I'm Not a Lunatic
I'm not a lunatic.
I forced open eyelids that felt impossibly heavy and found myself staring into a spider's nest.
"Ah."
A Demon Spider had bitten me and dragged me here. Then, wrapped up like a sleeping bag in layer after layer of webbing, I had simply drifted off.
Thok. Thud-thok.
"Hey, Edwin. You alive in there? Thought I felt a presence, so I came to check."
Sir Kaiden had the sort of light, breezy look that a strong wind might blow away, yet he was a knight who took his dual role as guide and protector with complete seriousness. A man worth respecting. He had probably decided I might not survive a night with a Demon Spider, and so he had followed me in secret without sleeping a wink just to keep watch.
"I'm fine. Did you manage any rest last night, Sir Kaiden?"
"You think sleep was even an option in this situation? What kind of nonsense are you spouting…?"
"I suppose even someone of your caliber would find it hard to sleep alone in a dungeon without companions."
"…You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"Isn't this the light atmosphere you were hoping for, Sir Kaiden?"
"You're just a lunatic. I mean it—wow. I've seen every kind of madman there is, and next to you those guys all looked perfectly sane."
As a former deputy commander of a knight order, he must have encountered every type of person imaginable. And out of all of them, I was the unmatched lunatic…
He's exaggerating far too much.
Nobles will happily stain their hands with blood if it elevates their house. Hard-won information becomes a family secret technique, and if even a whisper of it leaks, they will not hesitate to attempt assassination. In a world like that, someone like me ranks firmly among the normal. If I were a true lunatic, I would have used every means at my disposal to silence Sir Kaiden and keep the Guardian training methods from leaking.
"Shall we eat?"
"…Fine."
I clawed my way free of the Demon Spider's cozy web sleeping bag, moved with Sir Kaiden to a suitable spot, and finished breakfast.
"So what now?"
"I plan to head back for the time being. I need to pay a visit to the Cretus Church."
"You're leaving already? Then why the hell did you sleep in the forest in the first place?"
Obviously to confirm whether the Demon Spider sleeping method actually worked. I had heard the stories and absorbed the game knowledge, but real combat always produces unexpected variables. With a reliable protector like Sir Kaiden on hand, how could I possibly pass up the chance to experience it myself?
"Did you know this, Sir Kaiden? There's a saying that if you eat a little poison every day from childhood, you eventually become immune."
"Why are you treating common knowledge like some big secret… Are you actually insane?"
Sir Kaiden smacked his forehead with a loud slap and let his mouth hang open. I rather liked how cheerfully he reacted.
"So this is a form of training too? Building up poison resistance?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Weren't you scared when a monster dragged you off alive?"
"I'm human. Of course I was scared."
"And you still did it? Well, I guess a guy who sets himself on fire will try anything. No wonder our chicks can't even peep around you, haah…"
Sir Kaiden's gaze settled on the shield emblem engraved on the back of my right hand. When I first entered this dungeon I had been level 8. In a single day I had reached level 15.
"Is this some kind of secret technique too? It has to be, right?"
He asked while staring up at the sky, as if replaying everything that had happened over the past day.
"Something like that. But if it becomes a problem, just tell the truth."
"Wait, I can do that?"
"Even if it gets out, no one will try to copy it."
"Yeah—setting yourself on fire and charging into a nest! If you go around calling that a secret technique, people will just call you a lunatic. Better to hunt them one by one the stable way and build combat sense. Honestly, monsters like these are meant to be wiped out cleanly with magic. Tch… So do I report this or not?"
That was for him to figure out. I packed my things and stood.
"You, you know… you're a strange one."
I finished off the Demon Spider and harvested a generous amount of its venom. Then, retracing our path, I gathered medicinal and poisonous herbs and stuffed them into my bag. Sir Kaiden watched the whole process with a blank stare before squinting as though the sunlight hurt his eyes.
"Why go this far? The Revan Viscounty is a fairly well-known knightly house around here. They must have secret techniques for Warriors or Knights."
"Yes, they do."
"So why insist on Guardian? Did you really get some divine revelation?"
"Well…"
I gazed blankly at the sky and spoke.
"I suppose I don't want any regrets."
"Regrets?"
"We only get one life, don't we? Is wanting to live it to the fullest not answer enough?"
I deliberately left out anything about the world's destruction five years from now. Even so, Sir Kaiden scratched the side of his nose with a finger as if he had just heard something profound.
"That's stylish."
"Then you should live that way too, Sir Kaiden."
"At this point?"
He glanced back at the long shadow cast by the rising morning sun, as though looking over the path he had already walked.
"What's stopping you?"
I stepped a little farther away from him. My shadow behind me slapped flat against a tree trunk, close enough that he could have reached out and touched it. Sir Kaiden snorted a laugh and shrugged.
"You… really are a noble. Even if everything you do makes you look like a lunatic."
I keep telling you I'm not a lunatic.
A single day had passed since I set out for the dungeon full of confidence.
"You're already back, Edwin?"
