Chapter 51 – A Brief Respite (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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After stopping by the forge, I returned to the dormitory. I supported my head with both arms and sank my back into the bedsheet. Fixing my vacant gaze on the familiar ceiling, I muttered.

“…Why did it have to be magic stones?”

When I first received Murasame, I had quietly expected a lot from it, if only because its growth potential was high.

As if to live up to that, a newly added function.

It was an absurdly great perk that let me slot in as many as three special abilities. At first glance, it was enough to make me cheer inwardly.

“Ha.”

A sigh escaped on its own. The result was clearly satisfying, but the phrase “magic stone” made me think more deeply.

In the game, they had only been minerals plastered with ornate descriptions in the text box, with not much practical use.

They say even dog shit disappears when you need it for medicine, and there really was not a single thing the ancients said that was wrong.

Why in the world were magic stones the catalyst for granting special abilities? The moment that question crossed my mind, the last sentence in Murasame’s description suddenly rose to the surface.

Its size might be small, but its performance could differ depending on the user?

“……”

Could it be because my name had the character for demon in it? It sounds like bullshit, but why did it feel like that possibility was oddly convincing?

Whatever happened, happened. To begin with, my blessing was the Sword God while my name was Geom-ma, so would it not be stranger if wordplay did not naturally spring up from that? I let out a detached sigh.

Magic stones, minerals imbued with mana.

They were materials dropped when you defeated the boss monsters of certain dungeons.

The problem was that the boss monsters that spat out magic stones were technically magical beasts, but they were beings whose danger rating was at least A-rank, and in truth were hardly different from demonfolk.

For example, even the Gigant that dropped the “Gigant Mana Stone,” which served as the key to the stone gate in that dungeon, was a magical beast with the epithet giant beast.

For some reason, it seemed someone had defeated it and taken the stone, but a Gigant was still unquestionably a high-tier magical beast.

It was a golem-type magical beast with a ridiculously huge body and stamina, and the description even said that if a Gigant merely stamped its foot, the whole area would shake.

Even so, a Gigant was the cute kind. After that bastard, the magical beasts that coughed up magic stones were magical beasts only in name. In reality, their very existence was a natural disaster.

The impure serpent Basilisk, the vicious beast Manticore, the Lich King Draugr, and so on.

Before the full-scale conflict with the demon race began, they were branch bosses nicknamed the Wall of Wailing among users who insisted on staying low-spending or free-to-play.

Back when I played, I was a light spender too, and even I had clicked my tongue at that difficulty.

Nominally, they were magical beasts meant to build up the protagonist Leon’s achievements, but they were obviously monsters that insane game company created to suck money out of users.

Of course, I never paid for advantages in subjugating magical beasts. I hated the yellow greed behind it.

I had a stubborn streak in my own way, so I attacked them by smashing my head against the wall and dissecting their patterns. I even turned off auto-hunting. Thinking about it now, I wondered why I had worked that hard.

Anyway, was it worth enduring even those dangers just to grant special abilities to a weapon?

Especially since defeating those things was supposed to be Leon’s role.

I stared blankly at the ceiling and fell into thought. Soon I sat up abruptly and leaned against the window frame.

‘…It is more than worth it.’

You needed at least an A-rank weapon to grant a special ability, and this thing could be given three of them.

The fact that they activated at random was a risk, but from my experience playing, the difference made by having special abilities was as absurdly obvious as in any mass-produced game.

In the first place, most of the reason users spent money was for weapon enhancement and special ability gacha.

That was how much a weapon’s special abilities could advance the user’s martial power.

Put differently, it was a wonder I had managed to get through all these crises with weapons that did not have a single special ability.

I turned my head toward the window. A full moon hanging round in the sky.

Looking at it eased my worries and deepened my thoughts.

Right now, I was craving strength. I had already put aside the lax thoughts of peace, safety, and quiet stability, but my fundamental purpose was still no different from before. To survive.

Unexpected variables that had not existed when I was a player were running rampant, and dangers aimed at me lurked everywhere.

