Chapter 35

35. The Words of a Sage

“Listen! A level-one! Someone who is only level one has awakened their psychic power! Hahaha! You can call him a genius!”

“No waaay! He awakened his psychic power at level one?! That’s impossi~ble! Hey, hey! Is that really true?!”

“Ha-ha! Don’t be too jealous! Someday, you might be able to become just! Like! Me~?”

“Damn it~! Are all Outsiders nothing but incredible monsters like this?!”

…There was a time when I had dreams like that too.

“Hey! If you skipped dawn training, then you should be working extra hard in the morning! Get over here right now!”

“W-Who said I wanted to go…!”

“I can hear you! If you have a complaint, say it to my face!”

The way things turned out in this world really wasn't what I had expected.

Maybe that's what made the world interesting.

I just didn't have any motivation.

Six days had passed since I came to the training center.

What had I even done during that time?

Honestly, I wasn't sure.

After they recognized that I possessed psychic power, getting into the training center was easy.

But after thinking, I'm level one and I've already awakened psychic power! Maybe I'm a genius?, I soon realized that training alongside those monstrous children who had awakened psychic power before they were even ten years old was something I absolutely could not handle.

Yeah.

Even after thinking about it two or three times, or even a hundred times, there was no way I had some kind of genius talent.

I had slightly better stats than them despite my lower level, so I thought keeping up wouldn't be too difficult.

But these kids seemed to possess something beyond mere stats.

For example, a kid with less Strength than me could lift something that looked heavier than what I could lift.

Or a kid with less Agility than me could run faster than I could.

“What? How do I know their stats?”

They happily told me everything themselves.

If I didn't know after that, I would be the strange one.

“Haha! My Agility went up by one today, so now it's fifteen~! Amazing, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. That's amazing.”

“But you said your Agility is over thirty, so why are you slower than me?”

“…I wonder? Why could that be, damn it?”

“It's because you've hardly ever run at full speed! Want me to teach you?”

It was probably the difference in skills.

At this point, the only physical-enhancement skill I had was Indomitable.

There was no way I could compete with these children's proficiency.

Even so, because my stats were higher, I could at least keep up with them by their heels.

If I didn't even have that advantage, I wouldn't have been able to do anything at all.

The only person I could beat was one twelve-year-old kid who had entered the training center six months before me.

Everyone else had entered two or three years earlier than I had, so the difference in proficiency was like heaven and earth.

And unlike me, who wasn't particularly smart, these kids were all brilliant.

Whether it was because they were young or simply because they were born that way, every single one of them had a good head on their shoulders.

So while I managed to show some results in physical training, I was completely useless in the other classes.

The only thing I could do was keep going without giving up!

But saying that had no meaning here.

There wasn't a single person here who didn't do that.

Whenever I showed even the slightest intention of training for one extra minute, these naturally social kids would somehow gather around me.

“What? What? You're running again? I'll run with you!”

“Mister! Why do you always go around alone? I'll do it with you!”

“Ah, your posture is wrong. You'll hurt your back if you do it like that. Ah, move aside. I'll teach you!”

If something that was painful for me was nothing more than a game to someone else, could you endure the mental suffering caused by that difference?

I wanted to vent my feelings somewhere.

But the people teaching these classes were all grown-up versions of these very children, so they couldn't understand me.

Some were called knights.

Some were called heroes.

Honestly, they had ways of thinking that normal people would find impossible to understand.

Ironically, the little brats chattering beside me right now were easier to communicate with.

After all, they would eventually become people like those adults after completing their training.

But for now, at least, they could still understand normal human conversation.

Actually, I had recently learned something about all this.

It was related to my Practitioner, the knights who taught here, the Hero from that NPC massacre incident, and the Great Hero I met in the forest.

I already knew that awakening psychic power came with a related class.

After all, I had once been a Great Sinner of Madness.

And what I learned here was that there were stages.

Well, technically, this was only what I remembered from what I'd been taught.

I hadn't paid attention to the rest, so I had no idea about it.

For example, mine would be:

Indomitable Practitioner → Indomitable Knight → Indomitable Hero → Indomitable Great Hero.

The sheer height of the walls I would have to climb in the future made my head spin.

The teachers in their forties were already Knights.

That alone left me speechless.

Even those guys looked like geniuses to me.

If becoming a Hero or Great Hero required someone to be even more naturally gifted than these geniuses, then what did that make me?

Apparently, psychic powers like Madness that could eventually transform their users into demons had more stages.

Instead, they became stronger much more quickly.

That explained why I had been able to obtain so much power within just one month.

“Uuugh… uuuuh…”

And it also explained why I currently felt like I was dying from exhaustion.

My mind was perfectly fine.

But my character's body was so exhausted that it couldn't even move or speak properly.

It had been a long time since I had experienced this kind of physical exhaustion.

I had first felt it in the Labyrinth Forest.

It was strangely nostalgic.

And it also felt absolutely terrible.

“Hahahaha! You're Indomitable, yet you're not indomitable at all!”

“Sh-Shut up…”

“Nope, nope~!”

Everyone here possessed psychic powers related to virtues such as courage, love, patience, kindness, diligence, and so on.

The fact that their friendly behavior toward me seemed to be completely genuine made things even worse.

Just how twisted was I to find sincere kindness so burdensome?

These guys didn't care how uncomfortable I was.

They kept clinging to me.

There was no way they were people I had simply met six days ago.

Maybe it was some kind of connection from a previous life.

“Hey, don't tease Mister too much. He's good at fighting.”

