Into The Typhoon

Ro-un looked at the blue car, so dark it almost looked black.
The dark-blue car stopped smoothly, then the driver’s seat door opened and a long leg stretched out.

Step.

Every being gathered there stared at the figure who had stepped out of the deep-blue car, unable even to breathe.

“Oh my, my, my, my, my.”

A blush spread across Proprietress Gu So-ye’s face.
The being who had gotten out of the car opened the passenger-side door, then walked this way while holding someone in his arms.
The white child held in the new guest’s arms reached out.

“Ro-uung!”
“…Hello.”
“Kyahaha!”
“It has been a while, Student Lee Ro-un.”
“Welcome, Baekdu Chairman.”

Ro-un answered reflexively.
The child’s laughter filled the space where silence had fallen.
The new guests were Yong Chang-jin, Chairman of Baekdu Academy, and his only child, Yong Yu-jeong.

‘That tiger. He should have told me there was more than one guest!’

When Yu-jeong tugged on Yong Chang-jin’s arm, Yong Chang-jin set Yu-jeong down on the floor.
The moment the child’s feet touched the floor, he immediately ran over.

“Ro-uung!”
Dadadadada!
Flop!

Ro-un crouched and caught Yu-jeong in his arms.

“Ro-uung! Missed you!”
“Me too. Yu-jeong, your speech gets better every time I see you. You’re smart.”
“Heheh!”
“It improved every time I said we were going to see you.”
“Oh my, my, my, my.”

Proprietress Gu could not say anything specific and only repeated “oh my.”
To think it was not a seductive look, but a pure reaction like a young girl’s.
Surely she did not like Chairman Yong Chang-jin, right?
He had a child and was a married man, so Ro-un hoped she would restrain herself.

“I was not informed by Chairman Baek Ho-yeon that there would be two guests, so I almost kept a guest waiting. I apologize.”
“It is not the Saint’s fault.”
“That’s correct. If anyone is at fault, it would be Chairman Baek, who failed to convey the information properly. Since it is Chairman Baek Ho-yeon, there is a possibility that he deliberately didn’t tell you everything.”
“Oh? You know him well. Have you two met again without telling me? Tell me if you have.”
“Gu So-ye. You haven’t changed either.”

Proprietress Gu poked Chairman Yong’s forearm.
He accepted all that? Could Chairman Yong perhaps also?
At that moment, the two beings looked in one direction at the same time.
When Ro-un reflexively looked where they were looking, another car was entering.

‘There are more guests?’

He would have to bring this up too when he complained later.
While Ro-un added one more thing to the list of complaints he would make to the chairman, the door of a familiar-looking white car flew open before the car had even fully stopped.

“Saaaaint!”
“Princess! Please wait!”
“Princess In-woo?!”

While Ro-un was surprised by the unexpected person who got out of the car, In-woo, who had shot out like a bullet, stopped as if someone had pressed the stop button the moment she saw Ro-un holding Yu-jeong in his arms.

“Hh,”
“Princess?”
“Hwaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“P-Princess? Why are you crying again?”
“Whyyyyyy are you holding that one again, hwaaaah!”

Ah.
The shrimp caught between a dragon and a tiger let out a low sigh.

‘I absolutely have to complain about this.’

Ro-un lowered himself while resenting Baek Ho-yeon.

“Hic.”
“Princess. Have you calmed down a little now?”
“Hic. Y-yes, hic.”

It seemed she hadn’t.

[Whine.]

Ro-un sent a look to his Hyung, who was held in In-woo’s arms, asking him to stay there just a little longer.
Ro-un kept moving the hand patting In-woo’s back.
Yu-jeong was held in his other arm.

‘Why am I doing this here? I need to hurry and train Joo Hee-jun.’

Half of the one hour he had instructed Cheon Su-ho to use had already passed.
That meant In-woo had been sobbing for nearly thirty minutes.

‘This is all because of that immature father tiger.’

Ro-un glared sideways at Baek Ho-yeon.
The sight of the long-lived Divine Beasts gathered together and leisurely enjoying tea after leaving the children to him was irritating to watch.
Whether Lee Ro-un glared at them or not, those over there were casually chatting about how they had been.

