted to tell you. Jo Yerin Sunbae-nim, you’ve lost two matches in a row in the selection tournament, haven’t you?”
At those words, she lowered her head completely, looking downcast. Baek Yuseol glanced around, then leaned in close to Jo Yerin.
Ah…
Before she could jerk her head back in surprise, Baek Yuseol whispered quietly,
“Sunbae-nim. Don’t you want to win?”
“H-huh?”
“I can see that you absolutely have the potential. Your judgment is good, and your combat fundamentals are decent too, but you’re being crushed under your team and can’t show what you can really do.”
“I’m not really…”
“No. I’m certain of it. Do you not know me, Sunbae-nim? I’m Baek Yuseol. My brain works like a charm.”
“Ahh! Right! The greatest genius in history, one who even blasphemes the gods!”
“…Where exactly did you hear a nickname like that?”
“Hm? Just in the newspaper.”
“Anyway, forget that. I’ll teach you a crash course on how to win by making use of your strengths.”
At that, Jo Yerin hesitated and glanced nervously behind her. There, four students were gathered together snickering.
It was the Mao Lun White Team.
“Those are the people who said they came from the Mao Lun region?”
“Yeah… I’m just tagging along, that’s all. I think one student who was originally supposed to join couldn’t transfer in, so they put me in instead.”
“Ah, right. That friend must be tumbling around on the hamster wheel of eternal drudgery by now.”
“Hamster wheel?”
“No, it’s nothing. Anyway, let’s do this. You know your next opponents are Patrice Team, right?”
“I’ll lay out a detailed strategy for you, so try acting alone.”
“Go in by yourself.”
“W-what? If I do that…!”
“If you do that, those people won’t leave you alone? So what? Weren’t you already thinking of leaving the team if you lose here anyway?”
“Ah…!”
Jo Yerin blinked in surprise at the way Baek Yuseol had pinpointed her feelings exactly.
“And if you fight the way you are now, you’ll lose the next match anyway. If you’re going to lose, wouldn’t it be better to trust me and at least gamble once?”
Jo Yerin hesitated, wringing her hands, then cautiously asked while glancing around.
“Even if I act alone… will they follow me?”
“They will. No matter what, you’re still on the team too, and they know how big it is when even one person is missing. Right now, they’re more desperate to win than you are.”
“Really…?”
Jo Yerin could not quite understand what he meant, but Baek Yuseol was sure of it.
If they failed to make the main tournament here, there was no telling what would be done to them as dark mages.
“I’m the one who has to go in first…”
She looked nervous.
A full teamfight breaking out under her lead? That was something she had never experienced before. It would probably feel unfamiliar to both her teammates and herself.
But they would definitely win.
‘Because Jo Yerin Sunbae was never supposed to be on that team in the first place.’
In the original game, she had belonged to a better team and played the role of a born strategist who led them, but because the original story had warped, she had ended up wedged into the spot left empty by a dark mage and had been unable to truly shine.
If she could just pull herself together, there would be more than enough reason for the team to win.
“All right, from here…”
Baek Yuseol began explaining, one by one, in detail, analyzing the teams Jo Yerin would face from now on according to the bracket.
It took quite a while, but Jo Yerin understood everything he was saying, and she quickly realized what an incredibly valuable gift he had given her.
“But… is it really okay for you to do this for me? We’re all competitors, aren’t we?”
Now that she thought about it, that was true.
Why would he suddenly come over and help a rival?
But if he gave some serious excuse here, that would only sound more suspicious.
“Well, I’m just helping out, that’s all. Anyway, good luck. Make sure you qualify for the main tournament.”
After saying that, Baek Yuseol vanished almost at once, and Jo Yerin wrote down the strategy he had analyzed for her on paper and clutched it tightly to her chest.
‘I’m going to win too!’
She was sick of a life where she lost every time.
Now that she had made it into Stella, shouldn’t something change for once?
“All right!”
She gave herself a quiet little cheer in a timid, low voice, but then immediately shrank her shoulders and hurried off in embarrassment, worried someone might have seen.
It seemed her personality was not going to change overnight.
“So. You’re telling us you went off to help another team?”
Eizel asked again with an incredulous look, and Baek Yuseol replied while eating bread.
“There were circumstances.”
“Mmmm… I know there are always circumstances with you, but to skip even dinner, which is basically our team meeting time, to go help another team…”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. That team and ours don’t meet in the bracket.”
In that sense, you could almost say it was a relief.
If they had ended up in a situation where they absolutely had to face Mao Lun White Team, Baek Yuseol might have had to persuade Flame and manipulate the game so they would deliberately lose.
