༺ Reunion of Sisters (3) ༻
Hua Ran was on a relatively lazy side. Her birth as a powerhouse and her body that made it so that she couldn’t get hurt by anything in the world made the living jiangshi girl slower than others.
It probably wasn’t a wrong expression to call that lazy.
‘Wake up, Hua. It’s morning!’
The faint source of light shining in through the curtains told her that the sun had come up. Opening her eyes a little, she checked the intensity of the light and noticed that the room still wasn’t that bright.
It meant that it wasn’t time to wake up yet but…
‘You’re awake, right? Hurry and get up!’
“…So noisy.”
‘Excuse me! How can you say that to your older sister?’
‘Why are you the older sister?’ She wanted to ask but decided against it, because she was bound to get caught up in the opponent’s pace when talking to her new roommate.
In the end, Hua Ran didn’t want to continue listening to the noisy chatterbox so she had to get up from the bed.
“…7 am.”
The alarm of the cuckoo clock was 9, which meant that she had woken up 2 hours earlier than usual.
‘Let’s have breakfast! Breakfast!’
“…”
Without replying to her, Hua Ran slowly finished her preparations. The chains slowly crawled back up with hints of yellow talismans. They were quick, improvised versions but were enough to stabilize her mind as long as Hua Ran didn’t pull up the abundant aura inside her.
Leaving the room, she walked down the corridor and the staircase. On the first floor was the sunroom with a view of the garden, the kitchen, and the dining room. Hua Ran was about to head to the dining room straight away, but was stopped by a loud ‘Kung!’ that echoed from the sunroom.
‘What was that? What was that? Hua, let’s go! Let’s go!’
“…”
Hua Ran didn’t like the fact that she had to listen to each and every command of the noisy roommate, but was also curious about the sound so she headed to the sunroom.
This wasn’t because Ran told her to go there; this was purely based on Hua’s own choice.
– Creak!
Opening the door, she found the backyard garden and the recreation area connecting to it. The room contained large glass doors with wooden floors and walls, with occasional sofas and tables for a small chat and a morning tea.
Hua Ran had never used this place though. Usually, it was Marie and Korin eating baked potatoes here after baking them at the backyard, or Josephine for a tea-time by herself.
On one of the sofas of the sunroom was Korin Lork… but actually, his body had fallen off of the sofa onto the floor. The loud thud just then seemed to have been the sound of him slipping from the sofa. Considering how he was still fast asleep despite that, he seemed to be in a very deep sleep.
‘It’s Korin-oppa!’
“…”
Leaving behind the noisy Ran, Hua Ran headed to the sleeping Korin and crouched down next to him.
“…”
– Poke!
She poked his cheek. Her finger went straight in as if she was poking through water.
“Kuhang…”
The boy let out an inelegant snore. He appeared very exhausted and didn’t seem to be waking up any time soon.
– Pinch! Pinch! Pinch~!
‘Hua?’
With late autumn on its way, the sunroom was quite cold and refreshing. Her heart beat slowly and was far from warmth, but then…
“…”
What was this warm feeling in her heart? She wondered.
‘I knew it. Hua, you like him too, right?’
“…I don’t know.”
Without even noticing the wide smile on the face of her self-proclaimed older sister, Hua Ran slowly continued her words.
“He always acts as he pleases, does stuff for me even though I didn’t ask him to and always works hard. I just can’t understand.”
‘Do you hate him?’
“…No I don’t.”
‘Then do you like him?’
“…”
Hua Ran didn’t respond, not because she didn’t want to fall for Ran’s tricks. Despite her knowledge and physical appearance, the jiangshi girl was still only 3 years old and had trouble understanding the nature of the emotion she was feeling.
All she knew was that looking at Korin… would make her heart ache every time. Seeing him in bandages made her heart feel like it was being stabbed.
Even though blades couldn’t pierce through her skin, the sight of the tattered body of the boy pierced through her unbreakable skin with ease.
That was why she hated him. Like a hammer striking an iron ingot, he constantly banged at her heart.
“He’s annoying.”
But I don’t hate him, she thought. The jiangshi girl didn’t have a wide enough vocabulary to be able to explain her emotions.
‘It’s okay. I will help you learn what that is as your older sister.’
“…”
Without replying to Ran’s words, Hua Ran continued fidgeting with Korin’s cheeks. After continuing that meaningless action for a long time, the girl was about to get up from either boredom or satisfaction, but it was then.
“What are you doing?” A familiar voice echoed from behind. It was the voice of her other housemate who always had a bright smile on her face.
“…”
As expected, she found the vampire girl with water-colored hair after turning around.