“What’s this? When I asked to see your faces, you never listened, but the two of you gathered for something like this?”
“This is my academy.”
“You threw a tantrum and took it from the Association. It has only been a month or two since you came here.”
“Anyway, right now, this place is mine.”
“So petty! Then Chang-jin, why did you come here?”
“I heard the news that Jiri Academy and Bukhan Academy were holding an exchange sparring match, so I came for a new exchange between Jiri and Baekdu.”
“So unfair! I should’ve become a chairman too.”
“Weren’t you connected to Geumseol’s side?”
“My name is only listed on the board of directors. If I directly interfere with operations, the work increases too much. I like things the way they are now.”
“Then why are you whining?”
“I just regret not having a foot in this side too. It’s a relief I at least run a personal broadcasting business.”
“Gu So-ye. You have always been interested in entertainers.”
“You have always gone around stirring up work here and there.”
“Frankly, Ho-yeon, if I didn’t own a business in personal broadcasting, you wouldn’t have been able to broadcast the sparring match either, would you? You don’t trust humans.”

Proprietress Gu struck the black-hearted tiger right where it hurt.
Baek Ho-yeon said one thing.

“Yeah. Even so, I’m the one who found Student Lee Ro-un first.”

How old was that tiger, exactly?
Ro-un was horrified by the childish tone that even an elementary school student wouldn’t use.

“Ro-uung?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t look over there, Yu-jeong.”
“Ung!”
“Hic.”
“Princess, please try some tea too.”
“Thank you. Sniff.”

While looking after the two children, Ro-un opened his ears wide.
Just then, the two beings of the same generation were scolding Baek Ho-yeon.

“It seems mold grew in your brain while you were shut away in your cave.”
“Ho-yeon. I think you need to look into how the human world works.”
“You two. Your jealousy is ugly.”

Jealousy? They were 200 percent right.
The dragon and the fox also looked at the tiger as if he were pathetic.

Squeeze.

At the force tugging on his sleeve, Ro-un’s gaze lowered.

“Princess? Do you have something to say?”
“Saint, do you dislike it that I came?”
“No. There’s no way I would. I was just surprised and happy that you came, Princess.”
“Is that so?”

In-woo’s face brightened.

“Princess. You came to see me, right? That is why you came even though a typhoon is coming.”
“That’s right! Saint, I came to see you!”
“Thank you. For coming to cheer me on.”
“I didn’t come only to cheer you on!”

In-woo clenched her fists and spoke.
Ro-un reflexively ruffled In-woo’s hair.
At Ro-un’s rough hair-ruffling touch, Ray and Yu-jeong also pushed their heads forward as if waiting for his hand.
After the cute gesture, he roughly rubbed both their heads as well, then continued from In-woo’s words.

“What did you come for besides cheering me on?”
“I saw an ill shadow fall over you on the day the typhoon comes, Saint, so I came to tell you that.”
“Over me, a shadow?”

He felt the heads of the three beings who had been enjoying tea turn this way.
It seemed something would happen on the day of the spar against the Bukhan bastards.

Swaaaaaa!

Because the typhoon was making landfall, wind and rain battered the area.
The staff Gu So-ye had brought checked the facilities so that rain would not blow into the temporary stage and spectator seats set up for the sparring match.

“Can you see?”
“Yeah.”
“I can see well.”

Then people began gathering one by one in the spectator seats after the inspection was complete.

“Over there! Stay in line!”
“Entry will begin shortly. Everyone, please line up!”

With more people than expected, the local government officials ran around until their feet sweated.
And for some reason, people in suits barely containing their bulging muscles and beautiful women with pretty faces were diligently guarding the stage where the sparring match would be held.
For staff, they had a somewhat, somehow fierce atmosphere.
The Jiri Academy students who had come to watch whispered as they looked at the security personnel, who for some reason had an atmosphere that made them hard to approach.

“Those people are kind of scary.”
“They’re security personnel, right?”
“Did they come from the Association?”
“I don’t think so… Still, aren’t there a lot of them?”
“Isn’t it because juvenile Awakeners have more unstable power than adults?”
“It must be because there’s a higher risk of accidents, right?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Still, aren’t there a bit too many people? Where did all those people come from?”
“They’re apparently people from an outside company.”

