Chapter 4: The Magic Academy’s Slave Team
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 4: The Magic Academy’s Slave Team
I could see a glimmer of hope.
I, too, was starting to feel optimistic about my chances of survival.
The synergy between my 10 Wisdom and the Turn-Based Hourglass was far better than I had imagined.
The ability to always seize the initiative, combined with my destructive power that could one-shot-one-kill most anything on the 1st floor of the Labyrinth, gave me an incredible advantage.
Do you remember when I first incinerated those two goblins with a Fireball?
My turn, which had one action point remaining, ended the moment I cast Fireball.
That left two possibilities.
One: Casting a spell consumes Action Points.
Two: Casting a spell consumes a turn.
As expected, the answer was the first.
[Your Turn.]
[Action Points: ■■■■]
“Fireball.”
[Action Points: ■■■□]
Casting Fireball again, I saw that exactly one bar of my Action Points was consumed.
With a Fireball held at the tip of my wand like a dewdrop, it was still my turn.
In the game, all Tier 1 spells cost one AP, and as long as you have AP remaining, your turn continues.
[Your Turn.]
So, can I cast another spell in this state?
Yes, I can.
[Fireball Cooldown: 5 seconds]
As long as I wait for the cooldown to finish.
The hourglass gives me 60 seconds per turn, so I waited for 5 of them.
“Fireball.”
I cast a second Fireball.
It gets pushed forward.
The first Fireball moved about ten centimeters toward the goblin in front of me, and a new flame blossomed where it had been, hanging at the tip of my wand.
[Action Points: ■■□□]
Another bar of AP was consumed.
Theoretically, I can shoot four Fireballs in one turn.
Realistically, though, I’d rarely need to. That’s because aiming also consumes Action Points.
When the goblin’s sword nearly took my head off earlier, I had considered blocking it with my wand but gave up. Just moving my arm three centimeters would have cost me one AP.
Physical movements are extremely costly in terms of Action Points.
So, if two goblins are positioned far apart like they are now, I’d use up all my AP just by turning my wrist to adjust the wand’s aim.
Therefore…
“Ice Spike.”
I decided to hold a wand in my left hand as well—the fanatic’s.
[Action Points: ■□□□]
This way, I could target both goblins with spells and still have AP to spare.
I moved my body slightly and ended my turn.
[All Action Points have been consumed.]
[Ending Turn.]
The moment time resumed, the two suddenly summoned fireballs and the ice spike put on a spectacular magic show of fire and ice.
Boom! Kaboom!
The goblins’ shields were sent flying as they were burned to a crisp and skewered by ice.
The hourglass is the best.
*
“Caleb, you must have a talent for high-speed casting,” Yernil said as she collected magic stones from the goblin corpses.
“What’s that?”
I asked because I genuinely didn’t know. There was no such concept when I played the game.
“High-speed casting means there’s a very short delay between casting one spell and the next. Sometimes, exceptionally talented wizards can do it unconsciously when they’re incredibly focused.”
“Is that so?”
“And it looks like you have a talent for chantless casting, too. They say having just one of those talents puts you in the top 0.1 percent, but to have both at the same time…”
“…”
I had unintentionally become a natural-born genius. In reality, I had just dealt with them during my turn.
“That’s why dual-wielding wands suits you so well.”
According to her, dual-wielding wands was an extremely difficult technique, one that only those considered geniuses among wizards could manage.
From what I knew, she wasn’t wrong. Even in the game, almost no wizards dual-wielded wands.
It was extremely rare even among NPCs, and completely unheard of among players.
Why?
Because wizards are notoriously squishy. The standard builds were either a wand and shield for defense, or a two-handed staff to better handle close-range threats.
However, I had experienced the limits of those builds firsthand, starting from the Penance difficulty.
That’s why I developed the dual-wielding wand build. By getting the critical hit and wisdom bonuses from two wands, you could push your attack power to its absolute limit.
It makes you the squishiest of the squishy, but the mindset is to kill them before they can hit you.
