The First Fragment
Two mysterious men.
Their conversation stretched on for dozens of minutes after that, but as the tattoo on the back of his hand grew fainter, the translation function simply unraveled and fell away.
I can't make out another word of this.
He had studied the old tongue back when he still lived with the family, and it wasn't as if every word was completely foreign to him, so he had stubbornly tried to push through. But—
…At this point, the smart move is to leave.
The conversation had stopped. Silence settled in and stayed. Ethan decided it was time to go.
The Piece of the World. The moment he touched it, he had been dropped straight into the memory of an ancient ancestor. What had that conversation even meant?
"Hmm…"
The sound slipped out of him as he scratched his throat without thinking.
Creeeak.
The door opened, and a man in a black robe stood looking straight in his direction.
"…"
The man kept staring toward Ethan, saying nothing. After a beat—
Ah—Jesus. For a second I thought we made eye contact.
Ethan pressed a hand to his chest and exhaled.
This has to be a memory. There's no way he can actually see me.
He grinned and reached for the Piece of the World again, thinking, I'm going back to reality.
"You… who are you?"
Ethan sucked in a sharp breath, eyes flying wide.
What… he can see me?
He swallowed hard. Beneath a crop of short black hair, the man's eyes burned a vivid red. There was no mistaking it—those eyes were locked on him. The scarred mouth worked as if to form words, then broke into a faint, crooked smile.
"…Is that so."
"Hey… Solitaire, is someone outsi—"
And then, looking Ethan dead in the eyes once more, the man intoned:
"What you seek… will awaken the morning when two scops owls fall into the sea."
Ethan trembled.
Ah—no—
His consciousness was yanked back toward reality.
I finally come to cash in a plot thread and you hit me with a second-layer cipher riddle?! Who does that?!
When he opened his eyes, it was the familiar ceiling again.
He sat up with a heavy thud.
"Haaah."
The Piece of the World. The ancestral memory he had met inside it. Valois Solitaire, and that unknown blond man.
"Was any of those old guys' banter actually going to help me?"
No way to know yet.
"Right. I should write down that hint he gave me."
Ethan scratched the words Solitaire had spoken in the memory onto a scrap of parchment. That scruffy old man, though… he had actually spoken to him.
"How was that even possible?"
Hmm.
"Did I go back into the past, or did the ancestor's memory reach out and talk to me?"
He scratched his head. There was no answer to that question—not right now.
"I'll just put this in the drawer for now."
Ethan clenched the Piece of the World tight in his fist.
Piiing!
A blinding flash burst out in an instant, and the world before his eyes reeled. A sensation like freefalling through open sky raced up past his collarbone and brushed his temples.
"Ghhhk…!"
His skull felt like it was splitting open as visions of techniques of every kind streaked past his eyes.
Ghost Records.
Semi-transparent figures of thieves erupted from every direction and vanished beyond the walls. Traces of the Thief Masters of ages past. The techniques they had once unleashed. All of it was sprinting madly across the surface of Ethan's brain cells.
The light spilling from the Ruby Dormitory annex finally settled.
Ethan cracked his eyes open carefully.
"W-whoa!!"
Thud!
He dropped from the ceiling straight onto the floor.
"Urgh…"
He scrubbed at his head with both hands and looked around. At some point, without realizing it, he had been hanging upside down from the ceiling like a bat.
"Insane… I'm not a MapleStory thief job-change NPC."
All who wish to become thieves, come to me?
He opened his hand. The Piece of the World still sat there, its light spent. And the tattoo on the back of Ethan's hand—inside the circle at the upper left of the triangular mark, one more concentric ring had been drawn.
"…Huh."
Ethan understood.
"This thing… was an elixir."
An experience potion straight out of a martial arts novel. Shaolin's Great Return Pill. Mount Hua's Purple Cloud Pill. He could feel strength of that order settling into his body.
"Still no dantian, though."
He pressed a hand to his lower abdomen. There was no mana vessel for storing mana, no dantian for accumulating internal energy—nothing of the sort.
"…"
Ethan stared at the wooden dagger resting on the desk.
He picked it up. Right now, he felt like he could pull off something extraordinary.
He closed his eyes. Gripping the dagger, he took the basic ready stance he had learned in dagger class. From one point to another. From the upper left down through the lower center. A fragment of a constellation etched itself with perfect clarity into Ethan's mind.
He stood like that, motionless, for several minutes.
Rrrumble.
The Ruby Dormitory annex building trembled, just slightly.
"…The first star."
In the quiet room, as Ethan focused his mind, mist settled gently across the floor before he even noticed. He exhaled. The fog had already veiled his vision, and beyond his closed eyelids he could see a single, dazzlingly bright straight line.
All I have to do is follow it.
On the tattoo on the back of his right hand, the second concentric circle at the upper left flashed.
Slash
He brought the dagger down in a quiet, clean cut.
Shhk.
The wooden desk split cleanly in two and fell apart.
"Whoa. That's ridiculous."
A rush of pure, exhilarating pleasure swept through his whole body. Had drawing a dagger always felt this electric? Looking at how explosively he had grown, a smile rose to his face on its own.
…
"No. Nope. Thieves are not cool."
Clap clap.
"Ethan! Let's head to class toge—huh?"
A cheerful male voice cut in at that exact moment.
"Ethan…?"
Ethan turned his head. Through the crack of the dormitory door, Carson's white tunic was visible. Carson looked back and forth between the enormous half-destroyed desk and Ethan's wooden dagger.