Suddenly, one student spoke up.

“What are they installing over there?”
“It’s apparently an item that can install a barrier.”
“Did our school have equipment that could install barriers?”
“If we had something like that, they would have sold it off ages ago.”

The students around them nodded.
No one involved with Jiri Academy could fail to know how much of a mess the school’s operations had been.

Ruuuumble.

At the thunder, the students’ heads turned up to the sky.

“A spar in this weather of all things.”
“They said the typhoon already made landfall in Jeju-do.”
“They say it’ll make landfall here in a day or two too.”
“Wow. Then can’t they delay it a little?”
“If they delay it, they’ll pick on them for delaying it, won’t they? They’ll ask if it’s because they’re scared.”

The students, who could not bring themselves to deny it, grew solemn.

“What kind of crazy bastards spar in this weather?”
“If you put it that way, we came to watch too, so who are we to say anything?“
“…True.”
“Those crazy bastards were us.”
“It’s okay. We’re not the only crazy ones.”

A Jiri student spoke in a drained voice while looking at the nearly full spectator seats.
Seeing the white uniforms and white cheering tools over there, had the Bukhan bastards come to cheer?

“One, two, three!”
“Receive Bukhan Mountain’s spirit~”

At someone’s lead, students assumed to be Bukhan students sang their school song.

“Wow. Cheering so boldly in the middle of enemy territory.”
“Should I say they’re thick-skinned, or should I say they’re shameless?”
“Aren’t those the same thing?”
“More importantly, did you guys know? Apparently, illegal sports betting sites have bets up on whether we or the Bukhan bastards will win.”
“What?”
“What is the Association doing, not catching things like this?”
“One vote for there being someone involved with a betting site among the Association bastards.”
“One vote from me too.”
“Yeah. Three votes.”
“Even when the Association is in this much chaos right now, there’s still a guy doing that? Four votes.”
“You believe it too.”

While the students were talking noisily, one side suddenly grew noisy.

“They’re here.”

The Bukhan Academy bastards confidently entered the barrier as if they were students here.
Those guys, who had come out of nowhere and picked a fight, even showed enough composure to wave at the cheering students wearing Bukhan Academy’s white uniforms.

Waaaaaaaah!
Go!
Do well!
Fighting!
Kyaaah!

An explosive cheer burst out from a very small section of the spectator seats.
Wow. Listen to those lungs.
At the cheers of the visiting Bukhan students, the students in black uniforms looked over as if slightly fed up.

“Wow. Listen to those lungs.”
“Would we even enter their eyes?”
“They probably wouldn’t even treat us as the same kind in the first place.”

Seeing guests making loud noise in someone else’s house made the Jiri students feel uncomfortable.
Just before they fell into self-loathing over the fact that they could not raise their voices in this situation, Ro-un appeared.

“It’s Lee Ro-un.”
“President.”
“Student council president.”

The students looked at Ro-un and the two others with flushed faces.
However, intimidated by the performance the Bukhan Academy students had shown, they swallowed their frustration and couldn’t let out even one cheer.
That was when it happened.

“Saaaaint! Do your best!”
A child’s loud voice rang out from the front.
A girl with reddish-brown hair, as if dyed by sunlight, was shouting with her hands cupped together.
The white-haired boy sitting beside her laughed brightly and waved.

“Ro-uung! Fighting!”

Who are those kids?
It felt like there was someone beside them, or maybe not.
More importantly, even children were cheering at the top of their lungs, so what about us!
The students, drawing strength from the children, began to raise their voices.

“P-President! Do your best!”
“Don’t lose!”
“Kill those guys!”
“Uwaaaaah!”

The voices that began one by one burst through the downpour like cannons.
Even amid the pouring rain and wind, the heat seemed to spread, and the students rose from their seats and cheered for the three.
Ro-un looked back at the students and nodded.

“Did you see? The president looked this way!”
“I saw it too.”
“I think our eyes met.”

The seven people and one animal with the academy’s honor at stake faced one another under the barrier blocking the rain.
Perhaps because they didn’t like that the Jiri students had started to push back against the Bukhan students’ cheers, the leisure they had shown while even waving on the way in vanished from their faces, and a sharp light entered their eyes.

