41. The Genuine-Article Appraiser

At its root, magic in this world follows a precise law of equivalent exchange. You draw in the mana from the air, refine it into the circuits inside your body, store it up, and spend it when you need to manifest a spell. So the most MP a person’s circuits can hold is the absolute yardstick of their worth as a mage.

When I first possessed Arden’s body, I’d felt disappointment and hope in equal measure.

What if this is one of those cheat characters — HP of 1, but a ridiculous, off-the-charts MP pool?

That hope was soon smashed to pieces. The curses caked thick all over him meant this body couldn’t sense mana at all, and you’d have better luck pouring water into a jar with its bottom shattered out. It was, in every sense, a flat-broke pauper of a body.

Yet I’d still been able to use skills down in the underground training ground, and the reason was simple.

While I’d been sparring, Eve had started organizing my skills her own way.

“You put this together yourself?”

There was a fair amount of her own commentary mixed in, but it was definitely easy to read.

It’s like a friendly newbie guide.

With an Eve like this around, I never got bored.

I told her to go ahead. There was real fun in reading a skill book with her two cents folded into it.

I’m lonely.

Because right now, I was completely alone. Something had gone wrong, and Eve wasn’t at my side. Still, if I had to name one thing to be thankful for…

It was that the skill system she’d built was still running normally.

So every time the cooldown on [Phantom Manifestation] came back around, I went into Lillian’s nightmares. I’d turn the young Lillian’s tragedy into a happy ending and come back out —

— and spend the rest of the time tidying up the swordsmanship I’d been drilling into myself.

Why did they do it that way?

For the first time, I was trying to actually understand the ancestors’ swordsmanship that had been beaten so brainlessly into my body.

I stayed up through countless days like that, until I finally shut the door on the last nightmare.

Roughly two years and more had gone by, which worried me, but —

Time out there and time in here must run differently.

This was a space with no physical laws, so that was what I chose to believe.

I flailed around in the empty air and looked about, but nothing changed.

What am I supposed to do?

For the first time since possessing this world, I had no idea of the answer.

Huh?

And then, in the middle of all that, there it was: a single crude old iron door I’d never seen before.

No Admittance — Authorized Personnel Only

The words looked like they’d been scrawled on the iron in red lacquer.

It’s human nature to want something more the moment you’re told not to, and tell someone not to go in and they’ll squeeze through come hell or high water.

In a game, a “No Entry” sign means there’s a hidden piece stashed right here.

So without a second’s hesitation, I walked up to the door and turned the handle.

— Creeeeak.

What it opened on was nothing I’d expected. The place was utterly ordinary, but with an ordinariness that could never, ever exist in another world, because stretching out before my eyes was an office, the kind you could find anywhere in South Korea.

Is this some anime or webtoon company?

Posters of grotesque monsters were plastered thick across the walls, and on the desks stood rows of figures and dolls with faces I felt I’d seen somewhere before. I was browsing the figures and merch when I stopped dead in my tracks.

A coldly smiling Seraphina, a greatsword-wielding Valerian, a sneering Lucius. The three of them were striking poses on top of the desk like merchandise.

Why are these guys here?

Doubt and confusion were still churning through my head when I sensed someone there.

— Clack, clack, clk.

The keyboard sounds were rough.

Type like that and it won’t last long.

Maybe it was because I’d been a gamer at heart, but the first thing I worried about was the keyboard. Worrying about it, I made my way toward the only place giving off any sound.

There, buried beneath an enormous dual-monitor setup, I could see the back of a single person hammering at a keyboard at insane speed. They were so absorbed that I waited instead of calling out.

It pisses people off when someone talks to them at a time like that.

Today of all days, my old gamer-era sensibilities were running hot. A hopeless gaming nerd, through and through.

Anyway, I waited until the rapid-fire keystrokes ended.

“Phew.”

That deep, satisfied-sounding breath was my chance, so I spoke up.

“Excuse me?”

The chair spun around with a whirl.

Platinum-blond hair, slivers of starlight held inside coldly gleaming sapphire eyes, features I felt I’d seen a great many times. Familiar.

