The Guide's Shortcut
A familiar scent of grass filled my nose, accompanied by the soft rustle of leaves brushing together in the wind.
This was the stage for Chapter Zero of the academy—and the place where my home stood.
The West Forest.
“Ughhh… my stomach’s not doing so great.”
“Please rest a bit longer.”
Was it the aftereffect of the teleportation magic? I rose from my spot, leaving Stelle still struggling to regain her senses.
It was my first time seeing it with my own eyes, yet the scenery felt intimately familiar—something I had witnessed thousands of times before.
Tales of Sword & Magic.
Chapter Zero.
Returning to the Academy.
We had entered the tutorial section.
Her mind must have finally started to clear. Stelle, who had been standing and looking around, stepped up beside me.
“You can stay lying down a while longer if you wish.”
“No, I’m starting to feel… urk!”
Oh dear. Leaving the still-recovering Stelle where she was, I began formulating a plan in my head.
In the game, Chapter Zero—Returning to the Academy—had been a simple map where you could take first place just by following the guides and defeating monsters. But if this was reality, the story changed completely.
While we hesitated here, S-class talents like Yulia Frostwolf, Shepia Evergreen, and the warriors from the great plains were surely racing toward the finish line: the academy itself.
For people like us, lacking in ability, overtaking them would be impossible.
At least by normal means.
“Why are we here again?”
“It appears this is the academy’s ‘test.’”
“A test?”
“You may have forgotten due to the shock of the transition, but the student council president said this.”
This is an ordeal.
Return to the academy.
After hearing those words, Stelle fell into thought.
“Then shouldn’t we get back to the academy as fast as possible?”
“Yes. The academy gives generous support to students with outstanding results. There’s nothing to lose by being quicker.”
-Rustle.
The moment I finished speaking, the bushes surrounding us began to shake.
Both Stelle and I instinctively dropped into fighting stances.
What burst from the undergrowth were three birds.
Giant sparrows the size of a human torso, each with a sharply protruding beak.
Whether they could truly be called sparrows was debatable.
The Drill Sparrows had appeared.
I grimaced at the sight of a monster I recognized from the game.
Of all the monsters, it had to be Drill Sparrows.
The tutorial section was, naturally, not particularly high in difficulty. It was the kind of stage anyone, even a complete newbie, could clear. Of course the Drill Sparrow had been an average monster in the game, but… reality was another matter.
Among the three monster types in the tutorial, it was the only flying variety. It didn’t fly particularly high, yet the fact that it attacked while airborne made it far more troublesome than the others.
“Monsters! Leave them to me!”
“Ah, Stelle, wait a moment—”
“Yaaaaah!!!”
“…Too late.”
Ignoring my words, Stelle charged straight at the Drill Sparrows.
A one-handed sword had already appeared in her grip—the classic starter weapon that signaled the beginning of the game.
Unfortunately, a one-handed sword was not a very effective weapon against Drill Sparrows.
“Ugh! I can’t hit it!”
The Drill Sparrow dodged Stelle’s attacks with an agility that belied its bulk.
Its main traits were exactly that—surprising speed for its size, and—
“Whoa?! Stun?!”
—the stun effect triggered by contact with that high-speed rotating beak.
Stelle crossed both arms to block the strike, but the impact sent her flying backward. Thanks to the uniform that provided a minimum level of defense, she avoided serious injury.
“Hint! Save meeeeeee!!!”
The Drill Sparrow continued its assault, pecking at her from every angle. The sturdy uniform was still holding, but it looked ready to tear at any moment. Given F-class’s poor finances and terrible infrastructure, free repairs were out of the question. I sprinted to rescue her.
Of course, I had no actual plan.
What do I do…
Naturally, I had never been in a real fight before. In modern Korea, long past the age of romance, there was simply no occasion to brawl with others. No matter how many times I had faced them through a monitor, the moment it became reality, everything changed.
Still, I couldn’t abandon Stelle.
The Drill Sparrow paused its pecking and fixed its eyes on the boy charging recklessly toward it.
-Piyoooooot!!!
It hurled itself at me in a lightning-fast rush. To my eyes, the rotating beak seemed to move at blinding speed. Just before it made contact, my body moved on pure instinct.
The countless times I had seen this pattern through a screen had trained my muscles to react before my mind could catch up.
-Tap.
My lightly swung hand blade met the Drill Sparrow’s beak.
“Hint!!!!”
The unprotected, soft edge of my hand colliding with a fiercely spinning beak. Stelle cried out, instinctively expecting the worst.
But the result was the exact opposite.
-Piyot?!
The beak was deflected. The Drill Sparrow slammed into the ground with the same momentum it had flown in with, then dissolved into smoke and vanished.
“This is… parry?”
Stelle froze in astonishment. I stared down at my own hand, feeling equally dazed.