Marie Dunareff was gazing down at Hua Ran. Usually, she looked so kind and generous that it was annoying but her current expression wasn’t gentle in the slightest. In fact, it even seemed to contain a faint aura of dreariness.
“You woke up earlier than usual, didn’t you?” Marie asked.
“…It was noisy.”
Although Hua Ran had never talked about Ran to her, Marie nodded after being convinced and walked past her.
“Korin.”
She then stopped next to Korin. As if Hua Ran wasn’t even there, she spoke to him.
“Korin, wake up. You’ll catch a cold if you sleep here.”
However, the boy, who had come back after helping the securities of the Academy deal with the fanatics last night, needed more sleep.
“Can’t be helped. Doggo.”
A 2-meter-long dog revealed itself from her shadow. Without even needing to listen to her command, the dog immediately started to lift Korin up.
“Looks like he fell asleep here without even changing his clothes. Take him to his bed for me.”
Doggo was about to leave the sunroom carrying Korin, but that was when Hua Ran opened her mouth.
“…Sofa.”
“Hnn? Did you say something?”
“Isn’t it… better to leave him on the sofa?”
She was asking if there was a need to bother taking him to his bed, out of concern that he might wake up in the middle.
What Hua Ran didn’t know was that no one had ever seen her show consideration for other people.
“…A bed will be softer than the sofa.”
“He might… wake up.”
“There aren’t any blankets here. It’s autumn, so it might be cold for him.”
“…”
Hua Ran couldn’t come up with a logical rebuttal and in the end, she couldn’t stop Marie and Korin from leaving the sunroom.
“There are steamed potatoes in the dining room so have them! I can have breakfast together with Korin so feel free to have everything there!”
“…”
Seeing her back, Hua Ran felt slightly ticklish at heart and scratched herself. The word, ‘together’, which she normally would have ignored remained vividly as an echo in her ears.
‘Hmm~. I knew it; she’s our enemy, huh.’
Despite not really understanding why, Hua Ran inwardly agreed with Ran’s words.
****
The festival wasn’t over but the lectures were back. Even though they were relatively tolerant with lessons… It was in fact because of that that students weren’t exempted from lessons even during the festival.
Besides, the lessons were only in the morning and most of the afternoons were free.
“These are ingredients you can gather anywhere during emergency situations—”
The tender voice of Professor Lulara combined with the boring lesson content inevitably ended up resulting in students dozing off. Her voice and the sound of scribbling pens were the only sources of sound in the lecture room.
Since it was something I heard in the last iteration, I decided to ignore it and instead focused on something else.
〚Korin Lork (Hero)〛
Aura Rank: { Lower High (8,130) }
Mana Rank: { Upper Low (6,770) }
Specialty: { Regeneration of the Tenacious Warrior, Pain Tolerance, Domain Comprehension, Triple Core, Demonic Aura Release }
Strength: 111
Agility: 107
Vitality: 114
Aura: 104
Mana: 104
After Hua Ran’s incident, my overall stats went above 100.
Huu~, I still remember them being around 20s and 30s like a trash mob, and being able to reach this far in less than 1 year was extremely moving.
All the hard work I put in to diligently train my body instead of solely relying on the stat amplification of Precepts was coming in handy.
‘With this, I should have exceeded the initial stats of Alicia and…’
My stats were probably higher than the current Alicia’s stats as well.
It was nothing new at this point that Alicia was also a tremendous genius and she had been growing exponentially after the fight against Lunia through constant practices. However, my current growth speed was even faster than the player of the original game. I was confident in beating the game player as long as it wasn’t like last iteration’s Park Sihu or something.
‘I even got the 3rd core and the new skill, Demonic Aura Release.’
Apart from stats, there were two things I gained as rewards of the Precept, and they were the increase to my Aura and Mana Ranks, as well as the new skill.
Now, my Aura Rank was at Low High, where knights first gained their cores. It was the official stairway to becoming a superhuman.
However, I had the core from the White Silver Mandrake as well as the one with a demonic attribute that I inherited from Sebancia Duke.
In other words, all the other knights were getting their first Aura Core while I was in possession of three.
This difference should be massive. Even aside from how the demonic core contained ridiculously high-quality aura, a simple calculation meant that I had 3 times the aura of others.
‘…Alicia even gained hers as well.’
It seemed that taking dozens of steps in the Domain had exponentially helped with her growth and her Aura Rank had also gone up to Low High according to her.
She had already been Upper Medium from the start, which was only one step away, but that was still half a year faster than her progress in the game. Her future was looking very promising.
