◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
──────
Collector of Windfalls
The proctor's voice rang out, hollow and flat.
《...... Exam over. Winner: Viktor.》
Silence fell over the arena in an instant.
The crack of flames died. Even the thick heat had gone still. Two shadows drifted across the empty floor.
A red-haired girl, crumpled without strength.
And before her, a jester standing perfectly at ease.
"Heh."The mask laughed, low and soft.
Something sticky in the sound, half contempt. Like snapping the nose of someone who had held it too high for far too long.
"Ugh, ngh..."
Shariel looked up at him.
Her hair soaked through with sweat, her twin tails wrecked and straggling, the whole state of her only deepening the sorry picture.
"......"
The crowd watched.
The collapse of a bluster scorched and shattered and driven right to the edge.
-Don't tell me Shariel actually lost?
-Why are you stating the obvious.
The ones tossing those words around had gone quiet.
And so the entire crowd lost its voice.
Even in the wide silence, though, the boy's presence remained loud.
Eyes converged.
Simple as anything.
The strong, above.
The weak, below.
"Ugh, hah..."
Shariel's breath came in trembles.
The situation itself was a nightmare closing in on her. The sharp arrogance she had carried, broken. Her image, nothing now but something pitiful to look at. A trauma buried deep in her chest churned and writhed.
-Wait... she actually lost? Class C's top seat lost to some Class E nobody?
-Is this real? Not one rank lower. Two.
-And Viktor? Didn't they say his overall stats were all E-grade?
-I can't believe this. How do you even lose like that?
Sound.
Sound that needled into Shariel's ears.
-Viktor, was it? He's actually Class E? Looked pretty sharp to me...
-No, hell, but Class C's top seat losing to a Class E kid, is that even real?
-What does it matter? She couldn't do a thing. Got completely dismantled.
-She never landed a single attack. Couldn't put a scratch on him.
-A balloon... pfft, all that magic she was so proud of, and she couldn't even pop a balloon.
Mockery.
Being its target now, she sat beneath those pointed stares.
The sticky whispering kept squeezing the air from her lungs. Like kneeling before the gallows.
"Hah, hah..."
I... lost?
Shariel herself could barely believe it. Closer to say she didn't want to.
'This can't be right.'
A hollow breath slipped out. Color drained from her face.
'This isn't how it's supposed to go.'
The prodigy of fire sorcery.
Top seat of Class C at Grandia Academy.
The genius of House Labriell.
'This can't...'
Everything she had held pride in was splintering. Her composure shattered like glass. Her gaze wandered, unmoored, with nowhere left to land.
In the middle of all that, footsteps.
"Lady Shariel?"
A smiling mask.
That grotesque grin looked down at her.
The jester. The boy who had neutralized her magic with nothing but a balloon. Pushed to her limit, Shariel couldn't hold up against the pressure he gave off.
"Hii..."
Thump.
Her body flinched without permission. Wanting to get away from him, maybe. Her hips, still slumped on the floor, dragged themselves backward.
"D-don't come closer..."
"My, why the reaction? You look as though you've seen something frightening."
He stepped forward without stopping, drinking in her reaction.
"Don't come... I don't, I don't want this..."
Already pinned under the weight of her own trauma, she was cornered. The fear was inevitable. The ominous air pouring off the jester. The crushing sense of everything being stripped away, something about to burst open from the inside.
"I haven't done anything yet."
The mask.
The mask smiled.
'Oh.'
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
S
i
n
c
e
w
h
e
n
h
a
s
i
t
b
e
e
n
s
m
i
l
i
n
g
"Lady Labriell."
Rrrip.
The mouth of the mask split open all the way to the ceiling, a pitch-black maw yawning endlessly wide.
Darkness swallowed her vision.
A bottomless pit without light.
Spread across it, a sea of festering ooze.
And writhing through it, without bodies, thousands upon thousands of tentacles.
"......"
The girl couldn't scream.
From a height she couldn't fathom, something looked down at her. Eyes. Among the mountain ranges of twisted tentacles, one enormous eye, stretched wide open. Its surface alone was enough to swallow the entire ooze sea and still have room to spare.
"......"
She forgot to breathe.
If she made even the faintest sound, that thing would move. She was certain of it.
Her lungs burned, starved of air.
Even that pain was nothing against the terror.
In that silence, thick and absolute.
. -. -..
It spoke.
-.. --- -. .----. - . ...- . .-. -.-. --- -- . -... .- -.-. -.- .... . .-. .
A language she couldn't understand.
But just meeting its gaze felt like every circuit in her brain burning out at once.
-.. --- -. .---'. - - .-. ..- ... - - .... . -.-. .-.. --- .-- -.
Her vision blacked out.
Consciousness, falling away.
T
h
e
g
i
r
l
could not
come back
to her
senses.
