Magic Academy’s Genius Blinker

A certain memory surged into Baek Yu-Seol’s mind like a wave.

“Mom, I will definitely become a great mage when I grow up!”

Baek Yu-Seol could tell right away.

This was another Baek Yu-Seol’s memory.

In other words, the character in Aether World, Baek Yu-Seol, had the same name as the real him.

“That’s right. You can do it.”

In a world where everything was determined by magic, those who weren’t mages were condemned to live as the lowest class.

Character Baek Yu-Seol’s family was exactly like that.

Born and raised between a mother and a father who could not learn magic, Baek Yu-Seol dreamed of becoming a mage despite their crushing poverty.

His parents somehow saved enough money and bought him an expensive second-hand magic book. Baek Yu-Seol devoted himself to studying until his eyes bled.

However, a fatal flaw was found in him.

“D-Doctor… Did you say my son has Mana Leakage Disorder?”

He was unable to accumulate mana in his body. It was a cursed constitution for a mage.

To have such an extremely rare constitution that only appeared once in a hundred years, he wanted to curse the world, but he did not give up on his dream of becoming a mage.

Even with the disadvantage of mana leakage, he could freely use just one magic skill, and that was flash. 

From that day on, he started to hone the skill.

————

“Haah!”

As Baek Yu-Seol forcefully devoured the air and quickly stood up, his mind regained some clarity.

“Ugh. Ah…!”

A throbbing pain raided his senses as he couldn’t help but clutch his head tightly. It came along with the flood of memories that were strange as well as oddly familiar.

‘Crazy…’

In the real world, his name was also Baek Yu-Seol.

The name of the character he used in the game Aether World was also called Baek Yu-Seol.

However, they were not the same.

The real him and the Baek Yu-Seol in the game were different.

‘That’s not it… Are they both me?’

‘What the hell…?’

When Baek Yu-Seol opened his eyes and looked around, he realized that the ground beneath him was falling apart.

Crack!

A medieval board swayed under the cold winter wind and crashed on the ground!

Accompanied by a disturbing sound, it was instantly torn apart.

While curling up in the stinging cold, Baek Yu-Seol spotted a mirror. It was broken and left lying in a corner, neglected.

Baek Yu-Seol’s next action was almost instinctive.

He picked up the mirror to see his face, and soon, he couldn’t help but doubt his own eyes.

‘Have I… gotten younger?’

He was 29 years old.

He was used to hearing that he looked young for his age, but he still didn’t have this teenage face.

Baek Yu-Seol’s face in the mirror seemed youthful as if time had gone back to his middle and high school years.

It was difficult to understand the situation properly.

At that moment, a message hovered in the air, blocking his vision.

[Episode 1]

[Escape from the Pursuers!]

“Ehh…?”

Rather than being shocked at the message hovering in mid-air, he was more surprised to see such a familiar phrase.

‘Wasn’t that the Prologue Quest of the character Baek Yu-Seol?’

Aether World ran with a myriad of characters, and most of the episodes started with the entrance ceremony at the academy.

However, the weird thing was that this episode started with him running away from assailants.

‘No way.’

He knew the reason very well, so he had no choice but to get up.

Baek Yu-Seol was wearing an old and worn-out commoner’s outfit with a fantasy vibe. A dagger was tied to his belt for self-defense along with a water bottle.

In his waist pocket were biscuits and miscellaneous items such as a few pennies and a certificate of admission to Stella Academy.

“Is that for real?”

It was precisely Baek Yu-Seol’s starting item list.

He hurriedly stroked and pinched himself, but the reality before his eyes stubbornly stuck around him, making him aware that this was no dream.

In the first place, the chilling cold he felt assured him that this was a reality.

‘Why… of all times?’

Since most of the other characters were from aristocratic families, they had rather generous starting items.

However, the character Baek Yu-Seol came from a poor commoner family, so he started with nothing.

Such a disadvantage was a good thing for a hardcore gamer, but in reality, it meant death.

‘I have to think calmly.’

Baek Yu-Seol hurriedly thought through the memories of the moments before he fell here.

‘True Ending.’

He was sure it said something like that.

But this was an otome-game with multiple possible endings, and a single true ending didn’t exist at all.

‘Could it be that for over ten years, no other users have seen the end of the game?’

It wasn’t that there was no True Ending; it made sense if no one had ever reached it.

‘Damn it.’

He put the matter of the true ending for later and quickly decided to grasp the situation that was right in front of him.

