55. Welcome to Kalon Academy! (1)
55. Welcome to Kalon Academy! (1)
"How is Karina? She's not in critical condition, is she?"
"Her condition isn't good... but Sabrina's Blessing protects her, so she should gradually recover once the curse is removed. Did you bring the medium used to cast the curse?"
At Professor Lennon's question, Reni pulled a meticulously sealed box from her bag.
Professor Lennon accepted the box as carefully as if he were handling something fragile and placed it on what looked like a workbench. Then he took out a pair of leather gloves marked with what resembled a magic circle. They clearly had a specialized purpose.
"A curse whose presence can still be felt through such a thorough seal... Truly vicious."
Professor Lennon carefully broke the seal and opened the lid. His brow furrowed at the sinister energy that poured out the instant it opened.
"Ha. Vicious indeed. This medium was not made by ordinary means. At least... several hundred people must have been sacrificed to create it."
"Nasty indeed..."
I'd only heard about such objects before; this was my first time seeing one in person. I knew nothing about curses and had no ability to remove them, so the best thing I could do was stay out of the way. I sat beside Millia and watched the professor handle the cursed medium.
It felt a little wrong to put it that way, but it was a genuinely rare sight.
Very few people could deal with curses, and Professor Lennon was considered the foremost expert on curse removal on the continent. Watching him alone seemed likely to teach me something.
Ah, my source for all this was Reni.
The professor lifted the arrowhead with extreme care, turning it this way and that, inspecting its condition. I had no idea whether that kind of visual inspection meant anything, but since he was the expert, presumably there was a reason for it. Accepting that as good enough, I quietly tugged Millia—who was nodding off precariously next to me, her body leaning further and further forward—toward my side.
"...Yohan?"
"I'll wake you when we leave, so sleep all you want."
"Hehe... okay..."
Millia closed her half-lidded eyes completely and leaned her body against me. After everything she'd been through on the way here, I'd have liked to lay her down somewhere with an actual bed, but we'd come straight here without securing an inn. Outsiders couldn't use the academy dormitories either, so the plan was to head out immediately afterward and look for a place to stay.
"The analysis will take quite some time. Why don't you all go rest? You clearly aren't in good shape yourselves..."
"...No. I can't leave Karina behind."
"It is difficult to concentrate with you staring at me like that. Would you step outside? You can rest while you're at it. Sleeping for a while and returning to watch over her would be far better than keeping vigil in your current condition."
At the professor's firm order to leave, Reni hesitated for a moment, glanced at us, and nodded.
I wanted to watch a bit longer too, but now that we were inside the academy, there'd be plenty of opportunities.
"Millia. Let's go."
"I'm sleepy..."
Millia rubbed her eyes, stretched, and then let her head bob dangerously again. At this rate her head was going to fall off. Left with no choice, I sat down in front of her and spoke.
"Get on my back."
"Hehe..."
A pair of arms wrapped around my neck. The soft weight against my back told me Millia had climbed on, and I slowly stood. Despite how much she'd eaten over the past several months, she was surprisingly light.
She was small, so naturally she was light.
"Reni. Do you know somewhere we can rest?"
"There's a building called Dawn Hall that's been reserved for Saintesses through the generations. Let's use it. We should be allowed to."
I supposed so. At the moment, I was treated as something like Karina's lifesaver and trusted confidant. Still, I wanted a more secure standing... I'd look for another way.
"Then we'll go get some rest."
"Let's meet again when you're in better shape."
We left the professor's laboratory.
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Kalon Academy was unquestionably the institution with the best facilities, the greatest splendor, and the highest quality of education in this world. That was only natural. Every major figure, from royalty to the Saintess, graduated from Kalon Academy.
Basically, it was a pressure-cooker academy designed to gather the powerful and the gifted in one place.
Naturally, this was the very setup that let the game collect all the heroines in a single place.
"...I'm kind of excited to meet the heroines from the original game."
Regardless of romantic feelings, seeing the characters in person was genuinely exciting. After all, I'd poured more than a thousand hours into the game. Aside from the True Ending DLC I downloaded just before my transmigration, I'd seen every route and every ending, then completed several more playthroughs afterward.
My body still ached a little.
The forced march had left muscles aching all over my body, making me reluctant to move. My calves in particular throbbed like hell. How long had it been since I'd felt muscle soreness like this? Even fighting the Hydra had not left me sore.
I tried to sit up, then lay back down and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Trying to go back to sleep would be tough now, with the sunlight spilling through the window to warm my body, but at least I could lie here looking at the ceiling and get lost in thought.
