002 – The Genius of Grinding #2
Clatter.
A plate of sliced meat was set down in front of me.
“Thank you for the meal!”
But by the time I came to my senses, the dish was spotless and empty.
Someone must have stolen my food.
Fuck!
The problem was that I’d eaten too frantically.
It had been meat for the first time in ages, and I hadn’t even gotten to savor the taste.
‘Would she get mad if I asked for another plate?’
I’m a man too.
If a great beauty like Ms. Ezekiel hated me, I think it would hurt.
So when I sneaked a look at her, Ms. Ezekiel instead asked kindly,
“So, are your memories coming back at all?”
“Yes. Probably.”
“Then let me ask you something. Yor, the reason you were imprisoned was because you used trickery at one of the Dantes family’s businesses to make an unjust profit, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But you claimed you hadn’t cheated.”
“That’s right. I’m innocent.”
“Of course you are. Because you weren’t caught. A lie that isn’t caught is the same as the truth. And a trick that isn’t caught is as pure as a maiden’s skin. Right?”
Sliiide.
Ms. Ezekiel suddenly leaned her face toward me.
Her lukewarm breath was close enough to touch my nose, and I felt a little embarrassed.
I hadn’t washed in a month, so I must have stunk badly.
Being together in such a cramped space was mortifying.
But she looked into my eyes from right in front of me and said the following.
“You bribed one of the gambling dealers employed at the casino, didn’t you? Since you knew they were manipulating the dice pips with magnets, you knew what number would come up.”
“Bribed?”
“But even up until the moment you died, you never revealed who it was. A loyal con artist. Not common these days.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. I told you, I guessed the pips by pure luck.”
“Fine. Then shall we talk about the gallows again? You stopped your execution twice. That isn’t just luck. No matter how I look at it, you seem to be one of the 「Blessed」.”
“You mentioned that earlier too. Blessed.”
“Have you ever heard the legends of a country maiden who had never once held a sword becoming a saint of the battlefield, or a bumpkin youth playing an instrument as if he had sold his soul to a demon?”
“Of course. I’m very familiar with them.”
Actually, I’d never heard of them.
I just pretended I knew.
I wanted to keep Ms. Ezekiel in a good mood.
Today was the first time I learned that pleasing a beautiful woman could feel this thrilling.
“People with such extraordinary talents are called the ‘Blessed.’ My job is to find those Blessed.”
“Don’t tell me you’re saying I could be one.”
“Yor, you have the qualifications. Body, mind, senses, magic… if even one of them is exceptional, a person can reach a realm humans cannot normally attain. In your case, it’s ‘luck.’”
My luck is special?
At those words, I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh.
If I’d had good luck, I wouldn’t have been locked in prison and dragged all the way to the gallows.
But…?
Would there really be another guy who’s lived two lives like me?
There was definitely something special about me.
“Yor, you hold far greater potential than you think.”
Great potential.
It was the first time anyone had ever said that to me.
It felt strange.
For some reason, receiving praise for the first time made my heart stir.
But then… my vision suddenly began to spin.
“In the food… what did you… put….”
Thud.
# # #
“So that guy is the new rogue?”
“Twenty years old and fourteen prior convictions? Isn’t he a complete son of a bitch? I can’t trust him.”
“Me neither. I don’t want to get stabbed in the back again.”
I heard people talking.
When I came to my senses, I was lying on some kind of bed.
“Ugh, what is this? Where am I?”
What the hell?
My body felt incredibly heavy.
It reminded me of the first time I drank myself stupid and suffered through a hangover.
Still, when I barely managed to sit up, I finally saw my surroundings.
The floor, ceiling, and walls all seemed to be made of sturdy square stones.
Crackle, crackle.
The sight of the blazing fireplace and candlelight illuminating the room felt somehow familiar.
Could this be a prison?
Was everything about meeting Ms. Ezekiel just a dream?
“Ah, looks like he’s finally come to.”
“Hmph! What a shame. He could’ve kept his eyes shut forever!”
“Seriously.”
Just then, people approached me.
I wondered if they were guards, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
Prison guards in any city tended to wear similar armor.
But these people seemed varied in clothing, gender, and age.
One woman, one man, and one armored human of unknown gender.
“Where is this?”
I asked.
Then the person wearing armor that didn’t show a single strand of hair came clanking toward me.
“Where is this? Damn, you look like you don’t know a single thing. Then I’ll have to explain everything from the beginning. Fucking hell, do you really not know where this is?”
“I don’t.”
I wasn’t lying. I really didn’t know.
“Hammer, you handle it. I’m leaving.”
“I’m going too.”
The others left.
They say you don’t notice when someone comes in, but you do notice when they leave.
With those two gone, the atmosphere suddenly became much quieter.
“Yor, your name’s Yor, right? I’m Hammer.”
The person inside the armor introduced themselves as “Hammer.”
What kind of person were they?
Their voice was closer to a mechanical sound echoing through metal, and I couldn’t even guess their gender or age.
“Looking at your documents, it says you’re from the Rilke Orphanage in Maril Land. Didn’t you see the 「Wall」 out in that backwater?”
“The 「Wall」?”
“Yeah. The wall rising as high as a mountain to the north. The one they’re still building even now.”
