Chapter 192
Chapter 192
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 192
Chapter Title: Final Build
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I twisted the sword I'd stabbed into the boss's neck sideways. With a crack, its neck snapped around, triggering Vampiric Impulse to restore my HP.
I pulled out Wingless Nightmare. The boss's corpse toppled backward with a thud. This one was just a palette-swapped variant, so there wasn't much thrill to it. It wasn't even necessary to hunt the original, so I'd just cleared it off the list.
As I'd instructed, Nix—who'd been watching the boss fight obediently from a distance—came trotting over.
“Keehee, that's it?”
“Pretty much. Just need to acquire this one thing. Then everything I mentioned will be done.”
Nix handed over the staff she was holding. I took it in my right hand.
Black magic didn't require a medium like a magic staff or holy catalyst; it was cast bare-handed. So there was only one use for this.
Rune removal spell.
‘They treated me so well it was almost embarrassing.’
With the ring Minerva gave me, I'd visited the mages in a nearby city, and their reaction was similar to what I'd gotten from the paladins when I showed them the Pope's brooch.
They were desperately trying not to upset me. It was hard to believe these were the same snobbish mage NPCs infamous for their attitude in the game.
One wrong word, and they looked ready to uproot their entire guild and offer it up. So I'd taken just the staff and the rune removal spell before bolting, and the second place I'd headed was here.
The rune dungeon for the final build of a Nexla Mode melee character. The place to get the so-called 'Life Force Conversion' rune.
I'd already picked up the rune that ignored combat fatigue debuffs on my first stop. It felt almost anticlimactic how simple it was, after putting off the plan for so long.
‘Though Nix did all the traveling to get here.’
Without teleportation, it would've taken at least a few months just going back and forth. I was grateful anew for having Nix, Minerva, and the Pope sisters.
“Keehee, why?”
Sensing my gaze, Nix looked up at me with a creepy grin.
“Hm? Nothing. Good job with the teleports.”
“So, my reward?”
“Reward? What kind?”
“I only need one thing. Keehee.”
With that eerie laugh, her slender finger poked at my right hand.
I switched the staff to my other hand, lifted my right, and placed it on her head. Feeling the warmth, Nix purred and clung to me.
Whether it was casual Nix or polite Nix, she loved being petted so much that even I was surprised. What had happened to make her this way was a mystery.
After petting her for a good while, I pulled my hand away and approached the rune stele with the staff raised. I channeled mana into it as the knowledge in my head instructed. The tip began glowing blue.
The tattoo on the back of my hand lit up in resonance. I was about to remove the mana enhancement rune when a sudden thought made me pause.
‘...Come to think of it, what happens when you remove a rune?’
In the game, there was a UI to store runes separately, but not here.
Rune removal only required this spell or specific devices; equipping them was as simple as opening the inventory via ESC.
But here, what happened if I removed it? Ever since possessing this body, the only UI I'd seen was the stat screen from the Ability Check Orb.
‘Eh, it'll work out somehow.’
I didn't need it anymore anyway. By lore, runes reappeared somewhere in the world once their user was gone. Even if it vanished, a new rune dungeon would spawn.
I focused back on the back of my hand. The tattoo was still glowing. Shifting my gaze to it brought up details on each tattoo's rune type in my mind.
Without hesitation, I removed the 'Mana Enhancement' rune. I wouldn't need it from now on.
The black tattoo vanished as if absorbed into the back of my hand. Confirming the spell was done, Nix held out her hand. I gave the staff back to her.
The long wooden rod slipped between her breasts.
“......”
To be precise, she'd just hugged it to her chest, but given their size and her outfit, it naturally ended up there.
Nix looked up at me with her usual creepy smile, oblivious to how it looked.
‘...Yeah. It's not intentional, probably.’
If Lize or the Pope sisters did that, it'd be 100% deliberate. But with Nix, I could believe she was clueless.
I couldn't picture her deliberately seducing me like those three. Even if she did, I'd think 'cute' before 'lewd' or 'sexy.'
Probably.
“Why? Heehee.”
“Nothing. Anyway.”
I tickled her chin a few times and placed my hand on the stele. Closing my eyes, I focused my mind, gathering the power that roamed my body to the back of my left hand.
A tingling sensation spread across it, and when the pain faded, I opened my eyes. The empty spot left by the removed rune was now filled with a new tattoo.
