Treasure Hunting (2)
After the professor left, telling me to take the rest of the day off, I rose from my seat at once. No hesitation—my plan was already laid out in my head.
When Soul Academy begins, there is a set list of things a player must do. First: choosing which courses to take. Since taking classes at Soul Academy causes proficiency in that subject to skyrocket, scheduling them well was arguably the single most important part of the entire academy experience. And on this point, I hadn't agonized for even a second. The courses a blunt-weapon tank needed to take were already set in stone.
The next task was claiming the useful things that could be obtained at the very start of Soul Academy. Soul Academy was, after all, a game—which meant it was designed so that no outright broken items could be acquired from the beginning. Even Ruel's Mace, the weapon I carried right now, was originally something you could only obtain once you became a second-year and were allowed to leave the academy grounds. But among the seemingly worthless odds and ends, there were a few things that proved genuinely useful in the early game. And that was exactly what I was off to collect.
“Where are you going?”
The voice behind me made me flinch to a stop, and when I turned my head, there was Frey, trailing dutifully at my heels. She seriously startled me.How long has she been following me?!
<Didn't you notice?>
‘Of course I didn't! Why didn't you say anything?!’
Halbae! Do I really look like such a rotten person to you?! Fine, the skill forces this filthy mouth of mine, but I'm still not a bad person! Sure, Frey annoys me a little, but I'd never show it outright!
“Hm?”
I snapped back to attention at Frey's voice. Haah. What can you do with a girl who has absolutely no idea she did anything wrong? This is all Halbae's fault for not warning me, honestly.
‘The library.’
“The library?”
“The library? Why would you go there?”
‘Because I...’
“What's wrong with me going to the library?”
“It's boring there.”
Oh. That's what this is about. The library was boring, I supposed. Coming from someone who'd once used her school library as a nap venue back on Earth, it was a hard argument to dispute.
“Come train with me instead. It'll be fun.”
‘Sorry, but...’
“Ha. Useless swordswoman. I'm not as free as you.”
“Mm. Shame. Okay then.”
With that, Frey turned on her heel and walked off. She doesn't make a single sound when she walks. No wonder I never noticed her tailing me.
<So what business do you have at the library? You're hardly the type to study.>
‘I do study when it matters!’
<Did you now? I distinctly recall you collapsing the moment a book was opened.>
Th-that was only because I lacked the fundamentals! If someone had actually taught me properly from the start, I could have studied just fine!
<Spare me the excuses. Tell me why you are going to the library.>
‘...To obtain an artifact.’
<Did you receive a revelation from Armadi?>
‘Yeees.’
In truth, Armadi had done absolutely nothing to help me, but that was the excuse I fed Halbae. Blaming things on Armadi was far easier than trying to convince him I'd been reincarnated into a video game.
<Hm. So Armadi does look after Her apostle after all.>
‘...Yeees.’
Watching my hard-earned knowledge get credited to Armadi's divine grace made my blood boil, but there was nothing to be done about it. Damn it all. Someday, I swear, I will expose Armadi for the useless, incompetent hack of a god she truly is.
Pushing open the library door, I stepped inside to a familiar sight. Back when I'd leveled mage-type characters, I'd parked them here for entire days at a time. Thank goodness I'd chosen to be a tank instead—if I'd picked one of those pointless brain-drain classes, I'd have had to endure that torture myself. Aching body over aching head, every time. Obviously.
Without so much as a glance at the librarian, I went straight for my target. Third shelf from the bottom of row C62 and... there it was. On Mana Springs: A Treatise. The moment I spotted the title, I flipped the book open to its final page. And there, exactly where I knew it would be, was what I'd been searching for.
To the junior who read this treatise through to the end,
Thank you for digging through my foolish research. For your sake, I have hidden a special contraption within this very book. Write the correct word in the blank below, and a wondrous gift shall be yours. As for the clue to that word—let it suffice to say it is the word at the heart of every treatise I have ever written! Happy hunting!
— Ding
Kerta's Gift
Solve the cipher hidden within the book.
🎁 Reward: ???
Yes! "Kerta's Gift" was one of Soul Academy's hidden quests, the kind you stumbled upon while rummaging through the library. On paper it looked like nothing much, but when the game first launched, this quest had been an infamous thorn in every player's side. Kerta, the archmage who'd left an enormous mark on the field of magic, had published hundreds of treatises—and combing through all of them for a single word mentioned in every one seemed all but impossible.
Puzzle enthusiasts banded together, trading theory after theory, but the quest refused to budge. Just as players began to burn out and the prevailing opinion shifted toward "there must be a bug in this thing," one player posted clear proof of completion. The community was stunned—because the person who'd cleared it wasn't some grizzled veteran, but a complete newbie. The excited veterans swarmed them, demanding to know how it was done. And the newbie, as if wondering how anyone couldn't know, answered with perfect simplicity:
‘The heart of any treatise is its author, obviously?’
