Descent of the Demon Master-Chapter 1059. Interrogated (4)

“Excuse me, Mister Instructor, sir!”

“Yes! What is it?”

“I can’t make this work. Can you come and see what’s wrong?”

“Yes, yes! I’m coming!”

The instructor, Yang Jin-Chan, rushed toward the desk where the trainee with his hand thrust high up in the air was.

“I’m here! So, what’s the matter?”

“Right over here. I did as you told us to, but it doesn’t wanna accept the values.”

“Mm... Oh, over here. Look, you’ve inputted an incorrect command. Now look at this over here. Can you see? When you compare this to the window over there...”

“Ohhh...” Bae Jae-Min sheepishly scratched his head. “Hah... This is so weird. When you're here to point it out, I can see the issue so clearly, you know? So why can't I see anything when I'm doing it by myself?”

Yang Jin-Chan smiled brightly. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s like that.”

“I’m sorry about this, instructor. I have rocks for brains, you see...”

“Please don't apologize. I'm not trying to make you feel better, you know? Learners really do have a problem spotting mistakes like this. And this is why repeatedly training yourself is so crucial.”

“I see! Thank you, instructor!”

Yang Jin-Chan's smile was one of satisfaction as he walked away from Bae Jae-Min's desk.

‘This is so... mysterious.’

At first, he had his doubts about this whole training program. Would it really work out as well as the higher-ups hoped for? No, wait. It was more than a doubt, actually!

After observing the situation for the first two days, the overriding impression the instructors got was... This training program was doomed!

Any training program that saw its curriculum flushed down the toilet as soon as it began was as good as finished. It meant the curriculum the instructors had prepared was shockingly incompatible with the trainees, after all!

However, this situation was not like that.

Despite experiencing the absolute worst crisis of the curriculum having to change abruptly and extensively, things had settled down rather quickly. And it didn't stop at merely 'settling' down, either!

The trainees, who looked lost at sea at the beginning of the program, began finding more and more of their groove, too.

No, that was actually not accurate. To be more precise, it seemed the instructors had misunderstood their trainees. What Yang Jin-Chan meant by that was...

“Instructor! Over here!”

“Yes?”

“I don’t quite get this command, instructor? Can you break it down for me?”

There it was, the trainees’ combative attitude when asking a question!

A trainee asking a question with that kind of attitude would've been chided for being rude. They would also have received penalty points that negatively affected their grades. However, two issues stopped the instructors from resorting to such a recourse with these trainees.

One, receiving penalty points meant little to nothing to the trainees.

While the new Jaegyeong employees knew the grades they received during this training course would reflect on their overall evaluation by the HR department, these employees didn't have to worry about such a thing.

It was true that the Jaegyeong instructors were responsible for evaluating these people. But what would happen with the evaluation results was entirely up to the higher-ups of these trainees. In that case, using penalty points to temper the behavior was not a viable solution.

But the bigger issue was...

“Instructor? Are you okay?”

“M-mm? No, I’m fine. It’s nothing to worry about. What did you say was the problem, again?”

...The trainees and their scary faces! That was the biggest problem here!

They were doing nothing more than asking a question, yet their glare was murderously powerful and scary. So much so that Yang Jin-Chan wondered if the trainees were coordinating with each other to deliberately frighten the instructors.

‘No wonder the training program was spluttering earlier on...’

People who took on the task of educating their fellow human beings were fundamentally gutsy and strong-willed. That was because forcibly shoving and dragging someone with free will until they reached a satisfactory level required substantial psychological labor.

But strong wills didn’t work on these trainees.

‘I mean, come on... They might beat the living sh*t out of me if I do that!’

Yang Jin-Chan had dealt with his fair share of trainees pretending to be a tough guy. After all, it was fairly common to find a guy in his mid-to-late twenties who was still a bit too full of himself and didn't know how scary society could be.

However, these trainees were different from them. They weren’t pretending to be tough guys.

How would Yang Jin-Chan know that? The answer was simple enough.

“Thank you, instructor. I should’ve understood this in one go, but...”

“No, don’t worry about it, sir. You can always ask us for help.”

Their attitude might be thuggish, but their manners were exemplary, at least!

Whenever the instructors helped the trainees with something, they’d always be rewarded with a polite thank you.

‘I guess they are just not good at dealing with people...?'