'Hm. Maybe that was too much.'
Viktor looked down at Shariel sprawled across the floor.
Foam at the corners of her mouth, completely out. He had only meant to put a scare into her. The intensity had gotten away from him.
He stood there scratching his head as the proctors came rushing over to check on her.
'Well, she'll just be unconscious. Nothing more...'
He let his gaze drift sideways.
Right at the edge of his line of sight: the students in the waiting area. Class C and Class E cadets alike, all staring over at him.
Eyes that had completely checked out.
The reaction of people hit with genuine shock.
"......"
The triumphant entrance of a glorious winner.
The jester raised two fingers in a V.
"So then."
A ritual no gamer could resist.
"Anyone else here have a problem with my errand boys?"
Taunting the defeated side.
A perfect tea-bag.
After that, Class E's Freshmen Welcome Exam concluded just like that.
***
The day after the Freshmen Welcome Exam.
Walking to school through the morning sunlight.
A fresh breeze grazed past.
'Every now and then, this isn't so bad.'
On foot, for once. The past few days had all been the rickshaw.
Status window open in front of me, I crossed the campus at an easy stroll.
[Reward Details]
-Title 'Collector of Windfalls' obtained
-Status window function 'Windfall Collector' unlocked
The Freshmen Welcome Exam. The message had surfaced the instant the duel ended, conditions met, reward granted.
"Hmm..."
I had given it a rough look-over at the time. After closing the message, I opened the status window again.
Ding!
――――
[Status Window]
Name: Viktor
Title: Collector of Windfalls
Items equipped: Evil God's Mask, Evil God's Robe
Active set effect: The World as ■■■ Sees It.
.
.
[Windfall Collector]
1. Step Skip
2. Slowdown
3. Parrying
-> Using any single windfall 30 or more times registers it in the Collector.
-> Windfalls registered in the Collector significantly reduce the burden on the user.
――――
Windfall.
Probably the game's word for bugs.
I read through what the status window had laid out.
'Reduces the burden...'
That hit close to home. Every time I used a bug, there was the nausea and the headache, something digging through my brain, it had been putting a hard limit on how freely I could use them.
After the exam yesterday, I had spent a long while in the bathroom.
'If this cuts that down, it's about as good a reward as I could ask for.'
Tested it a few times with Slowdown. The queasiness was noticeably less than before.
An unexpected gain.
'Thirty uses as the unlock condition...'
I had gone completely wild with the bugs yesterday, come to think of it. Maybe all that stacking pushed things far enough to unlock the function.
'I'd been thinking I overdid it yesterday, but it ended up working in my favor.'
Thanks to that, the walk to school felt light.
Each step forward, and the breast pocket of my uniform stirred.
Still drowsy with sleep, a bat with bleary eyes.
[Viktor...]
"Yes, Your Highness."
[Are you walking to school today?]
"I gave the others the day off. They must have had a rough time yesterday, going through all that humiliation."
[A shame. I had grown rather fond of travelling lying down...]
"Nothing to be done about it. Call it athlete welfare, I suppose. Even marathon runners need a few days of proper rest after a race."
[A marathon...? What on earth is that?]
"Roughly speaking, something like maratang."
[Is that so...]
Not sure what the "is that so" was for, but the princess stretched herself out regardless.
The bat blinked a few times, then tapped lightly against my chest.
[That aside... you were rather rough yesterday.]
"Yesterday, meaning Lady Labriell?"
[Yes, Shariel, wasn't that her name...?]
"I only gave back exactly what was done to me. If you intend to mock others, you ought to be prepared to be mocked yourself."
[A ruler who is too cruel only earns fear...]
"That much is plenty, so it's fine. I have no particular interest in being respected by those around me. If anything, moving quietly like this, just the two of us, suits me far better."
[If that is how Viktor sees it, then there is nothing more to say.]
A nod, and she settled herself back against me.
I walked as carefully as I could so she wouldn't be jostled.
Building E's main block came into view before long.
'They're all going to be miserable.'
After being trampled that badly yesterday, it would probably feel like a house of mourning in there.
Bracing for a heavy atmosphere, I opened the classroom door.
Creak.
"......?"
A row of students, lined up in a single file.
The moment our eyes met, the errand boys at the front bowed in greeting. Straight spines, folding to a perfect ninety degrees.
""Welcome back, hyung-nim!!""
The right-angle bow, the kind I'd only ever heard about.
Louder than usual, even.
Far from beaten down, every one of them had bright, eager eyes. Not what I'd expected at all.
"Hmm...?"
Class E, shining all at once.
Every single gaze fixed on me.
"We've been waiting, hyung-nim!"
"Hyung-nim! Come sit over here!"
"I already put a cushion out!"
"H-hey, everyone...?"
What's this.
What's going on.
Why are you all like this.