The S-Rank Warden Devours the Academy - Chapter 86

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 86

Whoooooosh—
Waves crashed violently against the shore.
Beneath the scorching sun, the Research Complex Beach thrummed with activity.
“—Hey, Go Gyeol! Ha Jae-yun! Physical Arts Class C is already pulling way ahead! We’re not losing, are we?!”
Tae Eun-o, soaked to the skin in seawater, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“No way! Not twice in a row!”
Spurred on by his words, Ha Jae-yun let out a shout and kicked his pace up another notch.
“Damn it! What kind of training is this anyway?!”
Go Gyeol cursed through gritted teeth as he staggered after them, his gait growing ragged.
It was the second day at the Jeju Island training facility.
It had all started when Tae Eun-o casually asked if they could just go play at the beach.
Yeom Sa-hyeon had agreed without hesitation.
The only catch was that “playing” had turned out to be training.
One hundred laps across the bay, from the sandy beach all the way out to where the buoys bobbed in the distance—a hellish race that never seemed to end.
One might argue that Awakeners could handle such a thing easily enough, but the buoy marked the edge of the barrier that ringed Jeju Island itself.
A rival team had happened to be conducting individual training nearby, and the whole thing had devolved into a matter of pride.
‘Every day is a competition, a competition.’
Lee Su, who had stumbled upon the scene while heading off to replace a broken wooden sword, let out a hollow laugh.
Then, all at once, her grip tightened on the sword in her hand.
Yesterday’s hunting competition against Combat Class A.
At the critical moment, her Precognition skill had activated.
She saw her strike miss pathetically, saw herself lose in the end.
And that vision came to pass, just as it always did.
The moment she knew the outcome in advance, her grip had gone slack, and her will to fight had simply… evaporated.
‘The future’s already set, so what good does it do me to struggle?’
The emptiness crept in without mercy.
This was why Lee Su’s training regimen stretched longer than anyone else’s.
She harbored a deep resistance to her own skill.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to become a Hunter.
To be of use to others—that, too, was something she yearned for.
But…
‘Can I even make it through training like this?’
A bitter smile had begun to form at the corner of her mouth.
“Huff—huff—just four more laps, just four more—huff!”
Ragged breathing came from someone on the verge of collapse.
Ha Jae-yun, though his lips had already gone white and his body had reached its limit, pressed on relentlessly, tearing across the sand.
‘He’s actually going to pass out at this rate…’
Who would subject people to such brutal training?
The one who had prescribed it all lay beneath a nearby tree’s shadow, sprawled across a hammock with an eye mask pulled down over his eyes, dead asleep.
‘Must be nice.’
Lee Su snorted quietly and was about to look away—
“…!”
Suddenly, a ripple of magical power flickered across her eyes.
Two familiar silhouettes, passing swiftly across her vision.
‘…What is this.’
An instinctive wave of unease and dread washed over her, and her brow furrowed sharply.
‘…Not my business.’
She exhaled softly and turned to leave—
“You there.”
A quiet voice stopped her in her tracks.
Yeom Sa-hyeon had somehow risen, pushing his eye mask up slightly.
His ash-gray eyes were sharp and focused—nothing like those of someone who had just woken up.
Lee Su swallowed and instinctively adopted a defensive stance.
“…You mean me, sir?”
Even though she knew perfectly well he’d called her, she hoped against hope that he hadn’t.
A man claiming to be the Academy’s combat instructor, as frail-looking as they came, taking a leisurely nap while his students pushed themselves to exhaustion—the hypocrisy of it all grated on her.
The type of person she’d prefer not to tangle with, accident or not.
She was readying herself to dodge away at any moment when an answer came back that she hadn’t remotely expected.
“You’ve got the Precognition skill, don’t you?”
“!”
Lee Su’s entire body went rigid.
Even the trainees who had trained alongside her for years didn’t know that.
How could this man possibly know?
Lee Su’s fingers tightened instinctively around the wooden sword’s hilt, hostility flashing across her face.
“…How did you know that? Did Kim Do-gyeong tell you?”
“No, I just took a shot in the dark.”
Yeom Sa-hyeon rose slowly from the hammock, his voice utterly unbothered.
“What?”
Her mouth fell open in genuine bewilderment, and Sa-hyeon let out a low chuckle.
“Awakeners with Precognition—you can read them just from their movements. The way you overreacted to just a casual probe? That tells me everything I need to know.”
“…”
Sa-hyeon had framed it as nothing more than a casual guess, yet certainty etched every line of his face.
And his logic left no room for argument.
Precognition was the kind of skill that begged to be misused, so concealing it was standard practice.
But her dislike of the skill ran deeper than that.
“It’s not a skill,” she said quietly.
Lee Su’s words came out bitter, ground between her teeth.
Being caught in her blind spot stung—and worse, emotions she’d buried in the depths of her chest came surging up all at once.
“It’s a curse.”
Back when she’d first Awakened.
Lee Su had seen a vivid future unfold before her eyes.
Her sister, dying in horrifying fashion—consequences of a Gate eruption.
She had thrown everything she had into trying to change that future.
But nothing changed.
Her sister died in exactly the way Lee Su had seen in her vision.
The future could not be altered.
Worse—knowing what was to come had only added the crushing weight of guilt for failing to prevent it, doubling the despair she had to carry.
“A skill? What’s the point in knowing something beforehand if it can’t be changed anyway?”
Despite the bitterness in her voice, Sa-hyeon’s expression remained calm.
