Part 3: Fate Manipulation (1)
“Today’s lesson is on Aura.”
It was Basic Combat Skills class. Our instructor, Ales, looked around as he spoke. The students stood in formation at the outdoor training grounds, listening to his explanation.
Most combat-related classes took place here, though they sometimes borrowed the auditorium or a field.
“Human muscles have their limits. Naturally, they need to be sufficiently developed, but excessive muscle impedes movement, and as you know, muscle is inherently heavy. Ultimately, a fighter needs a body with the right balance of flexibility, strength, and explosiveness. In other words, you cannot simply keep building muscle for strength.”
Ales looked around after saying this, his gaze settling on Aster.
“Hmm. Aster, come forward.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aster stood beside him, and Ales placed his hands on Aster’s shoulders.
“This is what I would call a well-balanced physique. The right amount of muscle improves explosiveness, while too little or too much reduces it. Aster has struck that balance well. I want you all to use this as your model when training your muscles.”
Aster looked a little embarrassed.
Well, I wholeheartedly agreed with Ales about how balanced Aster’s physique was. Still, Ales had always sided with the commoners. Naturally, he was positively dripping with affection when dealing with their foremost representative, Aster.
“So blindly building muscle is not the best way to grow stronger. You must use another power humans possess. You need to increase your offensive power effectively while maintaining your body’s balance. That power is Aura.”
Ales stood before an enormous rock that had been set out in front of the students and raised his sword.
“Muscle alone cannot cut through a rock like this with a sword. Strength is one issue, but your sword would break before that even became a concern. However, an attack from a well-practiced stance, honed through repeated training, can carry Aura.”
Ales assumed his stance. He held the sword vertically before him in both hands, eyes straight ahead, its tip aligned with his gaze. It was a picture-perfect stance.
He raised his sword overhead and slashed down at the rock, blue light shimmering at the edge of the blade.
SHICK!
The blade sliced cleanly through the rock.
“Ooh!” The students marveled.
Ales looked entirely unmoved. Of course he did. He must have demonstrated this in every class.
“Through tens of thousands of repetitions, warriors learn to imbue their swords with Aura. At first, it lasts only an instant, and only during a single movement. Eventually, however, you will be able to use Aura in a variety of movements.”
“Um, sir?”
Someone raised a hand. I couldn’t tell who it was from behind. Since I didn’t recognize them, were they an extra?
“Does that mean if we keep training, we can keep Aura in our weapons all the time?”
Hmm. Judging by that question, they probably were an extra.
Ales grinned and nodded as if it were an excellent question.
“Of course. And you can do even more than that.”
“More?”
“At the pinnacle of Aura mastery, you can turn Aura into a weapon with your bare hands, without an actual weapon.”
“Oooh!” The students’ eyes sparkled.
“Of course, I can’t do that. Not yet, anyway.”
Ales’s joke drew a ripple of light laughter.
“Today, you will attack this rock with your own weapons.”
Ales pointed to the remaining half of the rock he had cut.
“Some of you will already have learned to imbue your weapons with Aura through practice and training before entering Constel. Even so, cutting this rock will not be easy. This is no ordinary stone. It was specially made using the professors’ magic.”
Even among those who could imbue weapons with Aura, its strength varied enormously. They might scratch the rock, but cutting through it would be exceedingly difficult. That would be true of an ordinary rock, never mind a specially made one.
The students looked deflated. As though he had expected that from the start, Ales raised his voice.
“Anyone who can cut through or destroy this rock with a weapon, without using Divine Power, will receive permission for one entry into a Low-Level Dungeon with a Five-Person Party. However, those five must include at least one third-year student and one teacher.”
The students’ eyes lit up at that.
Dungeons were valuable places where one could obtain all kinds of monster materials and riches. Exactly how they formed remained unclear, but they all appeared in places where Mana accumulated.
Clearing a dungeon did not simply mean finding the exit and leaving. Defeating its boss, cracking a code, or activating a hidden mechanism could also be ways to clear one.
Thus, as a dungeon’s difficulty increased, not only did its monsters grow stronger, but its traps and mechanisms became more vicious as well.
Even so, dungeons offered opportunities to earn money, gain experience, and collect items. They might even yield an unexpected, precious treasure—like the “Mistilteinn” that had made the news recently.
Of course, that had been a fake, but until I proved it, no one had been absolutely certain. There had been at least a slight chance it was real.
You never knew what item might turn up in any given dungeon.
“Shall we begin, then?”
At Ales’s words, the students stepped forward one at a time, starting from the front. They were all brimming with enthusiasm, apparently eager for the Dungeon Pass.
Honestly, though, I had no interest in cutting that rock.
‘Could I cut it if I wove Gram?’
But the Dungeon Pass wasn’t important enough to me to reveal Gram.
Weaving was practically the only weapon I had. I wasn’t in a position to fight with my entire hand exposed.
What interested me right now wasn’t whether I could cut the rock. It was finding a student who could.
As far as I knew, there was exactly one here.
“Hup!”
Eventually, Aster’s turn came. His blade left a fairly large gouge in the rock, but failed to cut through it.
“Grr.”
Aster’s clothes billowed as though filled with wind. Then his eyes shone white, and the white light spread into his hair.