“Lee Ro-un. If you rethink this even now, we can make this sparring match never have happened.”

You can?
So they were still thinking like that.

“Even after rethinking it, I can clearly see that you’re scared of us.”

At Ro-un’s provocation, the atmosphere on the other side changed.

“If we’re that scary to you, fine. This time, I won’t use [Healing] on my teammates. Well, I probably won’t need to use it anyway.”
“You’re going to regret those words.”
“We’ll have to see who regrets what.”

Tension rose between the two groups.
Through the suffocating air, Gu So-ye, who was serving as the referee, entered in a red suit.

“Now! Everyone, please stand in your positions.”

Gu So-ye held a microphone and gestured like an emcee.
Somehow, Proprietress Gu seemed more excited than they were.

“Please take care of the hosting.”
“I look forward to it.”

Even after seeing that Gu So-ye was serving as the referee, they didn’t bother raising an objection.
They had probably vaguely realized Proprietress Gu’s identity.
Proprietress Gu So-ye owned a lot of real estate in Gangnam and many businesses, so as children of power-holders, they might know if they knew.

“Are both sides ready?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”

Ro-un and Kim Jun-tae answered as representatives.

“The condition for defeat will be being rendered unable to continue the sparring match. Do you accept?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”

Ahead of the sparring match, only concise answers passed between them.
Gu So-ye curved her red lips and announced the start of the match.

“Then we will begin the friendly sparring match between Jiri Academy students and Bukhan Academy students. Both sides, to your positions. Begin!”

At Gu So-ye’s signal, attacks shot out from both sides.

Kim Jun-tae gave an instruction.

“Mi-ru.”
“Yeah.”

As they had discussed in advance, the gunner An Mi-ru fired a warning shot.

Bang!
Ting!

At the same time as the gunshot, something was deflected.
The deflected bullet grazed past An Mi-ru’s ear.
If she hadn’t dodged, it might have grazed her cheek instead of her ear.
An Mi-ru looked at the person who had deflected the bullet.

“Mm. If I’m going to use it in actual combat, I’ll need to refine it a little more.”
“Cheon Su-ho….”

It was annoying that Cheon Su-ho had deflected the attack, but as their data predicted, Cheon Su-ho was the first to rush out from that side.
However, although there had been opinions that he was likely inexperienced because he had only recently overcome <Mana Disability>, Cheon Su-ho was showing excellent reaction speed.

‘Fine. Still according to analysis.’

An Mi-ru stepped back, and Kim Jun-tae took her place, charging at Cheon Su-ho with his shield in front.
While Cheon Su-ho moved lightly and dodged, Kim Jun-tae bound Cheon Su-ho’s feet, and Hwang Yu-na and An Mi-ru charged in, targeting Lee Ro-un.
The two running quickly had already taken the medicine Tae Seong-ho had given them and had their movement speed increased.

“Got you!”

Hwang Yu-na swung her weapon, dual swords, toward Lee Ro-un.
She was unhesitating because she knew Lee Ro-un had the [Protection] skill.
At that moment, a brilliantly multicolored barrier blocked the sword coming down like lightning.

Claaang!

[Woof!]
“Thanks, Hyung.”
“Eek! Was this spirit a defense-type?”
“Fine. Continue attacking.”
“Don’t attack blindly! This barrier felt like it bounced back my force!”
“Reflection? Understood.”

An Mi-ru changed the type of bullet.
It was a bullet engraved with magic that increased penetration power.
Magic-engraved bullets were extremely expensive, but An Mi-ru’s financial power was enough to handle them.
At that moment, Kim Jun-tae gave an instruction to the two.

“Aim somewhere else!”
“Got it.”

Following Kim Jun-tae’s instruction, Hwang Yu-na immediately changed the direction of her attack and targeted Joo Hee-jun.
Since he had been near Ro-un, Joo Hee-jun’s face, completely exposed to the attack, filled Hwang Yu-na’s vision.
Joo Hee-jun’s expression was input directly into her mind.

‘Something is wrong.’

Joo Hee-jun was smiling.
Before she could pull herself back, Joo Hee-jun’s mouth opened first.

〔Burn!〕

Fwoooooosh!

At that single word, spoken without any motion at all, enormous flames surged up.