Right. This cursed puzzle was never about scholarship at all. It was pure nonsense. I remembered feeling so hollowed out by the reveal that I killed a whole bottle of soju that night.
‘Kerta Vulcan.’
Your reward is being granted...
The moment I wrote in the name, a magic circle flared to life behind the bookshelf, and from its center a ring sprang free. I cast Appraisal on it, and a message window unfolded before my eyes.
A ring etched with countless layered magic circles beneath its band. A strange power stirs within it.
My low Appraisal proficiency meant the description came out vague, but I knew exactly what this ring did: reduces the mana cost of all skills by 20%. By itself it wasn't spectacular—in the late game, once your raw specs went through the roof, everyone tossed this ring aside. But now, in the early game? Different story entirely. As I stood, casting Touch of Armadi five times would leave me completely drained of mana. For a mana-premature-ejaculator like me, Kerta's Ring was pure gold. And above all, this ring later served as the trigger for a critical quest. I had to keep it safe.
I slipped Kerta's Ring onto my thumb, and it shrank to fit my finger perfectly. As expected of a ring made by a grand archmage! Savoring the feel of it on my hand, I glanced at the clock hanging at the far end of the library. Almost four already. How is time moving this fast? Realizing I had no time to dawdle, I hurried out on swift feet.
From then on, I was a whirlwind of motion, circling Soul Academy from corner to corner—picking up the quests that needed accepting and unearthing the items hidden throughout the academy grounds. Of the two, the quest-collecting was fraught with hardship and tribulation. The problems were my reputation and my mesugaki tongue. Back when Soul Academy was a game, any NPC you spoke to would hand over a quest no matter who you were—but reality turned out to be a harsher mistress. People simply wouldn't ask a favor of someone as untrustworthy as I appeared. Hunting for hidden items, by contrast, was blissfully easy. Never had I appreciated so deeply the simple joy of not having to talk to another human being.
Once I'd more or less finished everything that needed doing inside the academy, there was one last place my feet carried me: the training grounds. Being the first day of the school term, most of the people training here beneath the gathering sunset were returning students. Ordinary freshmen, at this hour, would be dining with their brand-new friends in the cafeteria, or agonizing over their course schedules. Of course, not everyone followed the mold—there's a odd duck in every pond.
Frey, the very girl who'd invited me to the training grounds, had come here alone, claimed a corner, and was swinging her sword. She must have been at it for hours; her lightless eyes held nothing but the blade flashing before her. Even more striking was the circle of sweat she'd dripped onto the ground beneath her feet. Has she really been swinging that sword nonstop since the moment I turned her down? What a training maniac. I feel a strange kinship. I spent every single day like that back in the Alrn territory, after all.
Sensing my gaze, perhaps, Frey froze mid-swing and stared blankly in my direction. Then life flooded back into her eyes, and she dropped her sword and sprinted toward me at full speed.
“Are you here for a duel?!”
‘I said tomorrow, remember?’
“Useless swordswoman. Is your memory as bad as a goldfish's? Tomorrow.”
“Then why are you here?”
‘I'm here to meet someone.’
“I need to find a weakling.”
“A weakling?”
A kind senior who teaches the protagonist all sorts of things the first time they use the training grounds—but also a pitiful NPC who spends her existence getting pummeled by players, because defeating her in a provoked duel rewards a rare skill. And I, true to my status as a Soul Academy veteran, had come expressly to bully her. Given that it was evening, this was exactly when she'd show up at the training grounds. Ah, there she is. The moment I spotted the man standing at the center, propping himself up with a wooden sword as he surveyed his surroundings, I made a beeline for him. He reeled backward in alarm at the sight of my approaching face, but I got my words out faster than he could flee.
‘Excuse me.’
“Hey.”
“Y-yes?!”
‘You're a third-year senior, right?’
“That's why I'm asking, dumbass. You're a third-year senior, aren't you?”
“...Yes. That I am.”
‘You look like a good warm-up, dumbass senior. Wanna spar with me?’
At this bald-faced insult, veins bulged across the man's forehead. Angry enough that he won't back down. Perfect.
“Hey.”
Just as I was thinking the quest was coming together nicely, Frey, who had been trailing at my side, spoke up.
“Why spar with this weakling? Boring. Fight me instead.”
‘No thanks...’
“No. This dumbass senior looks about right for today. You go play by yourself, useless swordswoman.”
“Bullying weaklings is bad. Strong people should fight strong people.”
‘Like I was saying—’
“Like I was saying, I—”
As I tried to talk Frey into leaving, I felt a prickling stare and turned my head to find the man glaring at me, red-faced with barely contained fury.
“You two! Do you think being promising first-years makes you special?! I am a third-year senior!”
— Ding
Shatter the Senior's Dignity
Defeat the third-year senior.
🎁 Reward: Skill — Underdog
Not that I meant to provoke him—but things were working out beautifully.