Next was ‘Demonic Aura Release’.
『Demonic Aura Release』
– Pull up aura, and amass it into high pressure.
– You may build up and release up to 20% of your total Aura and Mana.
It was an incredibly useful specialty. That much was clear and straightforward but it was rather difficult in terms of use.
My current aura capacity was 8,130. 20% of that meant an instantaneous release of 1,600 aura. That would lead to a ridiculous one-off output.
The problem, however, was that I had no idea how to use it despite carefully testing it out at the hunting grounds.
‘I feel like this would allow me to do something similar to what Sebancia Duke did with his demonic sword…’
Damn… Am I going to be able to cut the sky and kill dragons with one slash of the spear?
“Now~. 5 minutes before the end of the lesson, I will go around looking at what you wrote~~”
Professor Lulara said, which surprised quite a few students including myself. Checking what we wrote? She wasn’t the type to do that though… Ah, was she mad because everyone was sleeping in her lesson…?
This was bad. Judging based on her personality, which I had been seeing for the past 4 years or so, she would probably make us clean the classroom or something. The problem was that this classroom was solely for alchemic studies, and all the old stains built up from experiments were nothing to scoff at.
– Hey, can I look at what you wrote?
– What? No. I haven’t even finished mine yet.
The students buzzed from everywhere. This lesson with Professor Lulara was the end of morning lectures for most people. Most of the students, including me, were eagerly waiting for the free sessions in the afternoon to enjoy the festival.
I threw my hand to the left and quickly looked for something to write with when my hand ended up touching something soft.
“Umm…”
What I accidentally grabbed was the soft hand of a girl. Jaeger was sitting on my right and on my left was…
“…”
Hua Ran was blankly gazing at my hand.
“Oops. Sor—”
– Grip.
Before I could pull my hand out, her small hand dug deeper into my grip. When I turned and faced Hua Ran, I saw her float a faint and playful smile.
“A, are you Ran?”
“Yes.”
With blue eyes and a bashful smile, Ran gazed back at my eyes.
“Umm, your hand…”
“Would you like to look at my notes, oppa?”
“Uhh… that would be great.”
While still tightly holding onto my left hand with her right hand, she used her remaining left hand to pass her note.
“Thanks. By the way, your hand…”
“It’s starting from that page on the right, oppa.”
Oppa… how sweet was the sound of that word?
『Uncle Knight. Please find Navi! Please!』
『…It’s oppa – oppa. Miss Anna? You can call me Knight-oppa.』
『Uncle Knight! Good luck!!』
『Mr. Korin. You… are more like, umm… a father or a mother I would say.』
『…Why can’t I just be an oppa?』
『We’re the same age though?』
『Umm hello? This is not making any sense. So you mean mom’s okay but oppa isn’t? Just call me oppa, and I will seriously buy you a meal.』
『Maybe later!』
Those were the moments of humiliation and agony. The times of being called an uncle, mom, and old man were all gone. Now… I was finally also an ‘oppa’!
“Uhuhu…”
If you think about it, I was still only 17, you know? Physical age is also very important, yes? Even a sword empress after going against the flow of time to look younger again would prefer ‘Sister’ than being called ‘granny’, right?
“Hehe…”
I had no idea what was making her so happy, but Ran continued fidgeting with my hand with a wide smile on her face. She was holding my hand with quite a lot of force but I could still pull it out if I wanted to. However, seeing how she was enjoying it that much, I felt too guilty to pull my hand away.
“K, kuhum… thanks.”
“Yes~ oppa.”
In the end, Ran continued holding my hand all the way until the end of the lesson.
****
After the lesson was over, I was packing my bag when Hua Ran handed me my pencil case.
“Oppa, would you like to have lunch together?”
“Ehew, sure. I will buy it for you. This ‘oppa’ will buy you anything you want.”
I knew I was being pulled into her pace but… I still couldn’t turn her down. That was just how powerful ‘oppa’ was.
I was wondering what I should buy for this beautiful junior to make her happy when I realized that everyone was looking at us funny.
– What is with that fucker?
– Was he always that close to Hua Ran?
– No. Well, Korin was the only one that would start a conversation with Hua Ran but…
– What happened during the festival…?
– T, that freaking gold-digger.
– Chill. What’s he done to you? Not saying he’s not though.
Hmm, these days, I had a feeling that people tended to stare at me with a weird look in their eyes. It was especially from the boys.
Jaeger, who was sitting next to me, placed his hand on top of my shoulder.
“You sinful bastard.”
“…Huh?”
“Ima head to the cafeteria with Lark. You guys should go by yourselves.”
