The Awakening of a Mystery
The world is full of Mysteries. Phenomena that modern magic and scholarship cannot explain, events whose very principles lie beyond comprehension. There are so many varieties that some seem utterly trivial to outsiders. The ability to move a fraction faster than others. The knack for hiding in plain sight. The capacity to hold one’s breath far longer than normal. Some people receive Mysteries they can never properly use and end up half-forgetting them. In that sense, Mysteries—which operate independently of magic, aura, or divine power—are both familiar and strangely alien to most people. Conversely, there exist Mysteries capable of reshaping the world itself.
The ‘Life Dominion’ once handed down through a royal bloodline now lost to history. The ‘Principle Exploration’ possessed by the primordial sage who first revealed the existence of mana. The ‘Infinite Growth’ wielded by the First Great Warrior who liberated the North. Mysteries have left indelible marks upon the world. Some even go so far as to call them a person’s innate talent. Neither common nor particularly rare. That is the place Mysteries occupy.
Ssssh.
Which is why I didn’t panic when a Mystery suddenly awakened inside me while I was working at the guild. I was simply dumbfounded that it had appeared while I was sorting documents at my station, as naturally as if it had always been there.
“Huh?”
The moment the sound left my mouth, every guild employee’s gaze snapped toward me. I saw uneasy tension flicker in their eyes.
“What’s wrong, Argo?”
“Is something off with the paperwork?”
“Weren’t you handling the food supply classifications coming into the adventurer guild?”
“Don’t tell me the statistics are wrong?”
I quickly pulled myself together and shook my head. The last thing I needed was a silly misunderstanding snowballing into chaos.
“No, nothing like that. I was just surprised because I obtained a Mystery.”
The anxiety vanished from their faces at once, replaced by bright curiosity. They might not be adventurers themselves, but working in a dangerous frontier branch meant they had plenty of it.
“You got a Mystery?”
“While processing documents?”
“Well, Mysteries are unpredictable by nature.”
Given their profession, the staff had seen plenty of Mystery holders before. But witnessing the actual moment of awakening was a first, so they crowded around with genuine interest. The commotion eventually drew in our supervisor.
“What’s all this noise about?”
“Ah, Luna.”
The woman with golden hair and sharp, fox-like eyes looked puzzled at the cluster of employees surrounding me. As a former Gold-class adventurer and the de facto leader of the receptionists, her arrival was met with visible relief.
“Did something good happen?”
“Argo says he just awakened a Mystery.”
“Oh my. Really?”
She looked genuinely surprised for a moment, then broke into a warm smile and congratulated me. She was beautiful enough that even that small smile seemed to light up the entire room.
“What kind did you get?”
“Just a moment. Let me check.”
I steadied my slightly excited heart and reached into my memories. The knowledge came easily, as though I had always known it. Then I noticed something strange.
“Huh?”
“What is it? Did you get a weird one?”
“Uh… yeah, you could say that.”
How exactly was I supposed to explain this? It wasn’t just ‘weird’—it was extremely weird. The fact that it was connected to my past life made it even harder to talk about. The situation was too complicated to lay out on the spot, so I ended up making an awkward face. Luna tilted her head.
“Is it something to do with animals? They’ve always been unusually fond of you.”
“It’s… related, I suppose? Or maybe not. It’s hard to say.”
Luna paused, considering my answer, then looked at me with a more serious expression.
“Don’t tell me it’s a composite Mystery?”
“It is.”
My immediate reply made her nod.
“Then finish up whatever you’re doing and come to my office. We’ll examine this Mystery of yours in detail.”
Well, that works perfectly for me.
Getting off work early was every office worker’s dream. There was no reason to refuse. Besides, I was curious about my own Mystery, so I accepted without hesitation.
“I’ll just finish sorting these documents and head over.”
I calmed my fluttering heart and returned to work under the envious stares of my colleagues. Perhaps because the Mystery was tied to my past life, old memories kept surfacing as I organized the papers.
It had all started when I was seven. While playing tag with friends, I ran head-first into a tree and suddenly recalled my previous life’s memories. It felt as natural as if I had always carried them.
What? Don’t lie? Even I admit it sounds like a lie, so I understand the skepticism. But it’s the truth. I have no idea what kind of Mystery would awaken past-life memories over something so ridiculous, but thanks to it, my life changed dramatically… or so I thought. In reality, I simply grew up a little smarter than the other kids.
In the North, remembering a past life wasn’t nearly enough to make someone special. In most fantasy stories, only a chosen few can wield mana. Here, everyone can. And I mean everyone—people, animals, even the village children used mana while playing tag. So my extra memories didn’t exactly set me apart.
The ones who were truly special were the orphaned brother and sister who had been my friends. They were the ones who brought me back to reality after my head had swelled from those past-life memories. Now they were training at an academy in the Central region. Just thinking about them sent a shiver down my spine.
