Not Ripe Yet
A rift.
I stared straight ahead and murmured the word. It was an unreal distortion of black and white—neither magic nor black magic. Undeniably, a Rift.
The game I'd transmigrated into had always been notorious for its hellish difficulty. Since this was that game's hard mode, I'd considered the possibility that Rifts might open sooner than they had before.
I just hadn't expected them to open this soon.
A Rift, right after the entrance ceremony?
Rifts were gateways connected to the Outer Gods. If one had opened here, it meant the Outer Gods were closer than they'd ever been.
"A Rift—!! Damn it! Students got caught in it!!"
Milo's shout snapped me out of my thoughts. He was practically beside himself—a more violent reaction than when the Principal had gone flying.
I quietly kept staring at the Rift. It was still small.
"A-aren't we going in?"
Milo asked, scrunching up his face. I gave a light nod.
"Not ripe yet."
"...What?"
"I said it's not ripe yet."
Milo blinked at me, dumbfounded, then promptly crumpled his whole face in disbelief.
"Not ripe"? What was a Rift, a cut of meat?! "Damn it! With Rifts, time is life! I'm going in right now!"
"Understood."
"...Aren't you supposed to stop me at least once when I do this?"
"Why would I?"
"What? You piece of—"
Scratching his head furiously, Milo charged at the Rift. His face was full of fear.
To an elite guard, a Rift was a hell with a survival rate of nearly zero. And yet there wasn't a trace of hesitation in Milo's stride as he ran toward it.
"Ninggiri! Blonde beauty!!"
With that bizarre battle cry, Milo vanished into the Rift.
The Rift that had swallowed him grew a shade darker.
There were two reasons Rifts were such a damn nightmare. First, their difficulty was viciously brutal. Second, there was no way to know their internal attribute until you were already inside.
A Rift was the kind of place where even a Sword Master could die if he drew a bad hand. That was exactly why I'd distributed my stats instead of dumping them all into one.
In exchange, the clear rewards were guaranteed.
Outer God Fragments.
Break a Rift, and you obtained an Outer God Fragment.
Right now, I was stuck so hard that even twelve years of grinding the tutorial hadn't cracked my bottleneck. But with an Outer God Fragment, I could break through that limit.
Granted, the fragments were dangerous—but regrettably, this wasn't a situation where I could afford to be picky. And I had ways of dealing with the side effects later, too.
The black-and-white haze pulsed, swelling and shrinking like a beating heart.
Looks delicious.
I flexed my fingers.
"Let go!"
"YOU let go!"
"No! You first!"
"On three, we both let go! One! Two! Three—!"
"Why didn't you let go?!"
"Neither did you!"
"This time for real! One, two—"
"THREE!"
Andy let go of Evangeline's head and toppled over. Evangeline released Andy's head a beat later.
Ugh, seriously! Andy slapped his hands clean in irritation. Pink hair drifted down in clumps.
"Ha! That'll teach you to mess with me."
Evangeline brushed herself off with a smug grin.
I just got into a brawl with Evangeline... Feeling a stab of self-loathing, Andy forcefully changed the subject.
"So, this place is a maze?"
"Yep, it's a maze. Can't you see it?"
"See what?"
"This! Can't you see it?"
Evangeline pointed grandly at the top of her own head.
There was nothing there. Just empty air.
"There's nothing there."
"Yes there is—there's a translucent window right here. It says the attribute is Aura, and that we have to defeat Von Derk to escape?"
Andy felt a deep spike of irritation at Evangeline, who was playing games even at a moment like this, but he swallowed his anger. His opponent was Evangeline. Losing his temper would only cost him.
"Step back. I'm casting a detection spell."
"Won't work."
"What do you mean, won't work?"
"The window says the attribute is Aura. Apparently magic gets debuffed here."
Ignoring Evangeline's nonsense, Andy waved his hand in annoyance and pushed his mana into motion. Mana scattered along his fingers—a detection spell.