“How nice of you~.”
Ran and Jaeger looked at each other and communicated using unidentifiable signals. Jaeger left the class first, and the two of us walked out after finishing packing up.
“What would you like for lunch?” asked Ran.
“I don’t have anything on apart from an exchange meeting with Purple Hawk in the afternoon. Do you want to head outside the Academy and go to an eastern restaurant?”
“You mean the place Hua always goes to? I wanted to try that place out!”
“Let’s go then. By the way, what happened to Hua?”
“She was dozing off so I sneaked out. She probably won’t wake up anytime soon.”
“So you can change like that as well, huh?”
It was only recently that they started changing so the conditions weren’t clear, but that would probably become clearer over time. While walking out of the building, Hua Ran and I talked about what happened after the incident.
“Have you met President Kang Yuhua and Sa Jinhyuk?”
“Yes. Hua and I both did.”
“I see.”
Those two were fairly responsible for what happened this time around. Of course, it was definitely true that they had been taken advantage of, and it would be slightly unreasonable to make them take responsibility for their actions.
All the negotiations with Purple Hawk regarding this incident were unofficial and we promised to spread the news of how Kang Ryun died on the road after setting off before others. Since he was going to be killed, it wasn’t right to ask Kang Yuhua and Sa Jinhyuk to take even more responsibility.
“Apparently Uncle Kang Ryun would go through an unofficial execution. In secret by the royal family of this kingdom.”
“That would be the best solution, yeah.”
There was nothing to gain by leaving that person alive. The Moonlight Castle incident where Hua Ran destroyed the castle by going berserk was known to be due to Kang Yu, her father, controlling her, but the real culprit behind that incident was Kang Ryun.
“Both Sister Yuhua and Hyuk must have had a hard time because of me.”
Apparently, Yuhua was deeply moved by the fact that she could meet Ran, her younger cousin, despite everything that happened and Hyuk seemed to have turned himself away from the path of revenge. Thanks to Ran’s testimony and Kang Ryun’s confession, he found out the truth behind the matter and seemed less upset by Hua, who had been used as a tool.
“Oh right, did you know? Now that uncle is no longer here, Sister Yuhua is the family lord of our Kang household.”
“Family lord? Like the head of the family, is it?”
“Yes. She takes care of everything ranging from small things… to household marriages.”
“…Is that so?”
“I got her permission already.”
“Kuhum…!”
I let out an empty cough as Ran giggled with a wide smile on her face.
“What should we do, hubby?”
“E, ehem…!”
Hua, when are you waking up? It’s not easy for this oppa to handle Ran…!
“Ah, you’re here.”
It was then. A green-haired girl wearing a robe hopped her way across from the other side of the corridor.
The girl, who had green hair that appeared to be full of vitality and an old oak staff, was none other than the Druid of the Avelorn Forest, Yuel, who was a freshman just like us.
“Did you finish your lesson just then as well?”
“Mine was over a long time ago.”
– Grip!
Ran added more power to her hands that were holding onto me.
“Mr. Korin. A spirit came looking for me this morning.”
“A spirit?”
“Yes, it came from the eastern forest.”
“From the east? That far?”
The spokesperson of the forest and nature, druid. Druids, who were always loved by spirits and elementals, were always accompanied by spirits regardless of who they were.
However, it was still rare for spirits to leave the forest they were born in and travel that far. Why would a spirit visit her from all the way there?
“What’s wrong?”
“We found it. The druid called ‘Uzkias’ and ‘Findias’ that you were talking about.”
“…Really?”
Findias.
That was the mysterious land hiding one of the 4 great treasures, the Sun, Claiomh Solais, and Uzkias was the druid protecting that land. 3 months ago, before the start of the holidays, I had requested Yuel to look into it.
The mysterious lands of the four great treasures had only existed as a background setting in the game. According to the original plot of the story, Tates Valtazar and the king’s subjects would retrieve them before the player could even have the option to take them.
If I could… take even at least one of them before they could…
“Both Findias and Uzkias are at the east of the kingdom. To be exact, they are across the borders… inside the Great Forest.”
I would be able to screw up the very foundation of Tates Valtazar’s plans.
Quickly, I looked back at my memories, at the reward I gained after defeating Fermack Daman – the only method of obtaining the Sun of Findias.
Solar Eclipse.
The weakest moment of the power of the sun was the only chance to obtain Claiomh Solais. And going through the memories of the past iteration, I realized that there had been only one solar eclipse during those three years.
‘8th of February next year. During spring holiday, huh.’
It seemed that the upcoming holiday was going to be quite the spectacular one.
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