Verl hadn’t seen the sun for days.
I’m gonna die.
Because he couldn’t synthesize vitamin D, his bones felt limp. This was why it was important to get so light.
Sure there may be a fluorescent lamp, but it didn’t solve the fundantal problem. Being in an elf’s body, this place felt harsh to Verl.
It was a space of about 66 m2 at most.
Not only was it not that wide, but the whole place was blocked off with tal bars. It looked like the shelters in those nuclear apocalypse movies he had watched as a child.
Living in such an eerie place for days drove a person insane. Even if it wasn’t quite claustrophobia, he could feel his quality of life decreasing in real ti. Rubbing his sunken eyes, Verl opened the can.
Why am I the only one filming an apocalypse movie in a fantasy RPG?
It was a clear genre shift. But now, he just accepted it.
Of course, being stuck in a place like this was better than dying. There was an old saying: better a live coward than a dead hero1.
Verl ate the P-rations2 that he had personally invented here at the Empire and went over the schedule.
It’s already the latter half of the First Act.
There were three parts to .
The First Act was Tilette Academy.
The Second Act was Iliad Academy.
The Third Act was the Showdown with the Demon King.
There was sothing like the Beastkin Academy as a DLC... but that story was a hundred years from now so it didn’t matter right this mont.
If the player felt like their life was being threatened, then that ant there weren’t many days left at Tilette Academy. Even Verl himself had to drop out after a sester. Though he was able to hide out in the basent of the Cultural Center courtesy of the chairman, of course.
Any other veteran player would’ve chosen to leave for elf country at this point. The reason why Verl was staying here instead was purely because of one girl.
“Aether....”
He couldn’t watch a fellow countryman be Corrupted.
Although she did flip out at tis.... And also seed to live rigidly based on contracts and such....
To Verl who had been fighting alone for over twenty years, she was a welco presence like rain in drought.
And so he stayed with the determination that he wouldn’t let her fall into the hands of the Demon Army.
He knew he was being stupidly sentintal. There wasn’t much he could do by staying here like this.
If only this had been ‘easy’ mode where the enemy AI turned retarded, he could’ve tried sothing, but at the highest level of difficulty with its unpredictable patterns, it was better to think that there was nothing he could do.
“It would’ve been good if I at least had a contracted Elental.......”
Verl smacked his lips regretfully.
Were the heavens just hating on him? And it was around then that he sensed an unknown killing intent.
“......!”
Sothing freakish was coming this way.
He didn’t have to think long. Those heels echoing in the far hallway belonged to Rosemary.
Because of the ga knowledge he had, Verl had expected this much. Rather, he had been wondering why she hadn’t co yet.
Verl hid in the cabinet that he had prepared beforehand. Like this room, the cabinet was made of iron so Rosemary’s Scope couldn’t detect it. It was also built inside so it couldn’t be distinguished from the wall. It was going to be difficult to spot with the naked eye.
One problem, however–
It’s so cramped....
Since it wasn’t originally ant to fit a person, he couldn’t move his arms freely.
Bang, bang, bang.
Crash─!!
Verl cald his trembling heart.
If he was discovered here, then it would be ga over. He had to stay alert and be dead silent. That was the only way he could survive right now.
“...... Found you.”
His heart nearly stopped.
Having ripped off the door with one hand, Rosemary looked around inside the room. She seed ready to kill any living thing in her sight.
“... Huh. There’s no one here”
Giggling like a child, Rosemary spun the violin string round and round.
“Is there really no one here? If there isn’t, I might get a bit upset.... I waited five hours out there.”
Rosemary sniffled in pretense and wiped at her eyes.
“The pretty Lady is crying. You still won’t co out?”
Rosemary’s monologue went on for over five minutes. Oh, how she talked.
If that had been an ordinary girl, all he would’ve thought was how cute her chattering was. But that was a monster, and the estimated difficulty of this ga was ‘extre’. That ant that the enemy could display unpredictable patterns at any ti.
Such as now.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
It seed like she would give up and leave but then suddenly began to cut out the wall with her staff.
Rosemary swung the violin string like so crazy bitch. The iron walls chipped away like they were being planed. It seed this was what she considered as playing.
The walls beca heated where they were sliced up cleanly like a paper cut with scissors. Verl watched the scene from inside the cabinet with his breath held. Soon after, Rosemary chopped at the place where he was.
The wire-like string whipped in and out between the cabinets repeatedly. He wanted to scream but bit down on his lip and held back.