Normally, Andy's detection magic was broad enough to sweep an entire castle in one cast. That was why he'd been so confident.
But the spell didn't work. No—it did work, but it couldn't pierce the corridor.
Andy hastily checked his incantation structure. The formula was flawless. The detection spell had definitely deployed. And yet, the moment it touched the corridor, it dispersed.
As if it had struck a knight's aura.
"See? Told you it won't work."
Andy had no comeback. The magic really hadn't worked.
"Okay! This way!"
Just then, Evangeline marched forward with confident strides. Andy grabbed her in a panic.
"And how exactly do you know the way?"
"I told you! I just get these—FEELINGS!"
"Feelings, my foot. If this really is a maze, wandering around is dangerous. A rescue team might come from the Academy. If we move for no reason, things could get tangled up. The smart move is to stay put and wait—"
"No. We can't stay here."
For the first time, Evangeline spoke with utter seriousness.
Seeing the usual clown wear a blank expression was somehow chilling. Andy opened his mouth to retort a moment too late—
Shk, thud.
A small sound echoed from somewhere far away. It was like something being dragged across the ground, and instinct told him everything he needed to know.
If that thing gets close, we are very, very dead.
"Run."
Evangeline whispered. Andy nodded immediately.
They broke into a sprint at the same instant. And then—
Shk, thud. Shk, thud.
The sound sped up.
Andy ran for his life, strangling the scream rising in his throat.
How long had they been running when the problem hit?
"It's a fork!"
Five paths, no less. Every single one of them gaped dark and bottomless, like doorways into hell.
Shk, thud. Shk, thud.
The sound was closing in.
Andy shot a desperate glance at Evangeline. Unfortunately, she was the only one left to trust.
"Hold on! Uuuuugh—okay! Feeling's here! This way!"
Evangeline pointed down the left-hand path.
Is this right? Andy doubted it, but there were no other options. They ran again.
After another stretch of frantic sprinting, the sharp, scraping sound finally faded into silence.
It was really the right way?
Even a turd finds its place to land, huh. Andy looked at Evangeline with fresh eyes.
But Evangeline's expression had gone sour.
"Hmm. This is definitely the right way, though."
"What's wrong?"
"It IS the right way, I'm telling you. It's just—"
"Just? Just what?"
Evangeline pointed straight ahead with a frozen face.
There stood a knight slathered in blood. A grotesque figure, as though it had just clawed its way up out of hell.
Clink. The knight slowly raised its sword arm. The blade, dripping blood, leveled itself at them.
A vivid aura ignited along its edge.
A Middle Knight.
"Hey! You said THIS way!"
"Something's off? This IS right! The feeling was spot-on!"
"I'm losing my mind! That thing is a Middle Knight!"
"Middle Knight—so, strong?"
"I'm a MAGE! And mana's thin in here besides! We absolutely cannot win!"
"Hmmm... what if we both rush it at once?"
"Are you good at fighting?"
"Do I seem good at fighting?"
"No."
"Correct!"
Just then—
Shk. Thud.
The ominous sound came from behind them.
Trapped, front and back.
"Andy."
Evangeline called his name with a grave face. Andy looked at her, clinging to a sliver of hope.
"Fufu, thankfully the road to the underworld won't be lonely!"
Evangeline flashed a thumbs-up with a radiant grin.
"You—F-tier little piece of—!!"
The curse Andy had been biting back burst out of him.
Just then—
"Ninggiri. Which bastard's messing with students?"
A rough, insolent voice spoke up right behind them. They whipped around to find a delinquent-looking man wreathed in blue aura.
Andy's eyes went wide the moment he saw the man's uniform.
"The Guard Squad!!"
"Stand back, you troublemakers."
The man growled out a laugh.
Milo had never taken a formal lesson in swordsmanship in his life.
He'd learned to punch by getting hit, and learned to cut by getting cut.
Still, he'd had a decent talent for it, and he'd even awakened an aura. Sure, the knights called it gutter trash, but Milo couldn't have cared less.
If anything, he was proud of it.
