Chapter 50 – A Brief Respite (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The face of Seo Yeom-jeong, the employee in charge of the clubs department, turned pure white.

While everyone in the administrative office stood rigidly with their backs to the wall and their hands clasped behind them in a line.

A fluttering black silk robe. Hair gleamed like crystal on shoulders touched by the morning sunlight.

A deadly woman approached with her arms folded, her shoes clicking. Two attendants with broad shoulders followed tightly behind her.

‘…The Headmaster?’

At last the Headmaster came right up in front of Seo Yeom-jeong. At the cold gaze, Seo Yeom-jeong swallowed hard. She tried to make sense of the situation before her, but it only made her thoughts more tangled.

The cousin of a close acquaintance of the Headmaster? That had naturally been a blatant lie.

But the advisor for this special advancement student’s club was the Headmaster?

Did it make any sense that Sage Media, one of the central figures of the Seven Great Heroes, would volunteer to act as the guardian of a mere special advancement student? Even a baby sitting there would have snorted at the absurdity of the scene unfolding in front of Seo Yeom-jeong.

She had worked at the academy for nearly ten years, but this was the first time she had ever seen the Headmaster’s face from this close.

Beauty so fresh and youthful that you could have believed she was barely in her early twenties. And yet the Headmaster’s eyes as she looked down were not fresh at all.

Gulp. A suffocatingly heavy silence seeped into the walls, and Seo Yeom-jeong, who had been staring blankly at the Headmaster, sprang to her feet as if waking from a dream.

“H-Headmaster!”

Seo Yeom-jeong’s nature was the kind that was strong against the weak and weak against the strong. She was harsh toward those she considered weaker than herself, but became pathetically servile before people of higher social standing.

Media frowned, clearly displeased by the excessively deferential tone dripping from her voice. Then, spotting the special advancement student standing calmly nearby with his arms folded, she showed a gentle smile.

“Yesterday we only spoke over the phone, but seeing our Geom-ma in person like this makes me so happy.”

“I apologize for troubling you when you must be busy.”

“Oh, not at all. If it’s your request, I should come running even barefoot. And I happened to be on my way to work anyway.”

In the atmosphere of the administrative office, tense to the point of snapping, only the Headmaster and the special advancement student spoke warmly with each other.

All the employees remained silent, carefully watching the Headmaster’s mood. Seo Yeom-jeong, who had her head deeply bowed, glanced sideways at the special advancement student.

How could the supreme authority of Hoakin Academy treat a mere cadet, and a special advancement student at that, with such familiarity?

…Wait a second. That special advancement student’s name was Kang Geom-ma? A sudden sense of incongruity coiled around her chest. A story she’d heard in passing from an instructor she knew well. Surely this year’s top entrant’s name was….

As the thoughts floating in her mind began to snap together like pieces of a puzzle, Seo Yeom-jeong’s lips began to turn blue. Her eyelids trembled as she stole glances at Kang Geom-ma.

“Geom-ma, can you hand me that paperwork first? I’ll take care of the remaining procedure as the club’s advisor. It’s already ten minutes to nine. Written exams are next week, right? You can’t be late for class. Off you go now.”

“Ah, it’s already that late. Then I’ll leave it in your hands.”

Kang Geom-ma gave the Headmaster a slight nod. The older employees showed signs of displeasure at that casual greeting, but when the Headmaster gave them a glance, they immediately swallowed their expressions.

“Of course, of course. Just leave this to me. Study hard!”

“Yes, then I’ll see you next time.”

Media, smiling brightly, waved him off warmly until Kang Geom-ma’s hand touched the doorknob.

Thud.

Kang Geom-ma closed the administrative office door and left. The fingers Media had been waving softly toward the door came to a stop. Soon after, she slowly turned her body.

“I more or less understand what kind of situation this is.”

“……”

Her voice was chillingly cold. To the cadets she was an endlessly warm and benevolent Headmaster, but to the employees she was a boss so meticulous and cool-headed she could be terrifying.

Reading the room in a glance, Media let out a hollow laugh.

Worthy of her title Sage, she had inferred the circumstances almost perfectly from mere fragments of the situation. There was no need for her to even manifest her unique blessing, the Blessing of the Poet.