But he quickly realized that simply throwing one game would not be enough.
Mao Lun White Team’s record was catastrophically bad.
At least, fortunately, fate had smiled on them, because a future excellent player named Jo Yerin belonged to that team.
From now on, just by giving her a tiny push, Mao Lun White Team would go on a winning streak.
‘If that happens…’
Then Baek Yuseol would have completely fulfilled Professor Raidin’s request.
That meant Raidin would now be in a position where he absolutely had to fulfill Baek Yuseol’s request:
Anella’s transfer.
“So what? We’ve already racked up a ton of points. We can afford to relax a little.”
Flame said that and stretched.
More important than that was the next match, because they were scheduled to encounter Ga Yurin’s Emerald Stella Team there.
In the original romance fantasy novel, Eizel met and fought Ga Yurin, and in the end Eizel won and overcame the emotional arc tied to it.
In the original game, meanwhile…
Flame smashed through everything.
That was because the League of Spirit part of the story focused more on the protagonist’s action scenes than on emotional development with the male lead.
“Oh, the next match started.”
At Eizel’s words, Flame and Baek Yuseol raised their heads.
[Emerald Stella vs Today Members]
Both were named teams, and it would not have been strange for either one to make the main tournament.
But Flame and Baek Yuseol could predict the result easily.
“Ga Yurin’s side will lose.”
“Eh, really? I thought Emerald Team was stronger…”
“They are. But they lose.”
They could not explain why.
It was simply fate that, after her team was defeated due to Ga Yurin’s blunder and their points became precarious, they would then meet Flame’s team.
[Victory! Today Members Team]
[Defeat! Emerald Stella Team]
Just as expected, Emerald Stella Team wrecked their late-game management through Ga Yurin’s solo actions and suffered a ridiculous defeat.
If they lost even one more time here, their hopes of reaching the main stage would be shattered.
And trampling that hope thoroughly—
was the protagonist’s role.
To be honest, that part only mattered to Flame. For Baek Yuseol, it did not really matter either way, so he did not think deeply about it.
Rather…
[Mao Lun White vs Black Circus]
Jo Yerin, gripping her staff with trembling hands as though she were nervous, and the four dark mages wearing expressions as grim as if they had bitten into shit because they thought they were finished if they lost again this time.
The opposing team also looked tense, apparently in the same situation.
‘They’ll win.’
As the match began and Jo Yerin was the first to start moving aggressively, Baek Yuseol became certain.
Hawol Plains, Lotus Inn.
“All right. These are last year’s past exam questions. This is a collection of this year’s mock exams. And this is a manual on spell composition and its answer guide, and this is a thesis on plural perspectives in the theory of multi-layer magic design. They say it’ll be this year’s essay topic, so make sure you get familiar with it.”
Thud! Thud! Thuuud!
Thick books piled up one after another.
Anella stared at them blankly, her hand stopping in the middle of her studying.
“There. That should be enough, right? I need to run an errand for milady, so I’ll be off now.”
“Wait a moment!”
When Anella hurriedly grabbed the maid who was about to leave, the maid tilted her head.
“Hm? What is it? Would you like some orange juice? Or candy?”
“I’m not a child…”
The way she was being treated was strangely infuriating.
Thanks to Baek Yuseol’s request, being able to stay at Zeliel’s Starcloud Trading Company was good, and being able to study was good too, but—
the pace of the studying was fast.
Far too fast.
“You said your goal was to transfer in this year, didn’t you? Miss Zeliel is the type to take anything Baek Yuseol asks completely seriously, so she set the schedule very tightly. Ah, and soon a private tutor from Stella will be coming too. They’re still young and busy with research, but apparently she bribed them by dangling access to a laboratory.”
Oh my, that’s a secret, by the way. Saying that cheekily, the maid scurried off, and Anella dropped her face onto the desk with a hollow thunk.
“I hate… studying…”
Why had she ever thought that becoming human would be full of happy life?
The version of herself who had imagined laughing and running around under a bright blue sky with butterflies, squirrels, and cats now seemed nothing but stupid.
Humans were a species that studied and worked until they died just to survive.
“Uwaaaaah…”
Anella felt as though her soul were leaving her through her mouth, but at that very moment, she imagined Zeliel’s apparition appearing from somewhere, grabbing her soul by the scruff of the neck, and stuffing it right back into her body through her mouth.
If it was for the sake of getting Anella into Stella, Zeliel would stop at nothing.
“Save meeee…”
Even today, somewhere in Lotus Inn, the mournful cries of some girl could be heard, but because Miss Zeliel kept her hidden so thoroughly, no one ever learned the truth of who it was.
It was truly unfortunate.
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