Chapter 125
Chapter 125
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 125
Chapter Title: Starseeker (4)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
There wasn't even time to let out a groan.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had come.
I felt a foreign sensation in my right eye.
It was as if a thin film had been placed over it.
I blinked.
After a few more blinks, the sensation naturally subsided.
But it didn't disappear completely.
What was this situation?
I looked around.
Director Jangmi was busy stealing glances at Professor Navian, sweating nervously.
Professor Navian, as if she'd taken a liking to it, just kept stroking my head.
The dwarf was still engrossed in his muttering.
No one knew what had just happened to me.
The mark of a Starseeker,
The one thing countless astronomers yearn for.
The eye that identifies stars.
Only the Starseekers knew of the fleeting change that had occurred in me.
With this, you now succeed the ninety-nine of us.
You have become the one-hundredth eye to follow the stars.
Ooh, the one-hundredth Starseeker!
So, in short, they were saying I had become a Starseeker.
It was too random, too sudden.
I had obtained the mark of a Starseeker, something I'd never even wished for.
Successor! Successor!
Maknae! Maknae!
And earned the title of Maknae.
He who gazes at the stars.
Shall hold the stars in his eyes.
May the one-hundredth eye finally reach providence.
The voices faded.
The pitch-black, shadow-like figures began to slowly blur.
Wait!
I called out to them urgently.
I still had so many questions.
What did it mean to become a Starseeker?
What was this thin film stuck to my eye?
As with all providence,
You, too, will come to know naturally.
At the right moment.
As much as is necessary.
But the Starseekers, just as before, only offered vague words in place of answers.
They didn't resolve my questions satisfyingly.
The time for our reunion will soon come.
Until we meet again, one-hundredth.
Goodbye, Maknae!
The blurry figures vanished completely.
The voices that had been ringing in my head were also gone.
“Ah…”
I stared blankly at the spot where the Starseekers had disappeared.
Then, Professor Navian's touch brought me back to my senses.
Stroke, stroke.
Her face looked strangely serene as she stroked the crown of my head.
“Hmm.”
Our eyes met, and Professor Navian belatedly pulled her hand away.
She looked somewhat disappointed for some reason.
It seemed she had taken a liking to the prickly texture of my shaved head.
“I should try shaving my head, too.”
To think she'd say she'd cut off her own hair, which she must have painstakingly grown for a long time.
“Don't!”
I shouted reflexively.
“...?”
She looked at me.
Her expression asked why on earth she shouldn't cut her own hair.
What could I possibly say to that?
“...It just seems like a waste.”
Even I thought it was a poor excuse.
Nod.
Professor Navian accepted my opinion without a hint of deep thought.
I did flinch when she muttered to herself that she should enforce a hairstyle policy on her family members when she returned to her house, but there was nothing I could do about that.
What right did I have to say anything when the head of a house wanted to manage her family's hair?
“Oh, the time!”
Director Jangmi exclaimed with a fuss.
Only then did I realize how much time had passed.
“Absent again.”
A sigh escaped me.
It seemed I wouldn't be attending class today either.
The only silver lining was that I had secured a promise from Director Jangmi that there would be no penalties for my absence.
“Come to think of it, Professor Navian, your one-on-one student tutoring session is…”
Before Director Jangmi could finish, Professor Navian vanished.
See you later.
Only her parting whisper echoed in my ears.
“And she doesn't even have a star's blessing.”
“I know. She’s incredibly fast.”
After staring at the empty space where Professor Navian had disappeared like the wind, Director Jangmi and I also headed outside.
“About Heidolf.”
As we walked down the long corridor, Director Jangmi spoke as if he had just remembered something.
“It doesn't seem like he has any other ulterior motives.”
I was just thinking something similar.
A dwarf turning traitor was an impossibility.
“They say it’s all due to a secret pact made with an ancestor of the Haime family a long time ago.”
“Then they’ll be looking to exploit the loopholes in that pact.”
Director Jangmi, who was walking ahead, stopped and turned to look at me.
He seemed displeased about something.
“It took me a long time to figure that out, but you got it as soon as you heard.”
