Chapter 7
It had been a week since I moved down to the first floor.
During that time, things had been peaceful enough that I wondered if this really matched the game I remembered.
No zombies had broken in from outside, and the worries about food had lessened.
If my calculations were right, this situation would continue for the next few days.
Even so, I could not afford to relax.
I checked outside the window.
In just a few days, the number of zombies wandering near the dormitory had increased.
I could have laughed it off as my imagination, but because I knew the flow of the game, I could not.
This plague of an incident did not take place only inside the academy.
It spread across the entire country, swelling like rot.
“I hope things hold out until the knight order arrives.”
I stepped away from the window and headed toward the makeshift cafeteria where the meal was about to start.
Today’s cooking duty belonged to Tania.
Not that it meant much. All she did was warm up the rice porridge we always ate.
“I am sick of this. I am so sick of it. Are there seriously no other foods? Even if we cannot eat meat, should we not at least have some fish or flour or something!”
The moment I stepped into the cafeteria, Gavinu started to complain.
Tania glared at him fiercely, still holding the bowl of rice porridge she had ladled out.
“If you want other side dishes, you can go outside and get them yourself.”
“You want me to go scout around out there where those monsters are crawling all over the place? You are basically telling me to go die.”
“If you don't like that, sit still and eat what you are given. If you whine one more time, I'll cut your portion in half.”
“Damn it, I get it, just give it here. If I don't eat that, my stomach is going to cave in.”
Their back and forth had become as natural as a comedy routine.
Tania set aside the authority of the name Rainwood.
She had done so with my permission.
Now that my position as leader had become firm, closeness mattered as much as trust.
But Talleon and Gavinu were a year older than she was, yet she did not use honorifics with them.
-I already gave up the power I had. Just for that, they should already be grateful.
That seemed to be the root of it, tied to her pride.
Her demure, polite attitude only went as far as people she acknowledged.
Her true nature was stubborn, and she was strong willed enough to be called a wild girl.
“Ah, welcome.”
As soon as Tania noticed I had come in, she tidied her hair and behaved primly.
Gavinu clicked his tongue, looking dumbfounded.
“We must not forget to feel grateful, even for a simple bowl of porridge. Someone out there is risking their life to walk around outside so we can have that one bowl.”
“…I am sorry. I guess I could not hold back my appetite any longer.”
“If that is how you feel, I get it. To be honest, I also want to eat something different like crazy. But what can we do? The only grain we have is rice.”
It sounded reasonable enough, but if I didn’t have the trait [Patience], I probably would have exploded long ago.
I missed the instant noodles I used to eat every day just to fill my stomach.
That had only been ten days ago.
Now, that life felt so distant it might as well have been a dream.
[Cool] urged me to drop the sentimentality and fill my empty stomach.
“Talleon, are you not going to eat?”
In the past week, Talleon’s face had become almost unrecognizably gaunt.
I almost doubted that this was the same boy who once tried to threaten me.
“I don't have an appetite.”
“Force yourself to swallow anyway. If you don't, a moment will come when you need strength and cannot use it.”
“…What do you think about what I mentioned before?”
“You mean how you want to kill the monster upstairs?”
“Yes.”
It had been a few days earlier, at dawn.
While we were resting, Talleon came to me and said he wanted to head upstairs.
The reason was easy to understand.
His eyes burned with the desire for revenge.
I had heard that the zombie that injured his friend was on the second floor.
At the time, he had been in too much of a panic and focused on getting his friend to safety, so he left the monster where it was.
Now the boy wanted to take it down with his own hands.
“That monster is probably still there, just like you think. But just give it up.”
“Please give me a reason I can accept.”
“I mean I cannot send you upstairs, where there will be at least ten of those things, when you struggled with a single one.”
“That was because he was my friend, so I could not kill him!”
Talleon suddenly jumped to his feet.
His breathing grew so rough I could hear it clearly.
“What did I say about how we talk?”
He wilted like a child who had just been scolded.
I had told the three of them to follow a few rules while we stayed on the first floor.
One of those rules was not to raise their voices.
“I am sorry. I just… want to comfort the spirits of my dead friends.”
I wore a bitter expression.
