Chapter 6
Chapter 6
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Entrance Exam (2)
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The day before the entrance exam.
I parted ways with Park Ha-yeon and headed straight home.
There were various things to prepare since the exam was tomorrow.
“Status Window.”
------------[Status Window]------------
◈ Name
Shin Noda
◈ Stats
[Strength 042 C]
[Agility 224 D]
[Intelligence 337 E]
[Luck 659 E]
[Overall D]
◈ Skills
[Inheritance 366 A]
[Dragon Heart --- A]
[Telekinesis 223 E]
-----------------------------------
Shin Noda sighed as he looked at the stats displayed before his eyes.
“Not enough.”
The achievements he had made in the short span of one year.
They were undoubtedly impressive.
If he caught a strong villain, his growth would be even greater.
Based on that growth, he could catch even stronger villains and achieve even bigger growth.
The ‘Snowball’ was still small but steadily rolling along.
However, the academy was a place with such fierce competition that some people would take the exam three or four times just to get in.
D-grade might be the cutoff line, but even that applied only to proper D-grades who had solid combat skills.
[Don’t waste time at a place like the academy. Come learn from me instead. Whether it’s martial arts or magic, there’s nothing I can’t do better than humans.]
Laura’s nonchalant voice.
It wasn’t about learning.
Not when he didn’t even know anything.
I shot back in a sharp, irritated tone.
“You might not realize it, but this world will soon revolve around the academy.”
[Such a confident voice? What could someone like you possibly know.]
I got angry at Laura for treating me like an idiot.
In my agitation, I ended up saying something I shouldn’t have.
“I know the future.”
[Have you finally lost your mind? Someone who claims to know the future struggles against trash like C-grade or D-grade villains?]
“Not those trivial things. I mean the big picture. Even finding you right away was…. Hmph.”
Suddenly, an inexplicable throbbing came from my heart.
“Gasp.”
A storm of mana raged.
The furniture and objects in the house were swept up by waves of mana with physical force and flew everywhere.
The Dragon Heart was pulsating wildly.
The storm of mana slowly took on a human form.
A massive human figure that nearly touched the ceiling of the officetel.
No eyes, no nose, no mouth.
A shape made purely of mana.
It was the furious Laurakis.
[How dare you. Toy with the fate of the dragon race!]
I couldn’t even lift my head under that overwhelming presence.
“W-Wait a moment. If I hadn’t taken you, you would have died anyway, Lady Laura.”
[How can I believe that? There might have been a better successor than you. They could be perfecting my body by now and realizing the revival of the dragon race! Do you know with what resolve I came to this world?!]
This was perplexing.
I hadn’t expected her to get this angry.
She must have had quite a bit of pent-up dissatisfaction with me.
“The original successor meant for you, Lady Laura, was a woman named Yong Cheon-hwa. She’s definitely stronger than me. But she falls into darkness and gets abandoned by every force on Earth, ultimately eliminated as a public enemy. For reference, even up to the moment of her death, you controlled her body to fight, but she still died.”
The waves of mana calmed a bit.
Had her anger subsided somewhat?
I needed to persuade her more.
“I’m different. I know what will happen in the future and how to use it to get stronger. For your sake, Lady Laura, and the revival of the dragon race, I’m the better choice. Since it’s come to this, please help me properly.”
[Grrrrr.]
The mana storm subsided.
The massive human shape gradually collapsed and vanished without a trace.
All that was left was the house in total disarray.
Laura asked in a subdued voice.
[What do you want? What more do I need to do for you?]
What I wanted.
That was obvious.
As things stood, passing the academy was uncertain.
I had to turn the uncertain into certain.
“Lend me your power for tomorrow’s entrance exam.”
The idea came from Yong Cheon-hwa in the game.
The way Laura used her body.
I would apply that.
I explained the method to her.
***
“A-grade monster, please.”
“What did you just say…?”
The proctor asked again, thinking he’d misheard.
Shin Noda’s overall grade was D.
He’d written that himself, hadn’t he?
‘And now he wants an A-grade monster.’
“I said I want to be tested against an A-grade.”
“This isn’t a place for jokes. Take this seriously. A D-grade examinee is matched with a D-grade monster.”
The proctor inwardly cursed him for having no skills yet acting so cocky.
Shin Noda’s next words changed his mind.
“If I can’t defeat the A-grade monster, you can disqualify me on the spot.”
That was when the proctor realized he was serious.
“A-Alright. If that’s what you want, we’ll do it. But if you fail, I’ll disqualify you with my authority.”
The goblin archer disintegrated.
The blocky monsters took on a larger, more solid form.
A height of 2.5 meters.
A muscular yet agile-looking body.
It was a troll.
A monster with tremendous regenerative ability.
Even if its arm or neck was severed, it regenerated quickly.
Without its weakness—fire magic—it was extremely tricky to deal with.
The troll stood in a hunched posture, glaring at Shin Noda.
In its hand was a short sword, which looked like a long sword to Shin Noda by troll standards.
[User Shin Noda. Target: Troll. Beginning. 3, 2, 1.]
The other examinees predicted Shin Noda’s overwhelming defeat.
“A troll? Even A-grade heroes struggle if the matchup is bad.”
“Now that you mention it, didn’t that guy have telekinesis? Wrong choice. If it’s not fire-based….”
“He’s showing off and being stubborn, only to embarrass himself.”
“Since when did D-grades get to act like that?”
Shin Noda closed his eyes.
He spoke softly, so only he could hear.
“Lady Laura. You can’t take over my body like this.”
Laura snorted inwardly.
‘How could I, when you’ve seen a future where I fail and the dragon race perishes?’
