episode_0005

– Thud!

“Gahh…!”

– Thump!

“Victory! Rachel!”

“Good job.”

“Yes, I also learned a thing or two.”

– Thwack!

I grabbed Rachel’s outstretched hand and rose from where I had fallen.

What I’m doing right now is swordsmanship training. It’s one of the classes taught by Professor Asphon, a sparring session.

After successfully recruiting Lulu through Carla and Ayla yesterday, I happily attended several classes and went to bed in the evening.

Failing to distance myself from Rachel and having nothing else to do, I just focused on myself.

And the next day, or rather today, during swordsmanship class, I sparred with Rachel.

Well… the result was, of course, Rachel’s victory, given her talent in swordsmanship.

But to be honest, my lousy stats played a role too.

‘Status.’

After the sparring match, sitting in the audience seats, I immediately checked my status.

This status is a special ability unique to me in this world. While others only catch a glimpse of their enhanced selves through a strange system window, I can continue to check mine.

Status is a basic specification in games, but in this world, having this status is a rare ability.

Only a few possess it for real.

– Ding!

With a clear ding sound, my status appeared in front of me, emitting a holographic green light.

[Shi Eileen]

Gender: Male

Age: 20

Title: Skilled 2nd Year

{Stats}

Strength: C[3.01]

Agility: E+[1.94]

Endurance: F[0.39]

Stamina: C[3.49]

Mana: D[2.31]

Willpower: A+[5.9]

Spirit Magic: F[0.01]

Divine Power: F[0.09]

Magic: D+[2.71]

Vitality: E+[1.81]

{Abilities}

Poker Face {A}[0% UP↑]

Status {EX}[∞]

Mind’s Eye {0}[Not evolved]

Executor of Immortality {0}[Not evolved]

Harbinger of Death {0}[Not evolved]

‘Wow, I’m really weak.’

Checking my status again, I realized how weak I truly am.

Despite being titled a skilled 2nd year, my stats were far from skilled; I was still a novice.

By the 2nd year, all stats should reach B, but mine barely had one stat at B or above, let alone five.

And that one stat above B was willpower, which is solely for mental attacks and unrelated to combat.

Sure, Shi Eileen has a versatile character with many stats.

Possessing talents in magic, vitality, divine power, and spirit magic that are hard to come by.

However, all these stats are at the lowest grade. Utter trash.

Magic could be used, but it was limited to creating dark orbs.

The next highest stats, strength and stamina, are difficult to utilize without agility, making Shi Eileen, who isn’t a warrior, challenging to employ.

Having focused too much on the library and neglected training, I found myself in this unfortunate situation.

While other students had all reached B, I felt like a frog stuck at the bottom of a well, only at D.

The abilities were somewhat decent.

Evolved Poker Face to rank A, possessing the EX-grade ability Status, and not to mention the confirmed exclusive abilities of Shi Eileen from the novel, Executor of Immortality and Harbinger of Death.

They may not have evolved yet, but I should be grateful they exist.

“Sigh…”

Despite the disappointment, I sighed deeply, realizing it was time to commit to training.

Although I had lived solely for the library until now, to make Lulu a librarian, I needed to increase my stamina.

Agility? Didn’t seem necessary to raise it. I’m not someone who enjoys fighting in the first place, so why would I pick fights over anything? Just by living my life, I end up in fights naturally.

Stamina. Stamina is the most important thing.

There’s only one way to raise stamina in just a week······

“Let’s just go.”

-Swish.

I wiped away the stats floating in front of me with my hand and got up from the spectator seat, heading towards the training ground.

Skipping classes isn’t a big deal for me, and the professors won’t care much either.

In this academy, attending classes is the students’ choice. They’re the ones losing out if they paid to get in and don’t attend classes. Is the academy at a loss? They’re just making money and enjoying the benefits.

And I am the person who smoothly slips away, allowing such an academy to reap its benefits.

With thoughts that no one would pay attention to, I needed to find ‘Gazelle’s Blood,’ a hidden piece that can raise both stamina and vitality stats at once, in a cave located behind the academy.

Although there are many tasks like solving puzzles····at this moment, finding ‘Gazelle’s Blood’ was the only real task at hand.

Since stat upgrades from sparring wouldn’t be enough to reach S-rank in stamina and vitality within a week, finding Gazelle’s Blood, the only way, was crucial.

My vitality is at E-rank, so without Gazelle’s Blood, reaching S-rank would be even more impossible. Without using cheats, raising vitality and stamina stats to S-rank in one go is not possible without hidden pieces.

