༺ It’s Common Sense to Break the Magic Orb ༻
‘Sigh…’
It’s funny.
This was a colleague who had spent 6 years fighting through life and death with me, Was it really that difficult to just tell us his name?
I already knew he had built up an invisible wall around himself,
But I never imagined it would be this much.
‘Well, whatever.’
This was why I didn’t like this guy.
He tried so hard to hide everything,
So it became impossible to get close, even if you tried.
On top of that, if you saw his grade on the electronic board,
F-class, in other words, the lowest grade possible.
The completely opposite of Ha-eun.
‘That doesn’t mean he’s weak though.’
If Ha-eun was talented,
This guy worked hard.
In fact, his swordsmanship was excellent.
If memory serves, I have recollections that there was a case when he overcame the extreme difference in levels and even beat Ha-eun in a spar.
‘It’s none of my business, though.’
Now it was my turn, so I didn’t have time to pay attention to him right now.
I needed to see if this actually worked.
To see if my plan worked, I first activated the Eye of Greed.
The target of the artifact this time was the magic orb itself.
‘…It definitely is interesting.’
On the outside, it just looks like a blue orb,
But when seen through the Eye of Greed, it looked completely different.
Should we say that I could see the mana flowing within it?
Just like blood flowing through a body,
One could see a large amount of mana organically moving within the orb.
But there was something strange,
‘What are those black things?’
Should I say it’s a bit broken, or was it always that way?
Something black that looked like a foreign substance was embedded in various places.
In fact, the flow of the mana inside the orb seemed to be quite unstable due to the foreign substance.
“Okay, next number please.”
As I was focused on the magic orb, someone called for me from the auditorium.
It was a bit strange, but did as I was told and went to the auditorium.
And,
“Isn’t that the punk from earlier?”
“No. He’s the asshole that made the girl cry.”
“That guy’s definitely an F-class.”
A bit different from when Ha-eun was called up, but the auditorium grew noisy.
As I watched this, I found it amusing.
It was a bit different from what I intended,
But the students were definitely interested in me.
‘This will make my skill more effective.’
Last night.
I tested it again and again with my two underlings.
What is an incomplete victory? And what is a complete victory?
And why did I acquire skills as soon as I saw them?
‘Thinking about it, it was strange.’
When I thought about it, the skill itself was weird.
Win a duel.
On what basis can we say a duel was won?
In the first place, a duel was a match where one wouldn’t know how it would end.
‘Seriously, the most dangerous moment is when you think a duel is over. How is the skill going to determine that?’
The moment an enemy was most careless was when they thought a duel was over.
The moment when one judged their opponent to be incapable of continuing.
At that moment, one would cancel all of their active skills and let go of their tension. There wasn’t a situation more dangerous than this.
There were even some enemies that had a resurrection skill.
What if I killed an enemy and copied their skill,
But say through the resurrection skill they instead came back to life and killed me?
Would that count as my victory?
10 out of 10 times,
They would all count as my losses.
Therefore, it felt like there was something lacking with the conclusion of simply winning a battle. ‘If so, the conclusion is simple.’
Personally, I believe that the outcome of a duel could never be predicted,
But clearly, this skill made a distinction between a complete victory and an incomplete one.
So far, the only complete victories I’ve experienced were the one against the boss Amaimon in the dungeon and when I won at rock paper scissors against Ha-eun,
The incomplete victories I had were when I cleared the task given to me by Amaimon and when I faced underlings 1 and 2.
Honestly, there was nothing complicated to think about.
In the case of a “clear victory”, the opponent had to recognize that they themselves were defeated, even if it wasn’t a fight.
When I won at rock paper scissors, and when I won the bet.
In both cases, they realized they lost, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Of course, this was just a hypothesis.
However if I conclude this,
I knew what an incomplete victory was.
The reason why it was called an incomplete victory was because the situation was hard to determine from the feelings of defeat.
To be precise,
Rather than a feeling of defeat, an incomplete victory was decided when one felt emotions similar to defeat such as a sense of inferiority or inadequacy.
This was why I got a screen that read “incomplete victory” when I faced underlings 1 and 2.
‘And I did a test just to be sure.’
