NOVEL NEXT Chapter 14 - Fear of the unknown.
TN: Thank Clone Trooper for yet another chapter. Part 3
Sometime after the man’s appearance.
The pain that had been tormenting Lyla’s body disappeared as if it had never happened.
“…My body doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“It’s good for the body to be in pain, just like vaccines that initially cause pain to prevent illness but ultimately make the body stronger.”
“Like a vaccine…”
She clenched his fist.
Kwaaak.
It felt completely different from her sword swings earlier today.
An immense force came with the sensation of the bandages on her hand snapping.
“…This is power.”
“Yes. Our power.”
Lyla looked up at the man’s figure.
Wearing a mask and a long coat that concealed his build, his appearance was impossible to make out.
“Even after becoming a member of your organization, you won’t show your face to me?”
“Once the true power of that elixir is revealed, you too will join us. But not yet.”
“True power?”
“Yes. It takes time to accept our power.”
Time is needed, huh?
She looked at the snapped bandages.
Is this still incomplete?
“Until that power fully manifests, you will remain as a self-proclaimed guardian of humanity, a student of the academy.”
“…I’ll do that.”
“Good.”
With those words, the man of unknown identity left.
‘True power, huh?’
So the power that never grew, no matter how much she trained, could be gained this easily?
Lyla gazed at the spot where the man had left for a long time with complicated feelings.
***
“You’ve grown stronger, Lyla. What on earth happened in just one day…!”
The teacher marveled as he watched Lyla’s training.
The force behind her sword swings felt remarkably intense compared to yesterday.
“Hup…!”
With a brisk sound of slicing wind, the practice dummies were instantly shredded.
Wow, she’s gotten insanely strong.
[Don’t worry, I didn’t make any mistakes!]
“When you say that, it makes me more worried.”
Thankfully, it didn’t seem like the Author had made any mistakes.
Those people must have enhanced Lyla well.
“By the way, Author, what are your plans for the villain in the novel?”
[Hm?…To get defeated by the protagonist?]
“I see…”
So they’re destined to die in the end?
It didn’t feel great.
What was this feeling?
A memory from childhood of playing simulation games resurfaced.
There were times when sacrificing certain units felt unavoidable, and a tinge of guilt would creep in.
It was a similar feeling.
But there’s no choice.
For the story to progress as the Author intends, sacrifices must be made.
Incidents and accidents never cease at the academy.
A raid on the academy is bound to happen eventually, and the villains will try to upend the world.
And with the existence of monsters, they could launch an invasion at any moment.
Subjecting the protagonist to trials, and having them overcome those trials triumphantly–that’s a key source of enjoyment in academy novels.
No, it’s like that for most web novels, too.
Villains are needed to create those trials for the protagonist to face. I just happened to designate them.
If I didn’t, another character would become the villain instead.
And these are just fictional characters from the novel, anyway.
I simply observed their backstory before being designated as villains without a real connection to them. I only saw them swinging their swords.
It’s not a problem if I don’t designate the villains, either.
In the end, the Author has to establish villains no matter what.
It’s certain. It’s necessary for the story’s progression.
Even if I didn’t choose someone, there would still be a villain. And if I can’t anticipate the consequences, the damage could escalate.
What if I refused to help the Author at all and obstructed the story’s progression?
What if that led to the novel’s serialization being halted?
Would the world be destroyed?
Or would everything just come to a standstill?
I’m not sure.
Ultimately, the best approach is to assist the Author and confirm the villains’ actions while I still can.
They’re not even human, just fictional characters, after all.
I don’t know.
I probably shouldn’t think about it too much. Like always, I’ll smile brightly and help the Author to bring this world to its conclusion.
There’s no need for me to ponder these things. The Author will determine everything.
I’m just here to offer advice.
Thinking about it will only give me a headache.
In the end, they’re just letters, not people.
Their fate is decided by the Author’s whim, mere puppets.
“Okay, let’s stop the training for today and start some sparring matches. Lyla, is there anyone you’d like to face?”
“That one.”
“Arte?…Are you still hung up about yesterday, Lyla?”
“No. I just felt like she would best test my strength.”
“I see, Arte. What will you do? You can refuse if you’d like.”
The teacher’s voice snapped me out of my reverie.
It seems Lyla has requested to spar with me.
Hmm…
Part of me doesn’t want to, but looking at her eager eyes, I can’t even imagine what might happen if I refuse.
I have no choice.
“Okay. …What are the rules?”
“An all-out match without using abilities.”
“Got it. The match will start soon, so you two get ready.”
Hey, wait a minute.
I suck without using my abilities!
[Ah, it looks like Reader will lose. Fighting!]
Author?!
