Capítulo 7: The Genius and the Common Man (2)
Uh-oh.
Damn.
The garden, barely out of the arena. I'm cursing and holding my knees. How did I end up like this....
The reason is simple.
I overlooked the recoil of the [Time of Genius].
Shit. A nauseous feeling rises in my stomach, and I feel like I'm going to lose it any minute.
A burning sensation travels up my esophagus, and I can feel it regurgitating. And it doesn't stop at the vomit line.
Was that… blood?
"Fuck."
I clench my fist tightly, looking at the sticky mess in my other hand. The sensation of coughing up hot blood was hard to take, even for someone so accustomed to pain.
"Looks like you're a little overdue."
[Genius Time]. While it was praised with all sorts of platitudes in the previous duel, it had one major flaw.
When you time yourself out, you're stuck with the [Recoil] debuff.
This was the worst debuff of all, permanently draining the caster of health and making them more prone to fainting.
As a result, players rarely used it except in very special circumstances.
…Of course, I wasn't in a position to judge such things.
[The recoil of the 'Hour of Genius' skill reduces the player's lifespan by 2 days and 17 hours].
Thus, the noble reason why I'm currently spilling blood in the middle of my own family's yard is due to the skill that saved my life.
…I can't imagine how ridiculous it must seem to others.
"Luckily, I've come to a secluded place where there are no prying eyes."
I muttered, the corners of my mouth twitching. If I had been noticed, I would have had to think long and hard about how to get out of the situation.
Naturally, with so much to worry about, I can't afford to have that happen, and it's best to avoid it at all costs.
In that sense, I was lucky not to be penalized during the battle. In a lot of ways, I was pretty lucky.
…I was thinking.
"Are you… hurt?"
A familiar girl's voice came from behind him.
It was clearly filled with concern, but to me it sounded more like the signature call of the Grim Reaper before taking a mortal away.
Why, what, suddenly?
With that thought, I turned around, unable to finish cleaning up the blood.
Sure enough, there she was, Talia.
She looked at me again and asked.
"Did you get hurt in the duel earlier?"
I was stunned.
If I told her now that I was ill, and that I had been injured in the battle earlier, I risked ruining all my plans.
Theo is unlikely to admit a weak son to Eldain who fights once and goes into a grotesque state.
At least, that's what my 27 Inner Lunatic clears tell me.
As soon as that realization hit me, I became indecisive about my course of action.
My head snaps back as if hit by a hammer.
What comes out of that tiny mouthful could determine my future. A cold sweat trickles down my face.
"You…."
Yuck.
As Talia begins to speak, a spitball is swallowed into my esophagus, along with a drop of blood. My uneasy gaze turns to the girl who got caught.
But... the words that come out of her mouth are somehow not at all what I expected.
"To win a battle against your brothers with such a mangled body… I must have misunderstood you, you are a true example of a knight!"
"...what?"
I blurted out, dumbfounded.
* * *
Talia, the second daughter of the Steiner family.
Her favorite fairy tale was about Celsus, one of the three great sword emperors of the world, now a recluse.
One of the three swordsmen of the continent, he is known for his reclusive lifestyle and refusal to reveal his true identity. A follower of Baal, he was known for his revolutionary work in sealing Paimon, the Ninth Demon.
He lives a quiet life, only to emerge whenever the world is in danger.
In short, he was the light of the continent.
He was.
A true example of a knight!
A knight must be selfless, untroubled by greed, frugal, and willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of justice.
…That's what young Talia thought.
And then, in her eyes, Knox appeared.
A moment ago,
he had continued to excel under his brothers' swordsmanship.
Not only had he recognized the twins' attacks in combat, but he had copied them, and at the last moment, he had won.
This was no easy feat.
At first, it was clear that Knox was being outplayed.
It's not like he was hiding his strength. For the past month, she had been secretly watching him train.
…A bit of a stalker, perhaps, but Talia had a weakness for curiosity by nature.
"Whatever, that's not the point!
Talia's thoughts continued as she ran out of the training center and in the direction of where Knox had disappeared.
