I Became The Only Healer In The Academy [EN]: Chapter 34

Since I wasn’t moving my body, nor was I injured, I didn’t feel tired. All the pain was purely converted into power.

Almost excessively so.

“Haha! I… Cough!”

Clearly, my body was overflowing with power.

It was growing, showing no signs of stopping.

But that was it.

The immense fear and pain that came with the overwhelming power were rejecting the very act of moving my body.

“W-What is this…”

Ui-hyeon sat on the floor, staring at Seong-hyeon with bloodshot eyes.

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“Th-This…!”

Seong-hyeon’s expression was obscured by the dark sky, but I could tell what kind of expression he was making just from the atmosphere.

“What… the hell…!”

Now, even sitting down was difficult as pain relentlessly crashed over me.

Of course, a tremendous amount of power was surging, but even in a normal state, it would be hard to handle such a magnitude. With the added pain, there was no way I could utilize it.

“Why? Isn’t the power overflowing?”

When I first realized that the Sacred Imprint had no offensive capabilities, I was honestly a little disappointed.

But looking at it now, it didn’t seem so bad after all.

“Huff, Kim Seong-hyeon, you son of a bitch…!”

Ui-hyeon could only use the frantically surging power to clench his fists tightly.

The pain made his hands tremble, and when he gripped the floor, the concrete cracked in the shape of his grip.

“Seong-hyeon, he’s still not coming to his senses?”

“Tsk, tsk, what good is overflowing power if he can’t do anything with it?”

In-hwan and Sang-yeon also chimed in from behind.

They had already heard Seong-hyeon’s explanation of the Sacred Imprint’s ability, which converted pain into power.

They had been worried, but it ended so anticlimactically that their worries were all for naught.

“What did he say earlier? To beg for his life?”

“Kuh… !”

“I can’t say those exact words. I’ll put it a little differently.”

Seong-hyeon lowered himself to Ui-hyeon’s eye level, who was sitting on the floor, and said,

“Beg me to kill you.”

Ui-hyeon looked up at Seong-hyeon with even more bloodshot eyes than before.

Whether the cause of the bloodshot eyes was pain or anger, one thing was certain: he couldn’t do anything.

I wondered if he had always been like this. He was completely different from the 모습 [Korean: appearance] we faced during the inter-class competition.

If those three in the back were to hear Seong-hyeon’s expression and words, what kind of expressions would they make? The feeling that he was a completely different person brought a tremendous sense of incongruity.

‘Th-This is a healer…?’

This unknown, tremendous pain, and the similar, immense pressure.

The person in front of me was not just a simple healer.

There was no action or prelude.

He didn’t even twitch a finger; he was just staring at me.

‘I really, really might die.’

Even though Seong-hyeon had said something that implied he wouldn’t kill me directly, I couldn’t stop thinking about dying.

Still, there was one piece of good news for Ui-hyeon.

Perhaps sensing a life-threatening danger, he didn’t endure any longer and immediately fainted.

“He lasted a lot longer than I thought.”

Of course, he had the ability to convert pain into power, but he was still just a first-year student at the academy.

“What should we do with him?”

In-hwan approached and nudged the unconscious Ui-hyeon with his foot.

“…Let’s just leave him.”

“Are you going to the gate [dungeon entrance]?”

“Well, what about you?”

At Seong-hyeon’s question, Sang-yeon just nodded and turned away.

“Let’s go.”

“Th-There… !”

Seong-hyeon also turned to leave, but Seong-wook grabbed him.

“Thank you. Seong-hyeon.”

“No need to thank me.”

Seong-wook, who had only shown passive behavior until now, had a noticeably different look in his eyes compared to before.

He hadn’t defeated Ui-hyeon himself, but the fact that he hadn’t backed down meant he had already grown a step further.

“But how did you know?”

“What?”

“How did you know Hwang Ui-hyeon was here…”

After parting ways with Seong-wook at the hospital, Seong-hyeon had immediately called In-hwan and Sang-yeon.

He told them the location near Seong-wook’s house and asked them to contact him immediately if they saw Hwang Ui-hyeon.

The two followed Seong-hyeon’s instructions without much question, and as Seong-hyeon had expected, they found Ui-hyeon nearby and contacted him.

“I just saw him passing by.”

“…”

Seong-hyeon didn’t explain further and left with just those words.

Seong-wook was left alone with Ui-hyeon.

“…”

Honestly, he wanted to do something to the fallen Ui-hyeon, but he knew that would make him the same kind of person, so he stopped himself.

However, he didn’t wake him up or contact any other acquaintances.

“You piece of trash.”

With a frown, Seong-wook left with a lighter heart than ever before, heading home.

Seong-hyeon checked the window he had forgotten about again.

[A person with faith has been added.]

“It must be Seong-wook.”

He certainly hadn’t acted with the intention of adding a person with faith in that situation.

A situation where he didn’t feel anything.

The reason he dealt with Ui-hyeon like this was also selfish, but it was to alleviate his guilt.

Of course, it wasn’t intentional, but he felt that he was somewhat responsible for Seong-wook turning out this way.

[When the number of people with faith reaches a certain number, a new ability will be unlocked.]

[Unlocked: Lighthouse]

‘Lighthouse?’

[Lighthouse: Allows healing of the target, regardless of their location, only for those with faith.]

‘Healing is possible no matter where they are?’

The basic effect of faith was the ability to sense when someone was injured.

That meant that if someone had faith in Seong-hyeon, they could receive treatment anytime, anywhere.

‘This is… an amazing ability.’

Faith also had the effect of increasing the spirit of sacrifice by 10%.

