Dark Moon
A full week had already passed since I entered the game world of Dark Moon.
Someone once said that humans are creatures of adaptation. That someone was right. I had adapted to this life.
All thanks to Instructor Lexy. Once word spread that I was a genius marksman, my treatment improved in every way and daily life got a lot easier. Even when I slipped up a little, they tended to let it slide.
My value went up. Even if I never become a Battle Mage, they can still use me as a sniper.
Every time Lexy looked at me, she would launch into an explanation of how important snipers were. A single veteran sniper makes life easier for a thousand allies—that claim felt a little exaggerated, but the high value of a sniper itself seemed to be the real deal.
Yesterday word came that No. 31 had broken through to 2-Class. The instructors and the other kids all reacted the same way: Of course it's No. 31.
Once she hit 2-Class, the preferential treatment she already enjoyed only got better.
The gap between 1-Class and 2-Class is pretty big, so it isn't strange.
I had no talent for close combat—or for any physical discipline besides shooting. Swordsmanship, spear techniques, the works.
The real shock was discovering I couldn't use a sword at all.
Back on Earth I was still an F-Class hunter who used a blade…
No. 211 had the exact same face as me and zero athletic ability to go with it.
Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep.
A cheap melody blared from the ceiling—the signal for the next block of the schedule. The kids sitting in the barracks filed out into the corridor and formed ranks.
"Move out to the mana training room."
No. 205, the barracks leader, took point. As we walked the corridor I felt eyes on me. I glanced over and found two soldiers in uniform, rifles in hand, watching us like guards. It drove home again that this body's status was slave and experimental subject.
The moment I stepped into the mana training room, dense mana pressed against my senses. I didn't know the exact principle, but the room was far richer in mana than anywhere else—a space built specifically for mana breathing techniques, true to its name.
This is where No. 211 suffered mana reverse flow and blacked out.
And where I woke up as No. 211.
I took my assigned spot and settled into a cross-legged seat. The most basic posture for mana breathing was the lotus position.
I closed my eyes and focused on observation.
No. 211's reverse flow was caused by breathing. Pay special attention to the breath while opening the Astral.
The moment I opened my Astral, the presence of mana sharpened into clarity.
Five mana roads went to work. Opposite to casting magic, they drew outside mana into me. More than ninety-nine percent of what I pulled in slipped back out again, but a tiny fraction remained and accumulated in my body.
That accumulated mana became my capital.
"Ghk—! Gaaah—!"
A voice shattered my concentration. I cracked one eye open. A short distance away, a man clutched his chest and collapsed to the floor. Mana reverse flow. Soldiers rushed in, hauled him up, and carried him off to the infirmary.
Three reverse-flow cases in a single week. That's still weird no matter how you look at it. Are they inducing it on purpose?
Once the rumors about me spread, the way people thought about reverse flow shifted a little. The nonsense going around was that if you gained enlightenment through reverse flow, you could climb to a higher tier.
They're misunderstanding something. Reverse flow can be a trigger at best—and a trigger with an extremely low success rate.
Still, I couldn't entirely blame the ones gambling on a fluke and deliberately courting reverse flow. That was how desperate they were.
Our status is slave and experimental subject. Bad grades mean immediate disposal.
I closed my eyes again. Whether someone deliberately triggered reverse flow or not was their business. I wasn't the type to stick my nose into other people's problems, and I didn't have the luxury for it either.
That afternoon, instead of sword training, I headed to the shooting range where Instructor Lexy was waiting. Once the instructors recognized my talent, they reworked the schedule so I could focus on marksmanship.
"Hey there, No. 211. How are you feeling today?"
Lexy said it with a bright smile. On the desk beside her sat more than ten firearms, starting with a handgun.
"Ordinary."
"You're not in bad condition, right?"
"No."
"Today we're going to try the other guns one by one. Weirdly enough, everyone has a different preferred firearm. Well—with your skill level, it probably won't matter which one you use."
I followed her instructions without complaint and started with the handgun. Every shot left me quietly impressed with myself. At close range I didn't even need to calculate wind—I just pulled the trigger on pure feel and still hit the target.
So this is what talent feels like.
I used to think talent was efficiency.
Geniuses were people who got maximum results from minimum effort. Or so I believed.
Now that I've become one, I get it. There's no minimum effort involved. Genius is just incomprehensible.
I scrubbed every useless thought from my head and simply devoted myself to the talent I had right now.
"You know what? The better a mage's marksmanship, the better off they are."
"…Do mages use firearms that often?"
"Hm? No—magic is still a ranged attack in the end. If you don't hit, it's worthless."
She wasn't wrong.
Not every spell was a long-range attack, but the image of a mage was someone casting from the rear. Reality wasn't far off.
Battle Mages are a bit of an exception, but the basic combat style for mages is still ranged.
The mages of this world didn't go looking for fights if they could help it. Once you had 3-Class magic skill, you could live an elite life—why would you want dangerous work?
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I pulled the trigger and savored the report. I'd fired more than three hundred rounds, but because every single one found the target, I never got bored.
