I Became an Academy Overpowered Growth Genius

I Became an Academy Overpowered Growth Genius – 74

EP.74 Hyena (1)

Early morning, school time.

In front of the academy dormitory.

“You’ve grown again!”

Jin Se-rin exclaimed in a high-pitched voice as soon as she saw Kang Seo-jun.

Kang Seo-jun replied awkwardly.

“I measured myself in the dormitory. I’m over 220cm tall now.”

“Wow… And your weight?”

“194kg…”

“You’re like a bear!”

Saying that, Jin Se-rin clung to him again.

She grabbed his thick arm and pressed her cheek against it.

“I told you, this can spread skin diseases…”

“No~ It absolutely won’t~!”

– Rub, rub, rub, rub. –

She wouldn’t listen…

“If you feel itchy or get blisters, tell me right away. I’ll give you some medicine. Early treatment prevents scars.”

“That won’t happen~”

– Rub, rub, rub, rub. –

She was rubbing too much…

It was getting to the point where his skin felt hot.

At that moment, Jin Se-rin seemed to remember something and exclaimed, “Ah!” as she spoke to Kang Seo-jun.

“Give me your bag! I’ll carry it for you! You said your back itches from rubbing against it!”

“It’s okay. It’s not that bad anymore.”

When he had a hunchback, his back skin used to stretch and itch terribly, but that was a thing of the past.

Of course, he still had dermatitis, so he wasn’t completely free from itching, but it wasn’t to the extent that he needed to ask Jin Se-rin to carry his bag.

Instead, Kang Seo-jun wanted to ask her for something else.

“More than that, Se-rin.”

“Yes?”

“Stay still for a moment.”

“Huh?”

– Whoosh. –

“Wow!?”

Kang Seo-jun suddenly lifted Jin Se-rin up and sat her on his shoulder.

“How is it?”

“No, it’s high!…and it’s really soft!”

“I wanted to try it once.”

In Kang Seo-jun’s past life, there was a game called Mabinogi.

‘If you chose the Giant race, you could carry your friends on your shoulder.’

Kang Seo-jun had even met his first girlfriend there….

Back then, as a Giant, Kang Seo-jun had met an elf female player and started an online romance.

On a night with a red moon, Iweka, and a blue moon, Radeka, he would carry her on his shoulder and wander around the beautiful continent of Iria.

It was a happy time.

Until he found out that she was actually a ‘he’….

‘Ugh! My head!’

Kang Seo-jun rubbed his temples, making a face.

Then, he felt Jin Se-rin’s buttocks wobble on his shoulder.

“Hmm? Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

Jin Se-rin tilted her head, looking at him with her eyes.

“Ah. Yeah. I’m fine.”

Looking at her, he felt the deep wounds of his past healing.

‘Yeah. People forget with time.’

The soft and fluffy sensation on his shoulder.

‘My happiness is here.’

The pain of his first love slowly disappeared from Kang Seo-jun’s heart.

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***

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At the same time.

A luxurious sedan slid into the grand entrance of the Korean Hunter Academy campus.

“This is the Korean Hunter Academy….”

A man sitting in the backseat of the sedan muttered to himself, looking out the window.

His name was Li Xiaoming.

The grandson of the chairman of the Huanglong Group, China’s number one conglomerate.

He was a new student transferring to the Korean Hunter Academy.

“And the place where that fallen Park Shin-hoo is….”

A sly smile spread across Li Xiaoming’s lips.

“I can’t wait to see it. What kind of expression will that bastard make when he sees me?”

Li Xiaoming.

He had a long-standing grudge against Park Shin-hoo.

Back in middle school.

It was during the time when Park Shin-hoo was studying abroad in China.

‘The first midterm exam was the beginning of our bad blood.’

It was the first time Li Xiaoming experienced defeat at the hands of a peer.

‘I tried everything to bring that annoying bastard down…’

The intense feeling of defeat he felt for the first time.

He desperately wanted revenge.

‘Even I think it was dirty.’

He started by thoroughly isolating him.

Since Park Shin-hoo’s Chinese was poor and he wasn’t a sociable person to begin with, it was easy to make him a loner.

‘But he didn’t care at all.’

That attitude only fueled Li Xiaoming’s anger.

So, he became more blatant in his provocations.

He flipped over his lunch tray, tripped him, and tore up his textbooks.

Li Xiaoming and his gang did everything they could.

But…

‘Even after all that, he didn’t care about us at all.’

When they flipped his tray, he moved to another cafeteria. When they tripped him, he easily avoided it. When they tore his textbooks, he simply pulled out new ones.

The only reaction Park Shin-hoo showed was a look.

A look as if he were staring down at insects.

– Grit! –

Even now, thinking about it made his blood boil.

But soon, a sly smile spread across Li Xiaoming’s lips again.

‘But I did manage to land a blow on him.’

There was a girl who was close to Park Shin-hoo at the time.

She approached Park Shin-hoo first, ate with him, got angry on his behalf when he was treated unfairly, and shared her supplies when he lost his.

‘It was easy.’

Li Xiaoming targeted her instead of Park Shin-hoo.

‘After all sorts of threats and coercion, I succeeded in NTRing her.’

She fell to being Li Xiaoming’s pet in just a few months.

The day he showed her off as a dog, broken and submissive, to humiliate Park Shin-hoo.

That day was a turning point for both Li Xiaoming and Park Shin-hoo.

– Ugh! –

Li Xiaoming got a lifelong scar that day.

Park Shin-hoo could no longer hold back his anger.

‘I was beaten to the brink of death.’

Li Xiaoming touched his nose, where a familiar, thick scar had formed.

