Chapter 48
Chapter 48
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 48
Chapter Title: Vitality Rune Secured
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‘As expected.’
I gazed contentedly at the rock centipede, which had perished miserably without even showing a proper pattern or two. Chunks of rock that had once been its head were now covered in ice and rolling across the floor.
Having the knight commander and her team handle the finishing blow on the rock centipede had definitely been the right choice. They’d taken care of it far faster, safer, and more efficiently than I could have.
If it had been me, I would’ve had to keep rolling and striking for ages.
“It was all size and no substance. Just like the rookie said, it was slow and easy to take down.”
Lize said this as she walked over. The ice covering her silver armor melted away with a soft hiss. She removed her helmet, revealing her blue hair.
“Indeed. Even if we’d gone at it alone, we could’ve handled it without issue.”
Erika also took off her helmet. Her bundled hair, coiled neatly at the back of her head, stood out even more. There was a metallic clink as Erika sheathed her katana.
“That’s it, right, rookie?”
“Yeah. How could it survive in that state?”
“...I once fought a monster that could regenerate even after being chopped to pieces, so I had to check.”
“That’s not just chopped to pieces, is it?”
I pointed at the rock centipede’s corpse. Its head was frozen solid and shattered into fragments, the body below melted and charred by flames, and the rest smashed to bits.
It was nowhere near something you could sum up with a single word.
“I suppose not.”
Iris gave a small laugh. It had been more of a joke from the start, it seemed.
‘I get what she’s talking about, roughly.’
The monster she’d just mentioned—one that could regenerate even after being dismembered—was one of the mid-game bosses.
It was a boss that could slice itself apart at will and reassemble, which often turned the fight into a drawn-out game of tag. Not well-regarded because of that.
It wasn’t on the level of the rock centipede, though.
A few years back, Iris had fought it but retreated without defeating it, and if you showed her proof of its subjugation, she’d be thrilled and shower the protagonist with praise.
“Rookie. It’s your turn now. You know what to do, right?”
Erika glanced back. Where her gaze landed was a rune stele glowing green.
The stele providing the rune would vanish and reappear somewhere else, its location and timing completely random. It might show up again in a few days or take decades.
That was a fact you could learn from the writings of a scholar who’d devoted his life to studying the patterns of its random appearances, only to fail and wail in despair. One of the few gag scenes in Bren 4.
I approached the stele, from which a faint green light emanated. Strange ancient characters were carved into the stone. Behind me, I felt the heat of six intense gazes.
“Let’s do this.”
I placed my hand on it. The green light swirling within the stele began transferring to me. It felt like wind rushing forcefully through my veins.
I closed my eyes and selected the spot for the rune tattoo. You could engrave it anywhere on the body, but the most straightforward place was the back of the hand.
Focusing my mind as if manipulating the game UI, the wind racing through my body soon gathered at the back of my left hand. My hand trembled uncontrollably for a moment, then a burning heat surged up.
The heat faded quickly. I opened my eyes and checked my hand. A peculiar tattoo was there—the mark of the Vitality Enhancement Rune.
‘No real sensation yet.’
That was partly because my stamina wasn’t depleting right now, and there weren’t many opportunities to consume stamina unless I was rolling four or five times in a row.
‘Some guys picked female characters and engraved this on the lower abdomen.’
Its actual meaning was nothing like that, but looking at it now brought to mind those who used it for weird purposes. Like engraving a womb tattoo on a female character, for instance.
The prime examples were users who deliberately chose female characters, customized them sexily, dressed them scantily, and combined runes to craft something resembling a heart-shaped vulva.
‘Talk about geniuses.’
Those users really came up with heart or womb shapes using combinations no one else would think of. Or they’d mod the tattoo shapes outright.
While I was lost in these pointless thoughts, the rune transfer completed. The green light fully seeped into my body. The stele that had given me the rune lost its glow, turned into an ordinary pile of rocks, and crumbled.
It’d reappear in some dungeon somewhere in the world now.
Of course, that was just the lore. No player had ever acquired the same rune twice in one playthrough, even if it reappeared.
It was merely a device to give plausibility to why players could collect all the runes.
“All done, rookie?”
“Here, the rune tattoo. It’s definitely absorbed.”
“What’s the rune’s effect?”
‘...Huh?’
Iris’s question froze my mind for a second. Come to think of it, how do you check rune effects here?
In the game, you’d just hit Esc and open the character status screen. But now there was no status window or stat screen. No way to check the rune’s effect right away.