Ah, that was...
“Stop, Aster. Divine Power is forbidden.”
“Oh! Ah, sorry.”
Aster bowed his head and returned to his place.
Well, if he borrowed Baldur’s power, a mere rock like that would be nothing.
But that put something of a damper on the students’ enthusiasm. A rock even Aster couldn’t cut—that came as quite a shock to them.
A few more turns passed.
SHICK!
“Oh?”
The rock had been cut.
The girl standing there with a sword thinner than her own arm looked just as bewildered. She stared at the cleanly severed rock, unsure what to do.
Naturally, everyone else’s eyes widened, including Ales’s.
Found her.
Pink hair. Green eyes.
“Eek! Professor! Look! I did it!”
Her hair danced, her excited shoulders tracing graceful lines. Every movement was lively yet alluring, her expression seemingly innocence itself—the height of cunning.
From head to toe, her beauty was so exquisite she might have been sculpted by a god.
“... Saibel, you pass.”
Ales spoke with a distinctly unenthusiastic expression.
Saibel Forte.
A woman beloved by fate, and one of Etius’s Main Villains.
‘Saibel Forte...’
If luck truly existed as something residing within individuals, rather than everything simply being the result of the world’s workings, Saibel Forte was someone who seemed to have been born of luck alone.
Saibel wasn’t a villain because she was inherently evil. Fundamentally, she was simply optimistic and took the easy way out. She did what she wanted and refused to do what she didn’t. Even after starting something, she would quit if she got bored halfway through.
Yet her fate always arranged itself to suit whatever her will desired.
“Saibel, could you use Aura before this?”
“No! This is my first time!”
Saibel answered cheerfully. She wasn’t lying.
Others might think she was playing innocent, but until this very moment, Saibel had never mastered Aura. The reason she had been able to cut that rock now was simple.
She had wanted to.
She had wanted the Dungeon Pass Professor Ales mentioned.
Not every wish of hers necessarily came true. But if something was possible for her, she would accomplish it. If what she wanted wasn’t physically impossible, it would happen.
While others repeated their training over and over to build knowledge and technique, Saibel skipped that entire process.
... And that was why she was a villain.
When an enemy appeared whom neither her strength nor her luck could overcome, she crumbled immediately. She had no experience whatsoever of overcoming such hardships.
She was a character destined for either Corruption or an exit from the story.
On a first playthrough, players would trust Saibel for her excellent Stats and ease of use, only to get royally screwed at the very end.
If you blindly supported her, her boundless talent and luck would carry her to a very, very high position. Then she would ruin the soldiers and territory under her command—or even an entire country.
Afterward, she alone would survive unscathed and vanish without a trace.
But if you tried to put her through hardships early on to help her mature mentally, her fate wouldn’t allow it.
No character could beat Saibel’s luck. Not even Aster could stand against it.
In the end, players had to neither help nor hinder Saibel, focusing instead on their own growth until they surpassed her through sheer strength.
Few villains were this much of a pain.
“Sir, about that Dungeon Pass. I need people to come with me, right?”
“Yes. You need a full party of five. Since that must include one third-year and one teacher, you can bring two other classmates if you wish.”
A dungeon expedition accompanied by an upperclassman and a professor could be considered extremely safe. Besides, almost everyone here had never experienced a dungeon. Someone experienced was essential even to give them a proper introduction.
I had known from the start whom Saibel wanted to go with.
She slowly opened her mouth and, just as I expected, called Aster’s name.
“Aster.”
Satisfied, I nodded quietly.
The truth was, I had nothing to gain from the dungeon. What mattered was what Aster Evans would gain there. His growth was just as important as mine to beating this game.
‘It’s not a difficult dungeon. Aster and Saibel should clear it easily. A teacher will be going with them, too.’
There was nothing to worry about with that party. Meanwhile, I could concentrate on my own training.
“Come with me, okay?”
Saibel’s tone was almost seductive. A bright smile, a slight tilt of her head. Her pink hair swayed.
“Sure, I’d love to.”
Aster readily agreed. Saibel was so openly delighted that she even clapped her hands.
Wow. I could actually see the gazes of the boys around us turning cold. Who knew it would be so easy to get a feel for Saibel’s popularity?
“But there’s still one spot left for a classmate, right? Can I choose who fills it?”
Then Aster said something strange.
As far as I knew, he wasn’t supposed to say anything like that. Runia Frisel, who was practically the game’s official heroine, would later join out of jealousy toward Saibel, but Aster wouldn’t take the initiative to invite someone.
“Huh? Sure.”
At Saibel’s reply, every gaze turned toward Aster. Everyone waited to see whom he would name.
“Frondier.”
He called my name.
“... Huh?”
I looked up from listening.
Why was he suddenly calling me? Wasn’t he looking for someone to go to the dungeon with him?
“Want to come to the dungeon?”
That someone was me.
Even at Aster’s sudden choice, I remained calm.
As a proud Korean gamer and a veteran who had sunk far too deeply into this game, I could maintain my composure in any situation.
With that detached state of mind, I discerned the true meaning of Aster’s words, completed my understanding, and answered.
“... Huh?”