Who would’ve thought that a whole group of burly guys was terrible at talking to other people? With how “unfriendly” their attitudes were, it was no wonder the instructors initially thought the trainees were trying to be intimidating on purpose.

However, sharing a few conversations and finding out that the trainees' attitudes had not been faked helped the instructors notice some new things about these people.

‘I mean, for one thing, they are surprisingly passionate about this program, aren't they?’

First of all, these people didn’t know the meaning of embarrassment.

Even though this training program was meant for new employees who didn't know anything, the people participating in it usually didn't want to reveal their lack of knowledge to their peers. Even if they didn't understand anything during the class, they'd still pretend they had.

Although this trait was fairly ubiquitous among South Koreans, it was more pronounced with the new employees going through the training program. That was because they believed failing to understand something everyone else had no issues with was a sign of incompetence.

Such an attitude was probably the absolute worst from the perspective of the educators. After all, their purpose wasn't to filter out the incompetent workers and find the cream of the crop through the program but to create a workforce that could be deployed immediately. Finding who was at the top of the class was the last thing on their minds.

If Yang Jin-Chan was being brutally honest, how was he or his fellow instructors supposed to figure out who were elites among the newbies during a training program lasting only three months?

Not only did they lack the methods to do so, but the newbies had at least a decade of evaluation to look forward to that would ultimately determine their place in the company, anyway.

Despite that, the newbies tried so hard to pretend they understood everything. As for the instructors, they had no choice but to go along with the charade to prevent panic from setting in among the trainees, even though they knew their lessons were not being understood by these younglings!

However, this group of trainees was markedly different from those newbies.

“Instructoooor!”

“Yes! I’m coming!”

These people obviously had no shame at all. As a matter of fact, they would confidently ask their questions while making a face that said, ‘What’s so embarrassing about not knowing something?’

Yang Jin-Chan had never dealt with this type of attitude before. That wasn’t the only remarkable thing here, though.

The attitudes of the peers toward the one asking the question were also different from the norm.

Usually, the peers would have directed their gazes slightly tainted by sneer and contempt at the trainee working up their courage to ask the question. Even if they tried to hide it, the subtle sneer could never be fully disguised.

That development would naturally discourage the courageous trainee from asking another question, even if they had a different query. At least the more hands-on types would sneakily approach the instructors after the classes to ask for some help. That was generally how things were like.

However! These trainees paid precisely zero attention to who was asking what. They didn’t look down on the others for not knowing something they did. And none of them acted like hotshots for knowing stuff others hadn’t understood yet.

‘What a bunch of strange folks they are...’

Such traits might not seem anything special, but Yang Jin-Chan could recognize how peculiar they were. He got to teach in countless training programs since the day he was first assigned to the education team.

Even then, he could swear that he had never taught so many newbies in a program simultaneously... And he could confidently say he hadn't seen too many newbies with this type of attitude, too.

Then again... How could Yang Jin-Chan know that he was dealing with martial artists here?

Martial artists not knowing anything about office work proved helpful to the Assembly's administrative staff in regard to their general attitude. Everyone here took their complete lack of knowledge of office stuff as par for the course. They didn't feel embarrassed about having poor skill sets.

Humans were usually more gracious and forgiving in fields they were not familiar with. These trainees' attitudes might have been somewhat different had these classes not been for administrative work but for martial arts instead!

There was another reason why the trainees weren’t dismissive toward the others. They had spent their lives mastering martial arts and constantly competing against one another. In a long and arduous marathon-like competition, these people knew surging ahead for a bit didn’t mean anything.

A competitor you sneered at yesterday could be running way up ahead in a month. Knowing that, who would dare underestimate and look down on their peers?

‘It’s kinda weird to say this to myself, but...’

Yang Jin-Chan finished explaining the problem to the trainee and stood up straight before scanning the surroundings. A wry smile soon floated up on his lips.

‘These people, they... are super-quick with picking up on things.’

Even now, these trainees still hadn't met the minimum standards required from a new employee of Jaegyeong. And no, Yang Jin-Chan didn't mean the new employees at the tail-end of the training program, but newbies about to start the program!

Even then, he wasn't discouraged by this situation because the speed of these people learning things had been frighteningly fast.

‘Are they triathletes or something?’

The instructors held an emergency meeting, then agreed to completely overhaul the training program's contents and schedule.