Knox was a rare genius.
In the month she'd watched him train, he hadn't picked up a sword once. On his first day back, he clumsily swung his wooden sword a few times.
How did he manage to win?
It must be a matter of talent.
Something he didn't have…
Yes. An overwhelming talent had manifested itself in him, just as it had in his sister, Chel.
That's why he went after Knox.
To ask Knox how he could make that talent blossom.
But when she ran after him. What she saw was a weak, shaking Nox who was bleeding profusely.
"What…? Why did he look like that? Didn't he just overwhelm his siblings with his genius?
Her mind was racing.
It was unavoidable.
Basically, Knox's usual behavior, negligence, and temper. Given the rumors, it was logical to assume that he had won on the strength of his talent alone.
The word hard work doesn't suit him.
But her assumption was clearly wrong. Talia chewed on her lip, disappointed in her rush to judgment.
"Knox… he's not the bastard they say he is, he's just trying to win somehow. Maybe he wants something, and he's going out of his way to get it.
So she couldn't help but ask.
"Are you… hurt?"
* * *
What an example of chivalry.
I thought to myself as I felt my vision go blurry.
"What the hell is this?
I'm trying to make sense of what's going on, but the blood is still pouring out. I feel my consciousness fading and I'm out of breath.
At this point, Talia approaches me and reaches for my hand.
"Crazy!
I quickly swat her hand away. Taking her hand would make me feel better for the moment, but not for the rest of my life.
The hand of a girl with this naturally virtuous face is an express ticket to hell.
"Don't touch me."
That brought out my sharp tongue again.
Okay, full confession. I've spent the last two years holed up in my room playing video games, and I'm not that great with people.
I have a hard time building interpersonal relationships.
I don't know what to say or how to act in a way that won't offend people. It never even occurred to me that it would have this kind of negative impact.
"Oh, I just wanted to say... sorry."
But for some reason, the response wasn't the same. Before, it was like a tomboyish girl talking to me, but now it was more like a sympathetic look.
I don't know what it was, but she seemed to feel some kind of connection with me.
But is there a connection between me and Talia?
While I was thinking about that, Talia watched me wipe the blood away with a calm expression on her face, and then she spoke slowly, hesitantly.
"I haven't been watching you very well."
"What?"
"I didn't realize you were so serious about your sword, which is probably why you were able to beat the twins at the end. I just don't have a good enough eye for people yet, um, yeah, something like that."
"...?"
Talia interrupted, nodding her head in acknowledgment.
"From what I've heard, you were congenitally weak, and now that I think about it, that's the only reason I've been training for so long. I'm sorry if I misunderstood that, too.
I'm sorry that I misunderstood that, too, and that you acted like an asshole because you didn't realize your own inadequacies. Emma said it happens to the best of us, and I get it."
... I was left speechless.
As far as being understood goes, so be it.
But it's a different story when it's Talia von Steiner.
Talia is the one who, along with her brilliant allies, later kills the Baal possessed by Knox.
To me, that means she's more than Satan....
"How am I supposed to react to this?
I couldn't come up with a pointed response, so I decided to start with my purpose.
"If that's what you think, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't tell anyone that I'm bleeding."
"No, of course not!"
Talia shook her head vigorously and looked at Knox, her fists clenched tightly. She looked like a spy with secret instructions.
She muttered to herself in a small voice, 'So you're going to pay back the family that ignored you with your skills….' She gave up trying to understand.
She was starting to get the wrong idea about me anyway, and I knew I was going to get in trouble for trying to correct her.
Having given up, I could now look at her calmly, nodding my head.
It's Talia. A child with chivalrous traits, but the scion of a stiff-necked, prestigious duke. It's never easy for her to admit her mistakes to others.
"She's as sincere as I saw her in the game.
Of course, I know there's something else lurking in the shadows of that sincerity: an inferiority complex about her terrible sister.
It's a sense of self-deprecation.
It was undeniably one of the biggest traumas of her childhood, even if it came from a misunderstanding.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"What is it?"
"Why did you fight your brothers to the point where you got hurt?"
