# Chapter 53
“He knows how to draw things like that?”
Sano frowned unconsciously. A fire extinguisher and a fly swatter. The lines were still crooked, but compared to his usual drawings, it was a night and day difference. Hyegang tilted his head curiously.
“It’s not that he knows how to draw… he traced those, didn’t he? Didn’t you know?”
“What?”
“Why are you so surprised? Iyeon hyung usually carries a few of those things in his bag. Don’t you remember? The megaphone he used when fighting Cheongho.”
You think hyung could draw something that complex on the spot? He used pre-drawn ones. With this nonchalant addition, Sano’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“I’ve never seen him materialize combat weapons before.”
If he had already known how to use his ability that way, he could have navigated situations much more comfortably. Then there would have been no need to get injured, so why…
“That’s because he doesn’t draw those. Why would he need combat weapons for low-level variant missions?”
Hyegang sucked on his drink straw and muttered.
“Honestly, these days are strange. Among the missions and requests Iyeon hyung has handled until now, there have been almost none serious enough to put his life in danger.”
Since Iyeon typically handled missions related to low-level variants, especially their capture, he didn’t need significant lethal capabilities. It was also inappropriate to casually pull out fearsome weapons on streets where civilians passed by.
Thanks to this, the backup drawings Iyeon carried around when not preparing for SuperCom were mostly things not very helpful in combat, like microphones, flashlights, or toilet paper rolls that he doodled when bored at the office. Even these weren’t regularly replenished after use, so some stayed crumpled in his bag for months, and sometimes the bag would remain empty for weeks.
“…”
“He doesn’t draw them because he doesn’t use them. You don’t prepare a cow-slaughtering knife to kill a chicken, do you?”
Though Hyegang’s words made sense, Sano’s frown didn’t smooth out.
“That guy tries to catch chickens with his bare hands instead of a knife.”
Using such a cumbersome ability on top of that… There was no worse case of safety negligence than this.
“Well, that’s true. Getting stabbed in the stomach during a request was a bit much… Of course, the guy who stabbed him was at fault, but still, I should tell him to draw some self-defense items to carry around regularly.”
After chattering, Hyegang turned his gaze back to the testing grounds. No one else was rushing aggressively toward Iyeon anymore.
“But the main event hasn’t even started yet.”
“Main event?”
They could see Iyeon, now free, just entering the residential area. Hyegang grinned mischievously. It was a rare smile on his usually expressionless face.
“Iyeon hyung’s specialty isn’t close combat.”
As Iyeon easily eliminated one man, a melodious guidance voice rang from the man’s bracelet.
[Mugunghwa Tier 2 Kim Minho. You have been eliminated as you have lost all your markers. Please exit the testing grounds immediately. From now on, all actions except departure will be considered cheating, and if there is a delay in exit, you may be forcibly removed.]
This happened less than a minute after the test started. Other people who had been rushing toward Iyeon hesitated. They seemed unsure whether they should continue to charge or not.
Honestly, does it make sense to judge a superhuman by appearance? Are they fortune-tellers or what? That showed their inexperience right there.
Thanks to this, though Iyeon moved leisurely holding a fly swatter, people only watched with wary eyes without moving, allowing him to safely cross the embankment and enter the residential area. Unlike the quiet surroundings, faint sounds of impact continuously came from far away. It seemed that battles were enthusiastically happening in various places.
As he turned past a wall, the open embankment and stream were hidden from view. He would have also been hidden from their sight. Judging the situation, it didn’t seem like anyone would chase after him. He could catch his breath for now.
Even after entering the residential alleyway, Iyeon didn’t stop. Some people must have been teleported to the residential area as well, and there might be others like him who wanted to hide in areas with many barriers. There was no time for carelessness.
As he was looking around and quietly moving toward the deeper part, his eyes met with someone who had just entered the alley from the opposite side. A woman with her long hair tied up tightly, wearing comfortable tracksuit. It was the same woman he had seen in the waiting room earlier.
