Chapter 108

9th Round Like the First Time

Level 1860

At this point I was powerful even without having any skills.

Of course the Elf King, who only had a high level and nothing in the way of defences, died very easily. But a big contributing factor there was his naturally weak elf species.

Elves would die easily if they get stabbed while in their defenseless state, when they aren’t protecting themselves with various abilities like magic or inner qi.

But I was different.

Natural human.

I looked just like an ordinary human being from the outside, but I was about 3 times heavier than humans with similar builds as mine.

It was because the density of the molecular structure which made up my body was very high and it had a special makeup.

My internal organs and skin were tough, my bones had a little elasticity and were hard like metal.

Regeneration and immunity to many things, on top of that.

“The hero who was summoned to save the human race, plotting treason?!”

“Hero? Is this really a Hero?!”

“Miss Lanuvel! What did you summon!”

The royal palace knights who were quietly listening while surrounding me and Lanuvel exclaimed while stealthily pulling out the swords that were strapped to their waists.

It was very ridiculous.

▶ Peek: Kang Han Soo Student. I’m looking forward to working with you again this time. After being in charge of Student Sieg for 5 years, I realized what an excellent hero you are! But it doesn’t mean that you’d kill these ignorant knights, right? I think it’s going too far to ask for the country instead of a set of clothes.

Miss Trainee Teacher didn’t know anything.

There was even a leader on Earth popular for his fantastic diplomacy skills, where he exchanged a corn for a diamond.

Mahatma Gandhi…

If you didn’t exchange it, nuclear missiles were going to fly into your country instead of corns.

(Note: reference to the Sid Meier’s Civilization games)

He was more famous than any celebrities if you tried to look him up on the internet.

▶ Shocked: What a horrible leader… I think it’s fascinating how Earth has been fine so far. Student Kang Han Soo, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to follow his example, right?

Of course.

Because the grade for Personality is important in the final marks.

So I activated Blackbox.

▶ Species: Natural Human

▷ Level: 1860

▷ Job: Demon King (Hero→ Level↓)

▷ Skill: Prodigy ZZ Divinity Z Demonic Energy Z

Spirits MAX Blessing MAX Fabrication MAX

Love SS Massacre S Eternal Life S Eternal Youth S

Immortality A ■■ A Friendship A Interpretation A Luck A

Farming B Fishing B Collection B Mining B Breeding B

Hope C Domination C Storage C

Infinity D Festival D

Intimidate E Spirit E Sprint E

Cold F Command F Internal Affairs F

▷ Status: Holy Sword, Magic Sword, Saintess

My skills grew freely during the 5 years I slept.

The most remarkable change was the five B-grade production system skills.

Farming B Fishing B Collection B Mining B Breeding B

I didn’t do anything, it seemed like my proficiency improved because the 5 elements spirits were following me.

It was my first time getting production system skills so I wanted to look at them more in detail, but too bad I didn’t have much time.

The time given to me was less than 10 seconds.

I had to make the most of the skills I had before it ended.

“Get on your knees.”

That sentence implied several meanings.

Demonic Energy Z promoted me to a ‘Noble of royal blood’, and Divinity Z created a halo around me that seemed to say I was ‘Sacred’.

Fabrication MAX covered me one more time as ‘the absolute superior’, and Blessing MAX finished it like a performance by lighting up my halo and gave blessings to ignorant people while enhancing them.

Earthlings might resist.

But the number of Fantasia natives who could withstand this overwhelming pressure from my transcendental skills and levels were countable on one hand.

“Ooh!”

“Aah!”

Clank, thud!

The royal palace knights released the long swords from their hands without hesitation and sank to their knees with their heads down.

Tears of joy were falling from their eyes after they witnessed the ‘Sacred Demon King’, who ruled over light and darkness.

It was incomparable to such things as the usual devotion.

6 seconds, 7 seconds, 8 seconds-

I ended Blackbox before 10 seconds passed.

And nothing happened.

The system misinterpreted it as the summoned hero getting a temporary heart attack and didn’t activate the ‘Fantasia reset’.

All according to plan.

I didn’t know this feature in the 8th round so I had to retake the test like this, but it was different that I knew about it now.

I just had to avoid it cleverly.

▶ Amazed: What a surprising trick!

Miss Trainee Teacher, you think so too, right?

But I couldn’t repeatedly activate and deactivate Blackbox all day. There were several reasons.

▶ Question: What is it?

First of all, it was annoying and troublesome.

It would’ve been nice if there was an automatic repeating system like macro for games, but it was impossible since Blackbox needed a fair amount of concentration.

With the same reason, the mental strength it consumed to turn Blackbox on and off was quite a lot. I couldn’t live while counting upto 9 all the time.

