# Chapter 13
Of course, Nam Seonjae had nothing to worry about. Even by his standards, this presentation was quite good. Even if he wanted to give a lot of feedback, when a presentation was prepared this perfectly, there was no feedback to give. More precisely, there was no need to give any.
He felt like showing the generous educator attitude he had initially intended when he first started leading Team 1.
The gate Nam Seonjae cleared was a low-level Zombie Gate. Zombies are very vulnerable to fire, so they quickly burn to death if you just charge in with a flamethrower. Nam Seonjae’s team, which had carefully considered their compatibility with the gate, didn’t just show the preparation stage but quickly cleared the gate and concluded the mock battle.
Ko Eungyo silently went through Team 2’s presentation video. He paused at the part where Nam Seonjae was vigorously beating down zombies.
“If a D-class Esper uses a weapon to play the role of a high-class Esper, who should take on the role of a mid-class Esper?”
“Ah….”
Nam Seonjae’s eyes widened at Ko Eungyo’s observation.
“In this team where there are more Guides than Espers, at least one Esper must be assigned to a protective role. When there are many Guides, not only is there a higher chance of exposure to danger, but the abilities of Guides who are exposed to danger tend to decrease, which can lead to a loss in the team’s overall strength. Do you understand?”
“…Yes.”
“You’ll need to change your positioning. Everything else is good. Well done, Team 2.”
“Thank you.”
Nam Seonjae mumbled with a dazed expression. Someone whispered, “Is Nam Seonjae really a C-class Esper?” Ko Eungyo slightly frowned upon hearing that voice.
Could it be that Nam Seonjae wasn’t a C-class Esper? But the attendance sheet he had clearly listed Nam Seonjae’s Esper rank.
If Nam Seonjae was hiding his status as a high-class Esper and had lowered his ability to be registered as a C-class Esper, then the critique Ko Eungyo made today would have been unnecessary. But… it might not be entirely useless. From now on, Nam Seonjae would think once more about protecting Guides when clearing gates. When clearing gates, minimizing human casualties was always best.
After checking the wall clock, Ko Eungyo walked up to the platform. The class could end 20 minutes early.
“Let’s end today’s class here. If everyone prepares presentations like Team 2 in the future, classes might end much earlier.”
“…”
He thought they would be happy, but the students’ expressions darkened.
Why? They didn’t seem like students who wanted to attend longer classes.
“Then I’ll see you next time.”
It was a good feeling. Ko Eungyo picked up Team 2’s preparatory report along with the attendance sheet and left the classroom. Truly, if everyone did like Team 2, both he and the students could have a happy semester without any stress.
*
Of course, that didn’t happen.
Nam Seonjae was apparently an Esper who had been out in the field twice recently. (He heard this during the feedback time for the next team’s report. The leader of Team 3 very carefully implied that they couldn’t give a presentation like Nam Seonjae’s team.) That’s why the presentation from the team with him as the leader was of such high quality.
By now, he had gotten used to the students’ messy presentations. And to the twice-weekly lecture times. And to Ko Eungyo’s body.
The students seemed frightened every presentation time. But when they go out into the field, they will actually come to miss Ko Eungyo’s detailed leading. They’ll also realize that he was actually being quite kind.
As he got a breather from lectures, other things began to bother him.
Specifically, why the Espers in “my” weren’t making guiding calls…
A month had already passed, and during that time, his Espers hadn’t made a single guiding call. Despite living in the age of “guiding saturation” where machine guiding was prevalent, Espers typically preferred the guiding provided by Guides. In fact, it was established as a guideline for Espers to receive guiding from a Guide once a month.
Inevitably, the longer one worked, the more Espers were added to “my.” Since they only needed to do it once a month, Espers were often assigned to Guides even if their matching rate was only slightly compatible. There were quite a few Espers who found receiving guiding annoying. They thought of it as simply an act of removing impurities from the body (like taking a bath). But most Espers tried to get this annoying task over with quickly.
In truth, it wasn’t a problem that Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo weren’t making guiding calls to Ko Eungyo. He had predicted this would happen.
From the moment he sensed hostility from Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo, he had thought they would receive guiding from another Guide.
But if that wasn’t the case… it would be a bit troublesome.
With a doubtful thought, he checked the center application to see how they had given and received guiding in the past. With Lee Seungwoo, they mostly did guiding once a month, and with Woo Sihyun, it varied. There were times when they did it every other day, but there were also periods of three months without any guiding.
Of course, those were times when Woo Sihyun ignored all of Ko Eungyo’s requests.
He stared intensely at the guiding history with a stunned expression.
“…How could all of these be Ko Eungyo’s requests?”
Even when he was a field Guide, Espers in “my” made guiding calls several times a day. Every day, at least one colleague Guide would complain about how to remove an Esper from “my” who acted like they would die if they didn’t receive guiding three times a day like meals. Since he wasn’t the only one annoyed by the constantly beeping phone all day, turning off the center application’s alerts was a given for any Guide.
But Ko Eungyo’s center application alerts were not turned off…
Just as Espers could view a Guide’s guiding schedule, Guides could also check when Espers in “my” received guiding. After hesitating, he slowly raised his finger and pressed to view the guiding history of Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo…
“Professor?”
He felt dizzy as he focused on what was in front of him. There were the Team 6 students, looking at him nervously with uncertain faces.
Without any particular expression, he quickly flipped through Team 6’s preparatory report. He had already pointed out in the previous feedback session to avoid citing papers unrelated to the mock gate. As a result, a flimsy report of only three pages had been submitted. Of course, it must be because they didn’t have time to revise. He swallowed a derisive laugh.
“Is the presentation over?”
There was a gasp. Did he hear wrong?
“…Y-yes, Professor.”
Ko Eungyo remained silent for a moment at the trembling goat-like voice.
The problem was that even though he wanted to be lenient for a moment, that feeling completely disappeared when he recalled their half-hearted report and presentation.
“I think I mentioned this last time.”
“…”
“Didn’t I say not to face monsters in the direction the wind is blowing from?”
“S-sorry…”
“And I said that at least one Esper should protect the Guides, or at the very minimum, the Guides should be out of the monsters’ sight. Do you have some special ability? How can Guides help when capturing monsters? As far as I know, there are no high-class Guides capable of radiation guiding in this class. And Student Choi Seonjae.”
“Y-yes…”
The student who was called out answered with a hiccup.
“Even if you brought weapons, I’ve told you many times that when Guides use those weapons themselves, it’s the worst-case scenario, haven’t I? Because gunfire easily draws the aggro of monsters, I said to be careful when using them. Moreover, it says that Park Aram is an Esper in your ‘my,’ so what would happen if you shot your own Esper?”
“That’s not it, it was an accident…”
“Of course it was a mistake, and since you haven’t trained in marksmanship separately, it’s natural that you couldn’t shoot properly. That’s why you shouldn’t use it. Besides, even if you hit the target with a gun, the monsters in this gate are ghost type, so you can’t inflict meaningful damage. Did you perhaps not write the preparatory report with your own hands?”
“That’s not it… it was such an urgent situation, to save Aram…”
“From the beginning, you should have brought weapons that work on ghost-type monsters. Bringing firearms into the gate itself is the problem. And right now, since this is a mock battle, there’s no damage assessment even if you shoot and hit your team’s Esper, but if this happens in an actual gate, Park Aram would die instantly. He’d be killed by a bullet from his own Guide, not by a monster.”
“…”
There was a small voice saying “that’s too harsh,” followed by the student who had been constantly critiqued starting to show tears. Along with sniffling sounds.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