Thus, to find Gazelle’s Blood, I left the academy and headed straight towards the cave behind it.

Behind the academy lies the ‘Cave of Emptiness,’ a cave well-managed by the academy.

This cave used to be filled with monsters called mazes, but people gathered to clear it all at once. Now, no monsters appear, but since the maze hasn’t been cleared, it remains a headache for the kingdom I reside in, the Eastland Kingdom.

Think about how much of a nuisance it must be when people’s fear revolves around the maze and it doesn’t disappear.

However, no matter how far I entered the cave, it remained dark, even when using light or fire magic.

It seemed as though the cave was indicating it couldn’t be conquered anymore, warning not to enter.

Well, the reason light or fire magic didn’t work was due to the cave’s characteristic of ‘magic nullification.’

When clearing the maze, it wasn’t as dark, and since monsters had magic resistance, the kingdom never knew this was a cave with magic nullification.

In the novel, the protagonist discovers this and receives various rewards, but I had no interest in receiving any rewards.

Receiving rewards would boost my reputation and make it harder to distance myself from Rachel.

If we fought again for no reason, she might wonder why I’ve changed so much, possibly leading to demon hunting.

In this world, demon possession is quite common.

“Let’s go in and see…”

With a small dagger in my left hand, I entered the Cave of Emptiness.

Right now, the Cave of Emptiness remains dark. No monsters come out.

Well, the lack of visibility makes conquering it impossible in itself.

But here’s the thing. There’s a contradiction in this cave.

It was just that the front wasn’t visible due to magic nullification.

-Shwoo!

“Hmm, effective.”

Using flame-like magic instead of torches eliminates darkness.

Those foolish folks in the kingdom, relying solely on magic without trying something like this, truly made me think they were a kingdom that loved magic.

Walking through the cave with the torch in hand, I soon found a puzzle.

‘Courage, hope, despair, sun····is it. It’s the same.’

In front of me were four stone tablets inscribed with words in the royal language: Courage, Hope, Despair, and Sun.

On the Courage tablet, it read, “The one with courage is someone who faces fear without hesitation. Are you that person?”

The Hope tablet conveyed, “Do not abandon hope; someday people will come to rescue you. Do you cling to hope?”

The Despair tablet ominously stated, “Embrace despair, for you cannot escape from here, and you will eventually meet death. So, how about igniting the final spark here?”

The Sun tablet posed the question, “The hottest sun in the world. A man like the sun, is that you?”

To some, these tablets might appear ordinary or meaningless, but they were the puzzle to obtain what I mentioned as Gazelle’s blood.

The nature of this puzzle may be unpredictable because touching any of these tablets initiates related trials.

Courage represents the specter of the three ancient calamities that perished long ago, while Hope signifies surviving in a place devoid of food, water, or anything. Despair involves facing numerous demons, and Sun symbolizes surviving in a place with nothing but lava.

Merely hearing about it, Courage might seem the most challenging.

The ‘three calamities’ are literal monsters of calamity.

Hope falls into a difficult category, but it is not as challenging as Courage.

Despair may seem daunting with the emergence of countless demons, yet survival is still possible.

Surviving as the Sun is quite easy—just avoid falling into lava.

However, to obtain Gazelle’s blood, one must clear the ‘Trial of Courage.’

-Swish.

As I placed my hand on the Courage tablet, it emitted a beautiful array of colors, enveloping the dark cave through the cracks in the shattered stone.

-Crackle, rumble.

With the shattering sound of the Courage tablet, the other tablets fragmented into fine pieces, completely destroyed.

The destruction of the other tablets signifies that once a trial is chosen, it cannot be switched to another. Succeeding in this trial may bring back the broken tablets, allowing challenges in different trials.

As the tablets shattered, massive plumes of smoke obscured my vision.

The smoke, gradually engulfed in ‘magic,’ was being consumed by darkness, and it was being drawn towards the Courage tablet.

The smoke being drawn towards the Courage tablet heralds the beginning of the trial.

Now, what will appear before me is not an ordinary monster but one of the three specters of calamity that have devastated many kingdoms, plunging them into crisis.

[··········Death.]

The Queen Bee of Death. The mastermind who plunged the world into the abyss of despair, a monster among monsters requiring over 20 skilled swordsmen, archmages, and sages to kill due to her tenacious vitality and unending magical power, only susceptible to pure firepower—a humanoid monster resembling the appearance of a queen bee dispatched from hell.

“My children… go forth and slay the foolish humans…”

-Shuuuuu!

It’s “Mephisto.”