Chapter 1 – Experts Don’t Blame Their Tools (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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It had been almost a full year since I was thrown into the game.

Miracle’s Blessing M.

A mass-produced mobile game that needed no further explanation.

That one sentence sums it up. A textbook pay-to-win model, a textbook auto-hunting system. The kind of game that looked like it would sit somewhere around fifth to tenth place in the app store rankings.

It didn’t really have much of a story, either.

Then why did I play it? Simple. The female characters were my type. But who would’ve thought I’d get swallowed by a game I had only started now and then just to pass the time?

I hadn’t done multiple runs, and I hadn’t gone crazy with spending to earn some special perk, so for half a year all I could do was grumble, Why me? By now, though, I had adjusted to it to some extent and was living a fairly satisfying life.

Let me say it again. I didn’t become a character inside the game. I became a person inside the game.

Background Character A, not even as important as a random NPC walking by. That was exactly where I stood.

In this place, my name was Kang Geom-ma.

I know exactly what kind of name must’ve flashed through your mind. The kind of name that naturally makes you think of the line, “A woman… talking back?”

Even I snorted the first time I heard it.

Geom for “sword” and ma for “demon,” making me Kang Geom-ma.

I wanted to erase it right away like I was resetting a nickname, but apparently my father in this world had spent a good sum of money having it made at a naming house. There was some bullshit belief here that the humbler a person’s name was, the longer they lived. Even so, calling your son “demon” still felt a little much.

…I want to change it, but this world had the uselessly realistic detail that a minor needed a guardian’s consent, so until I became an adult, I had to live with this name.

Anyway, aside from that minor defect in the name, life wasn’t bad.

We were a little short of middle class, but still a warm family that lacked for nothing. And fortunately, the setting of “Miracle’s Blessing M” was Korea. That at least narrowed the gap between the world I used to live in and this one. Names, place names, geography, all of it had only tiny differences of a syllable or two and was otherwise almost identical.

Thanks to that, I was managing to live out the life of an ordinary teenage boy born with a roughly average lot in life.

Back on Earth, my family went bankrupt when I was in high school, so at a young age I had spent my days washing dishes and cleaning at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant. Just being able to eat warm stew and rice three times a day here felt like a blessing I barely deserved.

And so a year passed. Just when I was slowly beginning to forget whether this place was even a game at all, a single sheet of paper arrived at the house as if to nail down the truth with a firm, “Yeah, no. This isn’t reality.”

An acceptance letter from “Hoakin Academy.”

== ==

Acceptance Notice

Examinee Number: 4982-Ga

Name: Kang Geom-ma

This was to inform you that the above-named person had been accepted to this academy for the 2034 school year, and was hereby requested to report as follows:

1. Date and Time: April 17, 2034, 09:00

2. Location: Hoakin Academy Grand Auditorium

3. Items to Bring: Your personal weapon and belongings

== ==

Oh my goodness! Look at this, honey!

Wahahaha, Geom-ma, you were the pride of our Seori Kang clan! I knew a good name would bring good fortune. Well done, my son!

My parents congratulated me with flushed, excited faces. I had to stop them from going all the way back to the Kang clan’s home region in Seori and slaughtering a pig to celebrate. No, more importantly, Seori as a clan seat? What, was an ancestor of ours a thief?

“…Ha.”

A deep sigh escaped me. The closer the enrollment date got, the more my brow kept tightening.

My modest plan to live an ordinary life in an average family had fallen apart. Fuck.

How the hell did this bastard Kang Geom-ma even get in?

This was the situation. Before I possessed him, Kang Geom-ma manifested a blessing, took Hoakin Academy’s entrance exam, and passed.

Blessings were usually hereditary. Distinguished heroic families arranged engagements in advance to reinforce their privileges, and what was born from that background was “Hoakin Academy.” A school for the upper class, where the children of heroic families size each other up and tie their futures together.

Of course, with all the other academy cadets entering draped in one blessing after another, there was nothing especially outstanding about me.

Usually, those who weren’t born from heroic families considered it meaningful enough just to be admitted as “special advancement students.”

Even now, while packing my bags, I still couldn’t help wondering how this guy Kang Geom-ma had managed to pass.