"Remember what I told you last time?"
"…That you would give me a reward?"
"That's right. Just checking—what kind of reward do you want? Be honest. I almost never hand out rewards to anyone, you know?"
"……"
Just because she told me to be honest didn't mean I was stupid enough to bare my real thoughts. The fact that she treated me well was no reason to forget my actual position.
"I'll take whatever you give me."
"Boring answer. Don't you want to go outside for once?"
"……Are you going to let me out?"
"Sorry. I don't have that kind of authority. But an opportunity to go outside will come next week."
"What's happening next week?"
"Your first mission. No—calling it a field exercise is probably better. You're still trainees."
"I'd like to know the contents of the exercise."
"Classified. I can't tell you. Honestly, I wasn't even supposed to mention that there is an exercise… It just slipped out. Keep it secret from the others."
It almost certainly hadn't just slipped out. Prepare yourself—there's an exercise coming. That was the real message. I was about to pick up a gun and focus on shooting again when her hand caught my wrist and pulled it down.
She set a bracelet in my palm. A crude metal band.
"This is my reward. An artifact with a 4-Class barrier spell on it. A little darling that's saved my life more than ten times."
Artifact.
The word for any object with magic worked into it.
"Thank you."
I accepted it without refusal. A 4-Class barrier could become my lifeline.
"You're allowed to fail this exercise. Everyone's already seen your shooting. Even if you fail, you won't be disposed of."
"…I see."
"Oh, right—Instructor Vinous has his eye on you. Said your magic manifestation is incredibly clean. But your marksmanship is even better than your magic. Don't forget you were born to be a sniper."
"…Yes. Thank you."
I dealt with Lexy without letting anything show.
Honestly, I wanted to be a mage more than a sniper. This body had magic talent every bit as sharp as its shooting talent.
The field exercise was one day away.
I dropped onto the toilet seat in the bathroom.
Eyes followed me everywhere in this place. Other kids filled the barracks; soldiers watched the corridors. The showers were the same—there was always at least one supervisor. The only place I could escape other people's gazes was roughly the bathroom.
Even this has a fifteen-minute limit. Stay longer and they'll come busting in.
Suicide wasn't an option even if I wanted it. The slave brand carved into my right forearm wouldn't allow it. Thinking about suicide was fine, but the moment I tried to act on it the brand would light up and flood me with pain. Ignore the pain long enough and I'd simply pass out.
I hadn't come to the bathroom to kill myself. I was here to check my magic.
Light.
I manifested the spell without a chant. A sphere of light bloomed on my palm and lit the bathroom bright.
Fire.
Where the light had been, flame roared up.
Ice.
The flame vanished. Cold gathered, and ice took shape. I closed my fist around a lump the size of a fist, winced at the chill, and dropped it into the toilet bowl.
Plunk.
The ice began to melt at once.
Wind.
Air stirred. My hair shifted.
I skipped earth-attribute magic. I knew the formula, but this wasn't a suitable place to use it.
Water.
Water pooled on my palm and spilled downward. Water and ice magic were similar, yet different.
…Spark.
Crack-crack-crack.
Blue-white current danced across my palm.
I stared at the electricity in a daze. Spark—lightning-type magic—felt far more natural than Light or Fire. More familiar, somehow.
Am I specialized in lightning attributes? For that to be true, the other magics never felt particularly hard either.
I closed my hand. The current vanished.
Eyes shut, I organized what I knew about magic and attributes. The characteristics I had felt ran like this:
Light mana spreads in every direction. Fire mana is hot. Ice mana is cold. Water mana flows. Wind mana is light. Earth mana is solid. Dark mana is heavy.
And lightning mana… is pure.
The moment I settled that understanding, the Astral—what mages called the mage's mind—reacted. It tried to expand sharply. I knew what that meant: my tier was about to rise to 2-Class.
Not yet.
By sheer will I forced the expansion of the Astral back down.
If I jump to 2-Class now I'll stand out too much. At the earliest, a month from now.
I forcibly blocked the rise in tier. Normally that would be impossible, but my magic talent made it possible. Even a complete outsider to magic like me could tell by now—my magic talent was greater than my marksmanship.
The path to 2-Class isn't closed. I can climb whenever I want.
I looked down at my palm.
The attribute that felt most natural to me. Lightning, without a doubt.
Crack.
Hm?
Current jumped from my palm. I froze. I had thought of electricity, but I hadn't activated any formula. The current right now was flashing from pure mana and will alone—no spell structure at all.
This is… an Ability?
Several ways to apply this power to magic surfaced in my mind. Turning those methods over and over, I left the bathroom.
"No. 211, No. 72, No. 54. No. 105, No. 14."
Instructor Vinous called five of us, myself included.
"You are Mission Eleven. Under Instructor Belhaga's command, eliminate the Neros Bandit Group. Receive the operational details from Instructor Belhaga."
We went to Instructor Belhaga. He briefed the operation in a purely businesslike tone.
The core of the mission was simple.
Deal with the bandit group called Neros, hiding in a ruined city.