‘Now it's truly done.’
Completing the final build for real felt oddly surreal.
It had taken less time than expected. I'd figured traversing the continent would take years at minimum. Nix and Minerva's help—especially Nix's—had been huge.
The name of the last rune I'd acquired here was 'Life Force Conversion.' Its effect changed black magic's resource cost from HP and mana to pure HP.
Black magic normally consumed some HP along with mana. But this rune let you cast it using only HP, no mana.
In exchange, the HP cost shifted from a fixed value to a percentage of max health. So it wasn't useful generally, since even a slight HP stat increase made potions more expensive.
‘Only when your HP stat is high, though.’
Consuming HP as a percentage meant the lower your HP stat, the more efficient it was. Especially for someone like me with only 1 HP stat, it was a no-brainer.
For a 1 HP stat character, the HP cost ranged from a minimum 7% to a maximum 30%, but that was negligible.
Max HP was only 100.
Losing 30% was just 30, and even the black magic with the highest cost could be covered with Vampiric Impulse's 50 HP recovery—with room to spare.
This was the final build for a Nexla Mode melee character. Now I just needed counters for bosses immune to Vampiric Impulse.
“Really done now?”
The rune stele crumbled to dust now that its job was finished. Nix approached with short steps, staff still wedged between her breasts as she eyed me.
“Yep. Time to head back.”
“Keehee. Got it.”
I had no desire to test the rune's performance here. I'd be using it plenty in the future anyway.
As usual, Nix teleported us straight to my room at the top of the castle. She'd teleported here so often that she could pinpoint these precise coordinates now.
“Huh?”
“Oh.”
The moment we entered the room, we ran into someone completely unexpected.
It was Lana.
On my bed, shaking her hips alone.
Lana, lying on the bed and rocking her hips back and forth by herself, turned pale as we appeared in a swirl of black mist. Her fingers clutched the sheets like she was ripping them, lips pressed tight.
At first I thought it was because we'd caught her in that weird scene, but as her expression grew more serious, I realized a beat late that Nix was the cause.
Nix vanished with an instant teleport the second she saw Lana. Lana's pallor returned to normal right away. I felt a twinge of guilt for making her flee again.
I'd have to pet her extra intensely later.
“Good evening, Delta sir.”
In that brief moment, she'd composed herself. Lana sat up casually and greeted me with her usual deadpan expression.
“Good evening or whatever—why are you on my bed? And what was that just now?”
“It was something a maid naturally does for her master.”
“Your master—Aurora?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. That made it even weirder. What did that have to do with Aurora?
Reading my face, Lana continued matter-of-factly with her unchanged expression.
“Someday, my master might lie here. She mustn't strain her back then, so I was testing the mattress in advance. She'd be lying there a very long time, and doing so on a hard spot could hurt her back.”
“......”
I had no idea where to even start. So, she was saying she'd tested the mattress beforehand in preparation for me sleeping with Aurora here.
‘Is that really it?’
“If you're curious how I tested it, I can demonstrate.”
Lana lay back on the bed, bent her knees, and drew her thighs up to her sides. Then she spread them wide and rocked her hips—
“Stop there.”
“Yes.”
As if she'd been waiting for me to say it, Lana sat up. She straightened her wrinkled maid outfit with pats from her gloved hands. Her expression remained impassive.
“......Did the lord teach you that too?”
“Self-taught. My master isn't in a position to teach me such jokes. It's all because of you, Delta sir.”
“Me? What did I do?”
It sounded eerily like something I'd heard from the Popes.
“My master still can't forget that pleasure, so every night she busily plays with her fingers—”
“Stop there and just tell me why you're here.”
“Understood.”
She barely stopped herself from spilling her master's intimate private life. She definitely hadn't been like this before; she was changing more each day.
“A guest arrived at the palace. So I came to fetch you, Delta sir.”
“A guest? Who?”
Lize had just visited not long ago. Who else was coming?
“They said their identity is a secret, but to think about what you sent to the palace. Then you'd easily guess who it is.”
‘...Minerva.’
Probably about the scroll. Had the crystal scroll research finished already?
“Got it. Head out now?”
“Yes. I brought a carriage, so I'll escort you.”
As Lana turned to leave, she paused and looked back.
“Since you'll be mingling bodies with my master anyway, a joke like this between us is—”
“You're really going all the way with it?”