He was nothing like me, whose inner core belonged to a thirty year old man and who had the help of personality traits.
He was only sixteen.
It was an age where you lived by your emotions rather than making rational judgments.
“I understand how you feel, but this is not something you decide on your own. How you use your life is your choice, but you are not the only one who suffers from the consequences.”
“Yeah, calm down for now, Talleon.”
When Gavinu stepped in, Talleon could not keep arguing.
He sat back down, folded his arms on the table, and buried his face in them.
I sank into thought.
His mind grew weaker by the day and he had become a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment.
Maybe it would be better to let him go, just like he wanted.
An incident you knew was coming was much safer than a disaster that exploded out of nowhere.
No, that’s not right.
Talleon was not an important character in the story.
I was certain that even without him, my plan would not fall apart.
But he saw me as his leader, and he was waiting desperately for my orders to be given.
I did not want to abandon him.
I could not send a sixteen year old boy into a deathtrap just for my convenience.
“I can tell what you think of your friendship with your friends. You are angry because you could not protect it, and now that they are gone, revenge is the only thing on your mind. It is not strange that your vision narrows like that. But revenge is not the only way to prove your friendship. Staying alive might be even more valuable than that.”
I did not expect a few words to turn the boy’s heart around.
I only hoped it would help him sort out his thoughts, even a little.
“Gavinu, keep a close eye on Talleon. If you notice even the smallest sign, let me know.”
“I will do that.”
Someone close to him needed to watch over him.
If I monitored him myself, it would only act as an accelerant that provoked his emotions.
After that precarious breakfast, I returned to my room.
It was time to open my status window.
[Name: Joshua Pallarion]
[Fifth Year (18) - Novice]
[Potential Abilities - Ancestral Heritage (Holy) / Master of Acquisition / Speed Reading]
[Personality Traits - (Steady Nerves) (Cool) (Clever) (Patience) (Loner) (Nocturnal)]
[Acquired Traits - Leadership (Low), Eloquence (Low)]
[Coins Owned - 0]
[Originality LV1 - Holy Magic]
[Stamina: 15]
[Strength: 10]
[Agility: 10]
[Mana: 160]
[Holy Power: (1,500)]
THE Survival’s growth system was no different from any other RPG.
Experience gained through play accumulated in the status.
Because of that, high risk, high return style builds were possible.
“This is not bad.”
It felt like I had found a small hope in this pathetic body.
In the early stages, there was a lot of physical work.
The strength to swing a bat to protect my body depended on my Strength stat, and the ability to run away depended on Stamina stat.
If I could sacrifice Mana to raise those two stats, I honestly wanted to do it.
Looks like I picked up Leadership and Eloquence too.
I moved my gaze to the traits.
The acquired traits were ones I had gained while surviving with the other three.
Leadership helped inspire trust when leading a group, and Eloquence was useful for building favorability through conversation.
They were both useful traits, but they also made me feel the weight of responsibility.
Those two traits were proof that I had a positive influence on others.
In other words, the three survivors trusted me.
What a hassle.
The back of my neck felt stiff.
It felt like the burden was pressing down on me.
At the very least, I did not want any of them to die before they left my hands.
I reached for the calendar on the desk to review my plan.
The knight order would arrive in about a week, or two weeks at the latest.
Instead of overdoing things during that time, it was more important to fully adapt to Joshua’s body.
I also decided to target the personal storage lockers and break room on the first floor that were still locked.
“I guess it’s time to study again.”
With that thought, I decided to go stand in front of the locked rooms.
The corridor was still dark and gloomy.
Ash gray clouds filled the sky, blocking the light that should have reached the ground.
I could not remember the last time I had seen clear, blazing sunshine.
If this dreary weather continued, people would crumble easily.
“Ugh! Why did he have to make it so complicated. He braided the spell formulas into a triple layer. Even for security, this is too much. At this rate, no one but the caster can open this. Femir, you perverted professor.”
Someone had beat me there.
Tania grumbled as she mentioned the professor who had set the spell formula.
She was so focused that she did not notice my presence even when I came quite close.
“You have to work through it step by step. You are skipping too many steps.”
“Eek!”
She yelped and landed on her backside.
She pressed a hand to her chest, then quickly got back to her feet.