“That's right! He fought like a beast, didn't he? I thought it suited his clothes perfectly!”

I was good at fighting.

But what they meant was my stats, not my proficiency.

Even if someone had extremely high skill proficiency, they could still lose if the other person simply overwhelmed them with raw strength.

There's a reason physical size and power matter in a fight.

Besides, I had hardly used skills during my battles in the Labyrinth Forest in the first place.

Even now, my body couldn't properly keep up with the commands from my brain because of my low stats, which made things uncomfortable.

Still, I was pretty good at fighting children.

Children, that is.

Of course, I couldn't even compare to the teachers, who were Knights above level 100.

Their techniques and strength were both superior to mine.

There was nothing I could do about that.

“Just you wait, Mister! I'll beat you in a fight soon!”

“…Go easy on me…”

An exhausted adult could become tired just by standing in front of a ball of children's energy.

Please.

The longer this continued, the more strangely angry I became at the village chief of Jageun Village.

If only the village chief hadn't mentioned the word training center!

That was the kind of belated regret I had.

“To do that, you'd first have to defeat ten Mist-Walking Wolves, right?”

“Ugh! D-Does it really come down to that?”

“Well, you don't really have to. I'm not a wolf, after all.”

“Right?!”

“Mister, if you keep encouraging him like that, the kid will never grow!”

If someone could accomplish something just because of one sentence from me, they wouldn't even be here.

What a fuss.

This kid seemed to hold some kind of leadership position in our training group.

He was always nagging the others, pushing them forward, and guiding them.

Of course, he did the same to me.

Maybe he was the reason everyone had become so friendly with me in only six days.

The leader spoke to me casually and treated me warmly, so the other kids naturally followed his example.

If that was the case, did this kid actually think about all of that when he acted?

Considering he might one day become a Hero, it didn't seem impossible.

Then again, despite all that, I was still unable to blend into the group and kept lingering on the outskirts.

What did that say about me?

No.

There was still plenty of time.

Even if becoming friends with children ten years younger than me seemed difficult, we'd probably grow attached to one another if we spent enough time together.

If I continued doing nothing but attending classes inside the training center, I might go insane from boredom.

So before that happened, I should pray that I would grow attached to them.

If there were at least a few people I genuinely liked, perhaps the training center would become a tolerable place to stay.

“Mister, what are you thinking about so seriously?”

“I wonder. Maybe you.”

“What are you talking about? You're always sitting there with a gloomy face, your mouth shut tight, lost in thought. Is there something you left behind in your hometown?”

That I looked gloomy was something I had often heard when I was in school.

But I never expected to hear it again here.

“It’s because I look gloomy.”

“Tch, there's no such thing!”

Ah!

Before playing this game, people had often told me that I looked gloomy.

But during the testing period, my face had become creepy enough to frighten monsters.

So there was no way I actually looked gloomy.

I should have looked in the mirror more often.

If I had, I could have confidently decided whether they were right or wrong whenever someone said something like that.

“Mister?”

Oh, right.

It seemed I had gotten lost in my own thoughts again.

I should just give him a rough answer.

“Maybe it's because life isn't easy.”

Hmm.

Even I thought that wasn't something an adult should say to a child.

I wasn't exactly a reliable adult, but still.

“Hmm. That's just how life is.”

“When things don't go well, if you become depressed and sad over every little thing, you'll end up carrying a dark shadow even under the bright sunlight.”

…Y-You.

What are you?

How old are you?

You look about fourteen or fifteen.

Huh?

Why do you already know the wisdom about life that I learned while getting beaten around in the military?

“When life is difficult, when it feels like nothing is going your way, it's good to find something, even something very small and insignificant, that can give you a sense of accomplishment and happiness.”

“If those small and insignificant things pile up one by one, someday you'll be able to smile again.”

“Did you lie about your age?”

“I just gave you some good advice, and that's your response?”

“Uh? Uh, no. Right. Thanks.”

Could this also be some kind of enlightenment that came along with awakening psychic power?

If not, was I simply the childish one?

Hmm.

Why did the latter seem more believable?

Whatever the case, I couldn't remember the last time I had had a conversation like this with someone else.

The last time?

Maybe this was actually the first time.

Pai sometimes said embarrassingly warm things to me, but we'd never had a conversation like this.

That was probably why this affected me so strongly.

It was like discovering a warmth I had never experienced during my school days.

It was a shame that I had discovered that warmth so late.

But I had finally found one reason to remain at the training center.

[Emergency Event Occurred!]

Huh?

All of a sudden?

I was finally starting to get attached to this place.

The words of a child ten years younger than me had melted away my defensive attitude.

I was about to become a proper adult and declare, I will become the King of Knights!

And then this happened?

“Hey, Kim Ingwang! Come here for a moment!”

Oh, what's this?

From my experience, situations like this usually meant something terrible had happened.

Maybe a sudden accident involving a relative.

Or perhaps the training center had some kind of announcement specifically for me.

“Y-Yes… Why all of a sudden?”

“…You said you were from Jageun Village, right?”

“That's right?”

Even with that cautious opening, I could more or less guess what had happened.

Now this was a game-like pace.

The story moved quickly, while farming after everything was over was painfully slow.

The perfect formula of a typical Korean game.

“Actually…”

Well, they were probably going to say the village had been attacked or something.

“I heard the village was attacked by Badger Beastmen… I'm sorry for telling you so late.”

“…What? What kind of beastmen?”

“Badger Beastmen. The minions of that wicked witch.”

…Hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

This is my fault, isn't it?