Chapter 122 – Star Fall(5)

Someone once said the world looks different based on what your heart is set on.

‘Aahhh, Coach Anzai, you were so right. It’s so nice to give up…’

I let go of everything. Not just rage-quitting but a true let-go. The situation has to be at a level I can control to at least have the thought of doing something, but what can a measly Professor Park do when it’s a god we’re up against?

‘Yeah. I think I was too caught up in the hero role. I thought that I needed to know and do everything in order for things to work out. Let’s go back to the start. Back when I was worried that my feet would get blisters by taking one wrong step. I’m a noob! A noob that couldn’t dare figure out the almighty mute’s legendary plan! Eheheheh!’

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– takealook : this kid’s eyes look deadd

– Jokass : Imagine that was you. Let’s be honest, what the f— did prof do wrong in this seed? It’s a miracle in the first place that he managed to drag the trash character soybar made for laughs all the way here. Look at his stream rank. He’s in 5th place, 5th. He’s right under Goldman, that filthy rich old man, with a free randomized Realistic Mode character. I do joke that it’s time for him to go, but I can’t anymore. What use is hard work when seed luck is more than 99 percent of the game. Motherf—ing trash game.

– Noru_is_druig : Can’t read more than three lines. TL;DR?

– Jokass : Feel too bad for him to enjoy his pain anymore. / His stream rank proves his efforts. / Motherf—ing trash game

– Noru_is_druig : thx

– korekorekorekore : maybe the devs did this on purpose? maybe they went like ‘oh shoot, this guy might actually make it to the next world’ and used the admin permissions to f— the game. y’know like how the game gets messed up to balance the character if they add too many options on the character.

– Numb3rtree : This. The Gedroits Company coords for game clear was an empty promise. They didn’t have the intention to let anyone clear it in the first place.

– Highwaynachoman : Look at it on the bright side. prof should have made a good haul from streaming, and the reason why he’s a ranker right now is because he’s opened up a completely new route that none of the other rankers knew. prof’s play on this world will probably be a good stepping stone for new type rankers like Wabbit Pwincess or Emperor Qianliu to make a new, clean World 3 clear seed. I’d say this wasn’t a complete loss.

– Undam_undam : ‘good stepping stone’ LMAOOOOOO he a stepping stone now

– professor : i’m not dead yet you asshats

– Nutriagena : damn, the corpse is talking

– Jokass : you’re already in the waiting line to the graveyard, that’s basically as good as dead.

======

‘Mmm. These guys are getting on my nerves, pretending to be all nice and empathetic.’

Of course, that didn’t mean that he completely gave up. He was just going to narrow down his wide field of view. There was a sort of pressure on him to work things out well in the game because of Hyde, but now that things were getting out of hand, it just felt like it didn’t matter what happened anymore. That honestly lifted a big load off his shoulders. And helped him figure out exactly what he needed to do now.

“Hey bal… Ahem! Priest Dimanus? I saw that you could see Bishop Senadis through the communication magic back there, so can they also see this side?”

“Yes… That is the case…”

Okay, good. It’s a two-way video call, then.

“Then contact her one more time. It won’t take long. There’s just something I want to show her.”

“Mmmm… There isn’t much holy power left, but if it’s only for a moment…”

“Ottman, sir? The far-sight magic one more time, please. The same place as yesterday.”

“Alright.”

Shortly after, the light shone out of the relic once again, and Senadis appeared with a slightly irritated expression.

“Brother Dimanus, you should be aware of the situation at the capitol. I believe I told you to return right away after delivering the news to the warrior…”

“I-it’s not like that, Reverend, ma’am…!”

She must have been pretty busy, as she glared our way while sorting through several different documents. I quickly budged in because it looked like she would hang up at any moment.

“Wait a moment! Bishop Senadis, do you see this?”

“This voice… Warrior Professor. What do you exactly mean by this…?”

The sharp thorn in Senadis’s voice melted away the moment I showed the screen of the Far-Sight magic ball to the light.

“This is…”

“Let’s make some things clear first. The first mission we received—can you revoke that one? The one to assassinate the Queen. I really do appreciate that you consider me so highly, but, you know, all I have is this one relic, and I don’t think that’s going to be enough to fight an entire evil god and all…”

“Well… of course. I am afraid that your current capacity is indeed inadequate to reach the Queen.”

Professor nodded his head in enthusiastic agreement. The only thing warrior-like about our group was our name. The actual ‘warriors’ are monsters compared to us. I’d feel a little guilty being set on the same level as guys who can flatten a mountain in a single swing.