Just how well had he done on the written exam? Thanks to him, I was about to end up smelling ink in a life that had never had room for that kind of thing.

“A blessing…”

The moment I called up the word blessing in my mind, a status window rose over my field of vision.

== ==

[Blessing of Painlessness]

The pain vanishes just like that.

[Activation Time: 30 seconds / Cooldown: 12 hours]

== ==

Looking at the blessing Kang Geom-ma had manifested, a gloom settled over me. The ability itself looked like a very attractive blessing.

The problem was that it only lasted thirty seconds while the cooldown was twelve hours. That meant a grand total of one minute of activation time per day.

I snorted and rolled my eyes, then my gaze stopped at the corner of the status window.

Right. That was there too.

The blessing newly granted to me, not to Kang Geom-ma, after I came here.

== ==

[Blessing of the Sword God]

What was cut would be severed.

[This blessing only activates when the blade is a sword under 30 centimeters in length and under 5 centimeters in width.]

== ==

His name was Sword Demon, yet his blessing was Sword God.

No concept could have been more on the nose than that.

The content was so absurdly simple compared to the grandiose name that it almost felt more mysterious.

Among all of it, the condition stood out the most.

A blade under thirty centimeters long and under five centimeters wide. A size so small it hardly even deserved to be called a sword.

The dimensions were exactly those of the sashimi knife I had held all my life. Was the world seriously telling me to keep filleting fish here too?

I was good at it, and I liked it, but with this newly granted life, I had wanted to live a little differently.

But what could I do when the system itself was pressing a blade into my hand? I just had to be satisfied that it wasn’t a paring knife.

…Life really didn’t work out the way you want it to.

“Whew.”

I let out a short sigh and was just about to finish packing when

“Ah, right. I forgot to bring a weapon.”

Now that I thought about it, the treasured heirlooms and weapons of the characters in the story drifted through my mind.

Even the lowest E-rank weapons cost tens of millions of won, average C-rank ones went into the hundreds of millions, and A-rank or S-rank weapons were treasures by their very existence.

I thought it over for a moment, then shook my head.

There was no way a family like ours, basically ordinary middle class at best, had the financial room to buy me some outrageously expensive weapon like that.

Even the tuition alone was murderously expensive by our family’s standards. I was already enrolling because circumstances pushed me into it, so I had no desire to add another pointless expense.

Still, they had plainly written it under required items, and if I showed up without one, I felt like I’d make a bad first impression from day one…

I hesitated for a moment, then got to my feet and took my wallet.

“Let’s go to Daiso.”

Experts didn’t blame their tools.

That had been my first master’s favorite saying, the man who insisted on using only one-million-won Japanese sashimi knives.

* * *

“…New student. Is this really a weapon?”

“Yes.”

On the day of the entrance ceremony.

The instructor looked back and forth between the black-haired new student and the weapon inspection table.

He wanted to snap, Were you kidding me right now?! But the boy was so composed that it left him at a loss. He stared at the student’s face, then lowered his eyes again.

A still-unopened bundle sat on the inspection table. The fluorescent sticker that read “30% Off” and the Daiso label stood out sharply. There wasn’t even just one. There were ten bundled together.

Ten years into his life as an instructor, he had never seen a weapon like this. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure it could be called a weapon.

He swallowed the words he really wanted to say and hardened his expression.

“New student, do you think the academy is some kind of joke? Do you really believe it makes any sense for these little kitchen knives to be the weapon you’ll use in today’s entrance exam?”

Right, if it was a prank, he’d let it slide once. This was the greatest academy in the world, attended by the children of the upper class, and there were often students with childish, nasty personalities who wanted to test themselves against the faculty. A deeply adolescent urge to plant themselves on top of the staff’s heads from day one.

It was a considerable shock that someone would pull this kind of stunt on the very first day, but discipline had to be established from the outset. The most effective way to deal with this type of cadet was to seize the initiative.

The instructor’s eyes narrowed layer by layer. The new student tilted his head slightly as if he didn’t understand the issue.

“These really are my weapons.”

There was something both brazen and strangely polite in the boy’s tone, and before he knew it, the instructor’s furrowed brow had loosened. The boy, having picked up on that, began explaining his reasons one by one.

