The Risky Hunt Begins
You have won the Lunaria Blessing Lottery. (3)
Because King's Crown was a world that placed great importance on bloodlines, that principle was thoroughly reflected even in the student cafeteria of Alhazard Academy. Inside the academy stood a dining hall reserved exclusively for nobles. Raisa, having fallen for my persuasion, was now eating lunch with me there. To her, who harbored a secret crush on Professor Giphotes, my offer had been an irresistible temptation.
I was eating salmon steak, the dish Leon often favored. When I sliced through the thick, appetizing orange flesh with my knife, juices trickled out. Being a noble certainly had its perks. To think they ate something like this every day without a second thought...
Raisa sat across from me, picking at spaghetti and a fresh salad with a bit of chicken. It was certainly a healthy-looking meal, but I doubted it was enough to fill her up. After we had eaten our fill, I began in earnest to persuade her. Yet when she heard my story, she refused to believe it outright and voiced her suspicions first.
"...You're teasing me, aren't you? Alhazard's dungeon... If such a thing existed, why wouldn't it have been discovered in all these hundreds of years?"
Unexpectedly, Raisa had a coldly rational side when it came to assessing the current situation. Or perhaps she simply suffered from a chronic distrust of people and couldn't bring herself to believe anything. Judging from how she had obsessively scanned her surroundings earlier, worried that something might be stuck to her chair, she was currently being ostracized by the other noble students. There was a reason they treated her as an outcast. Leon had deliberately tried not to pay attention to such matters, fearing it would stress him out, so I wasn't entirely sure, but it seemed she was treated as the child her family had cast aside. From the perspective of her family, a prestigious magical lineage, Raisa's lack of magical aptitude was an unforgivable flaw...
I'll be honest. When I played King's Crown, if a descendant with such a flaw was born, I would quickly arrange a political marriage and marry them off rather than waste money sending them to the academy. The fact that the current head of the Lumiere family had sent Raisa to Alhazard Academy was proof of how much he loved her as a father. For her, the academy might be the final chance her family was giving her. If she failed to prove her worth here as well, she could very well be forced into a political marriage after graduation—just as I had described moments ago. What a harsh life she led. Though I wasn't really in a position to talk.
While thinking these thoughts, I spoke to her, who still didn't believe me.
"If you don't believe me, I can show you the dungeon entrance."
Because I spoke with such conviction, she couldn't easily deny it and offered another opinion instead.
"If what you're saying is true... shouldn't we tell the professors instead of challenging the dungeon just the two of us?"
That wouldn't do. Why would I hand over the dungeon's rewards to someone else? But since I couldn't say that outright, I struck at her weakness.
"Raisa, didn't you want to get on Professor Giphotes's good side? Earlier, it seemed like he was very interested in 'Alhazard's Staff'... I think that staff is definitely inside the dungeon. If you find it and show it to him yourself, wouldn't he be pleased?"
I didn't stop there and revealed more details that would tempt her.
"And as the professor mentioned earlier, that staff is a divine artifact the Goddess Lunaria bestowed upon this land. If you were to find such an artifact that has been considered lost for hundreds of years, no one would be able to look down on you anymore. Not your family, not the other students."
As expected, she must have been under considerable pressure regarding these matters. After hearing my words, she trembled slightly, her emerald eyes wavering. After spending a long time with her head bowed in thought at the cafeteria table, Raisa finally lifted her head and declared her acceptance with surprising boldness.
"I'll do it! No—please let me do it!"
Resolve now filled Raisa's eyes. I could see a small spark of hope rippling within them.
"Good. But there's a problem. Neither of us is ready to challenge that dungeon yet. So..."
I poured cold water on her rising hopes.
"You and I are going to do something together."
"What?"
-----
Right now, we were wandering through the gloomy alleyways between buildings that seemed to surround and trap Alhazard Academy. The reason Raisa and I were doing this was...
"Whew~ Our little academy babies. Out on a date, just the two of you?"
"Kihihi—Look at these brats, all stripped bare! Didn't your parents ever tell you not to wander around places like this?"
"Tch—Leave them. If we keep robbing kids like them, our customers will piss themselves and never come out again."
...to witness this encounter event. The initial 1.0.0 version of King's Crown had been plagued with an absurd number of serious problems, but the most critical issues were its broken balance and the abundance of game-breaking bugs. And the thugs now appearing before us were one of the main culprits behind that broken balance.
In King's Crown, when a ruler had a child, they had no choice but to raise them with a somewhat hands-off approach until the child reached adulthood. As the ruler, all you could do was decide the child's life philosophy ("I want you to have a job with 'death' in the title~"), appoint a guardian, and occasionally—whether by luck or misfortune—select choices during growth events that directly influenced traits. These factors could affect a growing child's development to some extent, but they were never absolute. What truly had an absolute impact on growth, without a doubt, was the academy. What events you experienced at the academy and what grades you received determined your stats upon reaching adulthood. As a result, players sent their chosen heirs to the academy without exception in order to maximize their potential.
However, in the initial 1.0.0 version, every academy was set in an environment with extremely poor public safety. Naturally, this poor safety setting around the academies dramatically increased the chances that players' precious children would meet with misfortune. Imagine it. Like Zeus desperately trying to roll a Heracles, you finally succeed in the gacha for a child with excellent innate traits like the Three Divine Artifacts. You pay an expensive tuition to send them to the academy to make them high-spec, only for them to return crippled by some thugs, kidnapped, or as a corpse. How would you feel? Because of this danger, players running scarce-bloodline families would rather accept stat penalties and keep their children out of the academy entirely—this became the standard strategy in the early version.
The poor safety around the academies was clearly intentional on the developers' part. Naturally, this sparked massive backlash from countless gamers, which immediately affected King's Crown's reviews on Storm. As negative review bombs kept exploding, the developers rushed out a patch, but by then, the players' evaluation of King's Crown had already begun its endless descent into the abyss. Why had the developers done something like this? Had they wanted to show the darkness of the medieval fantasy era? Or had they wanted to teach players that not everything in life goes according to plan...
I had also experienced the pain of losing multiple children to this terrible balance before my transmigration, but perhaps thanks to that, the dangerous alleyways around the academy—where public safety was poor—had now become an excellent experience-farming spot in this transmigrated state. Watching the thugs approach while brandishing clubs and knives, I pulled out the wooden practice sword I kept for self-defense from the long wooden case slung over my shoulder, then removed the case and tossed it to the ground beside me.
"Hey, hey. What's that? Don't tell me you're planning to take us on with that?"
"Kihihihi—You that desperate to die? Huh?!"
When I drew my weapon, the thugs shouted threateningly. The small-built man holding a knife made slashing motions through the air—shhk, shhk—as if he intended to stab me in the stomach.
"Uwaaah... Senior... Is this really a good idea...? Maybe we should run away while we still can..."
Raisa pleaded from behind me, clutching a small wooden staff with both hands and trembling, but I ignored her and looked at the floating status window.
Stress: +57
When I checked Raisa's schedule at the cafeteria earlier, her afternoon was free, so on impulse I had skipped my own afternoon classes and dragged her outside like this. Thanks to that, my stress value was once again rising like crazy. After going this far, there was no way I could just turn back. I had to make sure I got my money's worth—and more—before the night was over. Tonight, Raisa and Leon would begin their hunt. With that thought, I raised my wooden sword and assumed the drawing stance unique to the Magnus Vision swordsmanship style.