I Became a Swordsmanship Genius at the Academy

---

“Huff… huff…!”

Namgoong Min, sword raised high, panted heavily.

His stamina and mana had long since run dry from the protracted battle, and he looked like a ragged mess, yet he couldn’t afford to stop.

There were still many foes he had to face.

Poof! Crack!

The strength behind his slashing and stabbing was nowhere near what it used to be. His body just wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to.

Namgoong Min fought as best he could, but the wounds etched on his body were steadily increasing.

His focus had dwindled as well.

“Cough…!”

In the end, he allowed a deep gash to open on his abdomen.

He tried to concentrate the little mana he had left, but the bleeding showed no signs of stopping.

As a result, Namgoong Min had no choice but to use his left hand to staunch the bleeding, and having one hand bound was a fatal weakness in battle.

“It finally broke through!”

“Push forward!”

Seeing his chance, Namgoong Min dodged back, avoiding the onslaught of enemies.

The front line was slowly collapsing, and soon he felt something touch his back.

“…Did you get hit too?”

“Yeah. I made a mistake.”

That touch was the back of Namgoong Hyuk.

He too was in a bad situation, having sustained deep injuries and being pushed back.

The Namgoong brothers, having turned their backs to each other, found themselves surrounded by enemies.

There was no gap to break through, nor any strength left to do so.

“…We’re completely surrounded.”

“Damn bugs. Where are all these pests coming from?”

“It’s all because of that guy.”

The brothers’ gaze fell on an individual outside the encirclement.

Known among the guards as the Ascetic, he possessed healing abilities that were hard to comprehend.

No matter how serious the injuries sustained, with just a touch from the Ascetic, anyone would spring back up and charge back into the fray.

Thanks to his abilities, the Namgoong brothers had to fight against enemies whose numbers never seemed to dwindle, no matter how many they defeated.

“Finally stopped rampaging, huh? You beastly things.”

The Ascetic said with a scowl.

He found it extremely displeasing that he had wasted this much time dealing with the two.

Moreover, the losses to his strength were significant, so once the situation was resolved, he could expect no leniency.

“Beasts, throw down your weapons and surrender even now. I’ll grant you a quick death. It is the last mercy bestowed by the heavens.”

A dense aura of bloodlust radiated from the Ascetic’s body.

Even though they only felt the killing intent, the Namgoong brothers recognized that the Ascetic was much stronger than they were at present.

However, that alone would not break the Namgoong brothers.

“I can’t tell who’s the beast here. These jackasses have long since given up being human.”

At Namgoong Hyuk’s mocking words, Namgoong Min couldn’t help but burst into laughter as he naturally fell back into his previous manner of speaking.

“Pfft! Spoken like a true sage. And seriously, who’s gonna surrender after hearing that? I mean, they’re saying they’re gonna kill you anyway. Isn’t that a bit dumb?”

“They’re dumb enough to be here in the first place. If they weren’t dumb, they wouldn’t have joined that cult.”

“How dare they!”

The Ascetic’s eyes became red with fury at the sight before him.

As the energy streaming from his two hands engulfed the surroundings, the fallen guards began to rise all at once.

“Cut off their limbs and drag them over to me. I’ll personally gouge out their eyes and cut off their tongues, then throw them into a pigpen!”

The frenzied guards surged like a tidal wave.

Watching as the encirclement quickly closed in, Namgoong Min spoke.

“…Should we not have said anything?”

“If we hadn’t, it would’ve been the same, I think.”

“Is that so? Then I should’ve thrown in a bit more sass.”

“The art of restraint. Stopping right here is the most infuriating thing.”

“Ou. Quite profound.”

Even on the brink of death, they didn’t lose their composure.

Instead, they relaxed and chuckled, bantering with each other.

“Giving up now is too late. The moment you rejected my offer, your fate was already sealed!”

To the enemies, they appeared to have resigned, but the Namgoong brothers had no intention of dying here.

They simply didn’t need to fight any longer.

The time they had promised with another brother had arrived.

Boom!

The explosion that echoed from the entrance of the building made the corners of the Namgoong brothers’ mouths rise up.

“They finally arrived.”

“You’re later than I expected.”

K-boom!!

Before the enemies could react, a bolt of lightning struck horizontally to the ground, sweeping across the battlefield.

Enemies caught in the lightning fell like weeds.

A calamity that tore through the air and sliced through the earth.

None dared to stand in its path.

“……Huh.”

“……Amazing.”

Once the moment of the sword clash subsided, the Namgoong brothers looked around the battlefield in disbelief.

In an instant, it had become quiet, with only corpses scattered about.

‘That guy… cut him down in one blow….’

