An Unexpected Gift
The nights of the Destroyed Kingdom are dangerous.
Not that the days are safe, either—but living things have always feared the night more than the day.
And every fear has its reason.
Predators that cloak themselves in darkness are the very image of terror, and the Destroyed Kingdom is no exception.
As long as I'm here, this place is safe.
In the middle of the wasteland, a pure-white woman gripped her sword. Her face was devoid of fear—devoid of any emotion at all—as she swept the surroundings with a vacant, unreadable gaze.
The moment her blood-red eyes fell on a monster that had been prowling closer, the creature bolted as if it had seen a ghost.
In the dark, those crimson irises gleamed. Each time her vertically slit pupils shifted, a faint scrape of earth accompanied the vanishing of every nearby presence.
For an instant, the woman's body went still.
Then, as if nothing had happened, she resumed her watch and muttered to herself.
"…Threats eliminated. I promised."
The voice that poured out its words so fluently was bold and booming—loud enough, it seemed, to shake the air—yet no one but the woman could hear it.
"Not needed."
"My power is mine. Never yours."
Her solitary muttering went on. She was trading questions and answers with someone, but to any onlooker she would have seemed merely to be talking to herself.
"Already have a name. My name. Albedo."
The voice had tried to coax her, but in the end it only sighed and fell silent.
In the quiet that returned, Albedo turned her head and checked the only other presence in this place besides herself.
A man, sleeping as soundly as if he'd been knocked unconscious, entered her field of vision.
The image of him using that wondrous power he called alchemy to turn stone and soil into water and food rose unbidden in her mind.
Ryu Seojun.
Was he from Won-guk?
The name she had heard when she received her own was not a name from the Destroyed Kingdom.
She remembered the knowledge a few people from the Cradle had taught her as a child—common sense, odds and ends of learning. Hard days, yes, but days spent living close together, finding what happiness they could even in the harsh land of the Destroyed Kingdom.
She could not go back to those days now, not with so many disasters piled one on top of another—but Albedo believed that the Cradle must still be standing, much as it had been.
She herself had left after that incident and wandered the Destroyed Kingdom ever since. These past few days, though, had been so full that the Cradle of her childhood barely crossed her mind.
…Happy?
When she realized that, Albedo's eyes went wide.
After her body had changed and her feelings had dulled, it had been a very long time since she last felt anything like joy. So long that she had accepted the emotion without even noticing it—and now it pressed deep into her chest.
Walk wherever her feet took her. Kill whatever monster entered her sight. Into that barren, flavorless routine, something new had appeared.
Was it the unknown art called alchemy that had brought it? Or the influence of the man who wielded it—Ryu Seojun?
Albedo considered it for a moment, then decided not to overthink it.
This happiness was soaking into her heart, and before long her feelings would dry out again. And more than anything—
—I'm not leaving forever.
—You can come find me yourself, Albedo, and once I'm strong enough, I'll come back to the Destroyed Kingdom someday too.
—Eat it all, and if you need more, come find me.
He had clearly left the door open.
Albedo closed her eyes to drink in the soft, swelling feeling as fully as she could.
"Still. It's a shame."
When she opened them again, her pupils were those of an ordinary human.
Their last night together in the Destroyed Kingdom.
Albedo watched Seojun sleep until the sky began to pale, telling herself over and over that a monster might appear to threaten him.
"Haaah… You didn't sleep again today?"
"I'm fine."
"…You've been awake four days already."
The first thing he did upon waking was worry about her.
Albedo accepted that warmth without resistance and threw herself into preparing to move. Of course she did—his destination was not the Destroyed Kingdom. It was Arca.
To put it bluntly, I don't have anything that could honestly be called a plan right now.
The protagonist who gets isekai'd into the game he loves, then moves according to a meticulous scheme built on knowledge of the original story—that's a cliché worn thin from overuse.
The problem is that the place I opened my eyes happened to be the Destroyed Kingdom.
The biggest issue is how I'm supposed to get into Origin Academy.
The early story of the game is much like any standard academy novel. The protagonist enrolls, stumbles through one incident after another, and grows. The question is whether I even have the qualifications to become a student at Origin Academy.
That doesn't mean I can just give up on enrolling, though.
Ether cultivation methods and all the common skills are taught at Origin Academy. Fail to get in, and my early growth takes a catastrophic hit.
Well. That might be counting my chickens before they hatch, too.
Enrollment is not the problem sitting in front of me right now. That's a hurdle for future me. The disaster planted squarely in my path at this moment is the border crossing.
