usenovelonline Chapter 381
Chapter 381
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
Chapter 381: The Designer’s Intent (1)
“…To be honest, I was disappointed at first.”
Veronica, seated on a flat rock, turned away with a pouty expression.
Her gaze drifted toward the canyon engraved with countless lines.
“I was like, what? This is nothing. That’s all there is to it?”
In the end, it was simply a matter of recreating the same shapes carved into those walls.
Veronica had initially thought little of it.
“But once I actually started, it wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought.”
At a glance, the lines all looked identical, but each one had its own differences.
“Some lines are narrow but carved deep. Others don’t feel like they were cut at all, more like they were scratched into the surface instead… They’re completely inconsistent.”
Length, width, angle, collision marks, direction of rotation, spacing between lines, even the roughness of the cut surfaces.
Every single condition varied wildly.
And demanding that all of them be reproduced perfectly was less training and more torture.
“But I still did it.”
Day after day.
Every single day, she clung to the canyon walls, investigating and analyzing the traces.
Then she spent her nights trying to reproduce those lines until dawn.
She had lived like that for a total of fifty-four days.
“So? What exactly are you stuck on right now?”
“…I don’t know.”
Tsk.
A light click of the tongue followed.
“The reproduction accuracy is definitely identical. I even cross-checked every single detail to see if I missed something, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong.”
“Come on, you obviously messed something up. If it was really identical, you would’ve passed already.”
“…Ngh, you little—”
Veronica’s lips trembled as fury surged all the way to the top of her head.
Oscar subtly avoided the murderous glare directed at him and spoke.
“C-Cough. Then let’s take a look first, shall we? See if it really is identical.”
“…Hoo.”
Letting out a deep breath, Veronica rose to her feet and stood before the canyon.
Human vs. canyon.
And Veronica was the one to make the first move.
“Line Number 1. Carve twenty-two meters at a depth of 4.12 meters and a width of 1.82 meters, rotate eleven degrees to the left, then advance three meters before finishing.”
Alongside her quiet muttering, an enormous gust of wind erupted forward.
KWAHHHH!
The wind instantly scraped across the canyon wall, carving a single line into it.
“This is Line Number 1. Go check it.”
At her words, Oscar moved back and forth between both sides of the canyon, examining the traces.
‘Mm, definitely…’
Oscar glanced toward Veronica, who looked tiny from down below.
He could tell just how much blood-and-sweat effort she had poured into this.
After all, there wasn’t the slightest difference between the two traces.
‘Even if you fully analyzed the traces, reproducing them perfectly is still difficult.’
Especially when the traces were this massive.
Oscar scrutinized them for quite a while in case there was something he’d overlooked, then descended.
“…Well?”
Veronica asked in a slightly tense voice.
“Like you said, they’re identical. But did you really reproduce all thirty lines perfectly?”
“I told you already. Every single one is ex-act-ly the same! Do you think I spent the last fifty-four days eating and playing around?”
She immediately strode forward.
“Wait. I’ll show you the result first.”
The sound of wind scraping stone echoed for a long while.
Watching her return, Oscar asked:
“Hm? There’s still one left, though?”
“Check the other twenty-nine first.”
Oscar inspected every line as requested, then nodded.
“The traces really are identical. To the point there’s absolutely no excess.”
“Hmph. Obviously.”
Veronica, looking slightly pleased, began drawing up her mana once more.
“Then watch carefully. I’m carving the final line now.”
KWAHHHH!
An even more violent wind than before swept through the canyon, clawing through it rather than cutting it.
‘But it’s accurate.’
After rapidly comparing the traces on both canyon walls, Oscar nodded.
Even he would have scratched the wall with wind just like that.
“There. That makes all thirty lines carved. And…”
Before Veronica could even finish speaking—
Sssshhk.
As if erased by an invisible eraser, the lines carved into the canyon walls vanished like a lie.
[Reproduction Rate: 72%]
[Create the same result]
The familiar guide’s voice rang through their heads immediately afterward.
“Hmm. I see.”
Slowly stroking his chin, Oscar muttered quietly.
“…I have absolutely no idea.”
* * *
The silence that settled between the two lasted quite a while.
Oscar needed time to think about the problem.
Veronica noticed that as well and refrained from bothering him, focusing on her own things instead.
“Eat.”
Only after the sun set and night arrived did she finally speak first.
Oscar blinked.
“Eat? They provide food here?”
“It’s more civilized than I expected. Though it’s not really my taste.”
She pointed behind herself with her thumb.
There, a sign had been planted into the ground.
[Place Where Food Falls]
‘Falls?’
The moment Oscar lifted his head in confusion—
Something descending slowly from the sky with a parachute attached came into view.
“Oh, there are two.”
“Is there usually only one?”
“Yeah. I was gonna split mine with you since there was an extra mouth to feed, but I guess they give an extra one when another person shows up.”
The bags that landed soon after truly contained nothing special.
One 500ml bottle of water and dessert.
“Dessert? Not actual food?”
“…Guess it’s the dungeon creator’s preference.”
Veronica muttered while staring at her portion of rich chocolate cake.
“I feel like I’m gonna die eating sweet desserts every single day.”
“Amazingly enough, you haven’t gained weight.”
