Pelhart Square was packed with people.
"They say it's starting soon!"
"We'll be late, let's hurry."
Words drifted from all around. The footsteps of the people, their faces half-flushed with anticipation and excitement, were light.
"Oh, I can see it over there!"
"Thankfully, it doesn't look like it's started yet."
At the end of the square—that is, right in front of the rampart leading to the river and the cliff—stood the execution platform. The ceremony was just about to begin.
A priest reciting a long prayer, an executioner tending to a wickedly sharp sword, and even a mage standing by a short distance away.
For an execution held in a frontier city, it was put together quite properly.
No surprise there.
Those to be executed today were a notorious bandit gang that had driven the surrounding area into terror.
Rumors had even circulated that their ringleader hadn't stopped at mere pillaging, but had colluded with wicked sorts to plot a rebellion.
The execution ceremony began after the prayer ended. The very first to be dragged out was the ringleader of the prisoners.
A long scar and fierce eyes. The executioner approached the side of the prisoner, who had been forced to his knees.
And the moment he was about to swing his sword—
"Stupid bastards. You should've cut my head off right away."
At the same time as those ominous words, the boss's eyes glinted. A blue light began to rise from the ringleader's hands.
Even after weeks of imprisonment without proper meals, he seemed to have hidden his strength to the bitter end.
"...!"
"E-Eek!"
Several citizens nearby turned pale and stepped back.
Yet that lasted only a moment. As something failed to work properly, panic surfaced on the man's face, and at the same time—
SHHK—
The executioner's swiftly swung sword sliced right through the criminal ringleader's neck.
His body collapsed in a spray of blood. Relief returned to the faces of the spectators who had backed away in terror.
Even if they didn't know the exact details, the mage up front had clearly done something.
"Oooh...!"
Murmurs of admiration rose from here and there. The executions continued rapidly.
Realizing that resistance wouldn't work, the remaining prisoners were dragged out one by one, pleading or thrashing about.
Executions repeated over and over. A touch of boredom settled onto the faces of the spectators.
Yet the next moment—
"..."
At the exact same time an unnamed prisoner, just dragged out to the center of the execution platform, raised his head—
Rumble, rumble.
A sudden vibration began to shake the execution platform.
"...?"
"Wh-What is that?"
Voices burst out from all around.
Of course, the most flustered one of all was the mage.
"What on earth is this...!"
The spell installed on the execution platform absorbed the mana of the target connected to the restraints. It was an exceedingly expensive magic circle, but its effect was outstanding.
It had easily neutralized the scheme of the bandit ringleader who tried to pull a fast one just a moment ago, after all.
Right now, however, that entire expensive magic circle was shaking.
Cracks forming here and there, and a blue light slowly seeping out. It was a clear capacity overload.
Considering that it hadn't even filled one-tenth of its capacity after absorbing the mana of dozens of people, it was a situation that clearly defied common sense.
However, there was no time for him to take action. Overheated by an amount of mana that transcended the limit it could hold, the magic circle was already collapsing.
Glowing letters. Along with the slowly spreading cracks, an explosion finally burst forth.
KABOOM!
With a deafening roar, blue light erupted from the center of the execution platform and engulfed the surroundings.
"R-Run!"
"An attack, it's an attack!"
"Hurry and contact the guard...!"
Thick clouds of dust. Before long, the spectators were screaming and fleeing.
And in the meantime, in a spot where visibility was blocked and no one could see—
A single prisoner began running toward a gap in the rear rampart, which had crumbled in places from the aftermath of the explosion.
***
Perhaps because the explosion itself had been triggered by my own mana, I wasn't hurt anywhere.
Still, there was no time to hesitate.
There was no telling how long the halo of light and clouds of dust created by the magic circle's explosion would block the soldiers' view.
I scrambled to my feet and approached the rampart. Escaping over the cliff beyond the rampart was the single predetermined route from the start. In other words, a surefire option.
Casting aside the already tattered handcuffs and shackles that had bound my hands and feet, I walked up to the gap in the rampart split open by the explosion a moment ago.
And then the view of the cliff came into sight.
Far below, at a considerable depth, blue river water was surging.
"...!"
It looked identical to what I had seen through the screen. However, the strong wind, the fishy smell of water, and the aftermath of the explosion still lingering behind me brought a dizzying sense of reality.
"—!"
Right then, shouts rang out from behind. The soldiers, having barely snapped out of their panic, seemed to have started moving to grasp the situation.
I can't hesitate any longer.
Looking around, I picked up two or three stones that had broken off the rampart and were lying on the ground, then threw them down.
They fell for a few seconds before striking the surface of the river, kicking up white foam.
Then I drew in a breath.
A simple starting point that in the game progressed and was skipped with a single click of a mouse. Swallowing my fear along with the fresh air filling my lungs to the brim, I threw myself right over the cliff.
—!
With a whoosh, the noises behind the rampart vanished. In their place, I felt the muffled roar of the wind and a dizzying sensation of falling wrap around my body.
The Levain River rushed closer at tremendous speed. A short distance away, the foam I had created a moment ago was breaking white against the water.
And the next moment—
SPLASH—!
With an almost dull impact, the spring river water enveloped my body.
***
A month had passed since spring began with the Goddess's warm breath, but the water of the Levain River cutting across the western edge of the Kingdom of Antalic was quite cold.