Senadis looked incredibly surprised as she looked at the Chamber Maid through the water lens.

“Goodness… That’s already all the way here?”

Huh, what? I was preparing to lay out a whole explanation for her.

“You… know what that is?”

“Only a few know, even amongst the church… It’s an entity that has been starting to show up in kingdoms close to the northern region. The mages have given it a temporary name as ‘Maid’, but from the considerable number of mutes that appeared with it, we are suspecting that it’s a sort of commander role within the mutes. From what you are saying, I assume you know about this entity?”

He could hear the silent ‘How did you know that?’ at the end of the sentence.

“Ah, yeah. Well. You know. My special relationship with the Queen and all.”

When I responded while tapping on my head, Senadis nodded her head with understanding.

“Isaac Mandalius’s Test Subject. You must have learned through the mute’s connection with the Queen. I knew you were too valuable to throw away like that.”

‘Phew! This is really convenient!’

The setting in which I was connected with the mutes was because of the mage’s experiments. I was pretty heavily discriminated against because of it, but thanks to that, it was incredibly easy to deliver the information I learned in real life to the NPCs.

=====

‘You… How did you know that? Not even the researchers in the mage towers know that!’

‘Huh?’

‘You! You must be the spy of the enemy!’

‘He’s the evil god’s puppet!’

‘Heretic! Heretic! Heretic!’

‘Kill him! Burn him! Rip him to shreds! The light will turn you to ashes!’

=====

The church and royals were already on high alert because of the Insomnia Crabs, so they would have chopped me right away.

But because I already set up the ‘infected by mutes but regained a human conscience as a special case’ story, I could always use the ‘my infected body heard it! The Queen spoke to me!’ as an excuse.

“The mute that you call a ‘Maid’ is a production factory to create mutes in places other than the nest.”

So, that meant he could give them all of this valuable information without any problem.

“By production factory, you mean…”

“You could consider it an inferior version of the Queen. It can’t extract the traits of the organism it consumed, but it’s able to create mutes based on the information sent to them by the Queen. If you just leave that be, this place will be filled to the brim with low-rank mutes in under a month.”

“Oh, my lightness gracious…”

Watching Senadis unconsciously tighten her grip around her necklace, Professor continued speaking.

“So because of those reasons, I want to kill that first before I go. Please cancel the return order.”

That was the reason why he used communication and Far-Sight magic in order to explain this to Senadis. It’s to the point where Kingsland, where the Light’s Order’s main headquarters are located, is at risk, so if he went on his own and rejected the return order, he could be dragged away to the cells under some weird crime like ‘foul intentions’ even after all was well and done. It’s a win for the church to have more people taken off the reward list. It’s similar to how you report your status in the military. Just leaving is basically like deserting your position.

“…Very well.”

Finally, permission came out of the bishop’s mouth.

“Considering the graveness of the situation and importance of the enemy target, the individual activity of Warrior Professor’s group is allowed and will be reported officially to the church. Brother Dimanus, I will also revoke your return order. Please assist the Warrior on his path.”

Oh! Freedom and an extra priest.

Just then, another priest appeared on the light screen and quickly whispered something in Senadis’s ear, then left.

“It seems we’ve gone through all of the necessary matters, so let us end the conversation here. The warrior group from the Adventurer’s Temple arrived outside, so I must go out and greet them. Latura, Ro Haram.”

“You must be pretty busy. Alright then. Latura.”

Whoosh!

Even before he finished his greeting, the relic dimmed, and Senadis’s image disappeared.

He finished reporting and figured out the overall situation now.

That completed all of the information and arrangements he needed in order to start moving. Now, the only thing left to do was actually put it into action and restrict the factors.

Clap!

Professor loudly clasped his hands together and collected the attention of his stunned comrades.

“Now then! We’re through all of the complicated stuff and rested enough, so let’s start moving! Our party goes this way! And the soldiers returning to Kingsland will go that way!”

“Uh… Professor? I am not completely aware of the situation, but what is this and that way?”

Professor responded with a bright smile to Aldrich’s question.

“Well, of course, this way is towards Pelas, which is crawling with mutes, and that way is towards Kingsland, where you’ll need to fight a mute army that’s apparently eight times bigger than the entire Rodrick army!”

His answer made the faces of both teams turn ash gray.

Zzg, gz. Zzzgk—

On top of the dirt ground next to the campfire. The six members gathered together in a small circle and looked down at the map of Pelas that Professor had drawn with a stick.