It’s a similar situation now that the game has become my reality.
I have to kill everything within a single turn if I want to live.
So, I have no choice but to dual-wield.
“Um, excuse me… Is it okay if I use this shield?”
Yernil pointed to a goblin shield.
She had no interest in a crazy build like dual-wielding wands. It seemed she wanted to proceed more safely with a shield in one hand.
“No.”
But a shield wasn’t right for her.
“Wh-why not…?”
Yernil seemed a little flustered by my unexpected refusal.
The reason was simple: Yernil’s strength was lacking.
Even if she used a shield, she wouldn’t be able to withstand a single blow. It was highly likely she and the shield would be sent flying.
How did I know?
Because it took her forever to bring that barrel.
Calculating the distance and time, I estimated that when she was carrying the barrel, she was in what the game would call an ‘over-encumbered’ state.
Therefore, her strength stat was less than 3.
What about her other stats?
Might as well check them now.
“Yernil. Try casting Lightning Shock on that wall.”
Zzzap!
The bolt of lightning that shot from her wand was pathetic.
Her wisdom was at most 1 or 2. Maybe even 0.
That left agility, health, and dexterity.
“Yernil, can you jump?”
It was a slightly stupid-sounding question.
“Jump? Well, of course… I can jump. Yes.”
“As high as you can.”
“As high as I can…”
Yernil looked up at the ceiling.
“I don’t think I can do it here.”
“?”
“The ceiling’s too low. I think I’ll hit my head…”
The ceiling was about three meters high.
She thought she’d hit her head on that with a standing jump?
Wait a minute.
“How many meters can you jump?”
“Back in the Fairy Forest, when I jumped onto tree branches, it was about… hmmm.”
She narrowed her eyes in thought before answering.
“Four meters? Maybe?”
That settles it.
Her strength is below 3, and her wisdom is 1 or less. Her agility must be at least 5.
In that case, I’ll redefine her role.
“Yernil.”
I handed her the bow and arrows from the goblin archer—the one that had been killed by my Ice Spike.
“Try using this.”
Yernil slung the quiver over her shoulder and took the bow.
“Use this, too.”
Next, I gave her the dagger from the goblin rogue I had picked up earlier as a secondary weapon. Yernil tucked the dagger between her belt and pants.
She now looked like a clumsy ranger. This was a hundred times better than her being a wizard.
“I’ll take the Lightning Shock wand.”
I took the wand from her.
With that, I had become a wand collector, having gathered all four wands from our party members.
If I collect one more, I might turn into Thanos and be able to do the finger snap.
As I tucked the wand into my belt, Yernil spoke.
“To be honest, I’m more comfortable with a bow, too.”
“You are?”
“I used it sometimes in the Fairy Forest.”
So that’s why she so readily accepted the bow and dagger.
Then why did she ask for a shield in the first place?
“Well… I heard that if we use weapons other than wands, the Magic Academy will consider us useless even if we escape and sell us off to some strange place…”
“Could any place they sell you be worse than this Labyrinth?”
“That’s true. But there’s another reason.”
She continued.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know for sure, but… shouldn’t someone carry a shield? I heard a tank is essential for Labyrinth exploration.”
How admirable, Yernil.
Even though you’re confident as a ranged attacker and started as a wizard, you’re offering to tank yourself?
“I thought I should buy some time for you to cast your spells, Caleb…”
“We don’t need a tank right now.”
I refused her self-sacrifice(?).
There were two main reasons.
First, on the 1st floor of the Labyrinth, a wizard with 10 Wisdom can one-shot-one-kill most field mobs.
Second, the hourglass cuts off most surprise attacks, allowing me to always seize the initiative.
Of course, we’d be in trouble if we were attacked from behind, but Yernil wouldn’t be able to handle that even with a shield.
So it’s better to increase our ranged attack power and suppress enemies in front of us before they can close in.
“Let’s go.”
*
The other slave teams from the Magic Academy.