If I forgot and counted to 10, wouldn’t the world vanish?

That would be taking the joke too far.

Second, the sense of deprivation and dejection was too much.

I couldn’t get used to the lethargy that overcame me everytime my transcendental skills got sealed with Blackbox, at all.

Imagine repeatedly giving and taking.

Don’t obedient pets also get angry and bite their owner’s hands if the owner plays with their food?

I hated to live while getting stress every 9 seconds.

Third, it didn’t help my growth.

As you could know from the species that I changed into, ‘Natural human’, my final goal was to perfectly be independent from Fantasia’s stats.

I couldn’t deny the usability and convenience of skills, but I refused to be the child-kidnapping Fantasia God’s plaything.

To do that, I had to build the habit of not being dependent on Fantasia’s stats.

Didn’t I live well on Earth even without skills and levels?

▶ Species: Natural Human

▷ Level: 1860

▷ Job: Hero(EXP 500%)

▷ Skill: InterpretationA ■■A

▷ Status: Magic Sword, Saintess

But still, I took measures so I could summon my lightsaber and Hippolia anytime just in case of an emergency.

The reason I ruled out the Holy Sword Nucleon?

Its performance was excessively outstanding to the point it wasn’t helpful for my training, but it was also because I found a new possibility for the lightsaber.

Lightsabers have no blade.

Instead, it creates a blade of light, as one would have guessed, by injecting the system’s power as a resource.

Just like this,

Level 1860 → Level 1859

Wooong-

I injected EXP into the lightsaber I summoned.

It was only 1 level, but the amount of EXP needed to go from 1859 to 1860 was massive.

It was an amount that couldn’t be casually ignored.

I abruptly swung the luminescent lightsaber.

Chwaak-!

And the lightsaber cut through the Lanuvel who was still not kneeling, severing her cleanly in two vertically from her left shoulder to her heart. There was no sign of her blocking it with transcendental spatial powers in the midst of it.

The level 200 mage died without any resistance.

Too ordinarily.

“… is this not it?”

The one and only Lanuvel who had the power to summon heroes.

It might seem like it was nothing big, but she was a wizard who could do dimensional shifts— something that even I couldn’t do yet. Even renown wizards and mages with excellent abilities expressed their incompetence when it came to dimensional shift magic.

It was also the same reason why I didn’t look for the way to do dimensional shifts and only focused on graduating since the 2nd round.

Because in the 1st round I had looked hard for any way to go back besides as a reward I got for killing Demon King Pedonar.

But all of it failed.

They were all frauds that deceived me into thinking that long-distance teleportation was dimensional shift.

“Hmm. Am I being too sensitive…”

Only Lanuvel knew the real way to go back to Earth.

She didn’t know reverse dimensional shift wizardry, but she received an oracle from Fantasia’s God and tricked me while saying “Mr Hero! You can go back to your hometown if you knock down the Demon King!”

In the 1st round I laid my hope on what she said.

For real.

▶ Positive: Heroes who like Fantasia’s world would knock down the Demon King voluntarily, but there are people like you once in a while, who want to go back to their hometown instead of killing the Demon King. They only looked for ways to do the dimensional shift back home instead of getting a passing grade. That’s why the only way to do it is told early through the oracle.

Like Miss Trainee Teacher’s explanation, what Lanuvel taught me was the only way.

So she was the most suspicious.

As Lanuvel was always there every time I returned.

It could be seen as something natural since she was the one who summoned the heroes, but in a village on the northern continent she appeared as my ‘humble sister’.

On the other side, the other colleagues’ settings had never changed.

Only Lanuvel was special in many ways.

“So I thought she was something transcendent.”

Was she a despicable grave robber who only knows how to act cute?

▶ Disapproval: you really have no mercy even for beauties, Student Kang Han Soo. Student Sieg was able to go on the adventure until the end without giving up, sustaining himself from the joy of watching his colleagues’ wiggling butts.

It seems like Miss Trainee Teacher went on the adventure instead of Sieg!

I expected Lanuvel to block my surprise attack, stop acting cute while saying “Oh no! Has this act of mine as little, cute, friendly Miss Lanuvel been seen through?” and changing her way of talking into an old man’s.

But she died in vain.

It seemed like my prediction wasn’t spot on.

As a result, a blood drenched Lanuvel was lying on the ground.

“Huk!”

“Oh my…”

“Oh no!”

The royal palace knights who saw the scene while lying on their stomachs were terrified and fell into chaos. It seemed as if it was the first time they had seen such a hero.

▶ In a difficult position: Of course there’s no way they’ve seen such a hero! Even if you look at the records all this time, you’re the first hero who killed a cute colleague from the beginning.

Don’t worry, Miss Trainee Teacher.