As though this world were rejecting me, I kept getting dragged into incidents I had never intended, and the original story I had known was twisting out of shape.

I had realized long ago that life at the academy would not be easy, but with all these things piling up, my personality had become much more cynical.

On top of that, a month had already passed since I entered the academy. The Second Human-Demon War scheduled for three years from now would gradually begin to reveal its inner workings as well.

As preparation for that, improving my own martial power and granting special abilities to my weapon were not choices. They were necessities.

Because, frankly speaking, I could not even guarantee the outcome of the Human-Demon War that would break out three years from now. The reason was…

Our protagonist, Leon van Reinhardt. For some reason, I just could not entirely trust him.

No matter that the mermaid was a demonfolk, the fact that the supposed next hero had been knocked flat by a single basic hit was a pretty big shock.

Well, after that, there was no major difference from the path Leon had taken in the version I knew, but honestly, he did not inspire confidence.

Even so, his accomplishments were clear, and I often heard talk that the party he had formed had conquered upper-tier dungeons.

At this rate, before long, on Avalon Island where the upcoming deserted island survival training would be held, he would obtain the hilt of Balmung, the key weapon that pierced through the story and the sword in which the light and dark attributes resonated.

‘Lucky bastard.’

It was only a hypothesis, but could my existence perhaps be some kind of ward that absorbed misfortune for the protagonist Leon? Like I was taking the shit that ought to have been aimed at him instead. Thinking that way made me feel awful.

Feeling vaguely unpleasant, I grabbed Murasame for no reason and loosened the cord halfway. Kiring, a clear ringing of steel spread softly.

The blade drenched in moonlight. The face reflected and formed there.

Black eyes, and black hair whose tips alone were dyed as if bleached white and allowed to settle downward.

My appearance, which looked rather bleak, was the complete opposite of Leon, who blazed like the sun. Like a shadow following light.

Perhaps I could not completely rule out the possibility that whatever had thrown me into this world had some kind of unpleasant intention like that.

I stared at Murasame for a while, then gripped the hilt tightly. I squeezed so hard that the color drained from my hand.

Gazing up at the night sky, I thought.

In this world, the one living as me was Kang Geom-ma. I had neither the reason nor the desire to walk the perfect path of good that befits a protagonist.

If it was to survive.

I would swing my blade without hesitation.

“If I cut, it will be cut, no matter what it is.”

The words slipped out before I knew it. A hazy feeling lingered, as though it were a phrase I had heard somewhere before.

At the same time, the stars that had been hidden behind the sharp moonlight gradually appeared one by one, filling the pitch-black sky. I remembered something a professor had casually said during a lecture.

The stars of this world were supposedly the souls of the holy heroes who had gone on before us.

That even after death, they burned their souls away to watch over the human world and protect it.

At that moment, one star pulled a long tail behind it and traced an arc.

A shooting star.

As that falling star seemed to answer me, I felt a strange sense of relief and comfort.

* * *

A week passed in the blink of an eye, and it became the day of the written midterm.

I got up earlier than usual and washed myself with cold water.

It was early summer now, and I tried it like some sort of ritual for exam day, but the cold water that swept over my whole body chilled me to the bone.

Even so, the drowsiness clinging to my eyes vanished in an instant, so I could say I had achieved my intended goal.

Standing in front of the mirror, I dried every corner of my body with a towel. A well-defined six-pack and a lean physique, the result of working out while squeezing in bits of morning drill training.

More than anything, that heavy thing below my lower abdomen. Maybe when you were skinny and tall, the rest was big too.

“Damn, this guy’s packing.”

With a small, genuinely amused snort, I finished by ruffling my hair dry and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

My baby fat had mostly gone despite my age, but the fine fuzz still left on my face made me unmistakably a teenager.

I was no carved masterpiece like Leon, but I was not bad-looking either. My skin was pale, and my jawline was very sharp.

Still, compared to my past life where I had the face of a macho man, it felt too much like a pretty boy, and there was no helping the sense of dissonance.

