episode_0008

[The system was flustered by the rapid progress.]

[Sub-Quest – Aris is in progress.]

[Sub-Quest – Aris – 1]

[Date Aris 0/1]

“Hmm…”

Even the next day, while attending class, I kept staring at that meaningful phrase.

“In the beginning, there were gods.”

“They devoted all their power for humanity, creating divine artifacts imbued with their authority and distributing them among humans.”

Numerous students, those who had passed the second exam, seemed to listen intently to the history explained by the Teacher-nim, diligently moving their hands to take notes.

“Don’t worry, Ray. I’ll read everything to you later.”

Aris, perhaps worried that I couldn’t write down the vast amount of information, told me this.

“Thank you, Aris.”

I replied with a smile, touched by her concerned words.

“However, humans began to use them for war, and the gods, realizing their mistake, placed restrictions on these divine artifacts. They made it so that the artifacts could only be seen with the mind’s eye.”

‘A lie.’

They say history is written by the victors.

The information about divine artifacts that the students were diligently writing down and the history Teacher-nim was presenting as fact was a little, no, very different.

First, the definition of a divine artifact was wrong.

Divine artifacts were not weapons imbued with the gods’ authority, but rather weapons designed to kill gods.

It was merely that their power was similar to the gods’ authority, leading the person who recorded it to misunderstand.

Those arrogant gods would never have given their authority to humans.

“Thus, the divine artifacts were scattered across the continent, and still, not a few adventurers are searching for them. However, since not a single artifact has yet been discovered, many people have given up. Next, turn to page 10!”

‘Those divine artifacts were all destroyed by the gods before the protagonist could fight them… It’s like a pre-ordained event in a game, making them impossible to find…’

Tap, tap.

Before my head became fully consumed with thoughts of divine artifacts, I shook my head, trying to clear those thoughts.

‘Today… yes… today is the day… The sooner, the better… As the third exam approaches, security will tighten…’

I began to concentrate and send my mana to the location I had marked the day before.

Behind the drawing, a magic circle was deployed, and as I channeled my mana, it didn’t return for a while.

I was momentarily flustered, submerged in darkness, but when the mana returned and I saw the interior of the place it had envisioned, I was even more surprised.

‘Surely… it wasn’t like this…?’

Far more enemies were located there than I had anticipated.

In the game, there were definitely many broken enemies, and it wasn’t this heavily guarded.

Now, the entire area was filled with enemies, with hardly any path left.

And at that moment,

Flash!

One of those enemies looked at me.

More precisely, it looked at the concentrated mana I had sent.

‘The mana concentration was a little denser than that in the air, and they noticed it…?’

I was momentarily flustered and retrieved the mana from that place, deploying it again here, in the classroom.

‘Well… nothing serious should happen….’

I concentrated on the Teacher-nim’s lecture, sweating slightly, like someone caught playing a game during class.

***

“Um… Aris… I’m grateful, but… aren’t you a bit too… close…?”

“You fell by yourself during the second exam, didn’t you? What if you get hurt like that again…? I’m not the kind of person who would let my benefactor get hurt while they’re by my side.”

‘No… it’s not that, it’s that other people are staring…’

As I left the classroom and grasped my staff to head outside, Aris approached and grabbed my left arm.

Her action drew attention, causing students to glance our way.

And so, we began walking towards the dormitory.

Every time I thought about her beside me, the sub-quest came to mind, and I tried to speak.

“Aris… um…”

“Yes, Ray? What is it?”

“That… this weekend…”

Before I could finish, someone hit my back and ran off.

Aris seemed about to say something to that person, but she saw what was behind her and closed her mouth.

Many students were running towards the entrance, and the Teacher-nims tried to control them somehow, but it was impossible.

And I understood the cause of this commotion.

The cause was,

‘A golem…?’

It was me.

A golem was breaking through that drawing and squeezing out.

A massive arm made of stone and earth emerged from the magic circle, moving this way and that.

The arm, seemingly searching for something, suddenly grabbed the wall and revealed its face to me.