Everything has a solution.

“Hippolia.”

Flap-Flap-Flap.

Saintess Hippolia, who responded to my call without even a 0.1 second delay, appeared while spreading her 3 pairs of wings gracefully.

“Bold from the start, Master. Huhu.”

“Well…. My hand slipped.”

I’ve had several chances to check after killing Lanuvel.

But up until now there had been some kind of weird psychological interference that was like “Don’t kill your colleagues!”. But I had been free from such mental restraint and pressure since I now had become the species ‘Natural Human’.

In all due respect, it might have just been me..

“I’ll bring Lanuvel back to life.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t absorb Lanuvel’s EXP just in case things like this happened.

Phat!

Hippolia’s hands glowed with a holy light and activated a skill. It was ‘Resurrect’, the skill unique to the Saintess job.

The holy light seeped into Lanuvel’s wounds.

She was horribly split by my lightsaber from her shoulder to her heart. In the process not only her skin, but her collarbone, spine, lungs and so on were also damaged while her heart disappeared totally.

But the Saintess’ power didn’t just heal dead people’s wounds, but also fill up their missing body and even organs, just like white cement on a crack.

As long as they had enough levels to pay for the Resurrection.

▷ Species: Human

▷ Level: 134

▷ Job: Scholar(Knowledge= Magic↑)

▷ Skill: Wizardry A Magic A Attractiveness B Cooking B Immortality C…

▷ Status: Confused

Lanuvel came back to life quickly.

My attack was too strong, so even though I didn’t absorb any EXP from her, she needed to drop from level 200 to 134 to pay the doctor’s bills.

The resurrected Lanuvel glared at me fiercely.

Finally she’s showing her true colors!

“You’re being too much just because I didn’t get on my knees, Mr Hero! Lanuvel didn’t have enough time to think and process what you wanted Lanuvel to do! Ah! Right! Beautiful Miss Saintess! Thank you so much for saving me! I’m Lanuvel, an archaeologist who traces the legend of a hero! Lanuvel means ‘truth’ in the ancient language! Please look after me.”

… whatever happened to true colors.

Lanuvel was just Lanuvel.

“Go.”

“Yes, Master.”

I deactivated Hippolia’s summon, already feeling tired from interacting with Lanuvel.

Then Lanuvel made a fuss again.

“Mr Hero! Mr Hero! How in the world did you do that?! Is that Miss Saintess a spirit? How did you make a contract and summon her? Ah! Is she, by any chance, a Golem?! That’s also awesome! She was like a living angel! Are all people from your homeland just as amazing as you are Mr Hero?”

“Shut up.”

“But Mr Hero, Lanuvel is really really curi- ouch?!”

“Shut up while I’m still hitting you nicely.”

One of the quick-witted royal knights ordered a nearby maid to bring clothes for me to wear..

It was casual clothes that I could wear easily and quickly.

They avoided noble clothes that were too hard to wear by oneself. It was a decision that was considerate of heroes who didn’t know Fantasia’s culture.

But,

“Give me the most extravagant noble clothes.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t make me say it twice.”

However, it was not a problem for this Mr Hero who had 25 years of rich experience with Fantasia’s culture. I could wear every type of attire on the continent with my eyes closed.

I was 8 years old, but I had 25 years of experience.

If I talked about the sad story of how it ended up like that, it could be released into 10 fantasy novels.

*

I met King Dumpling wearing fancy clothes comparable to the royal’s.

The throne room fell into chaos at the dignity I carried myself with, looking more like a ruler than the king who was sitting on his throne while half-asleep.

I was born to inherit the Emperor title of the Northern Continent.

I rose to earn the Emperor title all by myself while conquering countries one after another ever since I was born.

I wasn’t on the same level as the silver spoon King Dumpling who got handed the throne to him after the previous king died.

I took a similar flow of story as the 2nd round.

But this time I was different from the 2nd round in which I had the nerve to go ahead and say “I’m the only hero! Kill me if you can!”

I naturally got a head start even though I stayed still.

The result was,

Clank!

Just like in the 2nd round, I received a plump sack full of money.

“Mr Hero! Where are you going?”

Lanuvel acted cute and asked while following me. She didn’t change a bit even though she just got murdered by me a little while ago.

It was a cheerful and innocent-acting spirit just like Lanuvel, who shamelessly guided a Hero into a trap dungeon and killed him.

I answered with a smile.

“The black market.”

Even though it was the same situation, someone with 10 years experience and someone with 25 years of experience would naturally have different ways of dealing with things. I was so immature back then compared to I was now.

So I decided to correct my mistakes in the 2nd round.

In other words, reviewing.

PR

/N : There is an illustration page for some of the characters, be sure to take a look !