Chapter 13
Chapter 13
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 12
Chapter Title: Newbie Adventurer Bern (10) - Manners Depend on the Opponent
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Bern's face grew cold.
Normally, conversing with Lucidra just required strongly focusing on addressing her and recalling something, but this time it slipped out loud enough to escape his mouth unconsciously.
"Think before you act."
Lucidra spoke as if she were the wronged party.
[Why? You think demon worshippers and witches chanting about Sabbats while sucking and biting do it for fun? There aren't many techniques as easy, fast, and efficient for gathering mana. For a type like that woman with naturally low mana reserves, it could multiply her mana several times over in an instant.]
"The method is the problem."
Bern teaching Blanca Essence Absorption while calling it power enhancement? There wasn't even room for excuses—it was blatant sexual harassment.
Even if dirty talk was everyday chatter in the adventurer world, pulling it on a comrade was a whole different story.
[Tsk. Well, Essence Absorption doesn't strictly require sexual acts. Directly touching skin to steal life force and mana, or absorbing the soul and energy of a defeated foe—those all fall under 'Essence Absorption' as classifications.]
"Hmm. That sounds decent enough. How about 70%?"
[This is one of the sources that earned me the title of Great Demon. 70% is nowhere near enough. Obviously 100% plus extra compensation!]
"On second thought, 65% seems plenty."
[No, you're stripping away my capital and still trying to hog that? And why's the percentage dropping?!]
"It's for Blanca's power enhancement to begin with. If you suck it all up, she'll learn the technique but end up no better off than if she hadn't. 60%."
[Even so, that's not fair! Honestly, just telling you is a loss even at 100%!]
"No need to teach the knowledge or method itself. A type usable like a tool would work fine. Less risk of secrets leaking that way. 55%."
[No, that's easier said than done! It's not something you whip up on the spot!]
"Understood. 50%."
[Stop! Fine, I'll do it!]
"Pleased to have a mutually satisfying deal."
[Demon bastard...]
Bern paused in mild confusion.
For a human, it was like calling someone from another race a "human-like bastard"—was that really an insult?
About ten minutes later, a small ring popped out from Bern's shadow with a plink.
Pretty quick for something she'd claimed wasn't so easy to make.
[It's crystallized from part of my essence. Wear it while defeating monsters or humans, and it absorbs some of their essence to grant to the owner. Touch the opponent with the ringed hand, and absorption speeds up.]
Making the ring clearly hadn't been trivial—Lucidra's voice carried a hint of fatigue.
"Does it increase total capacity, or just current mana reserves?"
[Both. Fills the vessel if it's empty, enlarges the vessel itself if it's full.]
"Ho."
Bern was genuinely impressed.
It essentially let an RPG character level up mana stats by slaying monsters.
Considering ordinary adventurers got no meaningful spec boost from slaughtering a hundred goblins, this was borderline cheating.
"Any side effects or usage precautions?"
[No one but that woman can use it. The deal was strictly a 'means to help her.']
Bern nodded.
Lucidra wouldn't enjoy her power floating around freely; it was an understandable restriction.
[...By the way. Why fixate on her like that?]
"Fixate? You mean me?"
[Yeah. Talent or ability-wise, that Blanca girl isn't anything special. Wouldn't it be better to solo your way up and party with level-appropriate folks as you go?]
Lucidra couldn't wrap her head around it.
He was seen as a "promising newbie" for now, but once the goblin uproar fully spread, his value would skyrocket, drawing far better offers.
So why cling to Blanca? How well did they even match?
To her puzzlement, Bern answered as if it were obvious.
"Because that's precisely something a crown prince can't do."
[What?]
The unexpected reply left Lucidra's tone brimming with question marks.
Bern gave a wry smile.
A crown prince at the heart of power and authority faced restrictions because of his position.
He couldn't wander freely outside the palace or casually bestow favors on others.
Any sign of favoritism toward a specific person carried heavy political baggage.
But an adventurer could.
Do what he wanted, help who he liked.
That was the crown prince's dream—and this was adventurer Bern.
"Well, something like... Hm?"
Bern cocked his head.
His sharp senses had picked up urgent footsteps racing toward his room.
-Bro! You there? Bro!!
The frantic voice pounding at the door was one he recognized.
Bern opened the door to find Renya drenched in sweat.
"Blanca noona's in danger, bro!"
Bern's eyes narrowed.
"Blanca, you know, don't you think you're going too far lately?"
There was a saying in the adventurer world:
The very moment luck seems to arrive is the most dangerous.
Not mere superstition—plenty of real cases backed it up.
Luck exhilarated the mind, and for adventurers who lived cheek-by-jowl with peril, an excited mind was fatal.