“Instructor, I’m a special advancement student from an ordinary family, so I don’t have the means to bring some expensive weapon. The tuition alone has already placed a heavy burden on my parents, so how could I ask them to buy me something costly just for my own sake? As their son, how could I commit that kind of unfilial act?”

“…”

His tone was crisp, and his eyes were bright with intelligence.

After hearing the circumstances, the instructor ran a hand over his face. It was true that for special advancement students who weren’t from the upper class, the academy’s tuition alone must have been more than enough of a burden.

And yet here he was, a man belonging to an academy that ought to be an equal place of learning, blinded by prejudice and about to chew out such a thoughtful and dutiful son.

That thirty-percent discount must have been the student’s way of trying to reduce the burden as much as possible. The instructor’s eyes reddened.

Then, as if to drive the point home, the boy added another line.

“Besides… I think blaming your equipment is something only amateurs do.”

The instructor flinched. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing a boy barely in his teens should say. The words carried the weight of experience, as though he had already stood at the summit of a single discipline.

Experts didn’t blame their tools.

Unsure how to react to that oddly meaningful feeling, he decided to throw his support behind the boy’s conviction. For no particular reason, he wanted to cast a vote in favor of such unbending resolve.

“This cadet’s weapon is approved for possession.”

“Thank you, Instructor.”

For a moment, he found himself wishing he had a son like this.

“Cadet, what is your name?”

“Kang Geom-ma.”

After bowing politely, Kang Geom-ma swept the bundle of knives into his bag.

The other new students lined up nearby all curled their lips into mocking smiles at him. The moment the instructor saw that, a thick vein stood out on his temple.

“New students! Quiet down and move it, quickly, with urgency!”

“…”

Leaving the ridicule behind, Kang Geom-ma simply gathered the rest of his things as though it meant nothing and walked away.

“This instructor can become either an angel or a devil depending on your behavior. Understood?!”

“Yes…”

“What’s that, too quiet. Understood?!”

“Yes!”

The moment the instructor barked with the veins in his neck bulging, the sneering expressions changed at once.

“Kang Geom-ma…”

The instructor quietly repeated the boy’s name.

A small laugh slipped out as he watched that departing back, one that had left such a deep impression.

It was a name that sounded like he would be terrifyingly good with a blade.

* * *

Academy Staff Lounge.

“Phew…”

The male instructor who had finished guiding the students in opened the door looking exhausted. A woman with a blunt black bob smiled brightly and beckoned to him.

“Good work, sunbae.”

“Yeah, thanks. Damn, it’s a relief this only happens once a year. I’m barely in my early thirties and I already feel like I’ve aged ten years.”

Throwing off his black faculty overcoat, the instructor dropped onto the sofa. He pressed his hands into his stiff shoulders and massaged them slowly.

“Don’t worry, sunbae. They say if you age on the outside early, you get to stay young later, right?”

“The hell.”

“Hehe. More importantly, did you see the list of this year’s cadets? There were at least a dozen kids who only come around maybe once per class, if that.”

“Is that so.”

The instructor answered dully, and his junior tilted her head in confusion.

“Did you run into any cadets who stood out while doing weapon inspections?”

“Hmm, let’s see.”

The instructor rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. Then the face of one new student suddenly crossed his mind.

“Yeah, there was one.”

“Oh, really? Who? The Spear Saint’s nephew? The daughter of the Absolute Bow is here too… or was it the Sword Emperor’s granddaughter? It was her, right?!”

“No, not them. A special advancement student. Sharp eyes, good head on his shoulders. Kid’s got his act together.”

“Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk up a student like that before. Now I’m curious. Tell me who it is!”

His junior’s eyes sparkled. The male instructor let out a low laugh and shrugged.

“If I tell you now, where’s the fun in that? Just watch later. You’ll know the second you see him.”

“If he’s a special advancement student, then his blessing probably isn’t much… so what, does he have an A-rank weapon? Or don’t tell me an S-rank one?! At least tell me what kind of weapon he uses so I can keep an eye out for him during the entrance test.”

The instructor rolled his eyes around, then lifted one corner of his mouth and answered.

“A Daiso sashimi knife.”