I wondered what he was displeased about, and the reason was ridiculous.
“Don't you feel even a sliver of responsibility as the one who gave me the Myeongbu?”
He added the remark belatedly, but it was just an afterthought.
“Hey, that's not right. The person who receives the Myeongbu is responsible for verifying its credibility.”
It was a response that could have sounded shameless.
But I was confident.
It was true that Jamal had shown me goodwill at the end.
But whether that meant I should trust the Myeongbu unconditionally was a separate issue.
It's not like we had some profound connection.
Jamal could have deceived me, inserting his own agenda into the truth with slight manipulations, or he could have made a misjudgment and written the wrong name on the list.
This case was closer to the latter, but it wasn't as if he'd written down a completely unrelated person either.
“They will dig relentlessly into that secret pact with the ancestor. Isn't it a good thing to know in advance and prepare for it?”
In any case, it was clear that the empress's faction had room to use Heidolf.
“You cheeky little brat.”
Never loses an argument.
Director Jangmi muttered under his breath and started walking ahead again.
Watching his back, a question suddenly popped into my mind.
It wouldn't do any good for rumors of a traitor in the Yoram to spread.
The Vice Director was the one who received the Myeongbu directly from me, so that was understandable, but the fact that Director Jangmi knew of its existence was surprising.
I'd suspected it ever since he promised me special privileges like overnight leaves and visits, but his position within the Yoram was clearly no ordinary one.
He didn't seem to be a professor who taught cadets, either.
“Director Jangmi.”
“What.”
“What exactly is your position here?”
“My position? I'm the Direc…”
Director Jangmi flinched and shut his mouth.
“I'm just an affiliate here. An affiliate.”
He hurriedly mumbled the words and walked far ahead.
After walking ahead for a while, he came to a stop.
“I'm saying this just in case. Don't get the wrong idea.”
“...?”
“Back when we were with Professor Navian. I was acting a bit... you know? But it's not what you think.”
Seeing his strangely restless face, I understood.
He must have suddenly become self-conscious about how he was sneaking glances at Professor Navian earlier.
From my perspective, what was the big deal about clasping his hands, slouching a bit, and acting cautiously in front of a Black Knight?
“I don't quite understand what you mean…”
I feigned ignorance, tilting my head.
Blink, blink.
Blinking my already large eyes even wider.
I added that I was too out of it earlier to properly observe my surroundings.
“Ahaha. It's nothing. Nothing at all.”
Director Jangmi's face instantly relaxed, and he let out a hearty laugh.
“To think the stars of the ghost story were the creators of the satellite city.”
“If you think about it, aren't there a ton of ghosts in this Yoram? Oh, right, I should call them spirits?”
“Still, after seeing what happened this time, they don't seem particularly harmful.”
Once the troubling issue was resolved, Director Jangmi chattered on endlessly.
Listening to his chatter, I walked briskly and soon found myself standing before a large door.
Rumble.
Unlike when we entered, the door opened without any special operation.
“Whew.”
He stepped out of the door first and shivered.
Seeing his previously hunched back straighten, it seemed he had reconnected with his star.
I followed him, stepping through the doorway.
Zzzzing.
At that moment, I felt a strange sensation.
And at the same time.
Pop.
A cluster of letters appeared above Director Jangmi's head.
[Whirl□□□ □ind in the □□□ (☆☆☆☆☆☆☆)]
As I stared blankly at it, my right eye flared with heat.
A burning sensation many times more excruciating than what I had felt inside.
“Hk.”
I unknowingly clutched one eye and let out a groan.
As if on cue, the burning sensation subsided.
The letters that had been shimmering before my eyes had also vanished.
“Kid?”
Director Jangmi was looking at me with a startled expression.
I paid him no mind.
“Hoo.”
I slowly lowered the hand covering my eye.
And carefully opened it.
Zzziii...
I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut.
The strange sensation around my eye vanished as if it were a lie.
‘The mark of a Starseeker.’
‘The one thing countless astronomers yearn for.’
‘The eye that identifies stars.’
Suddenly, the words the Starseekers had spoken to me came to mind.
