The Schoolgirl's Request (5)
"How are you even able to attack me?!"
"Maybe it's because you're just trash?♡"
You wouldn't understand, existing only inside the game like that. I may be a paladin, but I'm still weak for now. It's only natural that I can't deal proper damage to a necromancer whose level towers over mine by such an obscene margin.
But being a veteran min-maxer means you go hunting for the gaps hidden in between. The boss of this place, a specter, should by all rights be untouchable — not a single physical attack should ever land on it.
And yet its evasion mechanic isn't immunity. It's nullification. The difference between those two is enormous. It doesn't simply refuse to take damage — it receives the damage and then negates it.
Which brings us to Underdog, the skill I picked up not long ago by flattening that poor third-year senior. A skill that converts its damage into true damage against any target twenty or more levels above the user — meaning it becomes a way to hurt a specter I otherwise couldn't so much as graze.
So what good does nullifying physical attacks do you? Fixed damage doesn't care about your fancy tricks!
WHAM.
My mace connected with the necromancer once again. Because it carries that broken nullification skill, its base stats are actually on the low side compared to other bosses of a similar level — low enough, in fact, that someone like me, with every proficiency skill maxed to its limit, could overwhelm it outright.
Not that the necromancer simply sat there and took it. True to its nature as the master of this dungeon, it struggled with everything it had. But I wasn't fighting this battle alone. Carl, who had weathered countless battles as a knight of House Alrn, shut down every last desperate flourish the thing threw out, carving out the perfect opening for me to strike. Knocking aside the specter's spells, clearing out the corpses clawing their way up from their graves, even intercepting the thing when it went into a convulsive frenzy — if anything, he was more of a tank than the tank was.
"I-I'll... curse you..."
And so, after a bout of utterly one-sided violence, the fight ended and the necromancer vanished without a trace. But I didn't let my guard down for even a second — I'd been stabbed in the back under almost identical circumstances before. Fortunately, this time a normal exit materialized the moment the boss fell, and strength flooded back into my body.
Thank goodness.
Ugh, seriously, the Curse of Agra is such a pain in the neck. Back when this was just a game, Agra's interference used to make people cheer — now I actually have to be scared of it.
I want to get stronger, fast. Strong enough to actually hope that the curse spawns something for me. The variables that come from Agra's curse are higher-leveled than the dungeon itself, which means they pay out better rewards.
Well. That's a problem for later. What did this dungeon drop, anyway?
Examining the table that had materialized before the exit, I found a single black orb sitting on it. This is the necromancer's trace, isn't it? When I ran Appraisal on it to check, a message window popped up in front of me.
Trace of the Necromancer
An orb containing the grudge the necromancer left behind in death.
An item you only ever needed when playing as a necromancer class — what am I even supposed to do with this? It's completely useless to me.
I wasn't happy about it, but there was no swapping out a reward once it was given. I pocketed the orb and moved on.
Carl...
"Trash. We're heading back."
"Yes, my lady."
Stepping out of the rain-soaked depths of the dungeon, I could finally appreciate just how much I looked like a drowned rat. My uniform felt as though it had been dunked in water and wrung back out, and my hair had soaked up so much that it dragged against my neck with every step.
Ugh. Gross. I want to get back to the dorm and wash up immediately — well, right after I pick up the thing I actually came here for.
With the dungeon cleared, the door that had been sealing off the room melted away into nothing. I conjured light once more and illuminated the dark chamber. It was something of a storeroom. Perhaps because the dungeon had sealed the passage all this time, its contents had merely aged with the years while remaining remarkably well preserved.
"This place?"
So this mansion...
"Just junk the losers who lived in this crumbling old dump stashed away ages ago."
Fitting for a storeroom belonging to people who'd lived in a mansion of considerable size, everything stored here was actually quite valuable. Sell off everything in this room alone and I could rake in twenty-odd gold coins, easy. But wealth wasn't what I'd come for. As the sole bloodline of a count's family, money was the one thing I never had to think twice about spending.
Standing at the entrance surveying the storeroom's interior, I spotted what I was looking for and strode straight in. Carl's voice called out behind me, urging caution, but I ignored it. That coward's warnings are only worth listening to on rare occasions — and if things had gotten genuinely dangerous, Grandpa would have said something.
From a corner of the storeroom, I picked up a ribbon caked in dust and spoke into the empty air.
"This is what you were looking for, right? Take it."
The instant the words left my mouth, the ribbon crumbled to ash and scattered into nothing.
— Thank you. —
The moment that voice reached my ears, several message windows bloomed in front of me.
Reward granted:
Skill — No Regrets Left
There we go. Just like in the game — clean and simple.
No Regrets Left, in a nutshell, is a skill built specifically for anti-specter warfare. Damage reduction against spirits, increased damage against them, and a whole pile of miscellaneous extras strapped on top — but its true value lies elsewhere. It outright blocks any curse below a certain level.
Going forward, every time I crossed paths with Agra I'd be walking around plastered head to toe in curses. Without this skill, there was no telling where I might meet a sudden, screaming death.
In high spirits over acquiring exactly the skill I wanted, I turned to head back — and there stood Carl, the color completely drained from his face.
"M-my lady... just now... a... a voice..."
God, this guy scares easy.
