First Step to Munchkin, Immortal (3)
Really, I must have been exhausted, because I slept soundly without even dreaming. Still, my body instinctively woke at the usual time, rousing each resting cell one by one. When the hour arrived, I opened my eyes out of habit and rose from the cozy bed. The Diligence trait really is convenient. Before possessing Leon, I had been a lazy person who rarely managed to wake properly even with smartphone alarms set. Now my body simply reacts on its own. How much easier could it get?
I headed to the bathroom, washed with lukewarm water warmed by magic, changed into training clothes, and left the room. The sky was dark as usual. Breathing in the chill and faint fishy scent unique to early morning, I walked toward the nobles’ training ground while thinking about Elaine—the question that had kept me up last night.
The worst possibility was that someone else had possessed Elaine, but I had already set that aside. Among the remaining options, which version of regression would be the most dangerous for me? It did not take long to decide. Naturally, the regression of “Crown Princess Elaine” from the canon route would be the worst. She had declared her love for Crown Prince Alex right up until the moment of her death. Even if she regressed, that love would not change. She had been roughly thirty-eight when she died, so by then it would not be strange for her, as crown princess, to know that Raisa had become a great mage through late blooming. Yet the Elaine I had met these past few days did not seem like the crown princess version who had lived and died a tragic life straight out of a grimdark novel. That possibility seemed very low.
The next most likely regression was “Sword Master Elaine” from the hero route. Having traveled across the Hamaltia continent with the hero party and fought countless battles against the Demon King’s army, she would naturally try to recruit Raisa first. That version of Elaine possessed tremendous mental strength forged through long combat experience and bonds with excellent companions. If the Elaine who had reached the peak of mental growth through the hero party had regressed, her earlier proactive advice made perfect sense. Statistically, this version seemed the most probable.
The final possibility was the version where a King’s Crown user had directly played as Elaine. That case contained far too many variables for any hasty guess or conclusion. Every player approached the game differently, and even the same player could change their style across multiple playthroughs with the same NPC. Predicting that Elaine was impossible, so I decided to set that assumption aside as well.
While lost in these thoughts, I saw the entrance to the nobles’ training ground. Inside, the sound of wooden swords striking training dummies echoed intermittently. I had half-expected it. Elaine would definitely attend morning training today. After all, she had learned about Alhazard’s dungeon last night—an extremely difficult place. No matter which version of regression she was, she could not have slept peacefully after I explained in detail why she should never attempt it at her current level.
Come to think of it, how had Elaine reacted when she first heard about Alhazard’s dungeon? I had been too distracted to remember clearly. She seemed to have muttered something like “That can’t be…”
“Haa…” Enough. No more thinking. If I was curious, I could just confront her and find out. The person who could give me the answer was right in front of me. Why hesitate? I steeled myself, opened the training ground’s main door, and stepped inside.
Elaine was surrounded by a large number of training dummies, fending off attacks from every direction. She was clearly practicing the defensive and counter techniques that were the essence of Hexley Vision swordsmanship. Yet something felt off—the number of dummies was far greater than usual. She was using every single dummy in the training ground. Their output settings were not normal either. Every one of them attacking her appeared to be running at maximum power. When I opened the door and entered, her attention wavered for a split second. The dummies, as if they had been waiting for exactly that moment, simultaneously struck at her from all angles with every weapon they possessed.
Wasn’t this dangerous? The sight made me shout instinctively.
“Stop!!!”
At my command, every dummy froze. Elaine, still gripping her sword, caught her breath and glanced toward me.
“Haa… haa… You didn’t have to stop them.”
The casual way she said it made anger surge through me. I stomped across the floor and strode right up to her.
“…That was dangerous. Training this harshly isn’t like you. Why are you doing this?”
I tried to keep my voice steady, but I already knew the reason. It had to be because of what I told her yesterday about the Blood Jiangshi. Sure enough, she slowly lowered her wooden sword and answered.
“The Blood Jiangshi will be stronger than those just now, right?”
As expected. I could not bring myself to lie.
“Yeah… much stronger.”
Perhaps I had been too honest. Elaine’s expression hardened. After a long silence, she murmured quietly.
“I’ll have to become even stronger than I am now.”
“…Right. We both need to get stronger.”
My answer seemed to please her. The tension in her face gradually eased, and a small smile appeared on her lips.
“It’s been a while since I felt this way.”
“What feeling?” I asked without thinking.
The smile never left her face, but a tiny spark ignited in her eyes and began to blaze.
“The feeling of desperation.”