The woman was holding an elongated pole. So that’s what she had been carrying on her back. Seeing how naturally she held the dark wooden pole, she seemed to have some basic martial arts skills.
‘Does she have combat experience too?’
Keeping his gaze fixed, Iyeon reached into his bag, and the woman also took up a fighting stance.
The woman bent her waist and then slid forward.
She wasn’t just running while sliding. She didn’t lift her feet from the ground, yet approached rapidly in that state. Looking closely, he could see the path ahead of where the woman stepped turning snow-white and freezing. It was a freezing ability.
Her speed, with minimized friction and added acceleration, was formidable. The woman approached Iyeon’s face in an instant and swung her pole.
Whoosh!
Having quickly ducked his waist, Iyeon narrowly avoided the trajectory and rolled to the side. As his body roughly flipped over, a few sheets of paper peeked out from his bag.
The sound of the wind cutting through the air was tremendous. If he had been hit by that, it wouldn’t have ended with just a bruise. Cold sweat broke out on the back of Iyeon’s neck. He could see the woman lightly spinning the pole as if exercising her wrist, then taking up her stance again.
Freezing is a useful ability, but since it’s only at Tier 2 level, its strength wouldn’t be too impressive. Iyeon noticed that the ground the woman had just frozen was quickly becoming wet and melting. The fact that it dissolved naturally even before the ability was removed meant that freezing was likely not her main weapon.
‘For example, if she only uses it for movement like just now…’
The woman’s main weapon was probably pole attacks utilizing the speed of sliding on ice. It doesn’t contradict the SuperCom rules that allow close-combat auxiliary tools that can exert independent physical force.
In simple terms, the ice was just a support, and her style was to beat opponents with the pole.
It wasn’t particularly surprising, as low-level superhuman fights ironically often had outcomes determined by factors other than superpowers. It was perhaps natural, given that there were few people strong enough to decide matches with superpowers alone.
It’s not a bad ability. Iyeon’s brain quickly went into overdrive.
His deliberation was brief.
“Time, time!”
As Iyeon suddenly raised both hands and shouted, the woman looked at him strangely. She maintained her guarded stance toward him.
“What is it?”
The woman thrust her pole menacingly. Even in the tension where she seemed like she might charge and swing at any moment, Iyeon smiled leisurely. The test had just begun anyway. Considering that he needed to endure for more than an hour from now on, the proposal he was about to make wouldn’t be a bad one for the woman either.
“Shall we form an alliance?”
“They’re moving in groups.”
At Sano’s words, Hyegang looked around the entire testing grounds. Ten minutes into the test, there were noticeably more people gathered in small groups compared to the very beginning. It seems there are quite a few experienced participants in this test.
“Ah, Sano hyung, since this is your first time seeing a Tier 2 test, you probably don’t know.”
Unlike Iyeon’s thoughts, Hyegang was very interested in the SuperCom system. He at least watched SuperCom videos occasionally, besides Iyeon’s test videos. Thanks to this, he knew thoroughly about the general patterns of Tier 2 tests.
“For Tier 5, it doesn’t matter because there are few people, but Tier 2 has many applicants. So it’s advantageous to observe at the beginning and then form alliances with people who seem skilled.”
It goes without saying that two people have a higher survival probability than one, and three people higher than two. There was no need to eliminate everyone in the testing grounds. Statistically, every test ends with around seven final survivors.
Aiming for the final survival group and forming alliances is the first thing anyone who has ever taken SuperCom would think of.
However, despite receiving a one-on-one lecture from expert instructor Hyegang, student Sano still looked like he couldn’t understand. The words might sound good, but this alliance had one blind spot. A very obvious and big hole in individual survival.
“What if they betray halfway through?”
Trust.
“Well, that…”
Hyegang shrugged his shoulders.
“What can you do? You’d have to blame yourself for lacking judgment.”
