Chapter 145. O Teacher! My Teacher!
“Teacher, after you left, I really...!”
“Huuuh....”
After discovering who Pie and I really were, Gildeupin had stubbornly insisted on telling me everything that had happened over the past twenty years.
Seriously.
Seriously, she kept repeating the same stories over and over again like some NPC.
No, like a bugged NPC.
Again.
And again.
And again...!
Even after I logged out, slept for a night, and came back, she was still talking.
Eventually, I lost consciousness.
Snap!
Or...
I tried to.
A painfully refreshing sensation spread through my entire body, as if someone had smeared menthol pain-relief ointment all over me.
My eyes shot open.
“Good grief! Teacher, how can you have such a weak mind while aboard a ship? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Please... Please let me go....”
“We still have plenty of time before we reach the Isolated Sea. Why are you having such a difficult time? It isn’t as if our relationship is so distant.”
Gildeupin was...
Really.
Really excited.
According to her story, even when we first met, she hadn’t been able to completely dislike me.
Apparently, she had intentionally gone easy on me a few times.
She had even gone out of her way to talk to me and act friendly.
I had simply never noticed.
People from Power were naturally hostile toward outsiders.
And entering Gildeupin’s circle of Friendship was apparently ridiculously difficult.
Right.
No wonder she barely talked to anyone except me.
“I knew there was something strangely familiar about you. It looks like you’ve trained your body diligently. Good!”
“...Well! That’s true! Hahaha! I worked very hard!”
“Hahaha!”
This...
Wasn’t so bad!
Yeah!
It felt nice to finally meet someone who recognized my effort!
Hehehe!
Well...
I hadn’t actually been training that hard lately.
Most of the people around me now had only met me after I had already built up my body, so naturally, there weren’t many people who could appreciate the change.
...
Wait.
Then why had Pie pretended not to recognize me?
Huh?
“A great deal changed in Power after that as well. On the day you taught us about the love between family and friends, those of us who had been scattered apart began joining our strength together.”
“Ohhh....”
But weren’t they still extremely hostile toward outsiders?
Gildeupin herself had said she still had that tendency.
“The Witch of Corruption helped us greatly as well. We had worshipped nothing but pure martial strength, but she properly taught us the mysteries of sorcery.”
“Sorcery? You mean those tattoos on your body?”
“Yes.”
Gildeupin looked down at the patterns covering her skin.
“These formulas awakened the power of dragons sleeping within the bodies of the people of Power.”
“Thanks to that, we were even able to test our strength against Heroes of the Empire.”
Hmm.
Was she talking about the first time Modak and Grandpa Aro met?
Grandpa Aro hadn’t been a Great Hero back then.
But considering that he could now directly fight the Roots of the Fanatics by himself and return alive...
The fact that they had been able to compete with someone like that at all was actually pretty impressive.
...
Grandpa Aro was like a wall that only became taller the more I learned about him.
Every time I looked up thinking I might finally see the top...
I only realized how hopelessly far away it still was.
“We even offered to serve as that woman’s hiding place and tried to protect her...”
Gildeupin’s expression darkened slightly.
“But we could not protect her from that monster.”
“I could hardly believe it.”
“At the time, I was already a Hero, yet I had to fight that man on equal footing when he was only a Knight.”
I feel like I’d lose if I fought Aien one-on-one right now too...
Was that really such a big deal?
Wait.
Then if Aien eventually became a Hero...
And later a Great Hero...
Could she become someone comparable to Grandpa Aro?
Ohhh...
As expected!
Our kid is the best!
“...But why are you with the Haemo Church now, Gildeupin? Did you fight with someone back home?”
“I am simply traveling the world for a while.”
Gildeupin crossed her arms.
“The Haemo Church possesses great power, so being affiliated with them makes traveling freely quite convenient.”
“Then you’re not particularly religious?”
“I trust the Haemo Church’s technology more than the Sea Goddess they worship.”
She leaned toward me slightly.
“That is a secret, Teacher.”
What a rational person.
And somehow, she had even made friends with the Haemo Church members and was getting along with them.
Maybe both sides were tolerating their ideological differences because Gildeupin brought such overwhelming strength to the table?
“Well, enough old stories.”
Gildeupin finally changed the subject.
“They are stories from twenty years ago, which feels distant to both you and me.”
“Wow. I’m so happy.”
“How about we talk about the Isolated Sea this time?”
“That would be all right, yes?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Gildeupin ignored my completely flat tone and continued talking.
Seriously.
Just how did the people of Power remember me?
Why was she treating me this warmly?
It was strange.
All I remembered doing was playing with them for a little while and talking some nonsense.
“The Indusami I mentioned before.”
“The monster guarding the entrance.”
“There is only one.”
Gildeupin continued.
“That alone makes entering the Isolated Sea an extremely difficult ordeal.”
“But leaving the Isolated Sea is even harder than entering.”
“Didn’t you go there and come back once, though?”
“I did.”
She reached toward her waist.
“I received this axe from the blacksmith there.”
Then she pulled it free.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Whooom! Whooom!
Simply swinging it lightly through the air created loud sounds of wind being split apart.
There was clearly some kind of special power contained within it.
It possessed an extraordinary flow, similar to Aien’s sword that grew together with its wielder.
To put it in gamer terms...
It was easily one of the top ten items I wanted to steal immediately.
If this had been a single-player game, I probably would’ve killed Gildeupin, used cheats, or done whatever else was necessary to get that thing.
Then I would’ve carried it around massacring everything.
“The Isolated Sea is a world made up of hundreds of small islands.”
“There are larger islands in the north, south, east, west, and center.”
“And finally, beneath the sea is a kingdom of merfolk different from Karantlia.”
“The blacksmith is on the central island, right?”
“Correct.”
Gildeupin pulled a map of the Isolated Sea from her pocket.
“The entire central island belongs to the blacksmith.”
She tapped the large island in the middle.
“And that entire island...”
“Is his forge.”
That’s insane.
I looked more closely at the map.
But something was strange.
The sizes of the islands were marked...
Yet there were no distances between them.
What?
Could the distances not be measured?
“I already told you.”
Gildeupin tapped the map again.
“Leaving the Isolated Sea is difficult.”
“Even if you board a ship and leave one island intending to reach the next, whether you actually arrive has absolutely nothing to do with your abilities.”
“Then... it’s random?”
“That is the best way to describe it.”
She sighed.
“If you are unlucky, you may try to travel to a tiny island right beside you and instead spend several days drifting across the sea.”
“You can see the island right there in the distance.”
“You row.”
“And row.”
“And keep rowing.”
“But you never reach it.”
Gildeupin shuddered.
“That terrible suffering is truly....”
...
Then why the hell did the Haemo Church call a place like that sacred?
There wasn’t something else hidden there, was there?
...
Wait.
Then how did the people living there survive?
They couldn’t leave the sea.
They had to survive entirely on the limited resources available inside the Isolated Sea.
It wasn’t like they could easily interact with each other either.
And how was this legendary blacksmith running an entire forge in a place like that?
Ah.
Maybe the Isolated Sea had never existed in the original world?
Maybe it was something like the developers’ testing laboratory.
There might even be tons of cheat-like items there that couldn’t be found anywhere else.