“Ah, this is, you see. It is not that I was planning to hog what is inside. I just got curious because you were working so hard. I-I wanted to help.”
She really must have been flustered.
She fidgeted and tried to explain everything she had done.
I listened to her with a smile.
“For someone with no bad intentions, you seemed a little too into it. Are you sure you were not plotting anything?”
“I’m being honest. What can I do to make you believe me?”
“Calm down. I was just joking.”
I already knew she was interested in the spell formula on the door.
At first, she simply watched from a distance.
With her body pressed against the wall and her eyes shining, she looked like a curious kitten.
Eventually, unable to contain her curiosity, she started analyzing the formula herself whenever I left the spot.
I had not stopped her.
With no female friends here, she did not have many ways to relieve her stress after all.
“I will step aside now.”
“There is no need. You came here first. I cannot just cut in front of a guest like that. That would be rude.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I know my limits. This triple layered formula is so hard that I have not properly unraveled even a single strand.”
“Looking at you, I can see what it means when people say being too smart can backfire.”
“Huh?”
I stepped closer to the formula.
When I tapped it with my hand, a blue light flared.
A circle formed from condensed mana appeared.
Inside the circle was a star, and around that star spun characters known as runes.
“When you interpret a spell formula, the most important thing is the sequence. Like you said, this one is triple layered, and in terms of steps, it is a three step formula. A three step formula uses twenty seven rune characters, so it must feel overwhelming when you try to decide where to start.”
In a spell, a step was like an operation.
There were rules here, just like the rules numbers followed in our world.
You solved the contents of the parentheses first, then exponents, then multiplication and division.
Magic worked the same way.
If you followed the right order and worked through the calculations, you eventually reached the correct answer.
However, there was no established formula for how to solve them.
I had redefined that system myself, using the knowledge I had and [Clever].
I hated math, but at least what I had learned was not completely useless.
I thought of the elderly teacher who had taught math back in high school.
He had been very strict, and if you dozed off during class, he would take a stick to you without mercy.
He yelled a lot, saying he was going to correct our bad habits.
A laugh escaped me.
I had never imagined I would feel grateful to him one day.
“First, if you take this inverted triangle and the cross here, like this…”
I only pointed out where Tania should start.
That alone would not be enough to reach the final answer, but I hoped it would reignite her passion.
However, her reaction was different from what I expected.
Her eyes looked as if she were staring at some distant view she could never reach.
“You managed to interpret the whole thing, right?”
Her voice held both expectation and fear.
I frowned slightly.
“Yeah.”
“This is triple layered! This is so difficult that only a handful of graduates can solve it.”
“Keep your voice down. You are getting too excited.”
“But… this really is shocking. A fifth year student solving one of the academy’s highest level written exam problems. Why have you been hiding your skills this whole time?”
“I did not hide anything. The old me actually was hopeless.”
Even after I said that, she could not erase the ideal image she had built of me.
I felt like going insane.
It was not a bad thing for me if Tania rated me highly, but everything was best in moderation.
When the knight order arrived, I did not want to get pushed around by misunderstandings.
“It is hard to believe. If there is some reason, you can tell me.”
“Let us just cut it there.”
“…Fine. But you will not be able to hide that ability forever.”
Tania snorted.
I sort of found myself missing the days when we had been awkward with each other.
“By the way, if you already interpreted the formula, how come you couldn’t open it?”
“Because the mana needed to interpret it and the mana needed to unlock it completely are different. To open it all the way, I need to be in perfect condition.”
“If I unlock the first layer, does that lessen your burden?”
“It probably will.”
Tania stepped forward.
Following what I had shown her, she manipulated the steps of the spell formula.
Thud, with the sound of gears meshing, the first guard released.
Watching that, I thought again that named characters really were different.
This girl had a talent for magic.
“Senior, I think you can become a professor someday. Your explanations are so easy to understand.”
The remaining double lock was my job.
I placed my hand on the blue magic circle.
[Clever] interpreted it five seconds faster than it had the last time.
It felt like it wanted to show off to the girl beside me.
Tania stared at me with an expression that said she found this unbelievable.
“Now you are just teasing me on purpose, right?”
“…This really was not on purpose.”