The training hours were drastically increased. The trainees now had to arrive before nine in the morning, while the classes now officially ended at nine in the evening. When individual study hours were added to the tally, one could safely say these trainees were going through a training regime similar in intensity to what a prospective national entrance exam taker might experience.

Despite the intense schedule, though, not a speck of fatigue could be seen on these trainees’ faces. Actually, many of them even willingly stayed behind despite the classes ending for the day to self-study. That was how committed they were.

However, the reason for their ‘passion’ could very well be...

Yang Jin-Chan sneakily glanced at the back of the class.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptap!

Someone sitting riiight at the back of the class was typing on the keyboard with terrifying accuracy and intensity. Usually, it was safe to assume anyone typing so loudly away was nothing more than an empty can rattling noisily. But not that man. Oh no.

‘How did someone like him end up in the newbie training program?’

Most people seemed to forget that Yang Jin-Chan was a Jaegyeong employee. In other words, he was considered an elite workforce who had also gone through this training program once upon a time.

Educating others was obviously not an easy thing to do, so only those who scored highly during the training program were even considered eligible for an instructor role.

Yang Jin-Chan received excellent grades during the program. And he was rightly proud of that. Compared to that young man, though...

'...He definitely doesn't belong here.’

Yang Jin-Chan always believed that Jaegyeong would be able to handle anyone regardless of which university they had graduated from or how much of a genius they were. But that young man named Kang Jin-Ho? He seemed to hail from another dimension altogether!

‘I mean... We have nothing to teach that guy!’

Not as in “Kang Jin-Ho is too excellent for us to teach!” but quite literally... The instructors had nothing left to teach him! At least on the first day, he seemed to ask one or two questions, but from the second day onward, he began self-studying the learning material for the next course. And before long...! He surged so far ahead of everyone here that there really was nothing left to teach him in this place!

But now, he...

Kang Jin-Ho suddenly stopped typing and raised his hand. “Excuse me, instructor?”

“Yes, Mister Kang?”

“I have a que...”

“Please don’t ask me!” Yang Jin-Chan hurriedly shook his head. “I told you, I also don’t know!”

“But, uh, I haven’t even asked anything yet...?”

“Please don't. Because I most likely don't know the answer to what you want to ask me about."

“Mm...?”

Anyone could tell Yang Jin-Chan was genuinely freaking out just then from his yells.

An instructor displaying such an attitude was not a good thing. However, it was definitely not Yang Jin-Chan's fault this time.

A man was supposed to perform the role given to him. If a high school third-year math teacher failed to answer a question regarding differintegral, one could say that the teacher was not qualified for the job.

However, what if the student asked the same teacher about differential geometry? The weight of responsibility would no longer belong to that teacher. After all, any student with morals wouldn’t ask a high school teacher something like that!

That was what Kang Jin-Ho had been doing recently.

He totally ignored textbooks and learning material for the program and began digging deeper into other stuff all on his own... And he even had the galls to ask the instructors about things he couldn't understand! And his questions would always be about something weird, too!

When Kang Jin-Ho did that for the first time, Yang Jin-Chan almost picked up his phone to call his professor from his university days. Was it because he also didn’t know the answer himself and wanted to know what it could be?

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Nope. Yang Jin-Chan simply wanted to know what the hell this punk was even asking him about!

“Mister Kang?”

“Yes, instructor?”

“...Please go home. Please.”

Kang Jin-Ho confusedly tilted his head. “Mm? But the class is still in session...?”

“It doesn’t matter, so please! Please go home! You’re killing me with your presence here!”

“...I’ll stay quiet at the back of the classroom.”

“No! Please! You’re interfering with everyone’s learning process! So I beg of you! Please! Go home!”

Kang Jin-Ho slowly got up while making a sheepish face. “I, I see. Then, uh...”

“Yes, thank you! You can exit through that door. Please hurry.”

“...Understood.” Kang Jin-Ho's shoulders slumped forward in dejection while he trudged outside the classroom.

But that immediately prompted relieved sighs of varying degrees of loudness to burst out from every corner of the classroom!

“Holy cow! I can finally breathe again!”

“Just whose idea was it?! Who made him participate in the program! Don’t they have any morals?! Seriously!”

Yang Jin-Chan joined the complaints train leaving the station and vociferously voiced his displeasure, his spittle dancing in the air as he did so.

This was a historical moment of the boundary separating the educators and learners crumbling down to create a group of brothers-in-arms sharing a common bond!