Chapter 38: The Catacomb Preliminary Begins

Jinhae

The next three days were a tutorial.

Any veteran gamer recognized the pattern. The Academy gave every candidate busywork before the real test. Scheduled evaluations. Orientation lectures. Division-specific assessments meant to sort the hopeless from the merely mediocre before the preliminary wasted everyone's time.

For Support Court West, the busywork was a written examination.

I looked at the first question.

A forward scout reports three demonic beasts of unknown classification converging on a supply column. You have one sword unit, one healer, and forty minutes of daylight. Describe your deployment.

I dipped the brush. The answer was a mid-game logistics tutorial. I wrote it out in clean, unhurried strokes.

The second question was about field triage priority. The third was terrain analysis for a mountain pass ambush. The fourth was a demonic-beast identification exercise.

I knew every answer before I read the question.

I finished in a third of the allotted time and set the brush down.

Ahyun's evaluation was practical.

Medical Court South ran its candidates through a field-hospital simulation. Wounded actors with painted injuries.

I watched from the covered walk outside the south courtyard during the second afternoon.

When she finished, she bowed to the evaluators and walked to where I stood.

“How was it?”

“Simple, Young Master.” She kept her voice low. “The herbs were common. The wounds were predictable.”

“Good.” I watched the next candidate fumble with a tourniquet.

Seolhwa's trials were in Martial Pavilion East.

I did not watch those directly. The martial evaluations were closed to non-sword candidates.

Haeun Seol had cut through every sparring partner the evaluators put in front of her.

“The Haeun kid,” a boy in the meal line said to his friend. “Took apart a third-year practice dummy in four strokes. The instructors made him do it again because they thought the first one was a fluke.”

I ate my rice and listened.

Seolhwa's cover was holding.

Seorin's seal examination happened in the northern annex above the library.

Seal Gallery was the quietest division. Twelve candidates total. Most of them looked like they had been raised in rooms full of books and had only recently discovered that sunlight existed.

Seorin fit in perfectly.

On the second evening the four of us sat in the small courtyard between Support Court West and the kitchens.

I poured tea and handed a cup to Seorin.

“When the preliminary comes, I need to know what you can do under pressure.”

“Binding,” she said. “Short-range immobilization. I can hold a single target in place for roughly eight breaths if the seal is prepared. Longer if I layer two. I can also do suppression—it dampens Qi circulation. Useful against cultivators. Less useful against demonic beasts.”

“Anything offensive?”

Seorin hesitated.

“I have a detonation seal. Paper burns. The Qi releases as concussive force.” She turned the teacup in her hands.

I turned to Seolhwa.

“Combat radius?”

“I'm best in close to mid-range.” She didn't look up from her tea. “My Qi output is—” She stopped. Corrected herself. “Sufficient.”

She had almost said something about her actual cultivation level. The Namgung heir's real output would have blown the Haeun cover wide open.

“Sufficient works,” I said. “The preliminary is a four-person field evaluation. We don't know the scenario yet. The party that completes the objective fastest with the fewest injuries wins the highest placement.”

Seorin's eyes moved between us.

“You want to run drills,” she said. “Before the preliminary.”

“Starting tomorrow morning.”

Seolhwa straightened.

“How early?”

“Early enough that the courtyard is empty.”

The training sessions started.

I ran them the way a raid leader ran progression nights. Clear roles. Short callouts.

“Seolhwa, left flank. Seorin, binding seal on my mark. Ahyun, rear. Stay behind Seolhwa's shadow until I call for healing.”

The first run was ugly.

Seorin placed a binding seal two steps too far left. Seolhwa overcommitted on the flank and left the center open. Ahyun hesitated on the healing call because she was watching Seolhwa's swords instead of listening for my voice.

I stopped them.

“Again.”

The second run was less ugly.

“Move.”

The third was almost clean.

Communication was the thing that made my build viable. In a game designed around a single overpowered sword saint cutting through everything, the support character existed to do one thing: make everyone else better. Call the openings. Read the field. Put the right person in the right place at the right time.

There was one other thing about the Academy that the game never explained properly: the gender ratio.

The official lore said male cultivators developed differently. Yang-dominant meridians. Rarer. That was the line.

It was all bullshit. This was an erogame. The developers needed a campus full of beautiful women for the player character to seduce. The lore was reverse-engineered from the harem fantasy, not the other way around.

The result was roughly one man for every ten women.

It showed on the first morning. Meal hall. Courtyards. Training grounds. Groups of women. Young sword practitioners in white. Healers in soft blue. A few Unorthodox girls in dark robes.

The men who were here stood out like boulders in a flower field.

That was the other side of the ratio. The game needed its male NPCs to be credible threats—rival love interests, faction leaders, mentors, antagonists. A man who made it through the Academy gates was, by definition, among the best the Murim had produced in his generation.

Which meant that every man on campus was automatically treated as a leader. The women gravitated toward them. The Academy's own evaluation structure reinforced it—mixed parties required at least one strategist or commander, and the men who entered Support or Strategy tracks were so rare that they were assigned to parties before anyone else.

I had been assigned to my own party before arrival. That was the advantage of registering as a group.

The dynamic was already visible. Women weighing the men in the courtyards for a team leader.

I had already proved mine. The ogre. The callouts. The fact that Seolhwa deferred to my voice in training without argument.

Three women. Three routes. All of them looking at the crippled support candidate with zero Qi like he was the most important man on campus.

The men who noticed didn't like it.

I didn't care.

The central pavilion was the largest structure on the Academy grounds. The noise was enormous—hundreds of candidates filtering in through four entrance arches, finding seats, arguing, stretching, adjusting weapons.

My party gathered near the western arch.

The drum sounded.

An Alliance official in formal gray stepped onto the raised platform at the north end of the arena.

“Candidates. The preliminary field evaluation begins in one hour.”

He let the murmurs die before continuing.

“Beneath this pavilion lies the Catacomb. Ten floors. Each floor holds demonic entities captured and contained by the Academy's seal corps over the past forty years. The deeper the floor, the stronger the prisoners.”

Silence spread through the pavilion.

“Your task is the first floor. Only the first floor. Any party that descends past the first-floor boundary will be pulled and disqualified.”

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“There are twenty entrance gates spaced along the first floor's perimeter. Your party will be assigned one gate at random. Once inside, you will navigate the floor and locate one of the exit gates. The exits are not marked. They are not in the same location as the entrances. Finding them is part of the evaluation.”

He paused.

“You will be scored on multiple criteria. Combat efficiency against any demonic entities you encounter. Party coordination. Navigation under pressure. Time to completion. Injuries sustained. And tactical decision-making, including the decision to avoid fights you cannot win.”

His gaze swept the crowd.

“The first floor contains low-tier demonic beasts. They can still kill you if you are careless or stupid.”

He let that sit.

“Parties will be called by registration number.”

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

“Questions are not taken. Prepare yourselves.”

The official stepped down.

I scanned the eastern arch and stopped.

He stood at the center of a four-woman party.

His face was exactly what I remembered from the loading screen.

Baek Museong.