Among the bodies, there lay an Ascetic with his head cleanly severed, just like the other guards.

His healing abilities and martial arts, focused on defense, were a difficult combination to break through even for the Namgoong brothers.

Yet that guy had died without even managing a small revolt.

“…Was he really this weak?”

The Namgoong brothers couldn’t help but be speechless in admiration until Kim Il-sin approached them.

Standing before the Namgoong brothers, Kim Il-sin spoke rapidly.

“Thanks for your help. You’ve worked hard. I should clean this place up for you, but it seems something urgent has come up. I’m sorry.”

“Uh, yeah. You should hurry.”

The Namgoong brothers nodded without any extra words.

From Kim Il-sin’s expression, it was clear he was in a hurry.

“Thank you.”

With those parting words, Kim Il-sin dashed off in the direction of Jangsangul.

Thud.

“Phew.”

“That was tough…”

Once Kim Il-sin disappeared, the Namgoong brothers collapsed onto the ground.

They had no strength left to even lift a finger.

For a while, they lay there in silence.

“How much did you see?”

In the meantime, Namgoong Min looked up at the sky and asked.

He was inquiring about how much they had witnessed during Kim Il-sin’s swordplay.

“About 30%. What about you?”

“40%.”

“No way. You must’ve misjudged.”

“No, I saw it all correctly.”

“Ah, I miscalculated. Now that I think about it, I’d say about 45%.”

“That’s just pure nonsense.”

The Namgoong brothers continued their playful squabbling over meaningless topics, fueled by their pride.

“……”

“……”

Then, at some point, silence fell upon them, and after a few minutes, Namgoong Hyuk finally spoke.

“I need to increase my training time.”

“We should raise the difficulty too.”

With that commitment, the Namgoong brothers heard multiple footsteps approaching.

“Who’s that?”

“Fortunately, they don’t seem to be enemies.”

The approaching figures turned out to be heroes from the Fengshin Guild who had come to assist.

Park Eun-ho, leading the charge, spotted the Namgoong brothers and rushed over to ask.

“You guys okay?”

“As you can see, we’re fine.”

“Seeing you say that makes it seem like you really are fine. What are your names?”

“I’m Namgoong Min, and this is Namgoong Hyuk.”

“Hmm. Got it.”

Park Eun-ho nodded and called their guild’s healer.

As the light infused with healing magic shot towards the Namgoong brothers, the blood flowing from their wounds gradually stopped.

“How long do you think this will take?”

“I’ll just need a quick three minutes to staunch the bleeding. The rest of the treatment will be done at the hospital after we transfer you. The environment here isn’t the best for recovery.”

“Got it? Just rest for now.”

Park Eun-ho did not regard the Namgoong brothers with suspicion.

Because they wore the uniforms of Cosmo Academy, he had recalled their names.

As the team leader of the Fengshin Guild, he remembered all the promising students from the academy.

“You two didn’t do this all by yourselves. Where’s Kim Il-sin?”

Before launching into the operation to eradicate the Blood Sky Cult, Kim Il-sin had asked to be assigned to one of their branches, and this was it.

“He left in a hurry. We don’t know what it was about.”

“In a hurry?”

“Yeah. But we don’t know what the urgency was about.”

“I see. That’s too bad.”

Park Eun-ho glanced around. The scene was filled with the corpses of guards who had lost their lives in a single stroke.

It wasn’t difficult to identify the bodies that Kim Il-sin had dealt with.

‘Perfect. Exceptionally efficient.’

He had cut through only the vital points, claiming their lives in one fell swoop.

And yet, the severed ends were unnaturally clean—a result of his exceeded skill level.

“I thought I had become pretty strong myself….”

Breaking through the wall that had held him back for several years, he reached the A-rank of heroes.

However, it seemed he hadn’t grown nearly as much as Kim Il-sin.

“Each time I see him, I’m amazed. …I wonder where he is now.”

From the mere traces left behind, Park Eun-ho couldn’t fathom Kim Il-sin’s level.

That was why he felt disappointed.

‘Maybe I should ask him for some personal training later. The odds are slim, but if I catch him off guard…’

Just as Park Eun-ho was mulling that over, a deputy team leader rushing in from investigating the Blood Sky Cult’s branch shouted.

“Team leader! You need to come quickly! Hurry!”

Responding to the deputy team leader’s call, Park Eun-ho raced to the top floor of the building, where he discovered the bodies of two bishops.

“Th-These corpses… They’re bishops, right…? They look like they could be…”

Unsure of his own words as he alternated between the sketch and the bodies, Park Eun-ho began to think.

‘I should ask for personal instruction instead of just sparring.’