The Dice's Answer
The Divine Beast Egg.
A hidden piece sealed away inside Seven Star Hall, the private dormitory reserved exclusively for the Academy's entrance-exam valedictorian.
Even among hidden pieces, the Divine Beast Egg sits near the summit of the power scale—an item you simply cannot afford to miss. Speedrun boards even split their records into an Egg Route and a No-Egg Route. Get your hands on it, and both the game's difficulty and your clear time collapse by orders of magnitude.
Power of that magnitude does not wake easily. A whole list of conditions has to be satisfied before the egg will stir.
One of them, for the record, is earning Ralph Leoris's recognition. Later on, we are going to need the Leoris family's help. Playing Lotochess with Ralph at the Leoris Mansion event was me laying that groundwork in advance.
"It looks like an incredibly powerful petrification spell has been laid on it, you knooow...! I'm not a specialist mage, so I can't say for certain, thoughhh... Where did you even find this...?"
"I stumbled on it while searching the dorm."
"That's the Academy for youuu...! To think a treasure like this would just be lying around..."
It had not been lying around. It had been locked away so thoroughly that digging it out had actually cost me some effort. Without knowledge of the original work, I never would have found it.
"A Divine Beast Egg! This is incredible! Even the Janette Merchant Guild has never handled a treasure like this!"
Elly's eyes sparkled so hard I half expected them to turn into gold coins as she leaned in toward the egg.
Her wonder was only natural. The Divine Beast Egg is a unique item even in the game—treated as completely unsellable.
Its rank is SSS-Rank. The highest grade of any item that exists in the game.
SSS-Rank — Unique / Unsellable
The highest-grade item in existence. A hidden piece capable of collapsing both difficulty and clear time once awakened.
"Amazing. Professor Reina—could this egg actually be hatched?"
Sierra asked as she studied it. Professor Reina, who had been watching the egg with a calm, measured expression, opened her mouth with care. Her voice was as cautious as her face.
"First we'd have to lift the petrification spell on it, you knooow...! My magical knowledge is so shallow I can't be sure, but it won't be easyyy...! The petrification on this thing may have lasted hundreds—no, thousands of years...! Which means the magic itself is that powerful, you knooow...!"
Her eye was dead-on.
In Legend Route, there are about three lead characters with outstanding talent for appraisal. On the weapons side, Arsha Swordhorn. For antiques and rarities, Izumi Reina. The remaining one...
"And even if you lift the petrification, that doesn't mean it'll hatch right awayyy...! An egg, by nature, only hatches when you match the environment just right, you knooow...!"
The professor drew a small scroll from inside her coat.
"I have an acquaintance who's an expert in this sort of thinggg...! A friend with a rather unusual class—Tamer, you knooow...! I'll write you a letter of introduction, so if you're interested, please go see them...!"
I had obtained Professor Reina's letter of introduction. That was why I had brought the egg here in the first place.
Appraisal finished, Professor Reina clapped her hands once, bright and sharp. Desserts had been eaten; it seemed she meant to start today's lesson.
It was still department-selection week, so this wouldn't be a proper class. Orientation, more or less.
"Well then... since we have three students gathered, today let's do a simple test to look at your potential, you knooow...!"
Professor Reina said it with a face lit up by excitement.
"Potential?"
Sierra and Elly tilted their heads at almost the same time. They made a surprisingly well-matched pair. It was a combination you would never see in the original work, and the novelty of it was oddly charming.
"What do you think is the core ability a rogue must possess, hmm...?"
Professor Reina raised her index finger as she posed the question. Philosophical, in a way—and, in another way, painfully simple. In the original game, that question spawned three choices.
1. Flexible judgment and keen agility
2. The patience to endure
3. Dark skin
"Hmm... that's a hard one. Agility and judgment, wouldn't it be?"
Sierra picked option one.
"I think it's the grit to never bow to scorn and contempt~!"
Elly picked option two.
Professor Reina turned her head toward me.
"And what does Yohan think, I wonder...?"
The correct answer was neither one nor two. And it certainly was not three.
"Luck... maybe?"
At my answer, Professor Reina snapped her fingers.
"That's the oneee...!"
A small die appeared in her hand.
Not an ordinary die. A thirteen-sided die.
It was a shape you would almost never see in ordinary life, and it looked as much like a tool for primitive sorcery as it did like something you would roll for a game.
Sierra and Elly shifted their gazes toward it, faces full of questions.
"Luck?"
Elly asked in a voice that refused to accept it. Sierra's expression was much the same.
"That's righttt...! A rogue's core ability is luck, you knooow...! Powerful fortune is the virtue a rogue must possess...!"
Professor Reina rolled the die. The thirteen-sided cube went clattering across the round table and came to rest on a ten.
"People think of luck as an uncertain idea they can't control, you knooow...! One reason the rogue class is looked down on is because they're treated as get-rich-quick types who lean on that uncertainty...!"