The next day after returning to Soul Academy, dragging along Carl whose legs had gone so weak he could barely walk, I made a beeline for the Sidekick Young Lady the moment class ended.
Why am I calling that NPC the Sidekick Young Lady? Because I don't actually know her name. And I doubt she'd answer even if I asked. So, in the same way the Mesugaki skill decides things for me, I decided to just call her the Sidekick Young Lady. What's the point of learning the name of an NPC that isn't even tied to the affinity system?
The moment she saw my face, the Sidekick Young Lady bowed her head in a hurry and pretended to be asleep. The fingers she'd tucked away beneath her arms were fidgeting anxiously, and it was plain as day that she was praying for me to just go away.
Her wish went ungranted. I had come specifically to see her.
When I sat down across the table from her, her shoulders gave a violent flinch. Does she seriously think I believe she's asleep?
Excuse me.
"Sidekick Young Lady."
No response. Hmhm. So that's how you want to play it? Let's see how long you can hold out.
Hey. Wake up.
"Sidekick. Wake up."
Her shoulders twitched ever so slightly this time, but she still refused to lift her head.
"Sidekick♡ Was it not that you lacked presence, but that you lack ears?♡ Wake up♡"
Only then did the Sidekick Young Lady raise her head. Her face had gone red — clearly fuming over the provocation.
"What do you need?"
The fact that even now she couldn't spit out a single curse spoke volumes about how towering Lucy's infamy truly was. She knew that provoking me would only mean getting burned herself, so she was swallowing her indignation whole. She'd probably get together with her friends and trash-talk me the moment I left. It wouldn't be the first time — when Carl first met me, she'd been calling me the Delinquent Young Lady behind my back, after all.
"Lady Alrn?"
Here — this...
"I came to give you this. Sidekick Young Lady."
What I pulled from inside my coat was the very item the Sidekick Young Lady had begged Carl to retrieve, along with the key to the mansion. She stared at the two objects for a long moment, brow furrowing, then studied my face carefully.
"...I asked Mr. Carl to find that for me, though."
It's an errand.
"Use your eyes, Sidekick. I'm on an errand."
Truthfully, I'd come in person partly to have a word with her — but details.
"How exactly do you know Mr. Carl, Lady Alrn?"
She glared at me, curiosity written all over her face, but I didn't dignify a single question with an answer. Instead, I just delivered what I'd come to say.
Have a good one, Ms. Necromancer. And keep the gossip behind people's backs to a minimum, would you?
"Bye-bye, Sidekick Necromancer. You know what happens if I catch you trash-talking again, right?"
The transformation of the Sidekick Young Lady's face was theatrical. First anger, then bewilderment, and now it had bleached over into a deathly pallor. Honestly, you could build a traffic light out of that face.
She stammered, trying to mumble out some excuse, but I ignored her entirely and rose from my seat. Now that I'd seized her weakness — her necromancy — and warned her about it, she wouldn't dare gossip about me again... right?
Evening at Soul Academy — the hours when students were free to roam the streets as they pleased. Vishy Bell set foot inside the mansion tucked away in a back alley. Thanks to the rumor that a ghost haunted the place, hardly anyone ever came near it, and today, too, it was silent.
The floorboards creaked as she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
"Vishy! You're here?"
The voice came from somewhere behind her. Anyone might have jumped — no footsteps, no presence, nothing heralded it — but Vishy Bell remained perfectly composed.
"Could you just say hello normally for once?"
"Boo. You're no fun, Vishy. Nothing ever rattles you."
"You're just bad at scaring people."
Only after Vishy's dry reply did something translucent drift down from the ceiling. It wore a faded set of pajamas and had taken the shape of a young girl.
"Am not! I'm great at scaring people!"
"Sure you are. How utterly convincing, Adri."
Adri — the ghost dwelling in the mansion, and one of the people who had once lived there in life — puffed out her cheeks in protest.
"I'm serious! Just yesterday I made somebody faint dead away!"
"Whoever it was must be a colossal coward..."
Yesterday? Wait — wasn't yesterday when that wretched Delinquent Young Lady came by?
"Um... by any chance, was that a girl with this really obnoxious shade of hot-pink hair?"
Ohh. So that arrogant little delinquent is a girl, huh? And she's scared of ghosts?
"Nope? The one I scared was a blond knight!"
A blond knight... Mr. Carl, then? So he came here too, after taking my request.
Vishy pictured Carl trembling head to toe, spooked out of his wits by Adri, and found herself laughing before she could stop. So even someone that impressive has his weak points.
"And the girl who came with him wasn't scared at all, even though she knew I was here!"
"You mean the pink-haired girl?"
"Yep!"
So those two really did visit this mansion together yesterday. What exactly is their relationship? Considering they'd come to a place this out of the way together, they had to be close. Well — now that she'd been caught out as a necromancer, it wasn't as if Vishy could ever say a word about it to anyone, even if she did find out.
"Adri... did you tell that girl anything about me?"
"Nope? I didn't exchange a single word with her."
That figures. Someone who isn't a necromancer couldn't possibly hold a conversation with Adri the ghost.
Then how on earth did she find out that I'm a necromancer?
"Adri... could you tell me what happened here yesterday?"
"Of course!"