Snowy mountains in a blizzard, a crumbling hut, a dagger, and a certificate of admission.

‘As far as I can remember, as soon as I woke up, the pursuers came into the hut…’

As those thoughts fell, he could hear the sound of footsteps from far away.

“You bastard, how far will you run!”

“There’s a hut over there!”

“Go and search!”

‘I’m fucked.’

Baek Yu-Seol bent down and hid under the half-broken board to avoid getting caught right away, but it was only a matter of time before they would catch him.

He checked the pursuers’ weapons and outfits through the hole in the board.

Armor made of steel or something unknown and weapons with mysterious magic runes on them.

In that world, those weapons were something that would only be used by the street mercenaries who were at the bottom in terms of combat power.

However, the only combat experience he possessed was of street fights in the neighborhood when he was a wild elementary school kid, so even if they were not magic weapons, his demise was set in stone.

‘What should I do? How should…?’

[You can use the skill, Flash.]

‘Oh?’

Flash.

The moment he recalled those familiar words, a message hovered before his eyes.

[Flash]

[Class: 0]

[Maximum Range: 9m]

[Maximum Charge: 1]

[Cooldown: 3 seconds]

The only hope and magic skill given to him, Baek Yu-Seol, was Flash.

And it was the skill that he practiced the hardest throughout his life.

‘But that was just in the game, controlled with a mouse and keyboard…!’

But there was no other way; the sound of footsteps was getting closer and closer.

Baek Yu-Seol gritted his teeth, revealed himself from his hiding spot, opened the door of the hut, and ran out.

“I’ve found him!”

“Catch him and kill him!”

The worst downside of flash was that if one failed to control the range, it could backfire and kill him.

However, it was different when he used it.

‘Calm down.’

Haven’t he already used it countless times?

Instinct understands timing better than the brain.

[Flash]

In an instant, Baek Yu-Seol’s body was teleported toward the front, and a tree that seemed far away appeared in front of him instantly.

“Wait. What?!”

“Flash? Is he a mage?!”

Some of the pursuers panicked, but the experienced ones were already aiming their weapons at Baek Yu-Seol.

They were targeting the two seconds of stiffness that followed immediately after using flash.

However, such a limit didn’t apply to him.

Because he was Baek Yu-Seol the Flash Mage.

Thud!

As he rolled forward, in less than two seconds, countless magic attacks and weapons showered the spot where he landed.

Had they all hit their intended target, nothing would have been left of him.

After a quick glance behind him, he ran forward again while his pursuers were taken aback.

“What is that kid? How did he move?”

“I don’t know! Get him right now!”

After a while, the pursuers followed him closely again.

It was a rough terrain with many rocks, trees, and even floating stones hovering in the air. They knew that if he used flash incorrectly, the only thing awaiting him was death.

Baek Yu-Seol knew well why the terrain here was like this.

The speed of the pursuers was faster than his, thanks to their magic boots.

‘If I want to successfully escape, I have to use flash properly.’

It was the tutorial episode of Baek Yu-Seol.

Players who hadn’t properly mastered the control of Flash would never be able to move on to the next episode and would continue to get killed.

A whopping 99% of the players who played Baek Yu-Seol failed to pass this tutorial, and the 1% who somehow passed were eventually overcome by the evil barriers of flash’s range control and limited activation.

‘Carefully. More carefully.’

[Flash]

Shoo!

As if Baek Yu-Seol’s body was attracted by a magnet, it naturally traversed the rough terrain and made its way through the endless mountain road.

The speed was not as fast as expected.

It was correct to say that the difference between the control with the mouse and the actual movement was as wide as heaven and earth.

He still had to run during the cooldown period, but as he sprinted through the slippery, snowy mountain road, he was out of breath within 30 minutes.

“Gasp, huff! Why is that guy so fast?!”

“Using flash in this terrain? He’s crazy.”

“Damn it! What are the mages doing?!”

“They’re already too exhausted!”

“At least shoot some arrows!”

Second Checkpoint: Dodge flying arrows and magic attacks using flash.

‘But in the game, I was able to avoid objects coming from behind because I could see them all on the monitor…?’

The wind-enchanted arrow almost chased Baek Yu-Seol with a flexible curve, and to dodge it, he had to use flash to match its exact timing. Even a single mistake would lead to death.

Suddenly, another message hovered in the air.

[The skill Mana Leakage Delay is being applied.]

[The derived skills of Mana Leakage Delay—Sixth Sense and Cognitive Acceleration—are applied.]