It meant he was strong where it counted—real fights.
Milo sized up the thing in front of him at a glance.
A Middle Knight.
Its condition was grotesque, as if it had just crawled up out of hell, but it stood at the same Middle tier as Milo himself.
Manageable.
No—he had to manage it. There were two students behind him.
Milo charged at the knight without a flicker of hesitation. The knight's sword swept toward him—so fast it was hard to believe this was only a Middle Knight's speed.
Milo threw up his fists in a hurry. The aura coating his knuckles and the blade collided like the jaws of a wedge.
When two knights of the same rank clashed, the contest usually came down to the purity of their aura.
Purity was exactly what Milo trusted. He'd never been taught anything, so he'd always built his aura the honest, stubborn way—layer by layer, through grit alone.
And so he pressed his aura confidently against his opponent's blade, planning to shove the knight's aura aside, carve out an opening, and press the attack.
The problem was that it was Milo who got pushed back.
I got pushed?
The enemy's aura was purer than his own. The knight's sword aimed for Milo's exposed belly, and Milo threw himself into a desperate roll across the floor.
Shaaak. The blade skimmed past him, slicing the stone clean open where he'd stood.
Having barely dodged, Milo swung a kick at the knight's lower body—an aura-coated leg.
One clean hit would skewer the thing. But the knight didn't even feint an evasion. It simply thrust its sword.
This bastard isn't alive.
A living thing couldn't react like that. No knight alive would abandon defending his lower half.
Milo abandoned his attack and closed the distance instead—close enough to see inside the thing's helmet. With no room left to swing, its sword could only cut empty air.
Milo drove his fist forward from point-blank range. It slammed into the knight's abdomen, his aura-wrapped knuckles punching through the bizarre armor—and inside, he could see it was completely hollow.
Hollow? What the hell kind of monster—
His eyes wavered at the sight. The knight's sword, without a moment's pause, swung back toward him.
Just then—
"Ice Drill!!"
A massive ice spike erupted from behind, aimed at the knight's head.
The drill struck its target dead-on—but the effect was minimal. The knight's head tilted a fraction of an inch. That was all.
For Milo, though, it was rain on parched ground.
"Aim for the skull!!"
A student shouted from behind. Milo kicked off the ground and swung with everything he had.
His fist punched through the knight's helmet. Hollow again—but this time, unlike before, the thing stopped moving.
The masterless armor clattered to the floor and rolled.
What the hell kind of monster is that...
Milo muttered, wiping the blood running down his cheek.
Just then—
Shk, thud.
Footsteps sounded from somewhere. He turned—and there they were: a line of blood-dark knights closing in.
The same things as before. The problem was there were four of them.
Absolute garbage luck.
He'd barely beaten one with help. There was no way he could take four.
"Hey, you two."
"We're s-sorry!"
Evangeline and Andy apologized in a frantic rush. Milo forced out an easy grin.
"I'll hold them off. Run."
"What?"
"I said run. And stay out of danger zones from now on."
Milo spat—ptooey—and swaggered forward.
Four monstrous figures fixed their gaze on him.
So I die without ever meeting the blonde beauty, huh.
There was no particular reason he longed for a blonde beauty. It was simply that blonde hair was his only clue to finding a mother whose face he'd never seen.
Though even that wasn't certain.
Milo reached for his guard baton to fire a signal flare. Or rather, he tried to.
Wh-where did it go?
He patted down the belt where his baton should have been. Nothing. Nowhere.
He'd definitely been wearing it when he came in.
Don't tell me—that bastard took it?
Just then—
"Gate Opening."
With that frost-cold voice,
Screeeech—a metallic wail like a cry of agony rang out.
At the same instant, black chains shot toward the knights.
The knights twisted their swords to block.
But that was an insolent thought.
The black chains pierced straight through their blades—and through the knights themselves.
Clink. All four knights collapsed where they stood.
"Mmm. Nicely done."
The corner of his mouth curled upward—like a man savoring a truly delicious meal.