I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 13 - Job Hunting (3)

Chapter 13 – Job Hunting (3)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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There were only four years left until the original story began.

At the same time, it had now been one year and one month since all five of the future Great Sins had left the orphanage and become independent.

‘What is Seollang doing?’

As he read another letter from Yutia as usual, Alon suddenly found himself wondering about Seollang.

Yutia’s letters always included news about the other five, but from around two months after Seollang became independent, her name had not appeared even once.

‘…She didn’t die on the road, did she?’

After thinking for a moment, Alon firmly shook his head.

According to Yutia’s earlier letters, Seollang had already reached the desert nation.

And if she had followed the contents of the letter properly, there was no way she would have died a meaningless death.

The gift Alon had given her would make her into an excellent Baba Yaga.

A gladiator in Colony, where the strong could seize everything.

‘It was in the item description too. So it should be right.’

Because the developers liked to stuff all sorts of worldbuilding and miscellaneous background into item descriptions, Alon had read through them one by one.

He recalled the line written in the description of the item Seollang was supposed to obtain.

‘If the Sin of Greed had obtained it, she would not have fallen and become a Sin, but would have become a great beastfolk instead… was it something like that?’

Of course, when Alon used that item in the game, the only effect he got was a simple twenty percent increase to critical hit chance.

Still, because it had that sort of absurdly grand backstory attached to it, he had told Seollang where to find it.

And in case that item description turned out to be nothing special after all, he had also written down the location of a hidden treasure for her.

But even so, he had heard nothing for nine months.

‘…Maybe I should have just quietly handed her the treasure instead.’

After thinking that for a moment, Alon gave a short shake of the head.

In the first place, the reason he had sent Seollang to Colony was because the narration had made such a fuss about her talent as a fighter.

And unless he meant to support her for the rest of her life, learning to live on her own was a very necessary process.

‘No. She needs to be able to feed herself before I can feel at ease.’

That was why.

‘…Considering Deus’s ridiculous talent, Seollang definitely didn’t just die somewhere. So what happened?’

While Alon was making a strange face and thinking over Seollang’s whereabouts,

inside a desert cave in the south of Colony, the desert nation at the eastern edge of the continent,

a girl stepped out.

“Phew.”

The girl’s appearance was a mess.

Dirty dust clung to her all over, and her hair had grown so long that it covered her tail.

But unlike that filthy appearance, Seollang’s face wore a deep smile.

“It’s finally over.”

Stretching with relief, she soon lowered her gaze to the gloves on her hands.

The gift bestowed on her by the Great Moon.

The Essence of the Golden Mane.

‘How did the Great Moon know this was here?’

The question rose in her mind as soon as she stepped out after finishing the trial.

She looked down at the gloves and tilted her head as though she truly could not understand it.

That was only natural.

To the Golden Mane clan, her own people, this Essence of the Golden Mane was an object like a legend handed down from ancient times.

It was an object fully worthy of being called legendary.

Hundreds of years ago, it was said to have allowed beastfolk to become kings and had given the Golden Mane clan the authority to grant strength to their own kind.

Of course, most of that had sounded exaggerated to Seollang as she grew older, since they were only old stories she had heard from her mother when she was very young and her mother was still alive.

But now, the instant she put on the Essence, she had been pulled into her inner world, forced to undergo every trial, and then emerged again.

And because of that, Seollang could now understand.

Not a single part of that absurd old oral tale had been false.

Sssss.

When she lightly drew out her power, her golden eyes began to glow softly in the dark cave.

That was not all.

Her hair and tail also began to shine, as though they themselves had swallowed light.

Just like the Golden Mane clan from the old stories her mother used to tell.

As she smiled at her own power, her thoughts turned once more to the Great Moon.

There were too many things she wanted to ask.

But she soon put those questions away.

She knew her own head was not especially smart, and she knew it would be impossible for her to infer why the Great Moon knew this truth.

More importantly, there was one simple and clear fact she understood.

The Great Moon was the benefactor who had saved her when she had been dying as a test subject.

And at the same time, he was the one who had given her the power to take revenge on the Black Dragon that killed her parents.

He was someone whose grace she had to repay.

As she maintained that power, blue electricity crackled for an instant around Seollang.

She recalled the Great Moon’s command, then soon shook her head.

No matter how foolish she might be, she knew his intention had not simply been for her to become a gladiator.

So as she thought, Seollang naturally lowered her gaze to the gloves.

The gloves that possessed the authority to grant power to the Golden Mane clan.

“!”

The moment she saw them, Seollang finally understood the Great Moon’s will.

‘To become a famous gladiator, gather together the Golden Mane scattered across the land, restore them, and then…’

A grin spread across her face.

‘…use that to beat the Black Dragon to death.’

It was such a perfect answer that Seollang smiled.

Crackle.

Blue sparks burst in every direction in response to her emotions, but she did not care.

Instead, with a deep smile on her face, she began to walk out of the black cave.