No matter how I thought about it, that had to be it.
They had clearly done something to my eye.
“Hah, hah.”
I took a few short breaths and opened my closed eye.
Excruciating pain.
But having braced myself, I managed to swallow my groan.
[Whirl□□□ □ind in the □□□ (☆☆☆☆☆☆☆)]
The moment I opened my eye, the letters that had disappeared reappeared.
After confirming the letters, I closed my eye again.
The pain vanished.
“Ha.”
A dry laugh escaped me.
『The eye that identifies stars』
It seemed I had gained the ability to distinguish others' stars.
An ability I had never seen or even heard of throughout my not-so-short past life.
It was incredible.
The problem was that it didn't come for free.
“Kid?”
Lost in thought, I snapped back to reality.
A sly face was right in front of my nose.
Director Jangmi's eyes were wide, somewhat surprised by my sudden actions.
I couldn't help but ask.
“Who are you?”
Who on earth was he to have seven stars?
“It seems your energy has been drained by those Starseeker ghosts or whatever they are. You should hurry to the infirmary.”
But instead of answering me, Director Jangmi disappeared as if fleeing.
I quietly watched his retreating back.
A seven-star knight.
A rank that wouldn't fall short even when compared to the heads of the top-tier Ascended Houses.
There was no way such a person could be an ordinary affiliate of the Yoram.
But his identity wasn't what was important right now.
“Damn it! My eye!”
An ability accompanied by excruciating pain.
At this rate, I'd have to live with one eye closed.
“Agh! Agh!”
Kicking the floor in frustration, I headed in the direction of the infirmary.
“At this rate, you're going to make it into the hall of fame. For the most infirmary visits.”
Professor Yuria, who had greeted me with a joke, belatedly noticed my tightly shut eye and tilted her head.
We had already shared a great number of secrets, but I couldn't tell her about the ability the Starseekers had forced upon me.
Knights do not reveal their blessings to others.
Of course, in the case of renowned knightly orders or Ascended Houses, the blessings they possessed were somewhat known through word of mouth, but those were exceptions.
Even knights from such prestigious houses usually kept a few unknown blessings hidden away.
But I had gained the ability not just to see blessings, but to glimpse the very names of the stars.
If you know the name of a star, you can know its blessing, and if you know its blessing, you can find its weakness.
From a knight's perspective, this was far from welcome.
Of course, it wasn't as if I could see the full name of the star.
And even then, the excruciating pain meant I wouldn't be able to use it properly under normal circumstances.
That alone was enough to get me beaten to death by knights.
“Do you happen to have an eyepatch?”
So, instead of explaining the situation to Professor Yuria and asking for advice, I requested something I needed.
“An eye infection?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you have been through a lot lately. I'm telling you this in advance so you don't feel bad, but it's not that I'm not treating you because I'm lazy.”
She said that while she could handle broken bones and torn flesh, using the power of healing for illnesses like this would do more harm than good to the body.
For me, who had been worried she might offer to heal it herself, this was welcome news.
I took the eyepatch she handed me and put it on right then and there.
“Ahahahahaha! A little bald kid with an eyepatch! How cute!”
Professor Yuria laughed as if she would keel over.
I hurriedly left the infirmary, not knowing what kind of teasing I'd endure if I stayed.
There was a place I had to go.
I threw open the door to the Director's office.
The Vice Director, who was holding down the fort in the Director's absence as always, frowned upon seeing me.
“What now.”
I asked him my question.
“How do I get to the archives?”
At my words, the Vice Director's frown deepened.
“Is the Director's office some kind of city information center?! Look at your terminal! It has the location and usage instructions for the archives available to new cadets!”
“Not that one.”
I shook my head.
The archives I was looking for weren't the general ones that new cadets could access.
“How do I get to the special archives?”
The special archives of the satellite city, accessible only to professors.
I thought there might be records there about the Starseekers or their abilities.
“No. You can't enter.”
Of course, the Vice Director scoffed, telling me I wasn't qualified.
I paid him no mind.
“Director Jangmi promised me. Have you perhaps not been informed?”
I asserted my right with confidence.