“Let’s keep it simple. Bait and bleed.”

“Attract their attention and use that chance to assassinate the target… It’s the classic of the classics.”

“It’s honestly the secret part of target assassination that’s hard. If you’re already prepared to get discovered, there’s nothing really that complicated about it.”

After roughly sorting through the situation and sending off the soldiers, who had begged him to reconsider and return to Kingsland with them, to the capital after a good nap, Professor then led the rest of the group up to the hill and started to explain their operation.

“First, let’s split the roles. The bleed, we need someone to be the actual assassin…”

Professor looked around at the others.

Level 5 Water Mage. Versatile. No stamina. Old.

Dark Mage, Soulbinder. Unknown.

Hero Unit, Troll. Sturdy. Ambush impossible. Good tenacity. Starting to learn something recently with the dark mage.

Werewolf. Fast. Strong. Agile. Quick, bouncy, yet quiet movements.

Priest. Walking radio. Boomer.

‘I don’t even need to think about it.’

Turn!

“Borka, you’re up.”

In the first place, moving while maintaining stealth took an incredible amount of stamina. Just from that, the older three were removed. Obviously, removing Notum, who was the polar opposite definition of ambush. And although I do have my fair share of experience in ambushes, Borka was the perfect match with his superior instincts and senses for infiltration.

“The two mages… I know what Mage Ottman can do as a similar water mage, but what can you do, Mister Aldrich?”

“Ahem… The strength of a soulbinder usually retains its true value when hidden within its own mysteriousness.”

“Are you going to say that in the Light’s Order’s underground dungeon, too?”

“Large-scale enchanting magic, weakening, pain curses… If I am on the assassination side, I can weaken the senses of the enemies so they do not notice us, and on the bait side, I can cause confusion or anger using illusion magic and make them fight amongst each other.”

Oh. He’s more useful than I thought. I thought he wouldn’t be able to use his abilities on anything other than the undead, but he wasn’t just a funeral assistant, after all.

“You have more similarities to normal dark magic than expected.”

“I said that we are the originals! Those guys who puppeteer corpses are the knockoffs!”

“Mmm… Speaking of the original, there are quite a few spells that are useful for direct battle in dark magic too, right? Like cursed flames, poison swamps, or summoned dead insects. Then shouldn’t soulbinders have some sort of main magic ability like that too?”

“…I really cannot tell you that.”

“Ahem… I can hear the church bells ringing…”

“I really cannot! Not only does it have certain criteria to use, but there will be a counteraction the moment I speak of it!”

“Tch, fine. Then Mister Aldrich can also go to support…”

On his system window, Professor wrote down, ‘Aldrich, definitely has something strong hidden away. Can participate in direct combat.’

“Notum…”

“Gwruh?”

“…Can go with Mister Aldrich.”

Her tenacity was similar to mine. Honestly, out of all of the units here, Notum was definitely the most useless one for this operation. It’s only her intelligence that’s overly high compared to her species, but everything else was similar to an average troll. Considering that she had the title of a Hero Unit, she was a little too useless, but recently she started to show signs of development.

“Grwuh. Ghost oldie. Look at this.”

“Hm? Ohhh! Notum! Yes, that is it! You have subjugated a wandering soul! I did not even teach you about creating contracts yet!”

“Wuurh? Subjugate… subordinate? No. Just followed when talked to it. Gwuhuhuh, soul is cute. Small aggressive soul.”

“Yes, yes! You can start with weak, harmless souls like small birds or mice…”

“Grwuh? This is soul of orc that was ripped into five pieces. Spraying black smoke and trying to bite.”

“Ahhhh! H-hand that over! That’s a ghoul! Hurry!”

“Grugh. Ghost oldie. Got bald because you like free stuff. Pay for the good stuff.”

After the battle with the dark mage, she started to stick around Aldrich all day, asking him about this and that, and she was already at this level.

‘I was wrong. Just because of her innate strength, I thought she would be a fighter-type Hero Unit, but that’s just because she was a troll. Her real ability was something else!’

Pling—!

When he had been watching Notum play around with small souls that were dancing around her fingers, a familiar, nice notification sound rang for the first time in a while. He turned off almost all of the system alarms in order to concentrate on the game, but looking at how it still appeared, it must be a pretty darn important notification.

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– Soygaybar : Damn she was lv9 intel

– Jokass : That’s the first thing you say after dipping for that long? Thought you died.