“Ah.”

The instant I saw that familiar face, I froze. How could I possibly fail to recognize it? It was the custom character I’d agonized over for days on end.

“Eve!”

I’d shouted before I even knew it, and at that, the person looked up and our eyes met.

“Did you go to a salon or something? Your hair got a lot shorter.”

Hm. Short-haired Eve looked extremely good too. Well, given who’d made the custom char, of course the base model couldn’t be anything but gorgeous.

Anyway, I spoke with a glad heart.

“What have you been doing in a place like this!?”

Sure, the appearance was a little different, and there were questions about how she’d gotten so far away from me, but —

As long as she’s safe, that’s enough.

That one fact alone planted some relief in a corner of my chest.

“What? How did you get in here?”

But the moment I heard the voice, I realized it. The guy in front of me was not Eve. He wore Eve’s shell, but what was inside was something else entirely. It was a man’s voice, playful, yet somehow unsettling.

“What’s this? How is Arden still alive?”

The guy wearing Eve’s face ran his gaze up and down me, then said, “Huh? The Abyssal Curse is gone?”

Having checked my condition, he raked a hand irritably through his hair and spoke in a peeved tone.

“I don’t know what the hell happened, but you’re disgustingly hard to kill, I’ll give you that.”

No matter how I looked at it, the man in front of me did not register as a benign being. I kept my hand on the scabbard so I could respond at any moment, and said, “Who are you?”

But instead of answering, the guy went on muttering to himself.

“If you’re gonna deal with something, deal with it properly. I’m busy as hell over here, and you always make me do the job twice.”

He turned back around and resumed pounding the keyboard.

— Thud, thud, thud.

At that, the teddy bear sitting on his desk swelled up grotesquely.

Not exactly cute.

The bear soon pulled an angry face and bared its claws and talons.

“Hah, deal with it and then I gotta write up another report. Am I the only one who works around here!?”

The guy seemed to have already lost all interest in me, and just slammed his fists on the desk over and over in a rage. It was so absurd that I meant to finish off the bear quickly and then have it out with him, but —

— KABOOM!

When I turned to look behind me, the other dolls I’d seen earlier had swelled up too and were closing in to surround me. I drew my sword before they could lunge first.

Slash, don’t stab.

In a fight against numbers, getting your blade stuck would be a catastrophe. So I aimed to cut the throat, the part that was relatively thinnest, but —

These things have intelligence.

Reading my intent, the dolls came charging with one hand guarding their own throats. I had no other choice, so I cut the opposite arm instead. Cotton fluff burst out in a spray, and from between the tufts, attacks poured in from every side.

Rather than block them, I chose to dodge. Like guerrilla warfare, I darted this way and that across the desktop, striking as I went, and the dolls climbed up onto the desk to chase me, and —

“Hey! That’s expensive!”

— a stray attack sank into a monitor and shattered the screen, or —

“That’s a limited edition! Those are impossible to find!”

— I crushed a limited-edition mouse underfoot, and when I kicked the keyboard, the keys scattered off like kernels stripped from a corncob.

“This is the keyboard’s revenge!”

To stop any more victims from piling up, I used a doll’s belly as a springboard, kicked it off the desk, and then —

“And this is the mouse’s revenge!”

— one by one, I sliced through their necks.

Cotton fluff drifted into the air in the wake of every cut.

Looks like white magnolia petals scattering.

Bit by bit the office filled with it, until it was thick enough to obstruct my vision, but —

Foul weather is fair to everyone.

— I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t see.

Once I’d confirmed that the dolls’ movements had gone sluggish, I bored straight into the middle of them. Even the ones still alive had already lost one arm apiece, so I spun a full circle and cut all their throats at once.

“Hoo.”

I blew the fluff stuck to my blade off with my breath. A single tuft, carried away on it, fluttered gently along and settled softly onto the keyboard the guy was tapping. When I saw his hands stop at the sight, I said, “You really suck at this. You thought you’d stop me with crappy dolls like these?”