He shifted in the hammock, leaning back at an angle, and spoke with deliberate slowness.
“You’re not a god. How were you planning to change the future?”
Before Lee Su could raise her voice in outrage at such cold cynicism—
“Just make the best choice you can in that moment.”
Sa-hyeon continued in his flat, matter-of-fact tone.
“If it still doesn’t work out, then it was never your responsibility in the first place. Just let it go.”
The casual way he said it left Lee Su momentarily speechless.
Just let it go, he’d said.
“…Is that something you can just choose to do?”
Her voice wavered as she spoke.
Sa-hyeon shrugged indifferently.
“If you can’t…”
“…”
“Then you’ll spend your whole life being dragged along by that memory.”
The way he tossed out the words held an edge of self-mockery.
“…”
Part of Lee Su wanted to scoff and argue back.
She wanted to lash out—to say he had no right to speak so casually about her, someone with a blessed life like his.
But strangely, beneath his matter-of-fact words, something that had been festering and rotting in a corner of her heart seemed to crack open slightly.
Lee Su cleared her throat awkwardly, deliberately shifting the subject.
“…Anyway, that big guy in your instructor’s class—tell him to be careful in the Gates.”
She gestured with a tilt of her head toward Ha Jae-yun, who lay sprawled on the sandy beach after finishing his training.
Sa-hyeon asked flatly, “What about Ha Jae-yun?”
“Ha Jae-yun.”
“I’m not entirely sure—the details are too murky to see clearly—but one thing I know for certain is that your instructor’s going to get caught up in whatever happens to him and take quite a bit of trouble for it.”
“Well, he’s always dealing with something anyway.”
Sa-hyeon tossed his eye mask into his Inventory with a dismissive air, then opened the main topic in a lighter tone.
“If you need Precognition skill training, just ask.”
“…You mean I should ask the professor?”
From the look of him, he didn’t seem interested in other people’s affairs and clearly hated being bothered.
Wariness flickered across Lee Su’s face once more.
“Why would you go this far for me?”
Yeom Sa-hyeon answered without hesitation.
“Your skill’s going to be useful. I have a feeling I’ll need it down the line.”
In other words, he was going to cultivate her and put her to work.
“…Hah.”
Well, at least he’s honest about it. That’s refreshing in its own way.
Lee Su let out an exasperated breath.
She actually preferred it when someone laid it out so bluntly like this.
‘…Still, if I can just get proper control over my Precognition skill, it could be useful.’
She considered this as she asked, “But how? Even the veteran instructors at the training facility struggle with Psychic-type skills.”
“Learning to control it? Once you know the knack, a day or two should be enough.”
“…That quickly?”
“It’s much easier when someone of the same type teaches you.”
“……Were you Psychic-type, professor?!”
Lee Su’s eyes, which had been full of disbelief, widened in surprise.
She’d assumed he was the type who only crushed opponents with raw power, being a Combat instructor and all!
But if that was the case, things were different.
“Then for individual training—”
It was the moment she carefully parted her lips.
“Individual training from Master…?”
A cold, creeping presence seeped up from behind her like frost.
“?! What—?!”
She spun around, dropping into a defensive stance.
Yu-wol stood motionless, drenched in seawater, his hair dripping.
He swept his wet hair back, his eyes gleaming darkly at Lee Su.
“Personal instruction from Master directly?”
“What?! Yeom Sa-hyeon’s doing one-on-one training?!”
Tae Eun-o, who’d caught that voice as if by instinct, came sprinting over.
“How’s it fair that just she gets it?! I want it too, me too!”
“Me… me too…!”
Ha Jae-yun followed, dragging his heavy legs forward with effort.
“What are these guys saying after we just finished training…… Please just……”
Go Gyeol, who’d been watching this unfold with bewilderment, shook his head weakly.
“Then… could we also receive training?”
When Tae-jun, shaking water from his damp hair, spoke up, Hyeong-won grinned brightly and chimed in.
“Yeah! That sounds great! The water training we just did was something new—it was pretty fun!”
Tae Eun-o narrowed his eyes, scanning the two of them up and down.
“No, why do the seniors want it? Go ask your own homeroom teacher!”
“Oh, that’s cold of you to say!”
“If we’re getting it, we should all get it together.”
“? Wait, so why are the seniors upset about getting it?”
The noise around them grew louder.
Yeom Sa-hyeon let out a soft sigh.
He’d thought he might finally get a little peace, but this is what happens.
Yeom Sa-hyeon rose from his seat without hesitation.
“Stop talking nonsense and just focus on keeping up with the training I assign you.”
“Ah! Teacher, where are you going!”
Leaving Tae Eun-o’s cry behind, Yeom Sa-hyeon moved on.
When would he finally be able to retire…
He thought of his potential replacement.
‘I wonder how Hae-seong’s training is going.’
Since Yeom Sa-hyeon was conducting joint training with Combat Class A and Physical Arts Class C, he’d handed off Hae-seong’s instruction to Ji Jae-hyeok.
It was while he was changing course to check on his successor.
“Interesting.”
Kim Do-gyeong emerged smoothly from beside a building he hadn’t noticed.

“Quite the professorish look, aren’t you?”
“…….”
What grievance was he airing now.
Sa-hyeon’s eyes narrowed, his expression turning sour.

S-rank Instructor Devours the Academy 86

Author
Baek Ru-ga
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yun Tae-ri
Cover Design
Tonp

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260512043.0086

ⓒ2026, Baek Ru-ga

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No part of this work may be reproduced or reprocessed in any form without the permission of the author and publisher.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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