But even so, wasn't this too soon? Blanca let out a deep sigh.
"No idea what you're getting at, straight out the gate. Karina."
Unlike Blanca, with her sky-blue hair and outfit exposing only her face, the red-haired woman baring her shoulders and upper chest wore a mocking sneer.
"Honestly, when I heard you'd been hired as a guild receptionist, I was pretty pleased. Old teammate finding some stability beat getting shit on everywhere."
But, Karina went on.
"Chance comes knocking after ages. You ditch the receptionist spot everyone dreams of but can't snag, latch onto a barely-fledged newbie like it's gold. Then you fake achievements with some bullshit report. Blanca, why'd you turn so ugly? It's embarrassing us."
Karina's voice dripped with undisguised disgust and contempt.
Deeming it rather gloomy, Blanca glanced at the others around Karina.
Two warriors. One thief. Not a priest, but a mage who could use healing spells.
All faces she knew.
Amusingly, only one looked away awkwardly; the rest stared at her with eyes mixing doubt and resentment, siding with Karina.
"Karina's right. Desperate or not, pulling crap like that drags down our rep too."
"Never pulled any crap."
"Ha! So we're to believe two people took down hundreds of goblins?"
"Guild dispatched an investigation team to confirm it."
"You were guild staff briefly. Who knows what dirty tricks you pulled behind the scenes?"
Blanca frowned sharply.
Their words were nonsense. The Adventurer's Guild wasn't so easily duped, and this could be seen as questioning the guild's competence and fairness.
If an ordinary adventurer spouted this in public, the guild could penalize them without backlash.
But these weren't ordinary adventurers.
A rare 3rd-grade party even across the entire eastern branch—soon virtually guaranteed a promotion to 4th grade. Real heavyweights.
Unless they openly rebelled against the guild, they were too valuable to punish over street talk.
Especially among old comrades.
"Believe it or not, that's your call. Do as you please. Later."
"Hold up. We're not done talking."
No point dragging it out—it'd just tire her—so Blanca turned to leave, but she froze mid-step.
Several ice spikes had materialized in midair, surrounding her and blocking her path.
Blanca's gaze turned icy.
She turned to face the red-haired mage.
"Don't cross the line. Karina."
"You crossed it first. Booted for being useless, and still gotta trash the party name?"
Blanca ground her teeth.
Past Blanca could've melted parlor-trick ice like that with a puff of flame.
Back in the party, they'd often competed fire against ice; the others had joked that their hair colors meant they'd learned each other's spells by mistake.
But current Blanca had to treat even this light probe as a serious threat.
She could melt the spikes, sure—but Karina would counter with something heavier. And she'd be the one pushed back.
"What do you want?"
"Now you're talking sense."
Karina's smile deepened.
As if Blanca choking down humiliation was endlessly amusing.
"Eh, no point yapping out here. Shall we move somewhere? Catch up after so long. Yeah?"
As Blanca reluctantly started to nod to Karina's fake-sweet tone—
"There! Right there, bro!"
A voice so flighty you could tell from hearing alone, belonging to a man so utterly lightweight on sight—like a rattle at best, and a third-rate one at that, not even proper sycophant material—he came pelting along, jabbing a finger toward Blanca and Karina.
The next instant, Blanca felt a sudden sense of weightlessness.
"...Huh?"
Her vision whirled dizzily.
Firm arms cradling her body.
Realizing she was being carried princess-style, Blanca blankly looked upward and murmured.
"Bern?"
"Blanca, you alright?"
"Why..."
Why are you here? Why butt in? Why that stony face?
A 'why' loaded with meanings, but no answer came.
Bern simply checked her over silently, confirmed no injuries, and gently set her down.
"What the hell was that."
Karina blinked in disbelief at the scene.
The ice spikes she'd suspended to blockade Blanca's rear were still hovering in place.
Yet this Bern guy had casually extracted her without a hitch—and Karina hadn't caught a glimpse of how.
Her eyes flicked to her comrades.
The warriors, whose jobs hinged on physical prowess and who could enhance their bodies with mana, should've seen what the young man did.
But they couldn't answer her unspoken question.
They hadn't seen Bern's move either.
They went on alert and signaled the anomaly to Karina with glances; she felt rattled.
She'd heard rumors of his skill, but even her top-tier 3rd-grade crew couldn't track his movement?
Still, Karina was a veteran adventurer.
She quickly quelled her unease and dissolved the ice spikes.
With the opponent potentially leagues above expectations, talk beat fighting.
"Bern, was it? Looks like a misunderstanding. That wasn't real harm—just trying to talk."
And Bern's reply came.
"Can't you tell talk from a threat, you brainless bitch?"
The crude outburst—so unlike Bern's usual demeanor—froze the air around them cold.