Then he felt heat bloom on his left arm. Sothing hot dripped down the length of it.
Seriously, this fucking ga.......
Bang!
At the staff that whizzed past his right eye, Verl turned to stone. If it had been a bit lower, it would’ve taken out his ear.
“Wow, don’t fuck with , seriously.”
Verl scoffed at Rosemary’s grumbling. Shouldn’t he be saying that?
“He really isn’t here? Where the hell did the elf bastard go?”
She didn’t seem like she was going to give up even after hacking away for twenty minutes. Rosemary smoked another stick of mana grass and then summoned sothing that looked like a cara. She then restored the wrecked areas to their original state and started setting up the caras in the room’s blind spots.
This, too, was a pattern that had rarely shown up in the ga.
The installation took another three hours. When he roughly calculated the ti, it seed to be about 4 a.m.
“Haaaahm.”
Verl couldn’t fall asleep until Rosemary put away her staff while yawning. No, he couldn’t sleep even after she cleaned up the room and left.
If I go outside from now on, I’m going to be caught right away.
He didn’t know exactly what kind of cara it was, but it was an item set up by the formidable Rosemary. It definitely wasn’t going to be easy.
Clunk.
How much ti had passed?
Being in the basent, he lost track of ti. He didn’t know if it was currently morning, evening, dawn, or the middle of the night. When was it? Judging from the noise outside, it seed to be lunch ti.
As he nodded off in the cabinet that he was half-voluntarily, half-forcefully trapped in, soone unlocked the door and ca in.
“......!”
It was a welco face.
The girl looked around and pulled her staff from subspace, then proceeded to smash the caras placed in the blind spots one by one.
“You can co out now.”
The girl spoke after the sound of lenses breaking occurred six tis. Verl kicked the cabinet door open and tumbled forward, drenched in cold sweat.
Things had still been manageable sohow during the Black Death, but–
Now that he was being properly targeted by the Beasts, it was hell. At this rate, even having multiple lives wasn’t going to be enough. Verl looked at Aether as he panted.
“... How did you know to co here?”
“Rosemary was dozing off the whole class. I asked her what she was doing up late and she said she studied. It was such a ridiculous excuse so I naturally realized it was because of you.”
He was awed by her sharp perception.
“... Thanks. I would’ve died if it wasn’t for you.”
“You can save it. I don’t have ti right now.”
“Don’t have ti?”
“It’s lunch ti right now. I had the other kids occupy Rosemary and sneaked out. She won’t be able to use Scope at the mont so I have to get back quickly before she suspects.”
Aether casually said bye and left. Verl’s gaze could only stupidly follow that path.
“You knew this?”
There was no response.
All this ti, he dealt with the future using ga knowledge.
The first few years were good. Whenever he had predicted the future and saw the amazed faces of his childhood friends, he had felt like a prophet.
But as ti passed–
The more the Beasts began getting involved in the story–
The world went in a completely different direction than he knew. Even just now, he got into this ss because he couldn’t predict Rosemary installing those sureveillance caras.
But that girl was different.
No, that transmigrator was different.
Despite not having any knowledge of this world, she was responding fluidly to the Beasts’ movents. Of course her being a Golden-Eyed played a part as well.
That friend was a genius–not just in physics, her major, but she was also naturally talented in reading other people.
─ I never thought of you as a nice person.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t trust others easily...?
Verl mulled over the conversation he had with Aether yesterday.
He prepared for a predetermined future thinking that reality would be like the ga, and when that prediction missed the mark, he would panic and fail to do anything.
On the other hand, Aether realized from the beginning that this world was real and even if prediction differed from reality, she quickly adjusted her strategy and adapted to whatever situation.
Verl finally realized that he had never really thought properly until now.
I was trying to get by with just the knowledge.
He couldn’t beat this with that kind of mindset. With his current ntality, the Happy Ending was sothing far away.
Then he had to change it.
Aether will definitely go to Professor Cai-Lussac next. She said she’s going to miniaturize Flare, so it’d make sense to ask him for help.
He was going to build sothing new based on the existing knowledge instead of just using it.
This was probably the first ‘thought’ he had ever had since coming to this world.
Footnotes
1. Raw is '개똥밭에 굴러도 이승이 낫다' which ans even if you roll around in a field of shit, this world is better (than dying) so no matter how hard life is, it's still better to be alive2. Not an official military ration. May just be a letter chosen since it's phonetically far from the rest to show that it's fantasy/fictional just as the K in K-rations was chosen to distinguish itself from the other A, B, C-rations
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