Chapter: 106
As I face multiple spirits charging at me, I can feel just how strong I’ve become.
The curses they use to grab my ankles are meaningless, or even if they have a slight effect, they vanish before the divine.
When they try to harm me directly, none of them have been able to injure me.
The movements of spirits who haven’t specialized in combat are simply too sloppy.
Is there any reason to fear attacks that can’t even scratch a shield made by dwarves?
After dealing with another room full of spirits, I took a light deep breath and unconsciously shook off my mace.
What filled my heart after finishing the battle was a strange sense of ecstasy.
Something indescribably different from the buff effects of the Mesugaki Skill.
The reason I’ve kept trying to get stronger was to survive.
I thought I would lose my life if I couldn’t pass the Academy’s entrance exam.
After passing the exam, I desperately trained because I thought I could be sacrificed to Agra’s nonsense at any moment if I didn’t get stronger.
However, there wasn’t much room to feel a sense of achievement in how strong I had become compared to my efforts.
My opponents were usually far stronger than I was.
Just when I start to feel a bit arrogant, they smack my head down into the ground like I’m a mole whack-a-mole.
I’m not some gopher.
Just when I think I might have gotten a bit stronger, they go ahead and smash my head!
If we’re talking strictly about specs, I know I’m among the strong right now.
But with all the breaking and smashing I’ve gone through, I can only think of myself as weak.
Yet, as I’m in this dungeon smashing spirits with my mace, I feel a semblance of my strength.
No matter how favorable the situation, this dungeon is a place that only shows up when you reach the second year at the academy.
On the other hand, I’m just a first-year student taking midterms.
If I had moved normally, I would have been smashed by those knights the moment I stepped in.
But not a single one of those knights has been able to injure me.
Not just the knights, either.
No one in this mansion has been able to inflict proper damage on me.
I am strong enough now.
It’s just that the world throws obstacles at me that are even harsher than that.
Uh. So does that mean it’s all meaningless?
While I was lost in such random thoughts, I stepped out of the room and noticed many changes in the mansion’s scenery.
The transformations that started from the corridors were gradually spreading throughout the rooms I had conquered.
Decorations were broken, shattered, or torn apart, and blood, looking like it belonged to a person, was splattered on the floor and walls.
The wind blew in through the broken windows, shaking the chandelier.
Leaving behind the eerie noises echoing through the mansion, I opened another intact room door.
I feel like I’ve become a wrecking crew in this mansion.
I didn’t even touch any of the objects!
I kept heading upstairs.
I smashed the dining room where the family may have enjoyed their meals.
I smacked down the head of a noblewoman who was lounging in a room full of clothes and jewels.
I took down the butler who blocked my way to the top floor, returning him to ashes, where he once may have been head of this family.
As a result, the state of the mansion became more and more tragic.
The mansion, which had finished preparations to welcome guests, was being turned into ruins because of me, the intruder.
[It feels as if the scenery outside resembles the mansion we saw.]
The place I arrived at was the room on the top floor.
It was the last remaining intact location in the half-destroyed mansion.
Adri’s bedroom.
As I abruptly opened the door, I was greeted by Adri, sitting cross-legged on the bed just as she had when I first arrived at the mansion.
“What are you?”
The first thing that fell from her chin resting hand was a question.
“Why does the mansion collapse wherever you go? How can you intervene in a place that should be under my control?”
“I’m the apostle of the great Shoddy God ♡.”
I responded with magic words to Adri, who asked me coldly and impassively.
Is there something wrong with a God’s apostle performing miracles?
If you’re upset, could you please inquire with the Shoddy God via prayer?
I don’t know if that lazy bum will respond to me either, seeing as they hardly answer.
As Adri furrowed her brows, she spoke again.
“What exactly do you know?”
“Well, ♡ I know more than a lonely ghost in the corner, of course ♡.”
How many times do you think I’ve invaded this mansion?
You may not know, but I’ve defeated you well over a hundred times.
I’ve even taken you down bare-fisted without any equipment.
There’s no way I wouldn’t know about this mansion.
I answered sincerely with a smile, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the kind of answer Adri was looking for.
She frowned, slowly rising from her seat.
“I get it. If you’re not going to answer, I have no choice but to force it open.”
With those words, as Adri raised her hand, my body began floating in the void before being hurled out of the room.
I had no time to gain my balance.
As I hit the floor, the hallway tilted, dropping me like a ball downwards, and I slid down like a slide, landing back in front of the main door.
With the impact of the fall, I grimaced and stood up again, looking up at Adri at the top of the mansion’s staircase.