***
“…She’s gotten unusually strong?”
“Yes. She is clearly much stronger than before. Even if it was just a sparring match, she defeated Arte so easily.”
Yu Siwoo recalled the day’s sparring match.
That female student who fought against Arte.
Her name was…Lyla, right?
“It’s a girl in my swordsmanship class.”
“Ah, is her name Lyla by any chance?”
“How did you know?”
“She’s quite famous as an underachiever. It is rather suspicious if that girl who couldn’t improve no matter how much she trained managed to defeat Arte.”
“…Huh? Underachiever?”
“You didn’t know? No matter how much she trains every day, her skills never improve. That’s why they call her the underachiever.”
Strange.
Yu Siwoo felt a sense of dissonance. Similar to before.
Even without being attacked, his instincts were ringing out too strongly to be a mere delusion.
Her, an underachiever?
That couldn’t be right.
She was definitely around the same level as the other students.
…Underachiever?
Come to think of it, she did seem to struggle quite a bit yesterday.
So it wasn’t just her condition being off?
“But she seemed perfectly ordinary…”
“What are you talking about? Ordinary, my ass. I’ve never interacted with her, and the rumors call her an underachiever. You really don’t pay attention to your surroundings.”
“…I guess not?”
“Yeah. At least listen to the rumors circulating. So you know when something happens.”
Yu Siwoo decided not to dwell on it further.
It had been confirmed that his instincts only detect physical threats.
The teacher who evaluated me did say there was potential for growth, but the criteria were extremely stringent.
Unless his life were in mortal peril, substantial growth would be difficult.
Yet he’d never experienced anything like that before.
Even when he defeated the Grade 3 monster, his instincts weren’t warning him this sharply.
‘I must have been mistaken.’
“Her swordsmanship seemed to have deteriorated compared to before…But her physical abilities appeared to have skyrocketed.”
“So she sacrificed technique for increased base stats. A potion, perhaps?”
“Potion?”
“Yeah. There’s a potion like that called the Wildfire Potion that drastically boosts your stats at the cost of temporarily lowering your intelligence, so you can’t utilize techniques well.”
The Wildfire Potion, huh.
He’s heard of it.
But it doesn’t seem to fit Lyla’s current situation.
“I’ve heard of that too, but she wasn’t raging out of control like someone under the Wildfire’s effects. That’s why it got that name, for making you go berserk.”
“Then is there really nothing…”
“No, there is one. We’ve learned that something unknown to us can make a person tremendously powerful. Knowing what we don’t know is also important.”
Recognizing what they don’t know is important too.
“Knowing what you don’t know is important…”
“It is. Humans have always harbored a fear of the unknown. A fear of the unfamiliar.”
“…You seem to know it well.”
He has bone-chilling experience with the fear of the unknown.
The woman whose thoughts I could never fathom no matter how much I contemplated.
The woman whose heart remained opaque, unreadable to all.
That was the terror he felt towards Arte Iris.
“Is that so? Seems there’s something you’re afraid of. Have you resolved that?”
“No, not yet.”
“I see… I may not know for sure, but they say the reason people fear death is also due to the fear of the unknown.”
“…Really?”
“Yes. What will become of us after death? Does heaven truly exist? Will we be reincarnated? If heaven does exist, will I go to heaven or hell? Have you ever thought about it?”
Yu Siwoo had never given it any thought before.
…What happens after death?
He wasn’t sure.
“In the end, none of us know what happens after we die. The afterlife is just something conceived by humans. It’s not like there are people who have actually died and been resurrected, right?”
“…So we fear death because of that?”
“Exactly. If people knew what awaited them after death, they wouldn’t fear it so much. Isn’t that interesting?”
Amelia’s beaming smile was slightly unexpected.
It felt like he had glimpsed a side of her that others shouldn’t see.
Unlike her usual unladylike demeanor that he had perceived as aggressive,
It was like seeing a new facet of her.
“I don’t know what it is you’re afraid of. But wouldn’t it be good to try and find out?”
“Find out…”
“Yeah. What you thought of as a tiger skin rug might actually be a pot lid*! …Something like that could happen, right?”
Amelia was right.
The side of her she showed him was indeed frightening.
But someone trying to stop Arte shouldn’t be afraid.
Just as Yu Siwoo learned a new side of Amelia,
He may be able to discover a new side of Arte as well.
“…Thanks, Amelia. That helped.”
“I’m glad. Now, let’s think about what to do going forward.”
“Yeah.”
Somehow, he was starting to feel courageous.
Translator’s Corner
*Means that something scary from afar could be way different if observed closely.
Should I keep using asterisks to mark notes like this? Also you better have read my essay in the last chapter.
-Ruminas