“Feels like I’ve turned into less of a man.”

Though originally, I was Kang Geom-ma.

It was a very strange feeling to fully recognize the current me as myself. In webtoons and things like that, I thought they called this possession.

Suddenly curious, I finished drying myself in the bathroom and searched up the meaning of possession on my phone.

== ==

Possession

[Noun]

1. A phenomenon in which another person’s soul, an evil spirit, a vengeful spirit, or a god enters and resides within a human body.

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“Hm.”

It was not much different from the meaning I had known in common sense.

Honestly, going over things like this one by one was kind of ridiculous for someone in my position. The fact that I had already entered the world of a game left far too many things to nitpick.

“At this point, it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

I tossed my phone onto the bedsheet and buttoned up my shirt.

Fully dressed in uniform, I chewed on the sandwich I had made before sleeping and flipped through my notebook, reviewing the written material.

‘The age range at which blessings manifest is… the aftermath of the Hero Revolution that began in France 694 years ago…’

Hoakin Academy’s academic style was basically practical training. As someone who had achieved satisfying results on the midterms, I had no reason to be this serious.

Even so, the reason I had become unexpectedly serious about the written exam, whose weighting was also low, was simple.

Because the rankings would be posted on a bulletin in the hallway of the faculty building for all cadets to see.

They said it was intended to make students aware of their academic performance, but I thought it was an excessively cruel measure for young sprouts still growing, myself included.

Honestly, if not for that, I would have planned to take it easy, but the problem was that two of my club members happened to be first and second in the written rankings.

It probably would not matter much, but as the club president, I did not want my members to look down on me over my grades.

And since the club’s founding purpose was, on paper, a Dungeon Strategy Academic Society, if my grades as president were low, would any cadet even want to join?

Thud.

I shut my notebook, swallowed the last of the sandwich, and slung my book bag over my shoulder. A strange tension filled my shoulders with force. So this was what it felt like to be an examinee.

Back on Earth, my family circumstances had collapsed overnight and I had dropped out of high school, but in middle school, my grades had not been bad.

Maybe I did not have a natural head for studying, but ever since I was young, I had always been good at little tricks in the moment, so if I cleverly picked something that looked roughly like the right answer, it often turned out to be correct.

‘If I don’t know, pick number three.’

I recited my firm resolve inwardly. Just as I was about to finish getting ready.

Rollin~♬

Together with the ringtone came a buzz, and my phone vibrated to announce an incoming message. Since I had to hand it in during the exam anyway, I had been planning to leave it behind today.

“Who’s this first thing in the morning?”

Tilting my head, I picked up the phone.

[Saki Ryozo: It’s the written exam today. Did you eat breakfast?]

Ryozo had sent a text like some kind of mother out of nowhere. She occasionally sent pointless messages like this. Usually they were links to nutritionless academic articles about yokan.

[Me: Yeah. Ate a sandwich.]

The number 1 after the text disappeared in less than half a second.

[Saki Ryozo: Before an exam, you need to replenish yourself with enough sugar. Otherwise your brain can’t function properly. That’s why I always carry yokan around with me… blah blah blah.]

Ryozo rambled on while even attaching a scholarly paper link.

“What’s with her this early in the morning?”

I was about to coolly read it and ignore it, but then a thought crossed my mind and I tapped at the keypad.

[Me: In my country, there is traditionally a sweet you eat before taking an exam.]

[Saki Ryozo: Really? What is it???]

I could vividly picture Saki drooling on the other side of the phone. Wearing a faint smile, I tapped the screen again.

[Me: Eat taffy.]

The number 1 disappeared, but silence lingered for a moment.

Rollin~♬

Soon the notification sound rang.

[Saki Ryozo: …You’re messing with me, aren’t you?]

“She’s more fun to tease than I expected.”

I let out a short laugh, tossed the phone back onto the bed, and turned away.

Rollin~♬, rollin~♬, rollin~♬

Leaving the endlessly ringing phone behind me, I closed the door.