My brother narrowed his eyes at the sight of me returning from the dungeon first thing in the morning. I had declared I would close a three-year gap in just three months, so he had clearly expected me to stay in the dungeon for a while.
"Well, things turned out this way."
I shook water from my hair and casually displayed the back of my right hand.
"Wait—eight, ten, twelve, fif… fifteen…?"
His eyes flew wide. For a moment I worried his eyeballs might actually pop out.
"How in the world did you do that?!"
He hurried over, ignoring everything else, and stared holes through the back of my hand as if double-checking he hadn't miscounted.
"The Remington County dungeon is only this strong…?"
Our family owned no dungeon of its own. Every spring my brother hunted the monsters that appeared along the roads of the Revan Viscounty, and whenever he had free time he made the trip to the dungeon belonging to our mother's family. Even living that diligently, his current level was 35. Among his peers that was quite high. Commoners usually hovered in the late teens at best, and even industrious nobles typically sat in the late twenties. My brother's 35 was the product of real risk and relentless effort. Precisely because he had run that race himself, he could not comprehend how I had nearly doubled from level 8 to 15 in a single day.
"Sit down. I'm about to tell you something absolutely insane."
I dropped the noble speech and opened with the rough tone of a street thug. My brother, having learned that this tone always preceded nonsense, narrowed his brow.
"I'm being serious right now, Edwin."
"So am I. Listen carefully. First, you push your pain resistance to the absolute limit. Then you smear yourself with the thick paralyzing venom of something like a Gorreuk. Once you're numb, it hurts less."
"…And then?"
"Then you douse yourself in lantern oil and light yourself on fire."
"What?"
"Once you're burning, plant and insect-type monsters won't come near you. They're weak to fire."
"…"
"The next part is the hard one. The flames on your body only last about two minutes. In that window you throw a torch into a Bespoid nest you've already located and set the whole thing ablaze. After that you run like hell until the fire on you goes out. Catch your breath, drink some water, then head back in. The residual heat hurts like crazy and sometimes your head goes fuzzy, but nothing else even comes close."
As I laid out the full method of Slash-and-Burn Farming and the subsequent harvest, my brother's mouth fell open as though an earthquake had hit his pupils.
"…Have you actually lost your mind?"
"Lost my mind? Isn't this pure genius?"
The Guardian's notorious level 10–15 plateau, which normally took forever to escape by ordinary methods, I had cleared in a single day. If that wasn't genius, what was?
"Don't you dare go around boasting about this like some heroic tale. The heresy inquisitors might come knocking. They're a pain."
My brother collapsed onto the sofa and let out a long sigh. Watching him, a completely useless thought suddenly drifted through my head.
Today my whole world collapsed.I asked, and it turns out I can't copy it.In an instant the spark of hope went out.It's too hard. I want to cry right now.I want it too—an opportunity like yours.I'm so jealous. You can take my honor if you want.Please just give me the secret technique.
My previous life's memories feel more like binge-watching one person's documentary than anything else. They influence my way of thinking, but they don't shake the core of who I am as Edwin. Even so, these pointless thoughts still pop up from time to time, and before I know it the dry wit I inherited from Father peeks its head out.
I hadn't meant for it to show.
Tak. Tak.
"…"
My brother glared at me with a terrifying expression while tapping the palm of his hand with his sword scabbard. One more word and the level gap would turn into one-sided domestic violence. So I drew the curtain on the wit and instead spread out the spoils from my pack. Raising pain resistance while stuck in the mansion was difficult, so these were materials for steadily building status-ailment resistance. I could turn them into snacks to chew whenever I was bored, or steep them into tea.
Grrrk, grrrk.
I chewed a poisonous herb and dumped the rest of the loot into a portable mortar. Byproducts from Gorreuk, Bespoid, and Man-Eater, plus the poisonous herbs and mushrooms that grew wild in the dungeon. As I began grinding them down, a fishy, nose-stinging, thoroughly dangerous smell rose up.
"Heh heh…"
If I diluted it carefully so it wouldn't wreck my body and used it as an additive for snacks or tea, that was training and grinding all in one.
"…"
My eyes met my brother's.
"Just checking—you aren't planning to assassinate anyone with that, are you?"
"Why would I give something this precious to someone else…?"
They say even a single bean should be shared, but this was one thing I had zero intention of sharing with anyone.
"Ah."
A precious drop of the extract splashed onto my hand.
Slurp.
Next stop, the Cretus Church.
Once you reach Shield of Faith (Lv. 2) and level 15, you can complete a certain event at the Cretus Church and obtain Shield of Faith (Lv. 3). From that point on, the Guardian class finally hits its proper stride.
My pulse quickened and heat rose through my body. Had I gotten too excited? Suddenly the world started spinning.
Thud.
"Ghk—grrk!"
It was probably the extract that had splashed onto the back of my hand a moment ago.
"…This is the great warrior of Cretus?"
"Ghk—grrk-ghk!"
The effect was, without a doubt, solid! As long as I carefully controlled the dosage, I wouldn't have to worry about poison up through level 30.
That was how intense it was.