As I answered Talia's meaningless question, I had to pause for a moment. My heart stopped for a moment.
Why did I fight them? To get inside the story, of course.
But that didn't seem to make sense to her.
"Actually, there are many other prestigious academies that aren't Eldain. As you know, if you push yourself too hard, you might break the mana circuit of the monolith, but I thought there must be a reason for you to do so...."
"… Because."
It was a weak answer, even to herself.
This would not convince her at all. Why I'm acting out. What I'm trying to find, what I'm trying to get.
But there's no point in talking about it.
For now, I just do what I have to do.
"I'm a man of my word."
After saying that once more, just in case, I returned to my room. I told Rona to clean up the mess.
When she saw me wield the sword and defeat my two brothers, she freaked out and decided to do as I said and keep her mouth shut.
She's probably the most timid character in the game, so I don't expect anything to happen to her. Sadly, she's the one who scares me the most, so she's the most reliable right now.
"Ha…."
I recall the battle from earlier.
I activated [Time of Genius] and was able to accurately parry Harts and Allen's swordsmanship. In fact, their swordsmanship was nothing more than crude.
I didn't know how they were positioned and struck, but the brothers had the physique and strength of children by the standards of the clan.
Furthermore, they were not yet of a weight class that would allow them to formally train with the family's secret weapon, the Supreme Black Sword.
Only the most talented would be allowed to pass on more than three formulas.
That was the rule of the Reinharber family, and in order to wield the sword, one must be able to control magic before they can wield it.
As a side note, you must be of age again to wield magic. No one who hasn't reached the age of fifteen is allowed to wield magic unless they are a member of the Imperial Family.
This is because they are so special and have many expensive artifacts around them to keep them safe.
As a result, compared to other students who are introduced to magic late in life, the members of the Imperial Family are many times more skilled in magic.
There are political reasons for this as well, to strengthen the centralized system.
But.
The same cannot be said for the genius trait.
Magic is best developed at a young age, but even then, if you have the [Genius] trait, you can still reverse it later on.
…Well, I'm still planning on awakening my magic before entering the academy.
In any case, this is something I can deal with before entering the academy.
I switched gears and reflected on today's events.
"That battle… it was definitely close."
Choosing to raise my last health while taking a beating was the handshake of handshakes. A choice he would never make if he had more time. But he didn't have the luxury of time.
He had a month at most.
All I could do was take a gamble.
"The problem from here on out is getting my stamina as high as I can before I enter Eldain, and doing something with my time-limited body...."
I crossed my arms, opening the status window for a moment.
__________________
[Basic Info]
Name: Knox Von Reinhaber
Gender: Male
Age: 14
Race: Human
Primary Element: Darkness
Achievements: None
[Traits].
Positives: [Genius with Swords and Martial Arts] / [Genius with Mana Sensitivity] / [Insight] / [Master of Memorization] / [Steel Mentality] / [Master of Smoke] / [Blessing of Growth].
Neutral: [Manifestation of Darkness]
Negative: [Time Limit] / [Nuisance] / [Hand Cold] / [Possession]
[Stats]
Health: 4
Magic: 9
Luck: 7
Will: 10.2
Charm: 25
[Skills] – Active Skill: Time of Genius
*The player's remaining lifespan is 332 days based on the [Time of Genius] talent.
__________________
I have only 332 days left to live.
I can feel my heart sinking with each passing day.
My health is now just 4, and my will is up 0.2 to 10.2. My initial stats were pretty high, so it wasn't too bad.
…The problem is, I have a bunch of negative talents, including Time Limit.
"I'll have to get those first."
I sat down on my bed and organized the document I'd created a while ago.
It was filled with all sorts of hidden pieces that I needed to get, not the least of which was something I could get right now.
And it was hidden within this Reinharbour estate.
In more ways than one, I'll take what I can from the Reinharbers.
With that, I swore and muttered.
"I'll do whatever it takes."
* * *
The next day, I thought.
"Tell me how I can grow that fast!"
Suddenly, Talia came to me. This feels like a lump.
...a big lump that will kill me in the future.
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