I Became a Mesugaki (2)
I woke up clutching my head like it was about to split open, and a message window was there to greet me.
Enroll in the Academy.
On Success: ??
On Failure: Game Over
I hadn't forgotten. I hadn't forgotten a single thing.
So quit popping up to nag me about it. Give me a little time to sort out this tangled mess of a heart, would you?
I dismissed the message window and pulled myself up, taking in the scene around my room.
A ridiculously ornate chamber, absolutely buried in frills — the kind of opulence that could drive a person insane.
Believe me, I'd love to rip every one of those frills off and burn them, but if I did, the household staff would start whispering things like "I think our young miss has finally gone completely mad." So I was holding back.
My reputation was already rock bottom. I had no interest in discovering there was a level of bottom even below that.
"Pardon me, my lady."
The moment I rang the small bell beside the bed, the door opened as if someone had been waiting right behind it, and a maid entered, pulling a tray.
Back when I first woke up in this body, I hadn't known any better — I'd just flung the door open and marched out myself.
I still remember the look of sheer horror on this maid's face.
She'd been so flustered she didn't know what to do and just kept bowing her head over and over. I remember wondering what on earth was wrong with her.
Today, too, tension was written plainly across the maid's face.
She came to stand before me and bowed her head deep, her hands trembling as she clasped them together.
"Did you sleep poorly, my lady?"
'No.'
"Nagging loser of a maid. Can't you tell just by looking?"
I'd tried to speak in a gentle, reassuring voice — but the body I inhabited moved its mouth on its own, twisting my words into something sharp and cutting.
I saw the bowing maid's shoulders flinch.
Damn [Mesugaki] skill. Here it goes again.
I hadn't known when I picked the [Mesugaki] trait during character creation, but it hid a special side effect.
It forced the user to speak and act like a mesugaki.
Whether I wanted it or not, I was condemned to talk down to everyone with an arrogant sneer and carry myself with insufferable condescension, forever.
'I'm fine. Go eat your breakfast.'
"Hehe~ Gonna keep staring at the floor all day, loser?"
"N-No, my lady! I only meant—"
Watching the maid's eyes dart about, unable to settle, I swept my hand down my face.
Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut entirely.
"My apologies! I'll brush your hair right away!"
She'd apparently taken even my thoughtless little gesture as a reprimand — urgency bled through her voice.
I moved to answer on instinct, then hastily clapped a hand over my mouth and sat down at the vanity instead.
The vanity mirror reflected the face of Lucy Aln — the noble girl I had created.
Long, deep pink hair and eyes brimming with mischief.
The little brat looked like she was built for a provocative smirk — even more beautiful than the version I'd seen in the customization menu.
If I hadn't been the brat in question, I'd have admired her with a purely aesthetic "wow, she's gorgeous."
But being her in the flesh, nothing came to mind except this sucks so much.
Three days had passed since I became Lucy Aln.
At first I'd been so utterly bewildered that I committed every bizarre act imaginable, but after a few days I'd more or less settled down.
In the process, I'd also come to learn quite a few things.
First: the little brat named Lucy Aln had been the mansion's public enemy number one long before I ever possessed her.
Me, I only adopt the high-and-mighty act because the [Mesugaki] skill leaves me no choice — but when it comes to thinking and acting like a genuinely rotten piece of work, our dear count's daughter had no equal. She'd mistaken her father's power for her own and ruled the mansion like a little tyrant.
Her personal maids had been replaced more than ten times, and dozens of servants had fled the estate entirely, unable to endure her abuse.
Her tutors had already cycled through four, and the one currently employed carried a resignation letter in her pocket at all times.
At this point, calling her a menace would be a compliment. Something like insufferable little hellion might fit better.
If Lucy's parents had been normal people, they'd have disciplined their child long before things got this bad — but Lucy's father, who treasured his only daughter beyond all reason, was anything but normal.
Remember how I said I committed all sorts of atrocities my first day here?
Well, he watched it all happen and just laughed heartily, cooing and indulging me the whole time?!
However precious your daughter is, there are limits!
No matter how I looked at it, Lucy turning into a mesugaki seemed largely her father's fault.
A brat raised to do whatever she pleased under endlessly doting parents.
Absolutely repulsive. If I'd met her in real life, some choice words would have slipped out.
Except that's me now? God damn it. Life, seriously.
Anyway, because the original owner of this body had behaved like such a monstrous brat, my reputation was at its absolute worst.
People said that if I hadn't held a noble title, a revolution could have broken out over me at any moment.
With things this bad, my reputation must be in the gutter everywhere — not just in this mansion.
I hadn't actually set foot in high society yet, so I couldn't say for certain, but I'd bet there were plenty of voices out there denouncing the misdeeds of Lady Lucy Aln.
Out of ten reasons to start as a noble in Soul Academy, eight of them came down to this reputation — and here I was, starting from the very bottom of the barrel.
I like to think of myself as someone who rarely cries, but I could feel the tears coming.
Once I entered the Academy, I'd be drowning in criticism, wouldn't I?
Most of Soul Academy's characters valued righteous dispositions and noble duty, after all.
The contemptuous gazes of the heroines... hmm, that might actually not be so bad?
No. No, no. That was fine only because it happened behind a screen. In reality, it would definitely sting.
But honestly, there was a far more pressing problem than any of that.
The simple question of whether I could even get into the Academy at all.
Reputation and the like — setting aside the ache in my heart — were problems I could overcome one way or another.
But getting into the Academy was a completely different beast.
Soul Academy started in medias res, with your character already enrolled, so I had no idea how the Academy's entrance exam actually worked.