The moon hung above the place where she emerged.

A blue moon that covered the whole desert in blue light.

And then,

“Everything is for him.”

With the sentence that had become a habit from saying it so often,

“Let’s begin.”

Five hundred years after the age of the great beastfolk king, the Golden Mane clan, once called the kings of all beastfolk, began preparing for resurrection beneath the blue moon.

Together with golden eyes.

* * *

After returning from the ball, starting about a year ago, Alon had found himself enjoying the study of incantation phrases and had devoted a great deal of time to it.

In the game, chanting phrases only consumed turns and strengthened magic attack power by ten or twenty percent each turn.

But in reality, just as he had expected, the phrases altered the nature of the spell itself.

If he used the phrases he had spoken several months ago while obtaining Constraint as an example, that would be Refraction, Repulsion, Azure Light, and Diffracted Line.

Refraction seemed to enhance instability in a completed spell and spread its range.

Repulsion seemed to crush the form of the spell and alter the transfer of a launched projectile.

Azure Light, in the case of lightning magic and similar spells, seemed to strengthen magic carried out in parallel.

And finally, Diffracted Line granted penetration to the magic itself.

In other words, it granted critical force.

Of course, his interpretation was based only on the information he had accumulated through half a year of experiments, so he did not know how accurate all of it was.

But one thing was certain.

Every phrase granted a different property.

He had also discovered several rules unique to the phrases.

‘You cannot repeat the same phrase, you cannot use a phrase that does not suit the spell, and you cannot use more than five phrases in a single spell. If you break any of those three rules, the magic either fails to manifest or grows weaker.’

There seemed to be several other rules as well, but he had not figured them out yet.

Alon had plenty of time to study magic, but he could still only use magic once a day.

‘…It would be nice if there were a book about phrases.’

In the first place, the phrases Alon used were, by the world’s settings, phrases from forgotten Babylonia, knowledge treated in this age almost like an out-of-place artifact.

The locations he knew only showed the phrases themselves.

They did not explain the rules or the phenomena behind them.

In other words, he had no choice but to throw his body at the problem and learn by doing.

But Alon did not consider that inconvenient.

His talent was at least enough to make the study of phrases enjoyable and immerse him in the study of magic.

That was why, after finishing his conversation with Evan and coming straight to the training grounds, he cast magic once again.

“Hoo.”

His hand naturally formed the Wisdom Fist Seal.

At the same time, the magic gathering there was Chain Lightning, a second-circle spell he had been experimenting with for roughly two months.

Guided by Alon’s thoughts, the mana arranged in parallel formed a round sphere, and then he deliberately erased one point from it to create imbalance.

Crackle.

The spell was completed.

With the little mana Alon possessed, the magic released only a faint light.

The one thing that was better than two months ago was that, perhaps because he had grown familiar with lightning magic, the crackling caused by the mana imbalance was a little more properly realized.

If one wanted to speak kindly, it had become more precise.

If one wanted to speak harshly, it was a useless spell that had only become precise.

But by chanting phrases, a useless spell gained purpose.

“Fixation.”

The lightning formed before him froze in place in the exact state it had been crackling, as if time itself had stopped.

“Compression.”

With the next murmur, the sphere that had been about the size of a large ball shrank, without moving, down to the size of a small bead.

“Collapse.”

Crunch.

With that next phrase, the magic that had been in the shape of a small sphere lost the shape of a sphere entirely.

What remained in front of him was the pure form of lightning.

Fragments of mana like thousands of irregular dotted lines gathered into one mass manifested before Alon.

And then,

“Instant Bloom.”

The moment Alon spoke the final phrase and released the Wisdom Fist Seal,

Crackle.

a giant tree of thunder manifested before him.

The blue tree shone brighter than the midday sun and displayed its form while remaining fixed in place.

It looked as though a bolt of lightning had been halted in the middle of striking.

Muttering that it did not seem as though it could be used as attack magic after all, contrary to what he had hoped, Alon soon felt regret as he turned away from the now empty mana core.

The body Alon inhabited only allowed him to cast magic once a day.

And the moment he turned,

“?”

Alon saw her.

Standing there in the training ground of House Palladio with a shocked expression was Kallia, the daughter of House Xenonia, one of the people he would never want to become close to.

She looked so startled by the current situation that even she, who normally carried herself with an air of nobility, had her mouth hanging open.

It was a rather rare sight.

“Th-that’s impossible…?”

At the voice that followed, Alon lost the timing to ask why she was here and turned his gaze.

“Origin, you said?”

There stood an unknown middle-aged man holding an antique staff, staring at him in even greater shock than Kallia, mouth open wide.

“?”

Alon was confused as he looked back at the two of them.

‘Why are these people here…?’

But the moment he heard the man mention Origin, the unique magic said to be usable only by a mage who had reached the seventh circle,

Alon realized one thing.

He had just fallen into an extremely absurd misunderstanding.