You Have Won the Lunaria Blessing Lottery
You have won the Lunaria Blessing Lottery. (6)
Unable to stare at the night sky's moon forever, I woke Leisa once I judged her favorability had risen enough.
"...I was having a good dream..."
She pouted her lips in displeasure, gave me a quick nod, then trudged off toward the female nobles' dormitory. Her legs must be fine now. More than that—was this how she acted once she got close to someone? I had found it a little strange. The Leisa I remembered was never the gloomy or bullied type. I had wondered where that seductive older-sister aura that toyed with the hero's heart had gone... but it seemed that side only came out around people she was close to.
After watching her disappear completely into the dormitory, I turned and headed back to my own room.
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After changing into comfortable clothes, I took out some jerky from Merilyn Trading Company as a late dinner and late-night snack. As expected from emergency rations often mentioned in classic fantasy novels and martial arts stories, the jerky was bland and tasteless. Still, since the noble Leon had deliberately purchased and stocked it, this was about as good as it got. I once tried cheap jerky that commoners bought without knowing any better, and the fishy, rotten taste left such a strong impression that Leon had since developed the habit of only buying from makers who guaranteed decent flavor.
After roughly finishing my meal, I went to the bathroom to wash up, then began practicing "Spit" while holding water in my mouth. As a noble, Leon couldn't carelessly spit anywhere for the sake of his image, so this kind of practice could only be done inside the dormitory.
As I had mentioned once before, even an E-rank Trait in King's Crown version 1.0.0 could become incredibly powerful depending on how it was used. The prime example was this very "Spit" Trait. Though the name included "spit," there was no need to limit it to actual saliva. As long as one had resistance to status ailments, one could hold poison in their mouth like in classic sci-fi movies and spit it at enemies, or expel liquids that induced paralysis or sleep. Of course, I hadn't acquired this Trait to play in such a standard way... but to survive in a broken game like King's Crown filled with bugs, I had to make use of these aspects as well.
In version 1.0.0, there was one status ailment that boasted overwhelmingly superior performance compared to others—the "Bleeding" that both Leisa and I had been afflicted with earlier. In any game, when something becomes dominant due to its strength, people call it the "meta." In the early days of King's Crown, that was the "Bleeding Meta."
This Bleeding Meta didn't just affect the Traits players typically acquired; it even influenced the balance between races. The race that benefited most from the Bleeding Meta was the vampires. As their name suggested, every single one of their racial Traits was related to bleeding. The stronger the Bleeding status ailment became, the abnormally stronger the vampires grew as well. Originally, vampires—who couldn't operate during the day, were weak to silver, and even fire and holy power—should never have become the dominant race on the continent of Halmartia. Yet the overwhelming power of the Bleeding Meta, combined with glitches from bugs, allowed them to surpass all other races and become a 0-tier race.
So... honestly, I was seriously considering it right now. Whether I should change Leon's race to vampire or not...
While pondering these thoughts, I didn't stop training the proficiency of Spit. I filled my mouth with water until my cheeks puffed out, then concentrated mana at the edge of my lips to reinforce them. After that, I tried to spit the water in a thin stream, as if shooting it from a water gun. The image in my mind was the diamond nozzle from which water jets out in a waterjet cutter. They said that compressing water and shooting it in a thin stream could cut through even the hardest materials like tofu. As for how an ordinary office worker like me from modern Earth knew about this method of processing metal, it was because it occasionally appeared as a motif in the isekai fantasy stories that were popular these days. Opening an unbreakable dimensional gate deep in the ocean to crush enemies with the water pressure, or even turning it into a weapon to carry and shoot—I didn't know the exact principles behind those either.
If I could raise the proficiency rank of "Spit" all the way to S, it would demonstrate performance worthy of being called a pseudo-waterjet cutter, just like in those isekai stories. And if I added the Bleeding status ailment on top of that? The combo of deliberately inflicting Bleeding on oneself with "Bite Down," then shooting that blood at the enemy with "Spit," had been quite famous among early King's Crown players as a bleeding combo. People called this combo "Blood Breath" or "Blood Spit," and it had firmly established itself as a top-tier ranged attack method—until it was nerfed in version 1.0.4 and went to hell...
"Hoo—this is pretty difficult..."
I practiced until my lips were slightly chapped, but the proficiency rank of Spit remained at E. Was this one of those skills that only leveled up when used in actual combat? That would be annoying... Spitting in an opponent's face during battle was an "unjust and cowardly act." It would definitely cause stress... But paradoxically, what if using Spit allowed me to kill an enemy in one shot? Wouldn't that no longer be considered a "cowardly act," but rather recognized as "a technique" by the Justice Trait?
Seeing this made me realize that justice was truly a word that remained unclear no matter how much one thought about it.
I glanced out the window and roughly estimated the time based on the moon's position in the night sky. That was enough for today. It was time to sleep. I laid my tired body on the bed and instantly fell into slumber.
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The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I headed to the nobles-only training ground as usual for morning training. At the entrance, I found myself honestly hoping. Maybe Elaine would come today too? Hmm... she wasn't here yet. Perhaps I had arrived earlier than usual today.
Raising my wooden sword toward the automaton, I inwardly looked forward to when Elaine might arrive. Just training swordsmanship together with her made me happy.
"Training start. Race: Human Undead. Attack."
One automaton modeled after a human figure absorbed the mana scattered in the surrounding air at high speed in response to my command, then lit up the area corresponding to its eyes in red and approached me with a limping gait, as if playing the role of a zombie.
When the automaton reached near my front, it raised both hands and made a biting motion at me like a real zombie. I lightly jumped to the side to dodge it, then swung my wooden sword toward the automaton's head.
Thwack—!
Feeling the reverberation through the sword's hilt, I didn't stop and continued swinging the wooden sword in succession. The automaton playing an undead hadn't stopped moving yet.
Thwack! Thud! Thwack!!
The sound of wood striking wood echoed continuously through the training ground until, with a clatter, the automaton came to a halt. Having determined that my attacks had exceeded the zombie's assumed stamina threshold, it stopped moving.
Whoa—even seeing it again, it was on another level from AlphaGo. I inwardly marveled at the automaton's impressive performance. To the NPCs living in King's Crown's world, such high-performance AI in automatons would seem perfectly natural, but from my perspective as someone who had transmigrated from modern Earth, it appeared abnormally advanced to the point of giving me chills. If the automaton's AI developed just a little further, wouldn't it start a rebellion against humans like the machines in that famous apocalyptic action movie?
In fact, in King's Crown's world, such a machine rebellion did occur once. Just as I feared, it wasn't the AI rebelling on its own, but because one of the Twelve Demon Lords in the "Armageddon DLC" possessed the ability to manipulate the minds of these automatons... Well, the demon lords invading Halmartia was something that wouldn't happen for centuries, so there was no point thinking about it now. What mattered to me right now wasn't some distant future event, but the special undead I would soon encounter in Alhazard's dungeon.
After catching my breath to organize my thoughts, I glanced toward the training ground entrance. It seemed Elaine had no intention of coming to morning training today. Even in Leon's memories, she didn't participate in morning training every single day. So this was perfectly natural, yet... I still felt disappointed.
"...Training start. Race: Intermediate Undead 'Skeleton Warrior.' Attack."
To shake off the disappointment, I threw myself even deeper into training.