Chapter 95: The Deepening Darkness (1)
The meal with Lucia, Aizel, and Yuri was rather enjoyable….At least Lucia and I enjoyed it.
Aizel and Yuri were too busy glaring at each other to realize they were even eating.
I wondered if they hadn’t gotten along since the duel at the Colosseum.
Yuri was the more competitive one.
I patted my stomach like Lucia, who had grown a couple pounds, and returned to the dormitory for a while after finishing my meal.
Today, I was getting ready to leave the Academy early because I had to go a little farther away.
I had to get a new skill.
Ever since I got the Hidden Pieces from the Labyrinth, I’ve been thinking a lot about what skills I should learn.
I had a limited amount of time and skill points, so I had to be selective and focused.
The first thing that came to mind were skills related to critical hits.
Since the chance of a critical hit is already overwhelming, I thought about skills that increase the player’s luck.
‘I couldn’t cut the golem down after all.’
There are some enemies that physical damage doesn’t work well against, like the golem I faced in the Labyrinth.
The Necklace of Hero’s Favor allowed me to convert physical damage into light attribute attacks, but there were limitations.
I could only do it once per day, and there was a time limit.
I also considered the ‘Berserk’ skill, a passive skill where your physical abilities increase by leaps and bounds when your health drops below a certain level.
But what do I need to do to lower my health?
I need to bleed.
In order to use Berserk intentionally, I would have to let enemies attack me and get hurt.
In the game, this was not the case, but in the real world, it’s a very risky skill. It would also be painful.
However, I had two health-consuming Reverse Heaven techniques.
As a high-performance skill, it was limited and I could compensate for this by maxing out my health with elixirs, but once I’m in battle, I can’t avoid the battle of attrition.
Berserk is the only way to ensure that I’ll be able to last longer.
Even if I maximize the time limit of two techniques and still fail to defeat an enemy, I will naturally trigger Berserk because my health is depleted.
But…
‘…It’s not like I can cope with all kinds of situations.’
My eyes were drawn to the Hidden Piece I had obtained in the Labyrinth before the public class.
This time, I got two items: the Spirit King’s Whistle and the Red Dragon’s Orb.
I kept them both in my subspace pocket.
The orb is a mage-only item, meaning it’s magic-related, so it’s not something I could use.
I don’t know how to use magic, and it would be difficult for me to learn with my blindfold on.
This was a gift for Yuri later. Although Aizel was also a wizard this was more suited to Yuri than her.
It was not a gift to be given away lightly, so it would be a matter of how it was presented… In any case, it’s better to give it to Yuri before she’s in danger.
Next up is the Spirit King’s Whistle, a one-time item that’s more of a “shot”.
When you blow it in an emergency, it immediately summons the most powerful of the spirits, the Higher Spirits, to help you in battle and disappear as soon as the battle is over.
I came up with a clever “trick” for the whistle. It was a brilliant idea that would add a great deal of power to my arsenal while still being useful.
It was something that would only be possible in the real world, not in the game.
To do this, I needed to learn the art of Spirit Sealing.
While Elementalism is usually about summoning spirits and making legitimate contracts, Spirit Sealing is a skill that is more about human ingenuity.
It uses a seal to forcibly borrow the power of a spirit.
You don’t need to have an affinity for spirits or any knowledge of necromancy to use this skill.
You don’t even need to interact with the spirits or have a conversation with them.
Such powers come with a price, and the same goes for Spirit Sealing.
You had to know the “true name” of the spirit you wanted to seal.
The true name of a spirit was not something that could be easily figured out like the true name of a dragon. Of course, I had played as an elementalist a few times, so I knew the true names of the higher level spirits.
The Spirit King’s whistle brings forth spirits with attributes tailored to the person who blows it.
I knew the four elements, and I knew the names of the higher spirits for the other elements.
The only ones I didn’t know were the light spirits associated with heroes and the dark spirits associated with demons.
I’m neither a hero nor a demon, so at least they’re not going to show up.
I don’t really care what kind of attributes I end up with since I was confident that I could make good use of them somehow.
It’s a one-sided deal, and the spirits won’t be happy about it, but they don’t have real names for nothing.
It’s a “trick,” but I figured it was a much better way for me, the possessed, to use the one-time item, the Spirit King’s Whistle.
It didn’t cost any skill points, and the process didn’t seem too difficult, which I thought was a plus.