“And here I am, the Headmaster, yet this kind of senseless person was still working here. No doubt you said something about his background. And to make it worse–”

The air in the room grew even colder. The curtains above the window frame whipped violently.

“–you said it to a cadet that both Sieg and I have already marked as a successor.”

Cold sweat ran down the backs of the employees like streams. A few of them wondered if they had heard correctly. Seo Yeom-jeong, so startled that she could hardly bear it, timidly raised her head.

At a gesture from Media, one of the attendants fetched over the chair that Seo Yeom-jeong had been standing by. Seo Yeom-jeong could say nothing and only worked her lips soundlessly.

Media dropped into Seo Yeom-jeong’s chair and crossed her legs provocatively. Then she propped up her chin, stared at Seo Yeom-jeong, and spoke lowly.

“I won’t drag this out. I’ll give you five minutes.”

The instant those words ended, Seo Yeom-jeong pulled out a pen and paper and began writing a resignation letter. Wrinkling her nose to keep from crying, she moved the pen with a trembling hand.

Because if she made excuses, it felt like she’d be resigning not from her job, but from life itself.

* * *

That afternoon.

After class ended, I returned to the administrative office and was informed that the club founding application had been accepted.

Of course, since we were still one member short of the required five, it hadn’t been formally approved yet, but in other words, once that was solved, the club would be established.

It wasn’t exactly something requiring immediate urgency, so I decided to look for the final member after next week’s exam was over.

But somehow, the female employee who had openly ignored me that morning was completely gone from her desk. And the administrative office employees, who now spoke kindly and even offered me snacks….

It seemed Media had said something to them, but even so, their sudden change in attitude was a bit burdensome.

Well, I was likely to stop by the administrative office a few more times in the future because of club matters, so I decided not to take it in too negative a way.

Scratching my head, I shook away the stray thoughts and hastened my steps toward the smithy inside the academy.

* * *

“Mister, I’m here.”

At that one sentence, Byullant, who had been drenching steel in sweat, turned toward me. He wiped his sweat with a rag thick with black grime and steadied his rough breathing.

“You’re here to pick up the weapon, right? Wait a moment.”

I nodded to show I understood. At that, he made a curious expression and headed toward the storage area to retrieve the commissioned Murasame.

The broad muscles of his back stood out beneath the tunic he wore underneath. After watching his back for a moment, I casually pulled out a chair and leaned into it. The heat wind rolling out from the furnace made sweat slowly start to break out on me.

Summer was only just beginning and the weather was already growing hotter by the day, so looking at those fiercely blazing flames was enough to make me shake my head.

I loosened my necktie as far as it would go and let out a deep sigh.

‘How does that man keep working in a place like this?’

I don’t know what that blacksmith thinks of me, but to me, as a former player, he’s a person I both love and hate.

Back during my gameplay days, I was only a light spender, so I didn’t really have any deep resentment toward him.

…Well, after what happened recently, the hate side had definitely gotten stronger, but I still couldn’t deny that I also feel sorry for him.

Blacksmith Byullant. One of the main NPCs who handled nearly everything related to weapons. At the same time, he was also one of those inherently cursed-to-be-hated characters who instantly gutted all the bullets players had loaded, making him a truly two-sided figure.

Judging by his lines in the original work, he might have been someone who loved money a little too much, but his particular shamelessness made him difficult to truly hate. Though, I could only feel that way because I had been a light spender.

Heavy spenders, on the other hand, had viciously mocked him all over the community, calling him things like Jwiralant, Doomlant, or even Bullalt.

Even if Miracle’s Blessing M was relatively generous, its roots were still that of a K-mobile game. In a world like that, it was inevitable that Byullant, the one handling weapon refinement and enhancement, would become the target of resentment and fury.

Come to think of it, I had also been furious when he turned my Murasame from B-rank into E-rank.

Still, if I gave him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he had done his best…. That’s what I wanted to believe. Otherwise I’d just get angrier.

Anyway, the heavy spenders would still line up his picture alongside the enhancement window before running a strengthening gacha, praying, “Please, Byullant, just this once!”

The game company might’ve been the one drinking the players’ blood, but it was Byullant who fed the players’ money into the furnace as firewood.

And besides, to me he was no longer some dry NPC, but a real person acting as something like a business partner. The moment I thought of it that way, my feelings became rather complicated.

