Chapter 13
- Student's Duty (3) -
The plot of -Final Manuscript- was still in the beginning. The Door of Mnemosyne should still be sealed. They had guzzled alcohol for days and days around there, but they hadn't seen even a trace of its opening.
The Amphitheatre was a dungeon that one could only enter through the Door of Mnemosyne. Was it the author's intention to present the protagonist with a skill he had no way of acquiring yet, but one he was supposed to in the future?
There was no way. He didn't think the writer who had been tenacious enough to remake the same manuscript nine times would want this kind of abrupt development.
'Rather, this feels more like an error.'
An information window came up in Kleio's mind.
[-In -Albion Kingdom's Prince-Final Manuscript-, portions of the paragraphs before the amendment are mixed in randomly.]
'That Stigma is the result of the last version of the manuscript mixing with the final manuscript!'
In the manuscript, Arthur had gone through numerous battles. But if the manuscript gets mixed up again, what if the mid-rank swordsman Arthur came face to face with a strong enemy that he should meet later? What if, instead of a Stigma, a fatal injury appeared instead? He couldn't assume that it would always be lucky like it was this time.
'What happens to this world if the protagonist dies?'
The manuscript that he had touched with 'Editor's Authority' was so tattered that it wasn't possible to write on it anymore. It was to the point that a hole would tear in it from just touching a pen to it.
'If a situation that even the author can't do anything about happens, wouldn't that be the end?'
Kleio was now somebody involved inside the manuscript. There wasn't a single clue as to how he could get out. He didn't want to even imagine the possibility of the world inside the manuscript collapsing in the middle of all this.
'Wealth or the army wouldn't be what's important at that point. That can't happen.'
When a reply didn't come back, Arthur grabbed Kleio's shoulder and shook him as if he were a little angry.
"You're pretty awful. You're not opening your mouth even after coming this far, even though you hung out with me well enough when I was Leo. Do you seriously dislike that I'm Arthur Riognan that much?"
"That's not-."
Arthur stretched his right hand out to the side, and a dark inky light burst out of his hand. Promise, scattering gold light, informed him of a new fact.
[-Arthur Riognan is using the Foregrounding skill.]
[-Remaining Time / Time Limit:
00:00:39/00:00:40]
He couldn't even blink before the background changed to a space that didn't even have shadows. The place where Arthur and Kleio were facing each other was the center of a stage. Kleio could see a collapsing stone column behind Arthur, as well as a semicircle of seats stacked up high when he blankly turned around. Even though he had read it in the manuscript, it took some time to match the text to the actuality unfolding before him as vivid reality.
'...It really is Foregrounding. This Amphitheater...'
Still gripping Kleio's shoulder with his left hand, Arthur examined Kleio's face with cold and unfamiliar eyes. Arthur's ability to read others had developed rapidly, having to suffer multiple murderous intents and deceptions from the adults around him. It was a talent he had trained in order not to die. He read what he wanted from Kleio's expression.
"You know where this is, huh."
Kleio, who had abruptly come to his senses, hurriedly shook off Arthur's arm.
"...No, I don't know. Let go."
"Don't lie. You look like you know more about this Foregrounding skill than even I do."
"You've misunderstood."
"Why are you acting so defensively? I'm not trying to blame you. Rather, should I be thankful? This skill seemed pretty useful."
Arthur smiled as he let go of Kleio's shoulder.
[-Remaining Time / Time Limit:
00:00:01/00:00:40]
[-The skill is canceled due to the expiration of the time limit.]
The two people instantly returned to the dusty storage. Outside, an unknown bird chirped peacefully. It didn't take long for the Stigma to fade from the back of Arthur's hand, and the first one to break the newfound silence was Arthur.
"I was sick and tired to the point of going crazy, of staying still, to do something like staying alive. If that older brother of mine started something again, I wanted to use that as an excuse to overturn things."
This part was completely different from the past manuscript's Arthur. He seemed like a surly child instead of a prince overflowing with charisma.
