“By now, they should have met, right?”
It was about time for Soon-to-be-on-Leave and Claire to meet, so Hio, who briefly thought about it, scratched his head awkwardly.
“I should’ve written the letter in Korean, huh?”
Without much thought, he’d scribbled it in the continental language, but looking back, he realized it might be embarrassing for that guy if someone else read it.
Well, Hio was confident Claire wouldn’t open it anyway…
…They’ll handle it themselves. I should just worry about myself.”
He trudged up the mountain path.
Of course, it goes without saying that playing a game and actually moving your body in reality are completely different things.
In other words, even if he could guess the general location of the Last Mage’s Tomb, finding its exact spot was no easy task.
He’d been scouring the area for two days straight, but hadn’t found a single dungeon worth mentioning.
‘…Could someone else have already looted it?’
That thought seemed plausible.
After all, just as he’d stumbled upon it by chance in the game, others could have found it by accident too.
But that didn’t mean he could give up searching.
There were almost no dungeons where you could get two skillbooks at once.
‘And you could get them with barely any effort, too.’
It was just a shabby dungeon with a few Kobolds, and yet it had two skillbooks.
So it was a place he absolutely had to go.
Especially since, thanks to the ‘Violence is Forbidden!’ penalty, all his skills except Thunder Emperor had disappeared.
Thunder Emperor was a top-tier skill, and its mana consumption was extreme.
He needed to get another skill that used less mana.
‘That way, when I restore my Endurance, I can make it my own skill.’
Without skills, there was no point in recovering Endurance.
And buying skills with Fame Points was just way too expensive.
For now, every point he earned had to go into buying stats, so he couldn’t save up points for skillbooks.
“…I really have to find this dungeon, no matter what.”
So, the Last Mage’s Tomb was a dungeon he absolutely had to find.
As Hio muttered to himself, wandering through the mountains—
“Uwaaaah!”
—a rough voice rang out.
“You fiends! Today, I will finally end this cursed tie with you!”
Hio turned his gaze in that direction.
Between the sparse trees, he could see the silhouette of a person in the distance.
Curiosity piqued, Hio’s feet naturally moved toward it.
‘Someone… here?’
This was a mountain so deserted, people barely ever passed by.
The only nearby village was Delphir Village, where Hio had stayed.
There was no real reason for anyone to cross these mountains.
That’s why he’d thought the Last Mage’s Tomb would remain undiscovered.
‘Could the owner of that voice have found something?’
“Revenge for the Master!”
Hio quickened his pace, and soon the source of the voice came into view.
An elderly man with hair as white as snow.
A worn-out robe draped over his body.
His lifted arm was nothing but skin and bones.
But what shocked Hio was—
“Today, I will sever all the chains of evil right here!”
—it was because he possessed the ‘Genius of Mana Sensitivity’ trait.
To others, he might just look like a crazy old man, but to Hio, it was clear as day.
“Huoooo!”
As the old man waved his arms drunkenly, the flow of mana gathered around him.
It was the first time since coming to this world that Hio saw mana move in such an organized, patterned way.
“Burn, O flame! Give endless torment to these wicked ones!”
The precise movement of mana and the old man’s command over it was a sight shocking enough to leave Hio dumbfounded.
Soon, three geometric patterns appeared.
Hio, with his sensitivity, could feel those patterns distinctly.
They were something that shouldn’t exist in this world.
‘A magic circle…?’
At the same time, the old man’s movements stopped, and mana began to surge within the completed magic circles.
“Krooooh!”
Just what kind of incredible thing was about to come out?
The old man’s use of unfamiliar magic circles and mana filled Hio with anticipation, his mouth dry with tension as he watched the spell burst forth from the completed circles.
“Burn everything! Fire!”
Three tiny fireballs appeared, squirming about cutely.
‘Huh?’
If he had to compare, they were about the size of Claire’s fist…?
No, maybe even a bit smaller.
‘Maybe the size of Claire’s fist from five years ago.’
“Kuoooh! Go!”
But the old man’s fierce shout and expression were sincere, and only then did Hio get a good look at the enemy.
-322
A monster the size of a child with a dog’s head—a Kobold.
Not an Abyss Monster, just a basic, weak, low-tier monster.
‘Seriously… a Kobold?’
The enemy he treated like a mortal nemesis was just a Kobold.
Of course, to an ordinary person, a Kobold was a monster you should always run from if you met one, but the old man didn’t look like an ordinary person, which made the whole scene feel empty.
While Hio thought this, the three adorable fireballs created by the old man flew at the Kobold, which growled and dodged the flames.
“As expected! You’re no pushover!”
The old man shouted, swinging his arms again.
With his movement, mana formed patterns, and the patterns became circles.
Even seeing it again, it was a marvelous, mysterious sight.
But this time, the Kobold didn’t just wait.
Krrrrrr!
With a dog-like growl, the Kobold charged at the old man.
Its weapon was a battered wooden club, but that would be more than enough to take the life of a frail old man.