The moment that message appeared, then, I'd thrown myself into researching the entrance exam.
Soul Academy's entrance exam was split into two parts: a written test and a practical test.
Four hundred total points for the written, two hundred for the practical.
That made six hundred points in all, and the typical passing cutoff sat at 427. The highest cutoff in the exam's history was said to be 453.
But here's the thing. Remember how, in the game's dialogue, the characters mentioned that the protagonist's class was the greatest of all time, having renewed the record for the highest cutoff?
So at minimum, 453 points.
Given all the fuss everyone made about it in the story, it'd be safe to assume 460 or higher.
High cutoff or not, you just need to score well on the test, right? That's what anyone would say.
That's what I thought at first, too.
I was the one who had memorized every scrap of Soul Academy lore there was. No matter how hard the written exam was, I figured a little studying would clear it easily.
That was my mistake.
What I knew was game lore — and it had nothing whatsoever to do with what was actually taught at the Academy.
How the hell would I know the achievements of the third king of the Soladin Kingdom?
And what else — mesugedi, fire-magic equations? How was I supposed to know any of that?!
There were a whole host of other subjects on the Academy exam too, and every single one of them left my brain turned to mush.
I never once imagined I'd live to see the day I was grateful to see a math formula. At least that was somewhat familiar.
Not that familiarity meant I could solve it. I'd been a liberal arts kid, and it had been over a decade since I'd quit math cold turkey.
I hadn't understood a word of it.
Only one thing was certain.
This was not something a transmigrator like me could fix by studying for the three months left before the Academy exam.
If I'd had a brain that could manage it, would I have spent ten thousand-plus hours grinding a game with no sequel in sight?
The practical exam, by contrast, was relatively familiar territory.
Two subjects: a sparring match, and an exploration of a dungeon constructed by the Academy.
These were things I'd done to death in the Soul Academy game itself.
Not that I'm calling any of it easy.
I was a normal person who had never once thrown a proper punch. How well could someone like me possibly fight?
This was a man who used to tremble in fear just killing a chicken, now expected to clash weapons with other people and dive into dungeons to hunt monsters.
Easy to say. The moment I stepped into actual combat, I'd freeze up in terror and be useless — that much was obvious.
Hah.
Truth be told, if it weren't for that message window, I wouldn't have had to be in such a frantic rush at all.
As a noble's daughter, ways to live comfortably without ever setting foot in the Academy were a dime a dozen.
But that message. Especially those words — on failure: game over.
In games, a game over meant death, with very high probability.
I said "high probability" because I wanted to deny reality, but in truth, game over was death.
Being forcibly dumped into a mesugaki's body without so much as an explanation was aggravating enough — was I really supposed to live like this for three months and then keel over pointlessly?
No way in hell. Absolutely not.
No matter how desperate things got, one fact remained unchanged: passing through legitimate means was impossible for me.
And so I'd scoured every avenue for a survival strategy, and at the end of my desperate efforts, I'd managed to find exactly one.
The Special Admission for Practical Excellence.
A system that admitted the three candidates who showed truly exceptional performance in the Academy's practical exam, regardless of their written scores.
That too was nearly impossible, of course.
The other people sitting for the Academy exam were ones who had spent years preparing for it.
Naturally, they'd be far more battle-experienced than me.
But there was one thing — just one — that I was confident I could do better than anyone else alive.
Dungeon exploration.
Who am I, you ask? The 13,000-hour veteran of Soul Academy!
I have every dungeon variant that appears in the Academy exam memorized cold.
I can close my eyes and draw the maps from memory — that's how thoroughly I know them.
As long as I secured the bare minimum of combat ability, I was confident I could post dungeon-exploration scores no one could touch.
So what I needed to do in the three months remaining until the exam was crystal clear.
Stat grinding.
However clumsy I was at fighting, I needed specs so overwhelming they'd cover for every one of my shortcomings.
And this happened to be my field of expertise.
What do you think I cared about most during all those years glued to Soul Academy?
Spoiling the answer: building specs.
Whatever character you played, whatever style you ran, growing your specs was essential to clearing the game.
Not being enrolled at the Academy yet meant many avenues were closed to me — but that didn't matter.
Ways to grind specs were still stacked to the ceiling.
"My lady. All finished."
When I came back to my senses, the work of taming my hair was already done.
Already?
Lucy Aln's hair was extraordinarily long.
Even granting that Lucy's frame was small, hair that reached down to her waist was no light burden.
Yet the maid had accomplished the feat of putting that mane in perfect order in record time.
How was that even possible? I hadn't dared so much as touch the stuff myself.
'Honestly, that was incredible.'
"Not bad. For a loser maid, I mean."
I panicked, thinking I'd slipped up again without meaning to — but thankfully, the words that came out were on the gentle side, mesugaki-wise.
She's not scared this time, right? I wondered, glancing behind me — and found the maid staring at my back with a face gone stiff.
What's with her? Was my tone off again?
My worry turned out to be for nothing.
The maid quickly composed herself and bowed deeply at the waist.
"Thank you, my lady!"
The moment I finished my meal, I set the first step of my grand, sprawling plan in motion — by standing before the door of the office where Lucy's father worked.
Perhaps because the heavy, difficult task at hand required me to stake my very dignity on it, my stomach was in knots.
But there was no help for it. This was, for the person I currently was, the easiest and most efficient way to grind specs.
I took one deep breath and knocked on the office door.
"Stupid daddy~♡"
Operation: Mesugaki-Style Aegyo. Commencing.
God. I want to throw up just from saying it.