“I’m going to punish the audacious little thief trying to seize this mansion.”
The moment she spoke, all the doors in the mansion flew open, and a myriad of objects shot out from within.
Buckets. Trays. Cute little dusters. Magic books firing curses. Swords enchanted with ominous energy. Staffs that summon spirits, and so on.
Watching the poltergeist phenomena that are straight out of a horror story made me chuckle.
This is Phase 1 before the Great Adri.
I have to dodge through those countless objects and reach the top floor to deal some damage to Adri.
When I first faced this pattern, it was terrifying.
The moment I let my guard down for even a second, I’d get hit by something, causing me to become stiff, and then get executed by a combo of objects.
Well, that was in the past; from my perspective now, it barely counts as a warm-up.
The objects summoned by Adri have a degree of consistency to their attacks.
For instance, if a mop hits the head to inflict stiffness, a knife plunges into the leg, and a book there fires a curse.
It’s coding designed to mess with the user, but if you memorize all these patterns, things will be different.
No matter what attack comes flying at me, I’ll always find a way to dodge.
“What the.”
[Oh, a good reaction there.]
As I successfully dodged the first attack and surged forward, both sides let out gasps of surprise.
They wouldn’t know that I knew that wasn’t a reaction based on sight.
I simply knew how to predict what attack was coming and how to move, allowing me to dodge naturally.
“Damn it! Why aren’t you getting hit!”
It seemed like Adri was getting upset with my dodging, but what could she do about it?
I’m me.
“Are you seriously expecting me to take this crap? ♡ Really? ♡ Not joking? ♡”
“Shut up!”
“If you’re noisy, just shut yourself up ♡ Ah ♡ How can a Shoddy ghost even do anything? ♡”
I climbed the stairs to the second floor.
I went up to the railings on the third floor.
Without even a scratch, I reached Adri.
Seeing me, Adri hurriedly summoned objects around her, but that was also a pattern I’d seen way too often in this game.
It meant I perfectly knew how to avoid what she was throwing at me.
Dodging countless attacks, I charged at Adri and brought down my mace filled with divine power onto the pure white ghostly face.
“Ugh!”
That’s gotta hurt.
The proficiency of my mace built up over time with the intent to smash Nakrad’s head isn’t light, ya know?
Despite Adri groaning in pain, she desperately tried to shake me off, but it was an impossible task.
No matter how much of a dungeon boss she was, she was still a magic user.
There’s no way her physical capabilities could surpass a Holy Knight who had honed their physical abilities.
So, I struck again, and again, and had she not been a ghost, her facial bones would’ve been shattered a long time ago, before shockwaves burst out from around Adri.
I anticipated this and tried to plant my feet firmly to withstand it, but that was impossible.
For some reason, something like a repulsion made my feet leave the ground.
After falling from the fourth floor to the first floor, I performed a roll and stood up again, looking up.
“That damned girl!”
Adri, wavering from the hits she took from me, staggered back up and began hurling angry words while waving her hands.
At that moment, countless spirits identical to Adri appeared, and the objects that had just fallen to the floor began floating back into the air.
“I’ll kill you.”
The chorus of the innumerable Adri spirits echoed through the mansion.
I remember thinking it was creepy even in the game, but seeing it in real life is even more bizarre.
Old nightmares began resurfacing.
I didn’t know how to distinguish between the real and the fake, and I recklessly attacked everything until I got killed by objects.
I remember trying to defeat that one specific Adri hundreds of times.
I think it took several hours at the minimum.
Of course, now I know how to differentiate the real from the fake.
As I easily blocked a sword aimed to cut me down, I surveyed my surroundings.
Lucky me.
Starting from the first floor, huh?
Clearly identifying myself and rushing forward, Adri seemed flustered and tried to back off, but by then, it was too late.
I already knew she couldn’t throw me down.
So just give up. Adri.
As my mace came crashing down on Adri’s head, the spirits that filled the mansion vanished.
And before long, those Adris reappeared.
“Will you find me again this time?”
“You really think you can? ♡ Seriously? ♡”
“Don’t bluster.”
“In front of the 2nd floor reception room’s painting, right? Am I right? ♡ Huh? ♡ Go on, tell me I’m wrong ♡.”
Sorry, but the moment you revealed your initial position, your fate was already sealed.
I memorized where you respawn.
As one of the boss monsters of the Soul Academy, there’s no way you’re strong enough to pin me down.
No matter how much you struggle, you won’t escape from my palm.
So just collapse quietly, will you?
At this rate, I might have to go into this test not having slept a wink.
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