"Uh… uh… uh… uh???"
Carson's voice shook as he spoke.
"Y-you!! Were you actually an upperclassman sent here to kill me?!"
"Why would I be."
"Th-then how else do you get this strong in a single day…?!"
Carson had clearly heard from their classmates about how Ethan had been getting thrashed by Caion, only to reverse it in a single blow.
Ethan isn't even from a swordsmanship background…
And in less than three days he could already handle sword qi well enough to cut through wood?
"This… this doesn't make any sense…"
"Just get to class already."
"M-my own brother only managed that after he became an upperclassman at Knight School, so how…"
Ethan slung an arm around the shoulder of the still-dazed Carson.
"Ethan… you're a real genius."
"I know."
"Teach me dagger work later too."
"No."
"Aw, come on!"
The two of them bickered their way toward the monorail station.
At this rate, how many years until I even graduate?
What kind of thief nonsense was he going to have to learn today?
He wasn't particularly curious.
Scratch that.
After listening to Carson, he was a little curious after all.
"Today's class is Qi Control, Ethan!"
"Carson, you're going to blow out my eardrums."
"Sorry! I got excited thinking about using qi and it just came out—hahaha!"
The rail fixed to the monorail ceiling scraped with a heavy krrrng.
"Good to see you, Mr. Orc. How's the atmosphere in Emerald Dormitory?"
"Quiet."
"Not so different from Topaz Dormitory, then."
The princess made an exaggerated show of covering her mouth with a flourish of her hand.
Today's lineup is… the orc, the princess, and Carson, huh.
Ethan traded a look with the princess seated in front of him.
The carriage to the capital is ready, I assume?
Of course. Looks like your luggage managed not to get stolen, somehow.
It did. Execution day is next week?
Yes. They postponed it to next week because of construction at Priest School.
Ethan nodded.
Dormuut's nose twitched.
"Sniff sniff."
He looked between the princess and Ethan.
"You two smell suspicious."
"What are you talking about."
"Snff. Smells like black-hearted scheming."
"I will never get used to orc speech."
"Smells like you're cooking something up."
Carson snapped his fingers.
"I knew it, Ethan! You even reeled in the princess—ugh!"
"Want to get arrested for treason?"
"Come on, Ethan, you didn't have to hit me that hard… We're all heading to the same class anyway…"
"The princess is in a different class from us."
Carson drooped, hanging his head.
Screeech.
The monorail arrived, and the cadets stepped out onto neatly laid brick flooring.
"Pay attention in class~"
"Yeah. You too, Princess."
The car carrying the Fourth Princess pulled away.
"Welcome to your first class of the year, cadets."
Even as Head Professor of Thief School, the man who had come all the way out to the station to greet them caught Ethan's eye.
Moppy Calden.
He was the instructor for the required course Qi Control at Thief School.
"I originally only taught the upperclassmen, but the curriculum was restructured this term, so I'll be taking the Novice Cadets as well. A pleasure to meet you all."
The students' reaction was distinctly lukewarm—nothing like when they had seen Professor Lena or Professor Yuzuha. But that was actually the normal response.
Mage School and Knight School were where mages and knights trained. Their faculty were, naturally, heroes who had made their names across the empire. Famous professors were everywhere there.
So did that mean Thief School had no famous heroes of its own?
Not at all. There was just one difference: those heroes were not known to the public. Thief School professors had far less information circulating about them than faculty at the other academies. What country would go around loudly advertising the personal details of its own intelligence agents? In a way, it was only natural.
"Huh."
Still, there was a reason Ethan was this startled by Professor Moppy's appearance.
He's the power behind the throne at the Imperial Intelligence Bureau…
Moppy Calden had a direct line to the highest levels of Imperial Intelligence. Over decades of operations he had designed for the Bureau, his failure rate was zero percent. Like a black-ops agent from the National Intelligence Service, almost nothing about him was public—but the major operations he had run had almost certainly rewritten the empire's fate more than once. The Northeastern Scorched-Earth Operation had been one of them.
The guy they call the Hammer of Ruin—infiltrated a barbarian kingdom alone, cut the king's throat, and walked out. That one was pure legend.
The webtoon had mentioned it in a single throwaway line and moved on. But the achievements Moppy had racked up had been shocking enough to force the eastern kingdoms to rewrite their entire tactical doctrine from the ground up.
"Top-ranked cadet?"
Having heard Ethan's quiet exclamation, Professor Moppy approached.
"Those bright, shining eyes of yours today—truly befitting the top-ranked cadet of Thief School."
Former 1st Seat of the Imperial Round Table. Moppy Calden. He might well be the single person Ethan needed to be most wary of in this entire school.
"Yes, Professor. The thought of dedicating this life to the Imperial House simply fills me with joy."
"An ambition forged entirely of loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor and the empire. Excellent."
Moppy clapped Ethan on the shoulder.
"We'll be moving into the Five-Pointed Star Hall."
Ethan fell in at the very back of the cadets as they filed forward in a noisy mass.
I might be able to bring Lena over to my side. Not this man.
He rolled the tension out of his shoulders and kept his expression carefully managed.
If the day ever comes that I go head-to-head with the Imperial House… I might have to kill him eventually.
Ethan was startled by how thoroughly thief-like the thought was.
Jumping straight to murder. Guess I've become a real thief myself.
When his eyes met Moppy's, the professor's curved into a warm crescent.
"Ethan Cass, come this way, please!"
A subtle, unreadable smile settled on Moppy Calden's lips.