Now, the only question was who would teach me how to do this rather nefarious and, from a spirit point of view, harmful skill called Spirit Sealing.
Sealing was supposed to be a rare skill.
The man who taught me this was a man who wasn’t even considered an elementalist among elementalists, and was treated like a freak or a fraud.
‘I don’t know what to say…I guess he was just a geek.’
Just as I’m about to grab my backpack and leave the room, Sierra asks.
[Where do you think you’re going today?]
She’s long since gotten used to me leaving the Academy and doing my own thing, so she doesn’t ask me what I’m doing today.
I smiled at her and replied.
“The gambling house.”
***
“He got it again!!!”
In a small gambling hall in the basement of a city, the room was abuzz with excitement as a blind man appeared out of nowhere.
The blind man was playing yabawi, a game of guessing which of three bowls contains marbles.
The blind man, who had a bandage over his eyes, could not see the bowl with the marble in it, but he could hear the sound of the marble hitting the bowl and guess the bowl with the marble in it.
When the blind man walked into the gambling hall, sat down in front of him, and pulled out a pouch full of money, the croupier thought he was going to have a good time today.
It didn’t matter to him how the blind man guessed the bowl of marbles but now, a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
This was the thirteenth time and out of the thirteen yabawis, the blind man had never been wrong.
It was unbelievable, even with the speed with which he could fool a sighted man with his eyes open.
‘Fuck… What am I going to tell the boss…?’
The giant fist of the man who owned the gambling house and was the head of the organization loomed large in front of the yabawi croupier eyes.
The windbag, a member of the same organization, kept trying to add wind, but the blind man paid no attention to the windbag and kept hitting the bowl of marbles without any wavering.
About the time the coin in front of him changed color to gold the organization that ran the gambling house also made a move.
Losing money is losing money, and the “hogus,” or customers who had to put their money down, were all huddled around the blind man, not even gambling, but watching this strange spectacle.
It was a headache for the gambling establishment.
-Bam!
Someone slapped the back of the head of the croupier sitting in front of the blind man.
“Ouch…”
Tears welled up in his eyes from the sudden pain and he looked back.
The person who slapped him on the back of the head was a balding, huge man who was the vice captain of the organization.
He was also a croupier but unlike his nimble hands, he had more nefarious tricks up his sleeve.
“Get out of the way, the boss wants to see you.”
At the sound of the gruff voice, the croupier scrambled out of the way, his mind racing and the vice captain sat down, and turned to the blind man.
“You don’t mind if I take over, do you? Your ears are in good shape, unlike your eyes… A fighter’s gotta fight a fighter.”
“I don’t mind…”
The smiling blind man trailed off as he replied nonchalantly.
He then thrust the money bag in front of him and all of his winnings forward.
“Oh, all in…!”
“Yikes!”
“I’ve got one, I’ve got one!”
As the blind man bet all his money, the onlookers gathered around him in awe.
“Huh…”
The vice captain muttered in disbelief, then quickly hid the marbles in one of the bowls.
‘Stupid asshole. Going all in against me without a care in the world?’
The bowls are quickly shuffled by his hand and the onlookers gasp at his skill.
“Oh, I missed it.”
“I don’t know about this one either…?”
“Right, right.”
At the same time, the windbag was diligently doing his job.
Finally, the vice captain’s hand stops.
“Now, choose.”
His confident voice continues, and the silence fills the room with the tension of the onlookers.
Will the blind man guess right this time?
“Hmph…”
The blind man drools and clenches his jaw.
He had just guessed the bowl with the marbles, but now he was having trouble.
This was not a good sign.
One of the bystanders clicked his tongue, saying, “There he goes, there he goes.”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“Pick one!”
The blind man finally spoke, encouraged by the windbag.
“…No. All three bowls…There are no marbles in them.”
The blind man’s last words stun the gambling house.
“None? What do you mean?”
“Are you saying he cheated? I thought he was being weird ever since he switched croupiers.”
“Bullshit. Are you afraid you’re going to miss?”
But the vice captain, who had been watching, was still smiling.
“Hey, now that you mention it. Can you take responsibility…”
That’s when the vice captain, taunting the blind man, reached around the bowl with an almost natural movement.
“…”
Suddenly, the blind man stretched out his arm and blocked the vice captain’s hand and in the next moment, the blind man overturns the three bowls with his remaining arm.
“…Nothing!”
“Nothing?”
“What!”
The marbles were nowhere to be found and the onlookers were stunned.