I knew the Vitality Enhancement Rune’s effect by heart: it increased the character’s natural stamina recovery rate by a fixed amount. But there was no way to confirm it directly, text or otherwise.
“......”
“...?”
Iris looked at me blankly, as if wondering what was wrong.
“Doesn’t something pop into your head? That’s the rune’s effect.”
‘Oh, so that’s how it works.’
Here, apparently, acquiring a rune made its info appear directly in your mind. Since I already knew about the Vitality Enhancement Rune, nothing new popped up.
No need to worry if the knight commander knew the concept of stamina. We’d seen the stat names from the Ability Check Orb.
“Uh... increased natural stamina recovery rate?”
“A pretty useful effect. You got lucky. Congratulations, rookie.”
As expected, Iris understood immediately. It wasn’t something I needed, but it wasn’t bad to have either.
“With this, we’ve achieved our goal for entering the dungeon. Now we just need to head out...”
Erika looked around.
“No passage leading outside in sight. We might have to backtrack.”
Lize recoiled at the idea of backtracking. We’d spent a solid hour and a half coming down. It was natural she’d react like that to climbing back up.
It’s fine. Anyway, after getting the rune, one of the walls crumbles.
“It’ll take a while since there won’t be any monsters, but otherwise no iss—"
Rumble. Before Iris could finish, the wall directly behind where the rune had been collapsed, revealing a path.
“—ue.”
“Looks like the structure is set up so part of the wall crumbles after acquiring the rune. I’ll note that in the report later.”
“Do that. Rookie, anything else to do here?”
I shook my head side to side. Once you got the rune, there was no need to come back. No extra items, nothing left to gain.
Even if there was a reason, I wouldn’t. Damn rock centipede.
“Got it. Everyone, prepare to leave.”
The exit was quick. Erika and Iris put their heads together, puzzled over the dungeon’s bizarre layout, while Lize, as always, stuck close to my side and chattered away.
Outside, pitch darkness blanketed everything, not even an inch of visibility. It felt like hours had passed.
Considering that rune acquisition dungeons were usually cleared in under twenty minutes at most, this had taken an absurdly long time. And most of that was spent on the rock centipede gimmick.
Even accounting for the more realistic scale compared to the game, Iris and Erika had said it was a fairly large dungeon, so yeah, it had taken long.
‘Now my rune slots are all unlocked.’
Next, head to another dungeon for the rune that ignores combat fatigue debuffs, then steadily level up and progress the main story.
‘...Wait. How far is that place, exactly?’
As I recalled the next dungeon’s location, an unexpected fact halted my thoughts.
Even in the game, the distance from the city with the Silver Dawn Knights to the dungeon with the combat fatigue ignore rune was quite far.
Now that everything was scaled to real-world proportions, the distance between them was obvious.
Just think about how long it took to reach the headless armored rider boss field, which was only a few minutes on horseback in the game.
‘...’
Even conservatively, it’d take a full three weeks.
“What’re you doing, rookie? Time to head out.”
“Oh, just thinking about something. Sorry. Coming right now.”
Iris, having already retrieved the horse’s saddle gems and mounted up, urged me on. Lize and Erika were waiting too. I apologized briefly and got on my horse.
“It’s late, so let’s hurry back.”
Iris spurred her horse forward. Erika followed closely. Lize and I trailed a bit behind.
“Wait. I have something to say.”
“...?”
After a while, Lize, riding right beside me, spoke in a serious tone.
“What?”
“You look like you’ve got something weighing on you. Thought I’d ask what’s up.”
“Wait, was it that obvious?”
“Impossible to miss.”
“......”
Fair enough. It was a pretty serious concern. I knew the general terrain and approximate location, but I couldn’t just set off blindly on that alone.
We’re talking a distance of nearly three weeks, not a few days. I wasn’t confident I could find it properly.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but agonizing alone won’t help. I know you worry about us, but we worry about you just as much. Might be better to think it over together than suffer in silence.”
“...Since when are you so serious?”
“I can read the room when I need to.”
Lize poked fun with a grin.
Of course, if she hadn’t immediately followed with, “They say most guys’ worries get solved by groping a girl’s chest. Interested?” it would’ve been perfect comfort.
‘Yeah, no reason to agonize alone.’
It was about time to reveal my rising stats, and time to start sharing info that’d actually help the Silver Dawn Knights.
Time to pull out the all-purpose shield once more.