The world around him became much clearer.

The familiar feeling came again.

He vaguely felt every object flying from behind.

As if there were antennae on his back.

Everything in the world was made up of laws.

In other words, there was mana in everything, and all that moved by it was detected by the cursed constitution of Mana Leakage Disorder—the body that leaked mana every second.

Simply put, he couldn’t use magic by accumulating mana in his body, but he was able to perceive all the mana movements, big or small, with his sixth sense.

From the arrow that flew at Baek Yu-Seol’s waist, the spear targeting his back with a calculated trajectory of his future path, and the wide-range flame magic that was cast in a radius of three meters with him as the center.

Baek Yu-Seol felt like he could dodge everything, and in less than 0.3 seconds, he used flash with impeccable timing to avoid the pincer attacks.

Thud! Gwang!

A rain of arrows fell on the spot he passed.

Baek Yu-Seol’s heart was pounding. If he had delayed even for a moment, he would have died.

“There are seven enemies. Two of them fell behind.”

It was understandable that they were getting tired because they had to run on a mountain road wearing heavy armor while he was moving by using Flash.

But he was also tired.

It was painful to endure this cold with such thin fabric and even more difficult to travel on the slippery mountains, but the hardest thing remained the continuous activation of Flash.

‘If you make a single mistake, you die.’

He had no choice but to focus on it, and the dizziness invaded deeper into his consciousness with each activation.

“He’s right in front of us!”

“He’s worn out!”

Baek Yu-Seol’s distance from the pursuers was about a hundred meters.

‘But there’s still the next checkpoint…’

Wheee!

————

Cliff.

A sharp, snow-capped cliff awaited at the end of the mountain road where he was running.

Between the stone wall and the cliff, there were floating stones dancing around at intervals of about five to six meters, and he could only cross to the other side if he perfectly executed the range control of flash.

If Baek Yu-Seol could cross this cliff, he would encounter other traveling mages and might be rescued, and the tutorial would also come to an end.

However, to cross the cliff, it was necessary to cancel flash in 0.1 seconds.

If he failed even once, he would die instantly.

It was easy to say, but most of the players who succeeded had only passed because they were very lucky after challenging hundreds and hundreds of times.

That was to say, it was at a level of difficulty that a human being couldn’t fathom at all.

The number of floating stones exceeded 20, and if one failed in the process, they would die.

But… To be honest…

‘It won’t be too difficult.’

Even while climbing the mountain, he had already gotten the hang of distance control.

Some terrains were easily passed by activating flash for a short duration.

The problem, however, was that the pursuers followed closer than expected.

The cliff was quite narrow but long.

In the midst of that, how could he use flash, which had a cooldown of three seconds, to reach the other side?

‘It’s impossible. I’m sure I’ll die helplessly on a floating stone under a rain of arrows and magic attacks.’

Even at that moment, the distance was narrowing.

There was not much time to think.

The most efficient way for him to survive.

Probably.

Seemed to be only one.

‘… I have to kill the pursuers.’

Surprisingly, even the thought of killing people did not feel uncomfortable at all.

Maybe because they were enemies of his parents in the plot?

Baek Yu-Seol just thought he could win.

He thought it would be safer.

If this world was a game, it would have been impossible to attack those pursuers.

However, this place was real, and no criminal blindly followed the instructions of the game system.

‘Whoa…’

‘I think it’s crazy. Why did I think this way when I’ve never really fought in my life, let alone kill?’

‘Am I this cold-hearted or just brave in the face of death?’

‘… I don’t know.’

However, instead of worrying, Baek Yu-Seol gently touched the dagger that was tied to his belt.

“Gasp! Huff! A cliff!”

“Damn! Where did he go?”

The pursuers had chased him to the brink of the cliff.

The question of whether he could do it was thrown at the back of his mind. He hadn’t quite figured out his situation yet, but one thing was clear.

‘If I don’t do it now, I will die.’

The only experience he ever had with a dagger in his life was when he sliced vegetables…

The use of a dagger was simple.

Approach so fast that the enemy can not resist, and stab it at the vital point.

Hiding behind the rock, Baek Yu-Seol quickly rolled over and revealed himself ever so slightly, figuring out their location.

“The bastard is there! Quickly catch and kill him!”

Target distance, 8.70 meters.

Baek Yu-Seol marked the archer who was shouting while pointing the bow towards him.

[Flash]

“… Huh?”

Puuk!

Baek Yu-Seol drove the dagger in.