She decided to trust Shin Noda.
When crossing into this world, she had arranged for strong but mentally weak individuals to come to her.
Shin Noda was the opposite.
There was no way he had ‘accidentally’ entered an uninhabited cave and obtained the red gem.
Unless he had foreseen the future and sought her out, as he claimed, someone like Shin Noda wouldn’t have become the successor.
[Don’t worry.]
The troll began to move.
Suddenly, Shin Noda’s body glowed red.
Geometric tattoos that abruptly appeared on his skin were shining.
The proctor was startled.
“T-That’s a magic engraving?!”
Magic Engraving.
A tattoo that dramatically boosted magic power, a field only recently beginning to be researched.
There was no one in Korea who handled it, and even the leading nation in magitech, America, had just taken its first steps.
The method Shin Noda chose to excel in the comprehensive combat evaluation.
He temporarily entrusted his body to Laurakis.
Laurakis was skilled enough to use ‘Dispel’ magic even while clinging to Shin Noda.
Handing her the body would naturally make him much stronger.
When she first heard the plan, Laurakis opposed it.
[I refuse. Your body won’t hold up. That monkey-level brain of yours will explode the moment it starts magic calculations.]
Dragon magic was different from human magic.
Their brains were so superior that they hadn’t optimized their calculation methods at all for others.
Trying it with a human brain was naturally impossible to endure.
Shin Noda knew the solution.
“What if we engrave magic engravings all over my body? We can assist the calculations through the engravings.”
[Magic engravings aren’t for that… No, wait. If we modify them, it might work…. Hoo, quite a creative idea.]
“It’s the method you use in the future.”
[I’m really feeling that you’ve seen the future now.]
“So don’t take my body. If I don’t intervene, this world is done for. The dragon race revival is out of the question.”
With the full-body magic engravings activated, Shin Noda slowly opened his eyes.
Slit pupils stretched vertically.
The body that had accepted the dragon soul was changing in real time.
Skeleton, muscles, organs, talents.
Everything was transforming to match Laurakis’s soul.
The troll was more hunter than warrior.
It circled around the ominous-looking Shin Noda, searching for an entry angle.
Laurakis thought she needed to end it quickly.
Any more delay, and the body might fully transform, rejecting Shin Noda’s soul.
She raised her arm toward the troll and spread her hand.
Judging Shin Noda a mage, the troll charged immediately.
Not giving a mage casting time was basic common sense.
The examinees watching the test didn’t even perceive the short sword swinging at blinding speed.
Shin Noda dodged with minimal movement.
The proctor couldn’t believe his eyes.
“No way. That’s agility D?!”
Even he wasn’t sure if he could dodge the troll’s attack.
Let alone an examinee.
“Trolls are fucking fast. Anyone catch the movement?”
“How’s a D-grade dodging that?”
The watching examinees couldn’t shut their mouths at the unexpected situation.
Shin Noda’s body grew hotter.
Mana generated from the Dragon Heart flowed through the magic engravings, producing heat.
Blood burst from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
Even with the engravings assisting calculations, it was woefully insufficient.
Laurakis realized Shin Noda’s body was even more trash than expected.
She had based human durability on her past escapades.
The human bodies made with Polymorph magic were powerful enough to contain a dragon soul.
They were on a whole different level from ordinary bodies.
‘I’ll have to borrow the system’s power.’
She had planned to incinerate it without a trace using ‘Hellfire’ magic, but conditions weren’t right.
Though it bruised her pride, she resolved to use a skill.
Skills registered in the system were like templates.
Pre-calculated so even those ignorant of magic could use them.
Using a computer analogy, a regular mage was like a programmer coding from scratch every time, while an awakener using status windows and skills just ran existing programs.
When using a skill, Laurakis just needed to tweak it slightly.
This drastically reduced the required calculations.
‘Telekinesis skill. So that’s how it works. Then I’ll boost the power.’
Laurakis fixed her gaze on the troll.
Clenching her outstretched hand into a fist, she said.
“Got it. Vanish.”
In an instant, the troll unleashing a fierce assault disappeared.
All that remained in the glass box was Shin Noda.
And then.
Thud.
A bluish orb the size of a fist dropped to the floor.
The heavy sound it made upon hitting the ground hinted at its weight.
Murmurs from the watching examinees.
“What happened?”
“Where’d it go?”
Shin Noda turned his head and met the proctor’s eyes.
The proctor got chills all over.
Bloodshot eyes with burst capillaries.
Slit pupils stretched vertically.
They were the eyes of a predator.
He shrank back involuntarily.
“No way.”
The proctor stood and approached the glass box.
His legs trembled the closer he got to Shin Noda, but he overcame his fear out of duty.
Up close, the proctor vaguely guessed the identity of the fist-sized orb on the floor.
As expected, it was probably the troll.
‘What kind of force turned a troll into that?!’
An absurd level of power.
No one had ever wielded telekinesis like this before.
An announcement came from the glass box.
[Critical error occurred. Test cannot proceed.]
“Examinee. Could you, uh, release your ability?”
Shin Noda made a face like he’d just remembered.
“Ah.”
The red magic engravings on his body faded away.
The geometric patterns etched on his arms, legs, and even face vanished completely.
Shin Noda’s soul returned to its place.
At the same moment, the blue orb shattered.
Troll remains splattered across the glass box.
The debris soon turned into blocky particles, sparking as they fell to the floor.
“I-I can hardly believe my eyes, but the score I’m giving is overall combat ability A, skill S. But how in the world…?”
Shin Noda didn’t answer.
No, he couldn’t.
The aftermath of using powerful magic made him feel like he’d pass out any second.
He staggered out of the auditorium.