Even now, when it rained, the scar would ache.

But what was more infuriating was the permanent shame of defeat.

‘Bastard…’

That day, most of Li Xiaoming’s gang also suffered permanent injuries.

And the next day, Park Shin-hoo was expelled from school.

‘But it was just a verbal warning. In the end, he went back to Korea and lived well.’

Li Xiaoming wanted to take revenge on him.

In fact, the root of all the conflicts was himself, but people like him didn’t know how to reflect on themselves.

‘It seems like heaven is helping me. Park Shin-hoo became a TS? That’s really ridiculous. Haha.’

The news that Park Shin-hoo, once a top candidate for the Korean Hunter Academy, had fallen spread quickly among those in the know.

The Taesan Group tried to block the media coverage and information leak, but it was impossible to stop the intelligence agencies of other groups.

A small security breach.

The information spread quickly through that gap.

Now, almost no one among the Taesan Group’s competitors didn’t know that Park Shin-hoo had fallen.

‘When Park Shin-hoo fell, the Fruit of the Sun, which was originally his, was left behind.’

Li Xiaoming’s transfer to Korea wasn’t just for revenge against Park Shin-hoo.

If that were the only reason, Li Xiaoming’s family wouldn’t have sent him to Korea.

The Fruit of the Sun, which was harvested in limited quantities every year in each country, was a rare resource that greatly increased the growth limit of Awakeners.

In this world where hunters are central, national treasures are truly the core of a nation’s power.

Securing such a treasure was the mission Li Xiaoming’s family had given him.

‘With the most likely top candidate having fallen, it’s inevitable that hyenas will gather.’

Even at this moment, countries around the world were likely scouting promising individuals to send in pursuit of Korea’s ‘Fruit of the Sun.’

Of course, Korea didn’t want to let foreigners take the Fruit of the Sun, which was practically a national treasure, so they were doing everything they could to block transfers.

But…

‘Korea isn’t that powerful right now. If we threaten them with various clauses and agreements, we can easily break through their resistance.’

No matter how hard the Korean government tried, they couldn’t stop powerful Hunter nations like China or Japan from pushing their way in.

‘I’ll NTR the Fruit of the Sun just like before~.’

Other promising candidates besides Park Shin-hoo.

He had heard that Jin Se-rin and Lim Chae-Won were only at [C+] level or below.

In contrast, Li Xiaoming’s specs had recently grown to [B-] level.

The same rank as Park Shin-hoo before his downfall.

He had more than enough specs to become the new owner of the Fruit of the Sun.

‘There’s no one here who can beat me. The Fruit of the Sun is mine.’

– Vroom. –

The sedan smoothly slid towards the main building of the academy.

Just as he felt that his path would be as smooth as this ride,

“…!?”

Li Xiaoming widened his eyes as he saw a blond man passing by the car.

‘W-What?! Kuyamoto Kenji!? Why is he here?!’

Of course, it wasn’t just China that was after Korea’s Fruit of the Sun.

Japan had also sent a promising candidate to seize the ownerless Fruit of the Sun.

Kuyamoto Kenji.

The problem child of the Kuyamoto family, a renowned Japanese swordsmanship clan.

“Who~ Smells like a loser Wwwwwwww Academy level Wwwwwww”

A man with striking blond hair and tanned skin, giving off a delinquent vibe.

‘This bastard…’

Li Xiaoming clicked his tongue as he watched him fade away in the rearview mirror.

‘There’s a rumor that he’s about to be promoted to [B+] level.’

He had expected Japan to send a promising candidate, but he hadn’t thought that guy would come.

A stronger opponent than he had anticipated.

‘And that guy is infamous for being a human trash.’

It wasn’t something Li Xiaoming, who had lived his life as a school bully, should say, but Kuyamoto Kenji was certainly no less of a scumbag than he was.

‘A pleasure rapist bastard…’

Even though Li Xiaoming was a morally bankrupt person, he had never killed someone purely for pleasure.

But that guy…

‘He raped a fellow Japanese promising candidate to death. I heard he was expelled from the Japanese Academy and imprisoned. How did he get here?!’

If Li Xiaoming was a bad guy, that guy was a madman.

‘I really don’t want to make an enemy out of him…’

He found himself competing against a troublesome individual.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

He had heard that the guy always moved alone and didn’t form groups.

In that case, there was a chance.

‘I’ll gather a gang and take him down. My specs aren’t significantly inferior to his. If I do that, I can handle him.’

Everything was still going smoothly.

For now.

Just as he was thinking that,

– Vroom. –

“…!?”

A red mass briefly flashed past the corner of Li Xiaoming’s vision.

“…What?!”

…What did I just see?

Li Xiaoming quickly turned his head back.

“…M-Madness! What, what is that!!!”

He hadn’t seen it wrong.

What had briefly flashed past his vision was getting further away behind the sedan.

But…

Even though he was seeing it with his own eyes, he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at.

“What… What the hell is that!!!”

A figure at least two to three heads taller than an average adult male, with a build that looked like it could wrestle a Minotaur without being pushed back.

It looked like a monster, but it was wearing an academy cadet uniform.

And on its shoulder sat a beautiful girl that even Xi Jinping would envy.

“What the hell is that!!!!!!”

Li Xiaoming couldn’t understand the figure he was seeing.

Something incomprehensible existed at the Korean Hunter Academy.

“Am I really going to have to fight something like that…!?”

Unluckily, the monster had a name tag of the same color as his on its chest.

Meaning, it was a fellow first-year cadet.

In other words, a definite competitor.

At that moment, the poison in Li Xiaoming’s heart, which had been filled with ambition and confidence, began to dissolve.