'Wasn't posing as a hooligan part of his plan for the future? Wasn't he supposed to lie low until he gathered all his colleagues?!'
"Why are you telling me this? You don't think I'm going to snitch, are you?"
"Well, if you go to my older brothers and give them a hint, 'Arthur is not actually a wastrel who plays around, he's scheming,' then that seems like that would be fun in its own way."
He was still smiling, so his words were even scarier. Arthur was pressuring Kleio with a vigor that you wouldn't think belonged to a seventeen-year-old. It was a threatening spirit that he had never felt before in his life.
"I despise being pushed around by others, you know, whoever they may be. I've been trying to survive... I had to survive, so I played stupid. But I can't hold back anymore. I want to do what I want, even if things go wrong for me when I do."
"Alright, if that's your choice, then I'll cheer you on. And stop paying attention to me."
"How could you do something like this and tell me to stop paying attention? Lei, if it were you, wouldn't you wonder why you received a Stigma?"
Kleio held his forehead. The way Arthur spoke had changed, so he had wondered if his personality had changed a bit, but what he talked about was the same. Rather, it was to the point that he wondered how Arthur had hidden that temper of his during school in the past manuscript. The personal item that he couldn't take off, the amazing Promise's 「Memory」 immediately found a similar sentence from the manuscript for him. It was the part where he had declared that he wouldn't fall prey to his brothers' persecution.
'I will not have my will be destroyed by anyone else. Whether they are a god or a demon, they cannot intervene. I will only depend and act on my own will.'
Wasn't he a strong-willed protagonist, an imbecile who didn't listen to the others who hung around him? Characters sometimes gained an independent life, despite being the author's creations, and they broke free of the author's intentions.
'Even if the author tried to grab onto this jerk, they wouldn't be able to strike him with lightning or let a flood loose to drown him right away, considering plausibility. Fictional worlds are more powerfully bound by cause and effect, compared to reality.'
Rather than in real history, incredible things happened straight out of the blue. Things that would bring about a hundred hate comments saying that there's no plausibility if they had happened in a serial novel.
'Ah, I don't know. I didn't do Korean literature; I made history. Why is it a novel of all things?! You should've sent me to mainstream Joseon instead! Things that already happened! How great is history.'
Submit to the right publishing company. It was to the point that he should begin a campaign about it.
'To think I trusted something like an author just because they listened to me once in the beginning - something must've been wrong with my head.'
Just like how there were no bad dogs in the world, there were no good authors in the world. Kleio was in the middle of escaping reality, but Arthur had no intention of overlooking this guy who was ignoring him despite being right in his face.
"If you have no intention of telling me, then there's no helping it. I'll stick to you so much you'll get sick of it until you think of telling me."
"I don't have anything to tell you, so what do you want me to do?!"
What could he tell him? Should he tell him he is a character inside a manuscript? But what if this boy changed because of that? What would happen if he disturbed an existence deeply involved with the world's composition? What if this guy who even the author couldn't put a leash on ran wild? Would the already tattered manuscript be able to endure that commotion? He had absolutely no confidence that he could take responsibility for that; revising this manuscript was outside of his capabilities.
"It's not that you don't have anything to say — it's that you're not planning on telling me. The two are different. Let's slowly find out what kind of situation it is from now on."
Arthur gave him a mischievous smile as Promise's golden words followed.
[-The user's level of narrative intervention is continuously increasing.]
"Absolutely no way. Get lost, son of a bitch."
"Why are you calling my mom a bitch, hm? We're going to see each other every day from now on, but you're sure acting prickly. We definitely can't clean this within two weeks; we'll probably have to keep on coming here even after the break."
'Ahhhhhh.'
Having let out a scream only in his mind, Kleio gripped his head like he was shrieking. It was now for certain that if he got involved with Arthur, and the more he got involved, the higher his level of narrative intervention rose!