“The marbles are…Here.”
The blind man said and patted the hand of the vice captain he had blocked.
Instantly, the bead fell from his palm.
– Ping!
With a clear sound, the iron ball fell to the ground and the heads of the onlookers naturally followed the marble as it rolled on the ground.
Then, the vice captain shouted in frustration.
“Shut the fucking door!”
A gang member near the door slams it shut.
It was a very bad thing for a gambling establishment to be caught cheating. At least there shouldn’t be any witnesses.
“What!”
“What are you doing!”
“Are you guys crazy?!”
A few bystanders, unaware of their predicament, shouted but around them, the gang members rushed forward.
The vice captain, scratching his bald head, speaks up.
“It’s better to lose a few hoodlums than to lose the chief. Too bad we don’t have any women… Well, don’t kill the ones that look healthy. We need to sell them for black magic ingredients.”
As he spoke, the gang members drew their weapons from their holsters and the bystanders, finally realizing what was happening, scrambled to their feet.
Their occupations were varied, but none of them carried weapons since the gamblers had to leave their weapons near the door to gain access.
And by the time they got there, the gang members had drawn their weapons and were approaching.
“Wizards? Wizards?!”
A bystander, desperate to get out of the situation, grabbed a random mace in front of him and shouted.
“What’s the matter? I don’t want to die with you!”
With that, he breaks away from the crowd of onlookers and stands next to the vice captain. He was one of the gang members.
“Fuck… I can’t believe they’ve got a fucking smoker…”
A stunned bystander curses, but it doesn’t change the situation.
The vice captain chuckles at the insults of the lowly bystander. Only one of them, however, remains relaxed.
The blind man, who was the cause of the whole situation, sat in his seat with a smile on his face, unperturbed by the tense situation in front of him.
The windbag standing next to him whispers to the vice captain.
“But brother, why is he laughing…?”
“He’s not.”
He doesn’t realize that his life is in danger because he can’t see anything, that’s what the vice captain thinks.
“What the hell!”
Suddenly, a member of the organization standing guard at the door asked.
Soon after, something came from the doorway and rushed at the blind man at high speed but the blind man caught it with precision.
It was his sword.
Everyone in the gambling house was skeptical since it looked like the sword had levitated out of thin air and flung itself at the blind man.
They couldn’t see it, but there was an imperceptibly thin thread attached to his sword and the entire gambling hall was tinged with bewilderment as the unbelievable happened.
The smiling blind man stood up from his seat and drew his sword.
***
‘One minute it’s loud, the next it’s quiet.’
The old man in the dungeon below the gambling house ran a hand through his beard.
He was caught for using spirits to defraud gambling houses.
“Hmm?”
Suddenly, he sensed a movement as someone was coming down the stairs.
He tilted his head to look in the direction of the stairs. Then a man came all the way down the stairs.
It wasn’t the gang member he was used to seeing, the one who fed him filthy, tasteless scraps of food.
‘Blind?’
The man’s eyes were wrapped in pure white bandages.
“…Who are you?”
He could smell the scent of blood wafting from the blind man who turned his head in his direction and started speaking.
“This voice…does it belong to you, Mr. Magredo, the famous Elementalist?”
“…Yes, for now.”
Magredo replies in a shaky voice.
‘Famous enough for me to recognize me by my voice?’
…Famous in a bad way.
It had been a long time since anyone had called him an elementalist.
The blind man before Magredo smiles broadly.
“Thank goodness you’re still alive.”
“Well, they say there’s no use for an old man’s body but I figured there’d be a use for me since I’m an elementalist, so I want to live.”
Magredo had no idea who the blind man in front of him was, but he accepted without hesitation.
True to his word, the others in the cell disappeared one by one.
Most of them were innocent people who had been defrauded by the organization and were in debt.
…It might not be fair to say that they were innocent at the point of gambling.
Listening to their conversations, it sounded like the women were being used as puppets and sold to brothels, and the men were being sold to warlocks and blood mages.
‘If it weren’t for the Imperial Casino, I wouldn’t have had to come to such a dangerous place…’
Thus, Magredo was looking for a chance to escape his prison.
For some reason, he was currently unable to deal with spirits above intermediate level. He was, as they say, ‘weak’.
Then the blind man came.
From the commotion in the gambling hall and the thick scent of blood wafting from him Magredo knew he was a man full of unknowns but at least by the look of his kind smile…he was not an enemy.