“You coward!”
The old man thrust both hands toward the charging Kobold.
But the magic circle was incomplete.
Hurriedly drawn, it was even rougher than before.
Still, magic burst forth from it.
“Fire!”
Even though the magic circle was unfinished, the spell activated, creating an even smaller flame that shot toward the Kobold.
Maybe it was just luck.
The Kobold, charging blindly, didn’t have time to dodge and took a direct hit from the spell, its body catching fire.
“Ahahaha! See that? This is the magic of the Pavlenko Family!”
The old man burst out laughing at the whining Kobold.
And then—
“Guagh!”
—He was immediately punched and sent flying by the Kobold.
The tiny fireball wasn’t hot enough to kill the Kobold.
“Damn… Cough! Coward…!”
A trickle of blood ran from the old man’s mouth as he was knocked down by a single punch.
“Ugh, how unjust… Revenge for the Master is right before my eyes…”
Hit just once by the Kobold, the old man lay sprawled, making no attempt to get up.
‘Is he… a bit out of it?’
Even a low-tier monster was still a monster.
There’s no way it would die from a fire that wouldn’t even burn a person.
‘But maybe the old man had thought it would, because even with the Kobold right in front of him, he let his guard down, laughed, and got knocked out.’
‘What is this…’
He didn’t know what was going on, but he couldn’t just watch someone die to a monster right before his eyes.
The Kobold, rolling on the ground to put out the fire, looked ready to charge the old man again, so Hio let out a sigh and got up.
The old man, repeating how unjust it was while lying on the ground, and Hio, moving toward him.
The Kobold noticed Hio and started to keep its guard up.
‘I stepped in, but… what now?’
Taking care of a single Kobold was easy enough.
Using Thunder Emperor in front of others was a bit iffy, but with only a dying old man as a witness, it shouldn’t matter much.
Thunder Emperor was already exempt from the penalty, so using violence wouldn’t make him lose any more skills.
However…
‘Kobolds are territory monsters.’
There was only one in front of him, but if things got noisy, more would swarm in.
And Hio’s mana was only 11 now.
If the fight dragged on even close to a minute, he’d run out of mana and the battle would be over.
…Running is the answer after all.
Thankfully, the Kobold was wary of him.
It kept its distance, growling low.
If a Kobold was acting territorial, that meant as long as he left its territory, he’d be fine.
Besides, it was wounded.
Hio looked at the Kobold as he slowly hoisted the old man onto his back.
The man was so skinny, he barely had any weight.
“Ugh… So unjust…”
Whether he was delirious or not, the old man just kept repeating himself as Hio mumbled, “Old man, where’s your house?”
“Revenge for the Master… right before my eyes…”
“Where’s your house?”
“Just keep going that way…”
***
After roughly getting the direction, Hio counted in his head.
“…Now!”
Without looking back, he dashed off in the direction the old man had pointed.
A single Kobold
Stared in disbelief at the old man fighting for his life, but Hio himself was in no condition to fight, either.
“Damn it!”
[Hidden Trait: Violence is Forbidden! (Endurance: 8 / 1000)]
All that was left at the scene were Hio’s curse and a confused Kobold.
“…Seriously, I can’t believe it.”
Unless you were completely oblivious, it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.
The Last Mage’s Tomb Hio was searching for had to be somewhere nearby.
Then, a strange old man had appeared, using skills in a way Hio had never seen before.
No matter what other word he thought of, the only thing that came to mind was ‘mage.’
And after following the old man’s directions, he arrived at—
“The Last Mage’s Tomb.”
It was the very dungeon Hio had been searching for.
The entrance to the cave was cleverly hidden, making it hard to find.
In the game, it had been overrun by a group of Kobolds, but now, it looked surprisingly clean, almost like someone lived there.
The moment he entered, the place became cozy, as if by magic.
He laid the old man down on the bed and looked around.
‘It’s all coming back to me.’
The Last Mage’s Tomb was a fairly large dungeon.
It looked like a house now, but that was just a magical illusion—really, it was a wide and deep cave.
‘It went down to the third basement floor.’
The skillbooks Hio wanted could be found right here on the first floor, no need to go underground.
But no matter how he looked, he couldn’t see anything that looked like a skillbook.
And the stairs to the basement, which should have been wide open, were blocked.
Maybe it was because he’d saved the mage who was supposed to die, messing with the original setup.
‘To get the skillbooks… I’ll probably have to wait a bit.’
For now, he’d have to wait for this mage to recover and find out what was going on.
“First, let’s take care of this old man.”
‘Did he even eat properly?’ The house didn’t seem to have any food.
No wonder a single punch from a Kobold left him half out of his mind.
“There shouldn’t be any monsters nearby… Let’s go look for some food.”
If a frail old man could live here, there probably weren’t any monsters.
Once the old man came to, Hio planned to feed him, earn a bit of goodwill, and then ask about the skillbooks.
All he needed was the skillbooks.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I think you just set up a flag for yourself