-----
Worried that Elaine had pushed herself too hard, I asked her to rest for a while. She seemed unaccustomed to my concern and sat quietly on the floor, occasionally chuckling while watching me train. That made sense—before I possessed him, the real Leon had never once worried about her. If anything, the real Leon would have been glad to see her condition worsen from overwork. The longer she was unable to train, the more he could dream of closing the gap through his own effort.
Still, her gaze made it impossible to focus. Damn it.
“Leon, you’re having trouble concentrating today.”
Whose fault was that? I glanced at my status window. As expected, stress had risen by +9. The Diligence trait’s penalty was kicking in because my training was not diligent enough. Today’s session was a total failure. If I could not train properly, I might as well use this time to figure out Elaine’s true identity—the question I had been pondering all morning.
So, while half-heartedly chasing a training dummy set to Skeleton Archer that kept backing away and firing practice arrows, I casually asked her a question.
“I mentioned going on a pilgrimage this summer vacation, right? Since it’s my first time, I wanted to ask someone with experience. Can you answer a few things?”
“Of course! Ask me anything!”
Her voice suddenly brimmed with energy. She had looked quite cheerful for a while now. I continued.
“Since I’ll be passing nearby anyway, I’d like to visit the Sun God Order at least once. But I can’t go all the way to the capital, Ismael. So I was thinking of stopping by Kelsey on the way to the holy land to get a feel for their culture… Does that sound like a good idea?”
Elaine fell silent for a long time. When I glanced at her while dealing with the dummy, she looked like she was carefully weighing her answer. This question was a test. Depending on which version of regression she was, her reply would definitely differ.
Among the nations that followed the Sun God Order as their state religion, the most powerful was the Kingdom of Horaism, which currently controlled the holy land. One of the land routes to Horaism passed through a region called Kelsey. Because Kelsey was separated from the Sun God Order by a mountain range, its religious character was somewhat diluted—or perhaps corrupted. Whenever a religion spread to another country, it inevitably mixed with local culture, indigenous beliefs, and myths, becoming slightly altered. Kelsey was no exception, but the degree of alteration there was extreme. It was so severe that the Sun God Order had officially declared the version of their faith practiced in Kelsey to be heresy.
The traditional Sun God Order worshiped the sun god Bel Solar. Yet the deity most widely worshiped in Kelsey was not Bel Solar. More precisely, the people of Kelsey did believe in Bel Solar, but they placed far greater faith in his subordinate deity—or divine beast—known as El Kelsey. According to solar mythology, Bel Solar personally moved the sun to govern the day by attaching it to the rear of a great chariot pulled by black horses and sailing through the cosmos, much like Helios in Greek myth. El Kelsey was the name of the colossal black horse that pulled that chariot and moved the sun.
Up to that point, El Kelsey could be seen as a magnificent god or divine beast. But the Sun God Order had not branded the worship of El Kelsey as heresy for nothing. Their scriptures clearly stated that Bel Solar himself rode the chariot with the sun attached and controlled the divine beast. Nowhere in those scriptures, however, was the beast’s name given as El Kelsey. In other words, only the people of Kelsey claimed that the black horse pulling the sun was named El Kelsey. Their local myth described El Kelsey as a massive, majestic black horse with two enormous horns who cruelly fed on human blood. If El Kelsey could not drink human blood and lost strength, it would be unable to pull the sun through the cosmos, and the world would be plunged into darkness. That was what the people of Kelsey secretly believed.
Furthermore, El Kelsey granted a single miracle to those who offered sacrifices: the resurrection of any one person the worshiper desired. Every human had someone precious—family, lover, friend. As long as one brought the “sacrificial offering” and the “bones of the person they wished to revive,” El Kelsey would bring them back to life. (Even those who had died of old age could be resurrected, though they would soon die again once their lifespan ran out.) It was no wonder the people of Kelsey worshiped El Kelsey as a god. If such miracles were witnessed over a century, who would not believe?
That was why they placed great importance on the tradition of secretly capturing foreigners—especially followers of the goddess Lunaria—who visited the region and offering them as sacrifices to their god. I had explained all this because, as of Imperial Year 571, the Kelsey region had not yet been officially branded heretical by the Sun God Order. Most people in the world still did not know that Kelsey was a dangerous place to travel. More importantly, if Elaine was the version who had fought the Demon King Plüton to the death, she would certainly know the true identity of El Kelsey. El Kelsey was the false name of Belial, the high-ranking demon who served as Plüton’s right hand and strategist.