To confirm my hypothesis,
I continued testing with underlings 1 and 2.
Of course, they each only had one skill, so I couldn’t copy their skills.
As I kept on beating the guys for no reason, I kept on getting a screen that read ‘incomplete victory’.
But even when I just used my stats to intimidate and overwhelm them, I got an incomplete victory.
What this meant was,
In the end, one had to give their opponents a sense of defeat or a feeling similar to defeat to copy their skills.
Of course, this could be wrong.
Which was why I needed to check whether this was just a baseless hypothesis or a definitive conclusion.
“Please place your hand on the magic orb.”
As soon as I was done thinking, the lady spoke to me.
With the attention of everyone inside the auditorium,
I placed my hand on the magic orb.
‘First, I’ll invest all my points in luck.’
A stat that literally increases the intangible trait of luck.
This was why there was no stat more ambiguous than luck,
But there was no stat I needed right now than luck.
There was no moment where I needed luck more than I do now.
‘Everyone’s attention is set on me, this is perfect.’
Although they had a negative impression of me,
Everyone was still paying attention.
No, rather, it was even better now.
The worse they thought of me, the greater the sense of inferiority they would feel when I showed them something they couldn’t believe.
This was why I once again pulled everybody’s attention by flipping my middle finger to everyone in the auditorium,
Then place my hand on the magic orb.
And with that,
I activate the Mana Manipulation skill.
As its name suggests, it manipulates mana,
And it’s one of the most basic of skills but…
‘It’s different if I have the Eye of Greed.’
I reversed the flow of mana within the magic orb using the Mana Manipulation skill.
Similar to the way a person’s body would be destroyed if their blood flowed backward, the same would happen to this magic orb.
Through the Eye of Greed I could see the mana within the magic orb, something other people wouldn’t be able to see,
And based on that, I manipulate the mana.
‘Who decides I’m D-class, huh? Fuck you, I’ll choose my own grade.’
How dare a mere inanimate object, that wasn’t even a person, try to judge me.
‘So go ahead and just break.’
I activated Mana Manipulation to its fullest extent.
To reverse the mana in the orb as much as possible and destroy it.
It wouldn’t break if you tried to break it from the outside,
But it could be destroyed by thoroughly manipulating the areas where mana needed to flow.
If this were to break, it would be amusing to see the academy professors’ faces.
It was expensive, after all.
However,
‘Damn it, is it too much with an E-class skill?’
Even though I precisely messed with the flow of mana using the Eye of Greed and Mana Manipulation, the magic orb seems unaffected.
Maybe it was because my skill level was too low,
But it wouldn’t be easy to reverse the flow of mana no matter how much I use Mana Manipu-
As those thoughts appeared in my mind, the system window popped up in front of me.
‘Magi Manipulation? There is Magi?’
Magi was such a rare thing, where in the world was there Magi…,
‘Could it be, these black stains?’
The foreign black substance trapped inside the magic orb.
As I started to use Magi Manipulation
I could feel the black substance reacting.
‘With this…’
It would be possible to break this orb if I used an S-class skill instead of an E-class.
Without any hesitation,
I used Magi Manipulation immediately.
Since it manipulates Magi, it would be impossible to reverse the flow of mana.
Instead, I attack the magic orb by blocking the flow of mana with Magi.
Not long after, mana began to accumulate and clump into one spot
The mana, unable to flow properly, built up and condensed to the point where it wouldn’t be strange for it to explode at any moment.
And,
-Crack
The magic orb was completely shattered under my hand.
“Huh…?”
“What the?”
“W-What…!”
Silence engulfed the area in an instant.
Only a few exclamations could be heard from around the auditorium, most of the others were unable to accept the situation.
And in that auditorium,
“Fuck, that’s crazy!”
Only my voice, unable to control my excitement, resonated.
I couldn’t help it.
No matter who it was,
[Skill: Small Flame(D) has been acquired.]
[Skill: Shockwave(C) has been acquired.]
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[To see more, click here! (89+)]
[You have leveled up.]
[You have leveled up.]
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[You have leveled up.]
There was no way anybody would be able to stay calm after seeing this ridiculous amount of notifications.
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