Its crimson eyes were clearly fixed on me, and it was swinging its arm as if sensing the mana I had deployed in the air.

After grasping at the air for a while, the golem finally began to reveal its colossal body from the magic circle.

Two enormous hands, composed of densely packed earth and bricks like a fortress wall, clung to the wall, serving as supports for its body to emerge.

And before long, the golem moved its main body into the academy corridor.

After its body passed through, the magic circle from which the golem had emerged began to fade.

‘I have to get in there quickly… If I miss this, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get in again…’

I summoned my two spirit swords and cut the bricks at the golem’s joints, raising a small cloud of dust. Then, I subtly released Aris’s arm and rushed towards the magic circle.

“Wow……… This… I never imagined this…”

The moment I passed through the magic circle and arrived there, countless crimson eyes stared only at me.

I looked back at them and quietly summoned my spirit swords.

[Strange noises.]

The golems, emitting strange noises, raised their massive hands as if to crush me the moment I deployed my mana to envision the area, and brought them down.

However, I had deployed my mana and knew the exact location of all their cores.

‘Golems die if you destroy their core… That’s basic…’

I plunged a spirit sword into the center of the first golem that rushed at me.

The golem, its chest pierced, crumbled into fragments, leaving only a circular hole in its chest, and collapsed.

The golems hesitated for a moment, seeing the gruesome sight of their comrade, but that was only for a brief pause. They began to rush at me again.

Arms, legs, hearts, heads—their cores were located in various places, and my spirit swords moved busily in response.

However, since I only had two spirit swords, no matter how hard I stabbed and moved, the number of fists coming at me only increased.

I briefly climbed onto the golem’s remains to assess their numbers, and the sight behind me astonished me.

Unlike in the game, where golem remains were scattered around and only a few prevented the protagonist from advancing,

At least a hundred golems seemed to be blocking me.

At this rate, I would die by their fists before I could defeat all the golems, so I desperately climbed onto the arm of a crumbling golem.

I no longer worried about mana concentration and used all my mana to envision this area. It began to materialize accurately, as if I were seeing it directly.

However, the more I increased the mana concentration, the more golems came towards me, but I was aiming for precisely that.

They were too densely packed in a space meant for only a few.

Moreover, from their perspective, they would have no choice but to gather even closer to catch an ant like me.

Ultimately, they could only watch as I stepped on their heads and passed through.

I slammed my staff hard into a golem’s head as if embedding it, deploying even more mana.

And finally, I could see what I had been searching for.

‘A swordsmanship manual…!’

Normally, it would take decades of practice for a typical person to acquire that swordsmanship after seeing the manual.

Indeed, if the system hadn’t recognized me as a player, I too would have had to practice this swordsmanship while unable to see.

But my current situation is different from the past.

‘Though it’s random out of 88 types…’

This swordsmanship manual allowed one to learn one of the forgotten swordsmanship styles.

That swordsmanship incorporated the appearance of constellations and the characteristics of the animals and objects associated with those constellations.

With a slightly flushed face, I touched the swordsmanship manual.

The manual twitched slightly, and a blue window appeared before me.

[Would you like to learn Constellation Swordsmanship? Yes/No]

My face lit up as I pressed Yes.

It was because an incredibly good swordsmanship style had appeared.

Perhaps finding their clustered state too inconvenient, the golems, which corresponded to the final phase in the game, combined and waited for me in a colossal form.

“To a massive thing, you must respond with something massive,” I muttered towards them.

“Transforming the two spirit swords into a greatsword.”

At that, the two thin swords in my vision combined and transformed into a colossal blade, one that a paladin might wield.

‘With this, I could unleash the power of two at once.’

I activated the swordsmanship style now listed in my skill list, which, though Lv.1, contained immense power.

Then, around my greatsword, a colossal wave began to materialize, surging as if something was about to appear.

The golems seemed to sense this energy, hesitating for a moment, but then tried to plunge their multiple arms into me.

“Now, it begins.”

Only a smile remained on my lips as I unleashed the swordsmanship.