Even in the early days after the game launched, there had been a climate of calling players who speedran the Luck Route crit-addicts, or cheesers. These days, with hidden pieces mapped and routes optimized, the Luck Route was practically the standard—but that had taken time.
Professor Reina pressed on, her voice rising.
"But that isn't trueee...! It's nothing but a fool's misunderstanding...! They believe in astrology like it's gospel, and yet they treat good fortune like some superstition, I tell youuu...! Luck is a stat human beings can control, the same as any other...!"
Just as she said, luck was one of the stats a Legend Route character possessed. The way people thought about that stat, however, was exactly as she described.
It didn't have the obvious punch of Strength or Agility, so a culture of looking down on the luck stat had taken root.
And yet, as I had said more than once already, luck was a late-game stat—the higher it climbed, the more brilliantly it shone. It was so good I could not understand why anyone would dismiss it. Personally, it was one of the few pieces of Legend Route's design I had never quite been able to accept.
"This is no ordinary die, you knooow...! It was handed down by my master's master's master's master... an ancestor so distant I can barely count the generations...! It's a special die that can read the potential of a person's luck...! In my hometown, we even used dice like this for duels, you knooow...!"
"Duels with dice!? What kind of duel is that?"
Elly pricked up her ears and hung on Professor Reina's every word.
"It's simpleee...! You roll the die, and whoever gets the higher number wins...!"
"Whoa~! What is that adorable little duel!? I don't think even neighborhood kids would play like that!"
"Of course the children in our village didn't fight those duels, you knooow...! The loser gets their head smashed in with an iron club and dies...! They believed a demon called Maguni lived inside the skull of anyone with bad luck...!"
"Eugh! O-okay, that is not cute! I take back the adorable part..."
Professor Reina held the die out to a recoiling Elly.
"Let's start with Miss Elly, you knooow...!"
"I-I just roll it, right? You're not going to bash my head in if the number comes up low, or...?"
"It isn't a duel, so you're fiiine...!"
Elly rolled the die with an uneasy look. It went clattering across the round table and came to rest on an eight.
"Ooooh! Higher than I expected! Could this be a sign that the stock I bought last week is going to go up!?"
Elly beamed at the number.
"Hiiiek...! I rolled a ten, and I've been swimming in red candles for over two months, you knooow...! Human madness is something even fortune cannot overcome...!"
Professor Reina said it in a mournful little voice. She had probably carved that investment out of a professor's already meager salary; her eye for stocks did not appear to be a gift. The day Professor Flora got back the money she had lent Professor Reina was, I suspected, never going to come.
"Then I suppose it's my turn."
Sierra took the die after Elly and rolled.
Clatter-clatter-clatter. Clack.
The face showing was a nine—only one away from Professor Reina herself.
"Incredibleee...! Both of you have tremendous talent, you knooow...!"
Having said so, Professor Reina turned to me with a face full of expectation.
"And Yohan... I wonder what you'll roll. Don't tell me—a thirteen? A number even I have never seen...?"
Under that hopeful gaze, I rolled the die.
Clatter-clatter-clatter. Clack.
The students had gone. Izumi Reina sank into her seat with a long, heavy sigh.
Elly and Sierra both possessed outstanding potential. Elly had rolled an eight; Sierra, a nine.
Either number was more than enough to flourish as a rogue. They did not fall far short of her own ten. Even in her hometown, people with potential of that caliber had been vanishingly rare.
If those two had rolled that high, then of course Yohan's number would come out higher still. And the number Yohan's die had shown was—
Luck Potential — Yohan Baker
Floor value: 2. This number should not exist.
It had been a one. Reina had never seen that number in her life. Even the unluckiest person started at a baseline of two.
Yohan possessed the finest qualities of a rogue. He had proven that talent in his duel against Bohn Zaborg.
"To have that kind of quality with only that much potential... that doesn't add up at all, you knooow...!"
No matter how she turned it over, it made no sense. The power Yohan had already shown and the potential the die had read refused to fit together.
Could it be that the die her master had left her was faulty?
The thought made her turn her head toward it—and in that instant.
The die split apart.
"Eeeeh!? Master's keepsake—it broke, you knooow...!"
Staring at the ruined die, screaming, Reina remembered something her master had said while still alive.
"It's a precious thing, so don't lose it. You're a bit of a scatterbrain, so I can't help but worry."
"I-I'm sorryyy...! B-but Master! What am I supposed to do if it breaks or gets damaged, you knooow...?"
"It's carved from the bone of a Divine Beast, so it almost never breaks by physical means. However..."
"However...?"
"They say it will shatter if it passes through the hands of someone whose potential even that die cannot express. Well—I only heard it from my own master, so I can't be sure. You'd have to have met such a person first."
Reina reached across the round table. Split cleanly into two pieces, the die stared back at her in hollow silence.