"The atmosphere seemed a bit unsettled."
That was my impression from what I'd glimpsed on the way into this building called Dawn Hall.
Here and there, I'd seen broken walls that still had not been repaired, and the students passing nearby had seemed dispirited. The academy clearly hadn't yet recovered from the Hellhound Incident. That was only natural, since Karina hadn't been running around spamming AoE heals as she did in the original game...
"...The original plot going completely off the rails would be pretty dangerous, though."
If the scraps of original-game knowledge I still possessed became completely useless, the difficulty would rise far too much. Survival Academy was already notorious for being difficult. Unlike in the game, I couldn't simply reload a save file whenever something went wrong.
...I decided to set that aside for now. There was too little information to judge anything until I went outside and checked for myself.
Even if things had gone a little off-script, they might still return to the original course.
For now, at least...
"Status Window."
[Yohan Quartz]
Age:19
Sex:Male
Race:Human
Job: Unemployed
-Traits-
Insight:B
Shoveling:A+
Carpentry:A
Processing:A
Pharmacy:C+
Dexterity:B
Anatomy:B
Survival:S
-Skills-
Craft:A
Repair:B
Dismantling:B
Auto-Translate:A
Allocate Trait Points.
Trait Points: 2
-Mission-
-Acquire a job.
Reward: 1 Trait Point
"So it was treating me like an unemployed bum, huh."
Somehow that stung a little. I glared at the Status Window for no real reason, but there was no chance the job field was going to change just because I did. Now that I thought about it, I didn't really have anything you could call a job, so I couldn't even argue with it calling me unemployed.
It merely raised one question.
Did the Status Window mean "job" in the literal dictionary sense?
Or did it mean I had to choose one of the jobs the protagonist of Survival Academy could select?
If it was the former, it would be very easy; if the latter, it would be hard.
If it meant the former, the mission would be complete as soon as I took any ordinary job, even as a servant at Dawn Hall. If it meant the latter, I would have to complete a fairly long quest and change jobs. Though in this game, a job change simply meant enrolling in a department and obtaining a kind of certification.
The problem was whether an unaffiliated outsider could even take the certification exam. Even if I could, I'd have to demonstrate the knowledge and ability associated with that department, which meant studying hard. Just imagining myself wrestling with books as thick as encyclopedias already gave me a headache.
"...I should put that off for now and deal with the Trait Points first."
I skimmed over the Traits and Skills.
Survival was S, so although I did not know the lowest rank, I could probably assume the scale began at F. Assuming that was right, what was I supposed to raise?
Based on my years as a hardcore gamer, higher ranks would probably require more Trait Points. I should leave the A-rank and higher Skills alone for now and prioritize the C- and B-rank Skills.
"Should I raise Insight or Dexterity?"
Among my relatively low-ranked Skills, those two seemed the most versatile. I didn't know exactly what they improved, but investing in both of them should not hurt.
Why had they given me a Status Window like this? If only it had been a stat window capped at 100 like the one in the original game, I wouldn't have had to suffer through all this guesswork.
"...No. Instead of dwelling on that, I should focus on spending these points."
"Points? What's that?"
What the...? I had not heard her enter the room. I turned and looked at Millia, who had placed only her head on the bed. When she saw me looking, she grinned mischievously and spoke.
"You're always muttering strange things to yourself. Tell me what they mean too! I'm curious!"
"I'm only talking to myself, so ignore it. But when did you come in?"
"Heehee. I snuck in~"
"Right. Then go back out."
"Play with me!"
"This isn't a playground."
"We worked really hard, so you can play with me for one day~ Let's go look around the academy together~"
As if lodging a protest, Millia climbed onto my stomach and started rocking her body. The whole bed shook with her, making me dizzy.
The situation itself was fairly suggestive, but with nothing above her neck, all I could think about was how bizarre it looked. Could she not at least put her head on her neck before talking? She'd gotten far too comfortable just because we were alone.
"First, get off. Whether I play with you or not, I can't do anything with you riding me like this."
"But this is pretty fun, you know?"
"You're making me dizzy, so get off. If you don't, there will be no sightseeing or anything else."
"You mean it?"
"Yeah. I mean it, so get off."
"Heehee, then I'll go change my clothes and be right back!"
Millia had approached like a gentle breeze and vanished like a storm.
I let out a sigh and sat up.
"For now, I should take a lap around the academy and decide where to spend the points..."
Thinking it over while getting some fresh air outside would not be a bad idea.
There was no need to rush the decision.
I grabbed a towel and a change of clothes and headed for the bathroom.