In martial arts or sword fighting, the act of deflecting an opponent’s attack using one’s own body or weapon.
In games, primarily used to induce an enemy’s groggy state and seize the initiative. A core element of action games—some indie titles even let you clear them using nothing but perfect parries. Its popularity is easy to understand.
Tales of Sword & Magic naturally adopted the parry system with enthusiasm.
My body reacted first.
Even though my eyes could barely track the high-speed strike (in truth it wasn’t that fast—how quick could a tutorial monster possibly be?), my body had moved on its own. I glanced down at my throbbing wrist.
Parry was a technique that could overcome overwhelming stat differences, but it had clear drawbacks. If the gap in specs was too large, even a perfect parry would allow some damage to leak through. The pain in my wrist was the real-world manifestation of that leakage.
To think I would take damage from parrying a mere tutorial monster. It seemed this body was far frailer than I had imagined.
“Hint! Are you okay?!”
“Yes. As you can see, I’m fine.”
I shook my wrist so Stelle could inspect it. It had swollen slightly, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes sparkled with relief.
“That was amazing! You took that monster down in one hit!”
“It wasn’t a real monster, but a summon prepared by the academy. It appears they arranged it for us.”
“A summon?”
“The West Forest is originally a place with almost no monsters. Any that exist are found only in the deepest regions. Creatures from the northern forest, like Drill Sparrows, don’t wander here.”
The tutorial monsters were essentially golems created by the highest-ranking summoning professors. Had it been a real Drill Sparrow, the encounter wouldn’t have ended with a slightly swollen wrist.
I shook my wrist a few more times to ease the pain, then started walking.
“Well then, shall we go?”
“Hint, that’s the opposite direction from the academy.”
Stelle grabbed my arm as I headed away from the academy. The look on her face that practically screamed ‘Hint is terrible with directions~’ made my right hand itch to deliver a playful flick to her forehead, but I held back.
“No. This way is faster.”
“Huh?”
“Hehe. Just follow me for now.”
The place I led Stelle to was my own cabin.
The Guide’s Cabin was originally located right beside the tutorial spawn point. It existed for players who ignored the helpful arrows pointing toward the academy and wandered in the opposite direction instead.
Here, users learned that the guide’s house which provided hints was located in this very spot. Of course, some players who saw the hint decided it felt like a loss and never visited again, but that was their choice.
“Whoa! There’s a cabin all the way out here?!”
Perhaps it reminded her of the rural village she grew up in. Stelle’s eyes sparkled at the familiar wooden structure. In a city built of metal and stone, this classic cabin was more than enough to evoke the scent of home for her.
“It’s my house.”
“Wait, you live here?”
I nodded.
It seemed Stelle assumed every current student lived in the dorms. That belief was 99% correct and 1% wrong. Naturally she didn’t yet realize she herself belonged to that 1%, and I saw no reason to tell her the cruel truth just yet. She would find out soon enough.
“But why did you suddenly bring us here… Gasp! No way! Don’t tell me—!”
“…It’s not what you’re thinking.”
I used to laugh while watching from the other side of the screen, but facing the protagonist in reality revealed how exhausting her personality could be. Despite feeling zero actual threat, she kept giggling and saying “No! I don’t like it! Stop that!” My head started to throb. I pointed at the cabin with my fingertip.
“Would you grab the doorknob once?”
“Huh?”
Though puzzled, Stelle obediently took hold of the handle.
The moment her hand touched it, a translucent window appeared before my eyes.
Will you accept Stelle as a resident? Y/N
I pressed Y without hesitation. A tingling sensation ran through Stelle’s hand where it gripped the doorknob.
“Whoa! It stings!”
“Ah. My apologies. I didn’t realize it would feel unpleasant.”
This was one thing even I hadn’t known, so I apologized sincerely. In any case, all the preparations were now complete.
“So what was that about?”
“You’ll understand once you open the door.”
Half skeptical, Stelle pulled the door open.
“Eh?”
She froze.
She had only opened the door of a cabin, yet an unimaginable sight awaited her on the other side. It was the academy’s grand auditorium—the very place we had been standing just ten minutes earlier. She recognized it instantly.
This was the bonus unlocked once the Guide’s Cabin had two residents: the Door to Anywhere. In truth it was a skill that let you revisit any location you had previously been to, but I had given it that name.
As Stelle stood there, brain struggling to process the impossible reality, I urgently called out to her.
“Wait, Stelle!”
I pulled her into my arms.
The cabin door had opened to reveal the grand auditorium, and now she was pressed against the boy she had met for the first time today, feeling the distinctly firm masculine frame against her entire body. It was a continuous stream of situations her mind simply could not compute.
“…!!”
With a soft poof, steam burst from the top of Stelle’s head.
All while remaining completely unaware of the greatsword rushing down toward her skull.