They are generally dangerous.
Most of them were thrown into the Labyrinth without any preparation, so they either die within the first few hours or fall into despair. Just think back to how Yernil had collapsed.
By the time they get past that initial stage, they’re usually left with nothing but rage, becoming vicious and desperate.
Besides, they were criminals to begin with. Just like Yernil was a drug offender(?).
So of course they’re dangerous.
Four and a half hours after entering the 1st floor of the Labyrinth.
“…”
Yernil and I were in a standoff with another slave team.
Our opponents were four human men.
They were armed with wands from the academy, as well as goblin swords and shields. One of them even had a bow.
We kept a distance of about ten meters, slowly moving in opposite directions while eyeing each other warily.
My hands, gripping the wands, were slick with sweat.
I kept my wands lowered, since aiming first could be seen as a threat and provoke an attack, but I didn’t relax the tension in my wrists. I was ready to raise them at any moment.
“Don’t look away.”
Like following the protocol for encountering a wild beast on a mountain, we stared each other down while slowly sidestepping and backpedaling.
Once we were far enough apart, the tension slowly dissipated.
The men, now walking away, kept glancing back at us and whispering amongst themselves.
“Let’s hurry.”
I wanted to put some distance between us and them.
About forty minutes later, after Yernil and I had moved on.
“Caleb.”
Yernil called my name, her expression deeply unsettled.
“I think those men from before are following us.”
“What?”
“I can hear their footsteps. I think they changed direction. They’re chasing us.”
“…”
I couldn’t hear a thing.
Of course, in this game, hearing acuity is affected by the agility stat, but the difference shouldn’t be this drastic, should it?
“Yernil. Close your eyes.”
Once her eyes were closed, I picked up three small stones and tossed them behind her.
Clack, clack!
“Do you know how many stones I dropped?”
“Three?”
“…”
It was certain.
Yernil possessed a special ability: ‘Sound Mapping.’ The power to determine a target’s location and movements by listening to sounds.
That meant her claim that the other slave team was following us was most likely true.
Damn it.
I had a bad feeling about those bastards.
“It’ll be really dangerous if they catch us from behind while we’re fighting a monster. Let’s just take care of this now.”
I led Yernil back in the direction we came from.
“Follow me.”
I had already spotted a suitable location just ahead.
It was a wide space, about ten meters square, with two large pillars.
The entrance where the enemies would come charging through had a sunken floor where water had pooled.
It was a small puddle, only about twenty centimeters deep at most.
“We’ll wait for them to enter through there. Hide behind the pillars.”
Yernil and I hid ourselves and lay in wait.
Splash, splash.
Now I could hear their footsteps, too.
Yernil was so tense she looked like she could barely breathe. To be honest, I probably looked the same.
They’re here.
Soon, the men appeared in the passageway.
They hesitated for a moment before starting to wade through the water.
I timed it perfectly and sprang out.
“Stop!”
I yelled, aiming my two wands like a pair of pistols. Yernil nocked an arrow to her bowstring.
The men raised two shields to block the front, while those behind them aimed a bow and a wand.
“Why are you following us?”
When other slave teams cause trouble, it’s usually over food.
They try to kill other parties to steal the boiled potatoes the Magic Academy handed out.
But when I first saw these guys, the potato sacks at their sides were bulging. They wouldn’t risk their lives attacking another party for food.
Could they just be psychopathic murderers?
It’s not impossible, but if so, would they have managed to stick together this long without killing each other?
That left only one possibility. Don’t tell me…
“You.”
A bald man spoke from behind a shield.
“Hand over that elf girl.”
“!”
Yernil flinched in shock.
I knew it.
When humans are pushed to the brink by extreme stress and despair, they tend to seek solace in primal excitement.
Especially in a Labyrinth with no laws or morals, and especially for a team of ex-convict slaves rather than proper adventurers, it was a given.
“Just give us that bitch, and we’ll let you live,” the bald man threatened.