Volume 1 Chapter 1: Born for the Second Time
This world is so similar to Kizuyoru.
I had that thought around the time I turned ten.
The name of the country is the same as Kizuyoru’s setting, the Kingdom of Lacresia, and many other geographical names, religions, histories, and wizards are identical as well. Moreover, the king’s name was the same as in Kizuyoru, which turned my speculation into a conviction: “Could this world perhaps be related to the otome game Kizuyoru?”
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder how far this world mirrors the game.
At that time, I lived in the royal capital as a landless noble, completely neglected except for my position as the firstborn heir who was growing up well.
In a house that couldn’t even be called a mansion, aside from me, there were only the old butler couple managing household affairs and a teenage maid working there.
My parents, brother, and my brother’s fiancée had moved to a new house they built in a different area of the royal capital, leaving me with just enough money to get by.
This was a great opportunity for many experiments!
So, with that in mind, I quickly started to entice the maid with special allowances, getting her registered at the adventurers guild located in the same area as the game map with her as my guardian.
Adventurers, in simple terms, are jack-of-all-trades, tackling everything from monster hunting to sewer cleaning.
Most of the adventurers around my age were enamored with fairy tales and heroic stories, usually prioritizing the simpler yet more glamorous monster hunting requests over the dirty and dangerous sewer cleaning tasks. As a result, the sewer was hardly touched, making it the perfect condition for my verification work.
By the way, I’ve heard that about 70% of rookie adventurers who take on creature-slaying requests either die or have their spirits completely crushed, disappearing from the adventurer registry.
Anyway, after finishing shopping in town, I accepted a “sewer cleaning” request and was guided to the underground sewer, making a beeline for a specific location.
What laid ahead looked like just a management door at first glance, but upon peeping inside, it revealed a dungeon populated by monsters that normally only appeared in aboveground forests or dungeons.
The thrill I felt at that moment was perhaps the biggest excitement I’ve experienced in this life.
After all, it was confirmed that there really was a realm in this world just like a game.
Now, let’s be honest, the RPG part of Kizuyoru is just a side bonus to the main story.
Leveling up isn’t particularly necessary, and the difficulty is designed so that you can defeat bosses even without character growth or item procurement.
With only Fine being a character capable of recovery magic and buffs, that was bound to happen.
After all, what people look for in an otome game are the scenarios and illustrations—if they wanted a solid RPG, they’d just play an RPG.
That said, with the RPG system they set up, it seemed a waste not to utilize it. Thus, the hidden dungeon called the 【Hidden Area】 was prepared, accessible through secret passages in the underground sewer.
This Hidden Area features a random generation of 100 levels, where, though with low probability, you can obtain overpowered equipment or rare recovery items right from the first layer, all the way to the game’s finale, and as you descend close to the depths, you can get the strongest equipment of heroines or characters you can form a party with.
However, the monsters wandering about are far stronger than the final boss, and their encounter rate is no different from regular monsters, making it an extraordinary high-difficulty setting.
After defeating the final boss, a system message informs you of its existence, thus clearing this Hidden Area is designed to presuppose that you have sufficiently leveled up on your second playthrough.
In other words, with my current level, it was a place I couldn’t even touch, but if I had the item called “Monster Repelling Charm,” then that changes things.
This “Monster Repelling Charm” is a consumable item that zeroes out encounter rates with monsters for 30 seconds.
In this world where the game has become reality, the effect translates to “you won’t be detected by monsters for 30 seconds,” but in either case, it sufficiently helps me achieve my goals.
And so, I steeled my resolve and dove into the first layer of the 【Hidden Area】 using a large stash of “Monster Repelling Charms.”
My objectives were the equipment obtainable from randomly generated treasure chests and high-value recovery items that could be sold for a good price.
Traveling around the entire first floor and returning to the exit usually took about ten minutes.
However, considering my stats, the weight of the items I was bringing back, and the time I needed to spend on the original request to clean the sewer, I figured four item retrieval attempts was my limit.
On my first attempt, the only treasure I was able to collect from chests were two Great Potions.
There were other chests, but since they were clustered in an area full of monsters, I chose to forgo them for the sake of returning on time. Still, Great Potions are items that are sold at the end of the game for a decent price, so I could call that a better outcome.
On my second attempt, I found only a treasure chest containing 8 Potions, leaving me with nothing to show for it.
Carrying bulky items while sprinting for the exit using “Monster Repelling Charms” was simply impossible with a level 1 status.
Then, on the third attempt that day, I immediately encountered a monster cluster near the entrance and had to give up again.
Thus, at the end of the day, I returned with only two Great Potions, which was somewhat disappointing, but at least I had something I could cash in.
I packed the items, along with the “Monster Repelling Charms,” into my bag and completed the more exhausting task of sewer cleaning than item collection, then reported back to the guild before heading home.
On my second day of attempts, I managed to acquire several High Potions and high-stat armor, but since the armor turned out to be heavy armor, I had to abandon my recovery efforts.
The third day ended up being a complete bust. I scored a few rare combination materials, but those were exclusive items for target characters and took up too much space, so I left them all behind in the Hidden Area.
On the fourth day, I finally found a weapon, but it was a massive two-handed axe so I had to reluctantly let it go.
That two-handed axe in the Hidden Area has enough attack power to one-shot the final boss. Hence, even after getting home, I kept wondering, “Shouldn’t I have made the effort to recover it?”
For a while, I couldn’t find any weapons, the only armor that I picked up couldn’t be recovered, and I kept discovering items that seemed like they would fetch a good price, which started to bore me a little.
Then, one day.
“Whoa…!”
Right after entering the Hidden Area, I retrieved a certain weapon from a treasure chest that was lined up close by.
Visually, it resembled an iron sword that could be sold cheaply at the town’s weapon shop.
However, its true nature was that it ranked among the top three most desirable weapons obtainable from the Hidden Area on Kizuyoru’s walkthrough site.
I had found two one-handed swords with a high status that provided experience point boost effects.
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