I knew what that was.
Thompson, an older brother from the orphanage who got kicked out once he came of age, had gone to the construction site for some wall or other, broken his back, wasted away, and died before half a year passed.
The director had tried to send me to that construction site too.
I ran away because I figured if I went there, I’d end up wearing diapers and shitting myself like Thompson.
“What about that Wall?”
“This is it.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’ll be faster to show you than explain it. Follow me!”
Hammer got me up from the bed.
Following behind them, I climbed the stairs while leaning against the wall for a long time, and then suddenly the world opened wide before me.
The vast sky, the mountains visible beyond it, and houses as tiny as ants.
“Wow.”
It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen a view from so high up.
If I’d gone up somewhere like the 63 Building in my previous life, would it have looked this high?
I don’t know. I never went.
I’d wanted to, but now I didn’t have the chance.
Still, that was fine.
Standing on top of this Wall, I stopped caring about things like the 63 Building.
“That dark world you see over there is the old imperial territory, ‘Night World.’ Now we simply call it the ‘Land of Night.’”
Land of Night? Old imperial territory?
Unfamiliar terms came rushing in all at once.
Hammer must have read my expression, because they added an explanation.
“Just look at it. Only that side is pitch-black.”
“Ah, so that’s why it’s the Land of Night! It really is dark as fuck, I can’t see a damn thing!”
“Right. A long, long time ago, that pitch-black area suddenly appeared on the land. Crops stopped growing well there, and it became infested with monsters.”
“By monsters, you mean the kind that catch people, eat them, and kill them?”
“Exactly! And this Wall is the final bastion that keeps that Land of Night and those monsters from invading the empire.”
“Oh, I like anvils too. You pound them with hammers, right? They’re iron, so they’re worth a decent bit.”
“…That’s an anvil. And do you really not know anything? This is common knowledge that every imperial citizen knows.”
“I’m an imperial citizen?”
“Damn it, I have to explain starting from there? Ugh, if only I hadn’t lost at rock-paper-scissors. I should’ve thrown paper. Haa….”
Hammer thumped their helmet with a hand clad in an iron gauntlet.
I heard you lose hair easily when you’re stressed.
Poor thing.
I decided to comfort Hammer.
“I was bullshitting. Of course I know I’m an imperial.”
“…Bullshitting me from the first meeting? Well, well, look at this bastard. The recruiter really picked up a rotten sprout.”
Recruiter! At that word, a light bulb flashed on in my head.
“If you mean the recruiter, that’s Ms. Ezekiel. Did Ms. Ezekiel send me here?”
“You met Brigadier General Ezekiel? That’s unexpected. The brigadier isn’t the type to personally go picking people. Still, this should make the conversation quicker. You’ve been scouted as a Wall exploration member.”
“Like a soldier?”
“Strictly speaking, not a soldier. In learned terms, it’s called a 「Night Diver」.”
「Night Diver」.
At those words, sparks flew through my head.
Isn’t that the name of the game I used to play?
Even though twenty years had passed since I reincarnated, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize that name.
It was the game that had normalized my life, so how could I forget it?
Even now, it appeared in my dreams sometimes.
In my dreams, I’d grind, order Bburinkle chicken, and pull cola from the fridge!
Kyaa. Those really were the good days.
I found myself imagining for no reason what would have happened if I hadn’t died of something like heart disease back then.
Would I have made tons of money, bought a car, and gotten a girlfriend?
“You’re thinking about something else again, aren’t you?”
Hammer crossed their arms.
Sharper than they look.
“But if I just listen to someone talk for more than five minutes, I get sleepy and my mind starts wandering, so I can’t help it.”
“Hey, you little—like that’s something to brag about! Then repeat what I said. We need to make sure whether you understood or not.”
“That I became a 「Night Diver」.”
The name was exactly the same as the game I played in my previous life.
Could this be a coincidence?
As I wondered what on earth was going on, Hammer nodded.
“Yeah, well. As long as you understood that much, fine. Anyway, members like us who come from the 「Blessed」 dive into that dark Land of Night, kill monsters, and gather Aether. That’s the job.”
“Aether?”
I knew Aether.
It was the money I’d happily earned in 「Night Diver」.
Ten million Aether for five thousand won!
“If you kill monsters, Aether comes out?”
“Yeah. You have to gather a lot. The more you gather, the better it is for you too. Your share gets bigger.”
The same name as the game, and now even Aether?
Fuck, this seems like it’s no ordinary situation.
“What’s really important is the role you’ll be taking in our party. If there’s a locked chest, you have to pick it. If there’s a trap, you have to disarm it. We call the guys who do that ‘rogues.’”
“I’ve picked a few locked chests before, but I’ve never disarmed anything like a trap. Don’t you need some kind of specialized skill for that?”
I’d wanted to learn it too.
But those thieving bastards wouldn’t teach me for free, so I never got the chance.
They said I had to join some kind of guild.
And pay an annual fee too.
Nothing but a bunch of daylight robbers.
“Skill? You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Why not?”
Seriously, why?
At my question, Hammer shook their head and took the lead.
“With you, it seems faster to show you directly than explain it in words. Let’s go straight to the real thing!”