“Well, I move around that much. Honestly, maybe it’s a good thing they’re high-calorie.”
While eating the apple pie from his own portion, Oscar spoke.
“I’ve been thinking. What exactly does ‘same result’ mean?”
“…What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“What I mean is, what kind of result does the dungeon designer consider to be the result?”
This was actually a far more divisive issue than it appeared.
“There are people in the world who think the process is part of the result too. Personally, I disagree with that idea, though.”
“If that’s true, then it means I have to copy the process too. Isn’t that way too much of a stretch?”
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
“But it’s hard to call it just a stretch when the traces were completely identical and the reproduction rate still came out at only seventy-two percent.”
“…Maybe I messed up somewhere.”
“You didn’t make a mistake. Besides, it makes no sense for one or two minor errors to dock thirty percent.”
Veronica frowned.
Just reproducing the traces carved into the canyon wall—the “result”—had already taken nearly two months.
“But if I have to reproduce the process too, it might take years. No, more importantly, how am I supposed to know what kind of process created those traces in the first place?”
“Everything you said is correct. That’s the normal way of thinking.”
But what Oscar kept mulling over was the guide’s earlier explanation.
“This dungeon was made to help challengers grow. That’s why it provides personalized theme dungeons tailored to each individual. It develops the areas that person needs the most.”
“They definitely did say something like that.”
“Then the condition presented here exists solely for you.”
A challenge meant only for Veronica Fricks and no one else in the world.
Oscar wanted to focus on that point.
“So then, what does Veronica Fricks currently need the most? I think we need to examine that to understand the designer’s intent.”
“Hm, approaching it that way… I definitely haven’t tried that before.”
Veronica, who had been obsessed only with solving the problem until now, crossed her arms.
“What I need most? I don’t know. There are too many things to choose just one.”
“Just say them one at a time.”
“…Hey, now that I actually have to say it out loud, this is kind of embarrassing.”
“Sure. If you want to live here with me forever, feel free to keep your mouth shut.”
“You crazy bastard.”
After cursing him cleanly, Veronica’s reddening face began her confession.
“F-First off, I want to tone down how easily I get worked up… And when I get fixated on something, I stop seeing anything around me. Plus I get angry easily when I’m sensitive, a-and I tend to blurt out whatever’s in my head without filtering it before speaking…?”
Mm, yeah.
That was definitely embarrassing.
Scratching his head, Oscar muttered:
“Definitely. I’m embarrassed just listening to it.”
“S-Shut up! That’s why I didn’t want to say it!”
“But I think I understand what your problem is.”
The common thread between everything Veronica had listed was simple:
She was easily ruled by her emotions.
Of course, that wasn’t necessarily harmful for ordinary daily life.
“But for an Over Craft user, it’s definitely a weakness.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
“Probably. Ever since you learned Over Craft, how many times have you actually used it in real combat?”
“…Once. When I went to Null City with the Special Operations Department guys.”
Only once?
If so, there was an even higher chance she hadn’t realized it herself.
“What was the situation like back then?”
“I created wind arrows with Over Craft and fired them, but they didn’t work on the opponent at all. He just grabbed the magic itself.”
“……”
The opponent she spoke of was likely the Level 7 black mage, Banamel Morit.
After thinking for a moment, Oscar spoke.
“Wind Arrows is a high-ranking spell of the White Tower. If properly formed, nobody should be able to catch it.”
“But…”
“You probably don’t want to admit it, but the Wind Arrows you made back then were likely incomplete.”
As Veronica tightly shut her mouth, Banamel’s words from that time flashed through her mind.
—Hoho, the way you use magic is quite innovative. It’s especially impressive how you compensate for your low-level, pathetic skill with sheer speed.
Crk.
Veronica clenched her teeth hard.
The opponent had called her magic low-level and pathetic.
If the Wind Arrows she created back then had been perfect, he never would have dared make such an evaluation.
“It pisses me off, but I think you’re right.”
“Over Craft is an incredibly delicate and difficult form of magic.”
Just qualifying to learn it was already a massive hurdle, since it required ultra-high-speed chanting.
On top of that, one needed precise output control, the ability to maintain multiple spell formulas simultaneously, and split-thinking capability.
“And yet, you managed to do it.”
Veronica could use Over Craft.
Oscar could say that with certainty because he had personally confirmed it.
“But you simply aren’t experienced enough to handle it properly in real combat.”
“…And that’s related to being ruled by emotions?”
“Exactly. Someone who uses Over Craft has to remain cold and rational in every moment.”
The instant emotions took control, mana output became unbalanced, and the structure of the spell formulas destabilized.
That might not matter for small spells, but once those spells piled up into a mountain, flaws would inevitably appear.
‘In Magiro’s case, for example, he didn’t even blink while his comrades were dying right beside him.’
Because of that, people misunderstood him a lot.
But no one grieved his comrades’ deaths more than he did.
“Maybe the designer of this dungeon understood even the structure of Over Craft and decided this was what you needed. In other words.”
Oscar stared at the thirty lines.
“Instead of slowly carving the traces one by one over time like you’ve been doing, maybe the point is to use Over Craft to draw all the lines rapidly and continuously without rest.”
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]