"Mm. The last attempt barely succeeded."
"Thank you for your hard work, Haruhime. The feeling of mind zero must be very unpleasant. Please rest well tonight."
After multiple grueling experiments, Noah had finally successfully inscribed Haruhime's ultimate magic, Uchide no Kozuchi, into a piece of ammunition.
What he held in his hand was a glowing red crystal formed from congealed blood.
This was a magic stone mixed with Haruhime's own blood; based on their tests, it was currently the only physical container that could preserve the powerful level-boosting effects of Uchide no Kozuchi.
Based on this massive success, Noah suspected that if he ever wanted to create bullets for Airmid's Dia Flatel spell, he might also need a vial of her blood to succeed.
Getting Haruhime's blood was completely manageable.
But Airmid was the precious, highly protected daughter of the Dian Cecht Familia.
Casually asking her to bleed for him wouldn't be a simple matter.
Extinguishing the magic stone lamp on his desk, Noah finally returned to his bedroom to sleep.
As his eyes closed, his breathing gradually became steady, and his consciousness slowly sank into the heavy chaos of sleep.
A door.
He was standing within a pure, endless white space.
The young man opened his eyes, staring at the empty doorframe waiting before him.
"Just as I expected."
Noah confirmed a permanent change that had occurred within his own mind due to his new magic, Yog-Sothoth.
He could no longer dream normally.
Or rather, his dreamscape had become permanently fixed to this pure white room.
As long as he stepped through this door, he could physically project his soul back into the alternate world he had previously visited.
"Hah... once you have done it once, the second time isn't as scary. Don't hesitate now, me!"
Noah paced back and forth in the pure white space, hyping himself up.
Suddenly, he strode quickly toward the door and leaped straight through the threshold without a second of hesitation.
Thud!
"Holy crap."
In a dark, filthy alleyway, a portal mysteriously opened on a brick wall.
The young man's figure tumbled out from within, his foot stepping squarely onto the lid of an overturned metal trash can.
The cylindrical trash can rolled under his weight, causing the young man to lose his balance and fall face-first toward the concrete.
"Gravity Reversal!"
Noah hastily used Weaver to adjust the gravity around him, stopping his fall in mid-air before landing steadily on his feet.
'Tch. Completely different from last time.'
Previously, he had awakened safely on the floor of a prison cell.
That was one thing, but this time he had been dumped directly into a pile of garbage.
This method of entry was far too random and uncontrollable.
Casually summoning a localized gust of wind to gather all the spilled trash, Noah stuffed it all back into the can and set it upright.
He looked down at the clothes he was wearing.
He was still wearing the exact same bloody, ragged outfit from the underground arena.
Anyone seeing these clothes would instantly know he was a slave who had escaped from the deathmatches.
"So this really is a modern society."
Noah saw English words like "Hamburger" printed on the trash wrappers, and inside the can were many plastic bottles, plastic straws, and torn cardboard boxes.
None of those synthetic materials existed in Orario.
While he was rummaging through the trash can to confirm his surroundings, a drunk man came swaying into the dark alley from the main road, lazily swinging an empty glass bottle in his hand.
The moment he saw Noah, the man's bloodshot eyes widened angrily.
"You little bastard! Where did you come from?! This alley is my territory!"
Noah turned to look at the drunk man and naturally used Appraisal.
[Gideon] > * Race/Gender: Human / Male
Age: 43
Origin: Kingdom of Vermillion
Status: Vagrant / Drunk / Angry
Criminal Record: Theft (63 counts), Murder (2 counts), Attempted Assault (1 count), Armed Robbery (5 counts).
Money Held: 4,000 Vermillion Currency
"I see."
Noah now had a very clear understanding of just how powerless the royal family of the Vermillion Kingdom truly was.
A citizen who had committed so many violent crimes could still swagger freely through the streets completely unpunished.
Even a literal city of sin like Orario wouldn't be this wildly chaotic.
'No need to show any mercy, then.'
"What the hell are you smiling about, brat?!"
The drunk swung his heavy glass bottle down at Noah's head.
Noah casually shifted his body to the side to dodge the clumsy swing, while raising a single finger to press gently against the underside of the man's jaw.
A razor-thin, highly compressed blade of wind shot up through the man's chin, instantly turning his brain into mush.
The man's pupils instantly filled with blood, and he collapsed limply to the concrete like a marionette with its strings cut.
'Oh no.'
He had killed him purely on reflex.
He hadn't actually intended to kill the mugger.
Was this a lingering side-effect from his brutal life-or-death battles against Evilus?
That lethal strike had been a completely unconscious trained reaction.
Noah looked down at the man's fallen corpse, feeling somewhat troubled.
Guilt was secondary—the man had a long history of murder and had indeed just tried to smash a heavy bottle over a child's head.
"Leaving a corpse here would cause a lot of unnecessary trouble for the local sanitation workers."
"Wait, does a slum like this even have sanitation workers?"
'Better to just burn him.'
Noah manipulated the fire elements to silently ignite the man's body, dragging him deeper into the shadows of the alley to prevent any pedestrians on the main road from noticing the light.
"Appraisal."
[1000 Vermillion Bill] > * Quantity: 4
Value: Purchasing power equivalent to roughly 2,600 Valis.