"Ugh, they really aren't biting worth a damn."
A middle-aged man grumbled on an old ferryboat as he reeled in his fishing rod.
Two hours had already passed since he left the ferry dock, yet today's catch was decidedly poor.
"Should I try heading over that way?"
Further upstream, where the current was relatively weak, there would probably be a few more fish. Narrowing his eyes as he looked toward the upper reaches of the river, he soon began working the oar he had rested in the back.
Creaking all the while, the ferryboat began pushing forcefully ahead.
"Damn it. I can't afford to come up empty again today. Please let me hook a big one."
Whether the spirit of the river could hear the fisherman's quiet muttering aboard the boat was anyone's guess, but tossing a leftover piece of bread into the water as usual and praying for a big catch, the man moved toward the upper reaches of the Levain River.
And just as he was about to prepare to cast his net in a spot where the current was reasonably slow—
"...Huh?"
Something was visible atop the river water far in the distance.
Tilting his head, the fisherman narrowed his eyes and focused his gaze.
What gradually came into clear view was—
"A p-p-person!"
It was unmistakably a person. And one flailing atop the river water, at that.
"Hey! Hey!"
The fisherman immediately started rowing the boat. It was an instinctive call that needed no weighing of options.
Though the thought did flash through his mind that the damned spirit of the river had clearly only half-understood his prayer.
***
The river water was freezing cold.
Yet at the same time, I felt a sense of relief. Being able to feel that at all meant I had survived safely.
The upper reaches of the river, where the current wasn't very strong. The distance to the riverbank was still considerable, but thankfully, there was no need to clumsily swim all that way.
Because a single ferryboat off in the distance seemed to have spotted me.
Thud—
I barely climbed aboard the boat. The face of the man, who appeared to be an ordinary fisherman, was colored with bewilderment.
"A-Are you all right? How on earth did you end up here..."
The terrain around the upper reaches of the Levain River here had nothing at all nearby. It wasn't a place where someone would get stranded in the first place.
He didn't seem to imagine for a second that I had smashed through the rampart and jumped down from up above where the execution ceremony was taking place.
To keep the fisherman from harboring unnecessary suspicions, I changed the flow of the conversation by thanking him, then quickly organized my thoughts.
What came to mind first was, naturally, the infinite mana cheat.
There was no room for doubt.
The refreshing energy currently circulating inside my body—this energy I had never felt before was unmistakably mana.
A brisk, invigorating energy pulsing fiercely. Perhaps thanks to that, my bodily movements and judgment felt a bit faster and clearer, too.
'...Wait, is it really infinite?'
Half-dazed, I looked down at my chest.
It was easy enough to say in words, but infinite mana was a perk that far transcended common sense.
In fact, throughout all the dozens of times I had played the game, I had never once heard of a magic circle that absorbed a target's mana shattering from a capacity overload.
And while standing completely still without exercising any skill whatsoever, purely from the mana held within my body, at that.
Could even the Tower Masters of the Magic Tower who shook the heavens with their staffs, or Sword Masters who split the earth with a single sword—that tiny handful of powerhouses—pull something like that off?
No. If it came down purely to the sheer amount of mana, even monsters like that probably wouldn't come close to me.
Because infinity was, quite literally, a concept without end.
Even so, I kept my composure.
-Wait, who couldn't clear it with an infinite mana cheat?
└Then would you like to try it yourself?
Even without dwelling on the brief conversation I had before falling into this damned world, I could tell that things going forward wouldn't be all that easy.
I was a modern person who knew jack shit about theories of magic or swordsmanship. With no status window to speak of, there was no way I would suddenly master advanced knowledge like magic out of nowhere.
Going to the Magic Tower to learn magic theory or spell chanting alongside little kids wasn't a wise choice, either.
It didn't seem likely that I could properly master those obviously difficult theories.
I'd be lucky not to get captured and reduced to a test subject.
Nor was learning swordsmanship from scratch a particularly attractive option.
"..."
Basically, I had infinite bullets, but no gun to fire them with.
Still, there was a way.
Because infinite mana wasn't the only perk I had.
Information.
Vast amounts of data accumulated from repeating this game dozens, hundreds of times.
A weapon that would be of tremendous help to me, even if things weren't completely identical.
I quickly carried my thoughts forward.
Even without learning and training in complex theories or martial techniques, there were plenty of ways to utilize the mana inside my body.
Most intuitively, items or artifacts that consumed mana, and a bit more secretly, things like the runes hidden all across the continent.
Perhaps due to the influence of mana, the information came quickly to my refreshed head despite having just flailed my way out of the water.
Right here in the upper reaches of the Levain River, a simple rune was hidden. A relic belonging to the beginner grade, fitting for the game's starting area.
Underneath a rock shaped like a wolf's head, in a stone crevice below the surface of the water.
It wasn't an item with particularly difficult conditions to obtain.
All I needed was a boat and a boatman. Along with a fishing rod and a harpoon.
And those were all things sitting right in front of me now.
"Good grief. Just what on earth happened to you? For now, let's head straight to land. You need to dry yourself off first..."
Words slipped from the elderly fisherman's mouth. While I had been briefly lost in thought, he seemed to have regained his composure to some extent.
"Before that, by any chance."
Having made a quick decision, I turned toward the fisherman and continued.
"Would you be interested in reeling in a big catch?"