Reaching the edge of the Destroyed Kingdom was fine. With Albedo's help, crossing the wasteland had been almost leisurely. But how, exactly, was I supposed to get to Arca—home of Origin Academy?
If this world's continental map wasn't wildly different from the game's world map, I would have to enter Won-guk first, then head for Arca.
Unlike the Destroyed Kingdom, though, Won-guk was still a standing great power. It did not casually admit suspicious people with no identity whatsoever.
"This is a mess…"
"Something on your mind?"
I had muttered to myself out of pure frustration while staring down the bleak reality. Albedo, with her superhuman hearing, caught it and spoke up.
It wasn't anything I needed to keep locked away, so I told her straight.
"I don't have any papers. I don't know if you'll believe me, but I came to with my eyes open in the middle of the Destroyed Kingdom."
"…Do you really need identity papers?"
"I do. To reach Arca, where Origin Academy is, I first have to pass through Won-guk—it shares a border with the Destroyed Kingdom."
No nation on earth greets illegal border-crossers with open arms. Getting tossed in a holding cell is the optimistic outcome; most of the time they just deport you.
And unlike other illegal entrants, I had come from the Destroyed Kingdom. Deportation would dump me right back into it. By then Albedo wouldn't be at my side, and I might actually have to clear a "survive the Destroyed Kingdom" challenge for real.
"…Then I'll help."
"Pardon?"
Help? Albedo was strong, no question—but I honestly didn't picture her as especially useful in this kind of situation. Was she planning for us to storm Won-guk together and demand they hand over an identity by force?
Given her power, the effect would be spectacular. The idea was also spectacularly dangerous.
Fortunately, the form of help Albedo had in mind was nothing like what I'd imagined.
"We're near the Destroyed Kingdom's border now. She'll have no choice but to come."
The problem was that even I couldn't make sense of the help she was talking about.
"Uh… what do you mean?"
"This is where we part."
Albedo suddenly drew her sword and strode toward me.
Part ways here? Was she about to turn me into rust on that blade?
The fear of death, which I hadn't felt in a while, closed in. Who was this person who "had no choice but to come," and what did "part ways here" even mean?
My endless questions cut off in an instant.
"Hup!"
KRAAAAAASH!
"…Huh?"
Albedo drove the sword into the ground. For the first time, she even let out a shout of effort—and the force with which she rammed the blade into the earth was, if I had to put a word to it, absolute.
An unidentifiable pressure crushed down on me. Every inch of my skin prickled. The sudden pain was like a full-body case of delayed-onset muscle soreness, heavy and deep.
What the hell had she just done?
I stared blankly at the ground, cracked and shattered around the buried sword. Albedo met my eyes with a lonely expression.
"My gift. The sword."
"A gift…?"
"Mm."
Who in the world gives a gift like this? The words rose as far as my throat; I forced them back down.
The sword buried deep in the earth looked like the legendary holy blade of King Arthur—pull it free if you can, and it's yours.
"Until the sword is drawn, no monsters will come near this place."
But Albedo seemed to have something else in mind.
"And within a few days, a woman will come looking for you."
She spoke as if she had already seen the future, promising me what would happen next.
"When she arrives, take the sword and go to Arca."
"Wait—!"
That was all.
Albedo turned her back on me, took only the backpack I had made for her, and left without a backward glance.
Abandoned in a single breath in the middle of the Destroyed Kingdom, I was left stunned—but there was nothing I could do about it. Albedo was already too far for me to catch, and the things she had said before leaving kept snagging in my ears.
"What in the world is going on…"
I scratched my head and muttered under my breath, baffled.
At this point, all I could do was wait and hope Albedo's sword kept the monsters away. I might not be a religious man, but losing faith has always meant death. And if my belief in Albedo was firm enough—well, maybe that counted as a kind of faith.
And the next day, someone really did come looking for me.
"I rushed here on a report of Antares's manifestation. Who are you?"
The number-one instructor at Origin Academy—the academy I was preparing to enter—and its strongest. Sayulcheon had appeared out of nowhere in the Destroyed Kingdom.
"…Antares?"
She said the name of the Destroyed Kingdom's worst calamity, the Ominous Star Dragon she had once brought down herself.
I didn't even get the chance to ask why Antares was suddenly coming up here before her head snapped around.
"That sword. Is it yours?"
Her gaze left me and locked onto Albedo's blade, planted in the ground before me.
What? What kind of history do these two have?