"So the exchange rate to Valis is roughly 1 to 2.6."
Looking at this rate, this vagrant was unexpectedly well-off for a homeless man.
Tearing off his bloody arena rags and burning them in the fire, Noah used Weaver to quickly modify and tailor the vagrant's spare clothes into a modern outfit that fit him.
Once he was dressed, he finally stepped out of the alley and onto the main road.
....
It was completely different from Orario.
Even though this city also maintained a heavily Western architectural style, it incorporated many modern, industrial elements.
The paved roads weren't particularly wide, and there weren't many pedestrians out at this hour.
A motorized car suddenly drove past his eyes, making Noah stop and stare at it for quite a while.
A car.
It was an auto brand he didn't recognize from Earth.
But undoubtedly, it was a standard, mid-to-large four-door sedan.
Gradually, a warm nostalgic smile unconsciously spread across his face.
Even though this was not his original home of Earth, this universe also had a technologically advanced modern society.
It gave him the comforting feeling of suddenly logging out of a hardcore fantasy virtual reality and returning to the real world.
He bought a hot cup of coffee from a brightly lit roadside convenience stand and began touring this unknown land like a curious tourist.
He could understand everything the people here said, and the language he spoke was no different from the locals.
Even the written language was exactly the same—he could easily read the text on the glowing billboards, and he perfectly understood the trendy new slang vocabulary the teenagers were using.
And when he wanted to write, his hand naturally wrote in the local script.
"How mysterious."
He sipped his hot coffee while looking at a medium for news dissemination that had long since become outdated on Earth.
That's right. A printed newspaper.
Actually, he wasn't really reading it—he just needed to use his Truth Seeker skill on the paper, and all the news and current events recorded in the pages were instantly downloaded and understood by his brain.
"This is..."
The front page of the newspaper featured a very familiar face... the red-haired girl he had seen that day in the underground arena.
Her name was Stella Vermillion, the Second Princess of this country.
At the same time, the article mentioned she had a very special identity.
—Blazer.
According to the newspaper's lore, Blazers were special, super-powered humans who appeared at a rate of only one in a thousand people.
They were characterized by their unique ability to manifest their own souls into physical weapons called "Devices" and manipulate them using magical power.
This absolutely shocked Noah.
He had already learned through sacrificing a chicken just how incredibly fragile and difficult souls were to manipulate.
Later, during his battle with Evilus, he had instantly defeated a Level 5 captain just by lightly striking the enemy's soul.
'Turning your own fragile soul into a physical weapon for brutal melee combat... wasn't this truly suicidal behavior?!'
As he delved deeper into the downloaded knowledge, Noah was amazed to discover that this incredible, reality-breaking ability seemed to be an innate, natural talent for the special beings called "Blazers" born in this universe.
"Devices" were the literal manifestations of the soul—Blazers transformed their own spiritual essence into a physical form.
Moreover, Devices usually possessed highly special elemental abilities, capable of accomplishing many incredible feats and wielding tremendous, city-leveling power.
Even the various geopolitical rules of this modern world were established entirely based on the power of Blazers.
Compared to modern tanks, aircraft, and fighter jets, a high-ranking Blazer possessed an even more terrifying deterrent force.
The combat strength of a nation's top Blazers directly represented that nation's overall military power.
The Kingdom of Vermillion was militarily very weak on the global stage precisely because it lacked powerful, high-ranking Blazers.
This world, having experienced massive, devastating world wars in the past, was now managed by the International Mage Knight League, an organization which oversaw and regulated all Blazers globally.
Even though Blazers possessed extraordinary power far beyond ordinary people, they could not legally use their abilities in public without official recognition from the League.
Everything was strictly regulated by the "Mage Knight System."
Those born with Blazer talent had to attend specialized Blazer academies recognized by the international organization.
Through rigorous exams and tournaments, they could obtain an official "license" and the elevated social status of a "Mage Knight."
Only licensed Mage Knights could legally use their abilities in society.
The political title of "Mage Knight" didn't matter much to Noah, but if he could somehow attend one of those specialized academies to study, he should be able to learn the exact methods for using a soul in combat!
This seemed like it would greatly help him further develop and master his Weaver skill's new soul-manipulation abilities.
In fact, Blazers had indeed once been called "mages" and "witches" in the distant past.
Many of the legendary holy swords and demonic magic swords in history were actually just the materialized Devices of famous Blazers from the old eras.
"Manifesting the soul as a physical, unbreakable form... I wonder if I could do it?"
Even though he was intensely curious, he didn't dare casually manipulate his own soul just yet.
If he made a mistake and failed, it would mean instant death and eternal damnation.
The newspaper also mentioned that the slaves fighting in the illegal arenas were mostly criminal or unlicensed Blazers.
These included people who had committed capital crimes but didn't want to die—they chose to become slaves, violently entertaining the corrupt elites in the arena just to survive.
However, it seemed the arena management now had a new priority.
On the back page of the newspaper, Noah caught sight of a very interesting piece of local news.
"WANTED: Young boy who escaped from the underground arena. Dead or alive; massive cash bonus for alive. If captured and returned by a current slave gladiator, that slave's freedom will be fully restored."
That's right.
He was currently a highly wanted fugitive being hunted by the entire criminal underworld!
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