'So what if my abilities increase?! It's a burden! If this author gives me power, they'll definitely put me in some incident where I'll have to use it!'
Coming this far, Promise was feeling more like a leash than a blessing, one that was dragging him limply to the center of the story.
***
He studied until late at night, then woke up every morning to run around the school before exhaustingly cleaning the library storage with Arthur after his daily tasks. He asked about his new skill every single day without growing sick of it, and if that didn't turn out the way he wanted, he carried out his examination. If Kleio ignored him, he bothered him about that too, and if Kleio replied, he had a lot of say. It was really tiring.
'It's a relief that Arthur doesn't stick close to me in the classroom at least - if I had to see that guy all day, my blood pressure would rocket up to a point I wouldn't be able to take.'
One week went by in an instant. The Magic Basics lecture room's atmosphere, when last week's results were being announced, was gloomy.
"There was no middle in this test's results. The gap between the faithful students and the non-faithful ones is too big. Tsk, tsk."
Zebedee swished his robe as he started to call out the students' grades, starting from the lowest.
"I'll start off with the ones who submitted a blank page. Group 1's Arthur Riognan and Nebo Yarbi, the two of you need to take supplementary lessons."
That went as expected as both boys feigned indifference.
"You can't disregard magic formulas just because you're going to become swordsmen! Even if you can't open a Circle, if you handwrite magic formulas and then imbue ether into it, you can use techniques like [Heating] or [Dryness] that can be helpful in field combat. After it saves your life later in the future, you'll be grateful for this day."
"Ohhh, it's violence, violence."
"Won't you shut your mouth, Arthur?"
"You're too much."
Arthur was only a hindrance when he came to class. When the professor's exchange ended, the grades continued to be called out. Most of the results were Group 1's swordsmen kids getting one right, and Group 2's mage kids getting around 3~4 because the questions from 『Magic Encyclopedia』 were landmines.
"Then, I'll name those who got full points in the swordsman group. Seven questions, Celeste Tanpet de Neju."
Kleio, who had been tired from Behemoth's Spartan private lessons every day, perked his ears up.
'What? Cel? She's also in my year?'
The heroine who would found Albion's Public Strike Force, Cel, would become one of Arthur's major combat forces in the future. In the past manuscript, she was definitely a character he had met after graduation, but what happened?
"Eight questions. Lipi Angellium and Letisha Angellium. Nine questions for Isiel Kision. Somehow, Group 1's swordsmen have learned magic formulas better this year! If I had known it would be like this, I would've allocated extra points! Tsk!"
'Lipi and Letisha?!'
Kleio, who hadn't had any interest in his fellow students until now, hurriedly looked around the lecture room. Lipi and Letisha were there in the front row, twins with fine, almost shining, dark hair tied up adorably. Lipi had an ivy leaf hair ornament on the right side of her hair so she could be distinguished from Letisha. The girls, who were pouting like they were regretting missed two unrelated to their score, were talking with each other, so their side profiles could be seen.
They were clearly visible to Kleio, who was sitting behind them. Both had golden olive eyes with a slightly slanted shape, looking incredibly cute. Lipi and Letisha were four years younger than Arthur. They should be in the same lecture room as him. Either they had been admitted early, or their ages had been changed. The Angellium twins, who used twin swords, had a strength comparable to four people when they joined forces. Those girls would also become part of Arthur's main combat forces in the future.
'Combined together, they were called the 'Royal Bodyguards.' Isn't this totally a school of big shots? Considering all the military commanders of one country are from the same school class, not to mention being classmates with the prince.'
He didn't know how involved they were with the prince right now, but it was apparent that the final manuscript was trying to give Arthur wings faster. It felt ominous.
'It means that the possibility of the war being pushed earlier is high.'
Kleio didn't listen to Zebedee because he fitted the information he had suddenly gained together.
"Kleio Asel? Are you not listening to me?
"I'm sorry?"
"The only one who answered all ten magic formulas correctly is you, Kleio Asel."