From what I’d heard, the Central lands were closer to the fantasy world I remembered from my previous life. Still, there were plenty of ways to make a living without going there, so when the siblings invited me to join them, I declined. The higher education I’d gained from my past-life knowledge hadn’t been wasted. With basic arithmetic and simple calculus, I was already being called a genius by the village adults. Not satisfied with that, I begged the village chief to teach me writing and various other subjects. He was a rather mysterious person himself, so I had knelt and pleaded more than once. Surprisingly, he agreed readily. Thanks to his teachings, I accumulated enough learning to pass the brutal 500-to-1 competition and become a guild employee.
Becoming a guild employee through such cutthroat odds meant I was an elite among elites. It was the best possible career in the North—honorable, well-paid, and guaranteed a comfortable retirement as long as I avoided dishonorable discharge. Northerners prized strength and glory, but even the strongest adventurer couldn’t handle everything alone. They respected the support that guild staff provided. As a result, experienced guild employees were held in high esteem and received compensation to match. From my perspective, it was an ideal situation.
“Though it looks like today might be the last day of that.”
I muttered to myself, hiding my complicated feelings.
Is there some connection between this Mystery and my past life?
The ability I had just gained was intimately tied to my previous existence. That was why the past had suddenly floated to the surface.
Argo Saga. An MMORPG that threw every fantasy genre into a blender. It launched with extreme freedom as its main selling point and took a brutal beating for balance issues in the early days. If the director hadn’t personally stepped in to fix things, the game would have vanished without a trace. Looking back through my past-life memories, it wasn’t even a genre I particularly enjoyed. I would never have known about it if I hadn’t accidentally watched that developer conference video. By the time I came to my senses, I had already created a character. I ended up playing it for ten straight years, so perhaps that video really had been a turning point in my fate. Thanks to it, I could now use Argo Saga’s systems in this life as well.
“How on earth am I supposed to explain this?”
I finished sorting the documents and organized my thoughts on the way to Luna’s office.
Argo Saga had been a remarkably long-running game. It was still wildly popular right up until the moment I was nearly crushed by an ogre that burst out of a gate. The core mechanic involved hunting monsters to earn experience points, which were then used to unlock skills and raise stats. Uniquely, there were no traditional levels. I’d wondered how they planned to balance the game, but they simply increased the total allocatable stats with each update. That same system had been transplanted into me. Naturally, any skill available in Argo Saga could be unlocked simply by spending the required experience.
Yes. By spending experience points, I could unlock almost every skill in the game.
“Doesn’t that make me basically invincible?”
The greatest feature of Argo Saga was its vague class system. True to its emphasis on freedom, every skill could be learned by any player regardless of class. Balance was maintained by giving mages overwhelming advantages in magic skills and creating exclusive skills for certain classes, but the core advantage remained: I could use a vast array of abilities without restriction.
On top of that, I had the inventory every game provided by default, along with various other MMORPG systems. I racked my brain for a way to explain all of it without sounding completely insane.
“I never imagined I’d be worrying about something this wonderful.”
I walked with a smile I couldn’t quite suppress. My head was a mess, but my steps felt light. An opportunity I had never expected had fallen into my lap, and now I wasn’t sure what to do with it. As I wrestled with the complicated problem, something wriggled in my pocket. After squirming around inside for a while, it poked its head out, then instantly scampered up to my shoulder.
“Kit!”
“Hm? Oh, you’re awake?”
The flying squirrel looked up at me with bleary, half-asleep eyes. I reached out and gently stroked its head. Ever since I had shared some precious nuts with the starving little creature back in the village, it had followed me everywhere. Using my past-life knowledge, I had named it Ratatoskr—Rata for short. The little guy seemed to enjoy my touch and leaned into it. Quite a few other animals followed me as well. As a result, people who knew me often called me Druid as a nickname. That was probably why Luna had asked if my Mystery was animal-related. In truth, it seemed to be an innate talent separate from the Mystery itself. Unfortunately, the affinity wasn’t strong enough for me to become a tamer, so I had chosen the far more stable path of guild employee instead. Given the North’s characteristics, the career prospects for guild staff were overwhelmingly better anyway.
“Ki-it!”
While I was busy stroking the affectionate Rata, I arrived at Luna’s office door. I took a slow, deep breath. Objectively speaking, the potential of this Mystery was top-tier. Combined with the special traits of the North, there was a high chance she would recommend I switch to being an adventurer. I felt as nervous as I had during my employee entrance exam and knocked politely.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Luna, it’s Argo.”
“Come in.”
At the voice from beyond the door, I carefully opened it. I had prepared a thorough explanation of my Mystery in my head. In a way, she was the only person I could truly discuss this with, so I entered intending to ask for her advice.
“You finally showed up?”
The moment I saw the middle-aged man sitting inside the office, every plan I had prepared turned completely blank. He was simply that extraordinary a presence.