– Soygaybar : Did a couple times.

– Jokass : cap

– Speedwagon : Don’t think it’s cap. He’s a Dome guy. Probably went through hell.

– Noru_is_druig : Ah, right. You’re living in the Dome. Did you see Gyosu? Is he really living with a mutant on his arm?

– Numb3rtree : I heard he got a real big parade on his way out of the Dome, did you see him then?

– Soygaybar : I, I….. I don’t know anything! I don’t even know who Gyosu Park is!

– Speedwagon : The embargo must be pretty darn high if even that nutcase is keeping quiet. Looks like the Dome’s on a high alert too.

– Soygaybar : L, Let’s talk about the game, yeah, the game! They’re a intel. 9 and has a special ability! Wow! Hero Unit! So kewl!

– Noru_is_druig : ……He really must have gone through a lot. He’s an idiot now.

– Nutriagena : But isn’t 9 intel really high? Aren’t the 5 Great Judges all the way over in the free trade zone super west of the blueline an average intelligence of 8?

– Jokass : But they’re actually a 6 because of the race penalty. Although a 6 is still on par with the average tactician of a country.

=====

Opening up the window I shoved into a corner of the screen, I saw a waterfall of messages pour out of the chatroom along with Notum’s new information.

=====

– professor : Anyone know what a soul guider is?

– Jokass : it’s a type of sorcery

– professor : not you

– Noru_is_druig : they guide souls

– professor : you wanna get kicked?

– Speedwagon : Guider of Souls. Appears in Sorcerer or Prophet classes from the Eastern Great Desert, or very rarely within Dark Mage classes, but mostly a main Sorcerer class trait from sorcers that come from the Southern Great Forest. If Mages take up about 2.5 percent of all jobs, Sorcerers are close to 0.25 percent. Not much data available because all of the Players with the class died. For now, it’s been confirmed that the Troll Head Sorcerer from World 2 was a Lv.5 Guider of Souls.

– professor : I am always indebted to you Speedwagon sir. The location of the BDSM shelter has been officially released, so if you stop by anytime, we will do our best to welcome you.

– Speedwagon : ……

– Speedwagon : DM for business. Aight for now.

=====

“Oh, are they really coming?”

It was just a means to say thank you, but that wasn’t a bad reaction. I’ll need to contact them once I’m out.

Anyway, Notum is a definite Sorcerer now. Not to mention an incredibly rare troll sorcerer.

‘If the Head Sorcerer was Level 5, then just how strong is Notum? And she isn’t just a little smarter than normal, either. Thinking about it, didn’t she just learn a completely different race’s language just by listening to it? That’s like learning how to speak like a dog just by listening to it bark for a few years!’

Notum was playing with the blueish-black souls that were floating around her. Even people who don’t know what a Soulbinder is could tell that this isn’t just a normal talent.

‘This is just six days’ worth of progress after the battle with the dark mage. She’s not deadweight—she’s a treasure chest!’

“Alright? You stay right next to Mister Aldrich, okay?”

“Grwuh. Big small human. Was never bad listening to you. Will obey.”

Honestly, he would have rather kept here somewhere safe, but that could cause a chance for all sorts of bad traits like [Loneliness], [Discriminated], [Timid], [Refuses to Fight] to be obtained. The only thing he could do was keep her close and watch her progress.

Note : Notum. Normal fighter. Max potential Sorcerer. Support assassin group with Aldrich.

“Now then, that’s everything! While Mage Ottman and I turn the attention of the enemy, Mister Aldrich and Notum will support Borka and chop off the ‘Maid’s’ head! Any questions?”

Rustle!

The moment he finished, Ottman raised his hand.

“There is one thing I do not understand… I will be in a safe location as a support, but how are you going to take on the attacks of the enemies, Professor?”

“Uh… I was just gonna go be their punching bag.”

Professor snickered as he saw Ottman’s expression darken. This old man must be thinking that I’m risking my life over here.

“Just trust me and follow. I don’t plan on dying either. Honestly, I’m not confident that I can win against that massive army, but I can at least stay alive and keep them at bay… even if it’s several times that number.”

“But how?”

“Heheheheh. You’re a mage. Try to think of how.”

Looking at Ottman’s face turned twice as dark as before, Professor tapped on his head.

It is a mystery whether the bloodlust mode can withstand the power of high-ranking mutes over Rank 3… but if the plan I have works, then there won’t be a unit with higher sustainability than me in World 3, at least when it comes to mutes.