The guy stared blankly at the fluff resting on his keyboard, then flicked it away in irritation. And he slowly turned his head to glare at me, with eyes exactly like Eve’s, but so cold and unpleasant they made my skin crawl.

Presently, a satisfying answer came back.

“…Son of a b—”
“So you can finally hear me?”

But the guy turned his head back to the desk and —

Clack, clk! — no, not like that. Like a deranged pianist slamming down on the keys, a frenzied bdbdbdbdbd! of pounding filled the office.

The acrylic stands propped up in a corner of the desk began to give off an eerie light.

Valerian, hefting his heavy greatsword.

Seraphina, radiating an icy aura.

And Lucius, smiling balefully.

Their eyes were dead and clouded, but the menace coming off them was enough to trick me into thinking they were the real thing.

“Go tear him apart!!”

The instant the guy screamed it, Valerian came rushing in with his greatsword hoisted high.

— KWAANG!

With a thunderous roar, the desk split clean in half, and right on its heels, Seraphina’s ice sword went for my neck.

— Clang!

I’d crossed blades with Seraphina before, so I managed to fend it off somehow. The problem was that this wasn’t a one-on-one duel. While I was tied up with her, Lucius fired a poison needle from the side, and behind me Valerian’s greatsword came charging in.

A dead end in every direction.

First I planted my feet and heaved a monitor up.

— Fwababat!

The poison needles buried themselves in it. Then I clambered onto a wheeled chair beside the desk.

— Drrrrr!

Skidding along, I just barely dodged the linked assault of greatsword and ice sword. Then, when Valerian, the relatively closer of the two, lunged first —

“You should’ve all come at once.”

— I dodged his greatsword and whammed a kick into his belly.

— KWAKWANG!

Thrown off balance, Valerian went backward-rolling off the desk, and before he could get up, I quickly cut his neck.

Down a frontline fighter, the remaining two exchanged a glance.

“Cowardly, but smart.”

Seraphina shifted her stance too, hurling ice spears in a ranged assault.

— Clang!

My thin sword had a hard time blocking the two of them at range, so —

“Mind if I borrow this?”

— I blocked their attacks with the ownerless greatsword.

Ice spears and poison needles rained down. I parried only the attacks I couldn’t avoid and kept my focus on evasion as much as possible.

A drawn-out offensive puts me at a disadvantage.

I had a limit called stamina and they didn’t, so if things went on like this, I’d obviously be the only one to tire out.

That’s it.

I’d confirmed that a stray ice spear had frozen the area around it with its cold.

“Over here, you fake!”

Dodging Seraphina’s ice spears, I closed in on Lucius as much as I could, and he nimbly fled this way and that, scattering poison needles. And so, when we’d played one good round of tag across the office —

“Where are you gonna run now?”

— the whole office had frozen over like an ice rink.

Comically, Lucius was dangling upside down from the air conditioner. I grabbed some random keyboard from a nearby desk and hurled it at him with all my strength.

— Whack!

Lucius batted it away with his hand and dropped, but in that gap I was already gliding in on a chair, arriving right in front of him.

“You’ve got no respect for keyboards, you little bastard.”

I grabbed Lucius by the collar and slammed him straight into the floor.

— Crash!

The moment he smashed into it, he shattered into pieces.

Now all that remained was the fake Seraphina.

— Shu-shu-shk!

Her ice spears flew in, aiming for my back. Just like with Lucius, my own movement was restricted, so I had no choice but to parry.

— Klang!

If I moved carelessly and slipped, the spear would clearly bury itself in my body. I couldn’t find a clever method, so I focused on parrying too.

Now.

The real Seraphina would have rained down a near-infinite barrage of ice spears, but —

— the fake Seraphina couldn’t.

The instant I confirmed that her mana had run completely dry, I hurled the greatsword at her. She hastily gathered mana and knocked it aside, but the greatsword wasn’t the only thing I’d thrown.

My own sword, thrown a beat later, sank into the fake Seraphina’s forehead.

“Let’s not use knockoffs.”