“What are you thinking so hard about?”

While I was sitting there dazed and lost in thought, Byullant had apparently come all the way over and now asked me.

“Ah, it’s nothing. You just remind me of someone I know.”

“Then I guess that person must be handsome like me too.”

Byullant stroked his soot-darkened beard and grinned, showing his teeth. I inwardly snorted. He handed over the Murasame he was holding in one hand.

Then Byullant moistened his tongue by gulping down a peach-colored drink that looked like liquor. It smelled of fermented grain, so it was probably makgeolli.

According to the setting, Byullant was from Northern Europe, and yet here he was draining makgeolli by the cup like it was delicious.

It reminded me of those foreigner videos where someone had been perfectly patched into being Korean, and the sight was oddly funny. While I was staring, my eyes met his.

“Want a drink too?”

“…How can you offer alcohol to a minor?”

“You brat, a kid should at least act like a kid! The way you talk is like some bastard who’s already lived through the whole world.”

“……”

Byullant grumbled lowly and swirled the alcohol cup around. I withdrew my gaze from him and looked over the Murasame he’d handed me.

“It feels a bit much to say this myself, but I can confidently say I did this job beyond perfectly. Of course, the higher-grade material mixed in with the monster materials helped a lot.”

Just as he said, it looked like he had steeled himself this time, because the craftsmanship was visibly better than before.

The blade, once covered in cracks from the aftereffects of raising aura through it, now breathed out chill. And the scabbard, once charred black like coal, had regained the elegant texture of paulownia wood.

‘Byullant.’

Looking at the upgraded Murasame with satisfaction, I called up the status window in my mind.

The words flashed into my retina.

Pa-at.

== ==

[Blessing of Painlessness]

The pain vanishes completely.

[▷NEW! You have met the required number of manifestations, so the activation time has been adjusted as follows.]

[※ Activation time: (40▶50) seconds, cooldown: 12 hours]

== ==

It seemed the Blessing of Painlessness didn’t simply count as long as I manifested it often. It only counted when I manifested it in actual combat.

I’d been focused only on checking the Blessing of the Sword God, so I’d forgotten about this one, but it was welcome news at the perfect time. Considering the dungeons I would need to clear in the future, forty seconds had honestly felt insufficient.

The increased time was only ten seconds, but it was still clearly good news.

Back then I used to grumble self-deprecatingly that it was a useless blessing, but the Blessing of Painlessness originally manifested by Kang Geom-ma was actually quite versatile for a personal-spirit-class blessing.

If I took into account potentially using it together later with the Blessing of Transference after raising my weapon rank, the outlook was entirely positive.

Scratching my cheek, I moved my hand a little more and scrolled down.

== ==

[Murasame]

Type: Sashimi knife

Description: It was a blade that was once called the sword that gathers dew. It had been reborn as a carbon-steel sashimi knife imbued with a craftsman’s know-how. It might be small, but perhaps its performance varies depending on the user?

Specifications: 「Blade length – 35 cm」, 「Width – 6 cm」

Attributes: 「Destructive Power – C」, 「Range – E」, 「Hardness – (E▶C)」, 「Growth Potential – A」

Rank: (E▶D)

[NEW! A new function has been added.] ◀ (Touch to unlock.)

== ==

Since the main material was from the buffalo, a C-rank monster, I hadn’t really been expecting much, but for all the trouble I’d gone through, the rank-up wasn’t especially dramatic.

There had even been material from the Cow King, an A-rank monster, so I had thought it might at least become C-rank…. But then again, things were never going to work out that easily.

Still, the fact that Hardness had jumped by two full stages was pretty encouraging. There would definitely be situations later where I had to forcibly pour aura into Murasame again, and it would be a problem if it shattered every time it couldn’t take it.

And I’d feel a little sorry for this drunken blacksmith too.

“……?”

As I kept scrolling down, I brought my finger to the line written at the bottom and tapped it.

Pa-at.

== ==

Through the combination of successful strengthening and this weapon’s growth potential, up to three special abilities might be granted.

1) [ — (empty) — ]

2) [ — (empty) — ]

3) [ — (empty) — ]

※ Special abilities could only be granted through a mana stone and activate at random.

== ==

“Bullalt?”