Moreover, there was no penalty for sacrifice, no feeling of the target’s pain.

Taking only the benefits without the penalty of feeling pain, plus an additional 10%.

In fact, anyone who had faith in Seong-hyeon was practically immortal, except for instant death.

Of course, the process of increasing the number of faith targets was unimaginably difficult, which was a bit of a drawback.

‘Well, with this level of ability, it has to be difficult.’

That wasn’t all.

The people who currently had faith were Park Han-wook, Kim Jin-seok, and Kang Seong-wook, a total of three people.

With a total of three people becoming faith targets and the new ability Lighthouse being unlocked, it meant that if the number of people with faith increased in the future, another new ability could be unlocked.

‘As difficult as it is to create faith targets, the more there are, the greater the possibility of unlocking amazing abilities.’

“Hey, Seong-hyeon. Did you have that kind of ability…?”

“Ah, yeah. Well, somehow…”

In-hwan had a slightly disappointed expression.

“We’re on the same team, you could have at least told us.”

“The association doesn’t even know about it yet. Only you and Sang-yeon know.”

“The association doesn’t know? Wow, we know something the association doesn’t…”

“But Hwang Ui-hyeon had the ability to convert pain into power…”

Gu Sang-yeon had a slightly gloomy expression.

No matter how he thought about it, it was a much higher-level ability than his own.

“There are pros and cons to everything. What good is being strong if your intelligence is like that?”

Gu Sang-yeon looked at Seong-hyeon with a slightly surprised expression, as if he didn’t expect Seong-hyeon to take his side, and then burst into a light laugh.

“That’s true.”

“Alright, let’s go. Aren’t we going to do a subjugation [monster hunt] today?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Now, all that was left was the inter-class competition to determine the academy’s national representatives.

The next day, Seong-hyeon, who had come to the academy, was greeted by Seong-wook waiting at the entrance of the class.

“Ah, Seong-hyeon!”

“Seong-wook? Why aren’t you in your class? Are you here to meet someone?”

“Who else would it be? Of course, it’s you. I just have something to tell you.”

I wondered if Hwang Ui-hyeon, who had regained consciousness, had done something again, but looking at Seong-wook’s expression, it didn’t seem like it.

“What is it?”

“It’s a bit much here… There’s still some time before class starts, so let’s move somewhere for a moment.”

“Okay.”

Seong-hyeon followed Seong-wook to a quiet place.

Seong-wook still looked worried that someone might hear, and then whispered to Seong-hyeon,

“I want to tell you about the abilities of the second-year and third-year representatives.”

“The abilities of the second-year and third-year representatives? Do you know everything?”

“Not everything, but I know more details than what’s known.”

“Wow…”

Seong-wook scratched his head, embarrassed by Seong-hyeon’s exclamation, and lowered his gaze.

“Then first, the second year.”

Seong-wook pointed out one person to be most careful of and said,

“Lee Jin-hee, you have to be the most careful of this person.”

The look in Seong-wook’s eyes as he gave the information was even a little dark.

‘What’s hidden?’

“The ability that’s originally known is curse. But the ability that’s not known is necromancer.”

“Necromancer? The necromancer I know?”

“That’s right. He didn’t use the ability last year, but I think he’ll probably use it this year. Because he sees a chance to win.”

Certainly, in the first year, the proficiency of the other team members was low, so the chances of winning were close to zero.

Therefore, it was wise to hide the ability and then use all the hidden abilities when the other team members became more proficient in the second year.

“What about the third year?”

“You should be careful of all the third years. It’s hard to pick out just one person. They’re all people who have been decided to enter large guilds.”

In fact, the top students in the third year have already been confirmed to be recruited by the association or famous large guilds.

Of course, the third-year representatives were those who would enter the association or guilds.

“Actually, the most difficult opponent was Hwang Ui-hyeon, who was the counter to your ability, Seong-hyeon, but Hwang Ui-hyeon’s ability was not yet complete during the inter-class competition.”

“It certainly seemed that way.”

“And there’s also talk that a new rule will be introduced in the inter-class competition, rather than selecting a leader, so we’ll have to watch it a little more.”

“Thank you. Thanks to you, I won’t be behind on information.”

Seong-hyeon was such a famous figure in the academy that a lot of information was disclosed about him.

He didn’t help Seong-wook with this situation in mind, but Seong-wook was quite helpful.

“I want you to be the academy representative, Seong-hyeon.”

“I hope so too.”

Honestly, with just the Sacred Imprint, it seemed easy to become a class representative.

Even Hwang Ui-hyeon, who turned pain into power, was so miserably defeated.

But Seong-hyeon was currently in a team.

Even if it was to receive help when a problem that Seong-hyeon couldn’t solve alone arose someday.

“The third year…”

The sound of the start of class rang out just as Seong-wook was about to continue talking about the third-year representatives.

“I’ll make it separately and give it to you.”

“Okay. Let’s go in.”

Seong-wook, who had parted ways with Seong-hyeon, returned with light steps.

“…”

But at the entrance of the class, he ran into Hwang Ui-hyeon, who was coming to school.

‘…Don’t be scared.’

Seong-wook paused for a moment but headed to the entrance of the class as if nothing had happened.

His heart was beating wildly, and he was a little worried that he might be heard, but Hwang Ui-hyeon just looked at Seong-wook and didn’t say anything.

Soon, Seong-wook completely passed Hwang Ui-hyeon, and goosebumps were rising from the relief that followed.

The things that had caused pain for nearly a year now seemed like they could be thought of as memories rather than painful pasts.

And he knew very well that all of this was thanks to Seong-hyeon.

Not only did he save his life, but he also removed the cause.