“No. I want to see you suffer, Alicia.” “Gah!” I pummeled her face. Right. Left. Right. Left. Prolonging her agony as much as possible without knocking her out. “You scoundrel!” “Gurh!” “Come, now. Is that all you’ve got? Your precious princess is getting beaten up, and that’s all you can do?” The knights overcame their fear and leaped to her defense, but a mere half dozen guards were no match for me. I struck their joints, throwing them off balance and sending them crashing to the ground as painfully as I could. I threw my weight on top of them, twisting and breaking bones. I gouged out their eyes, tore their ears, and ripped their noses. “Ah-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” My body still felt heavy, but I didn’t draw my soul blade just yet. A sword would end things too quickly, and I wasn’t only trying to kill them; I wanted vengeance. I wanted them to suffer a long and painful death. Only then would I feel at ease. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Their terrified screams of agony were like music to my ears. The sound excited me. I made sure not to inflict any fatal wounds, and they continued to scream as the pain kept them awake. For the guards and the princess, this must have been hell. But for me, it was a paradise where all my wishes were granted. I couldn’t stop my laughter, and they couldn’t stop their screams. “Ahhh… Urgh… Gah…” “Hgh… Gh… Ah…” When at last only the sound of weak groans filled the room and any further torture failed to elicit a response, I stopped. Princess Alicia lay on the floor before me, her face so bloodied and bruised that she was nearly unrecognizable. Each one of her fingers had been bent backward and broken, and her stare was vacant, her mouth frothing at the edges. “Now, let’s find out what’s going on here,” I said. My thirst for revenge was far from sated, but there was little sense in torturing a victim who could no longer react. My rampage had cleared my mind a bit, and once I could think clearly, I summoned one of my soul blades. Resisting the urge to impale Alicia with it right then and there, I cast a healing spell on her instead. A small amount of mana flowed from my hand and into the pale-white light of the Nephrite Blade of Verdure, a soul-blade form I unlocked in the elven forest. This dagger had a fifteen-centimeter blade made of some sort of crystal with a greenish hue, and I could channel mana into it to produce a healing effect. However, as it would take a while to bring the princess back to full health, I used the time to confront my suspicions. “It’s not just my imagination; my body really is heavier. Why?” I wondered. It was clear from the fight that my physical ability had dropped. “Oh, perhaps that curse’s effect is still active?” The Immortal-Slaying Blade, the sword that ran me through. Every hit applied a debuff that lowered the target’s base ability scores. It was the Church’s prized relic, and at the time, I had a soul blade equipped that negated its effects. My intrinsic ability, “Soul Blade,” was a weapon that I could command to take on a variety of forms depending on the conditions I had fulfilled. Those four years of training weren’t just for show. Among all the blades I had collected, I knew there was one that nullified status conditions. To find out which one it was, I needed only to look. “Open Status.” At the sound of my voice, a semitransparent blue screen appeared. My status screen. These showed the abilities of whoever invoked them, but they were incorporeal, and barring certain kinds of skills or magic, only the person to whom the screen belonged could see the information written there. What I read was shocking. “…What the hell?” I thought it was a bug. I rubbed my eyes, closed the screen, shook my head, and tried again. “Open Status.”
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“…Why?” There was so much wrong with what I saw, but that one question was all I could muster. Firstly, my age. I arrived in this world four years ago, when I was still a second-year in high school. Back then, I was seventeen. I was supposed to be twenty-one now. Was this some sort of age-reversing magic? Impossible. But that wasn’t the real problem. Next was my level. After defeating the demon lord, I had continued to gain experience, passed level 300, and was approaching 400. Just to put that in perspective, the most powerful knight in the kingdom, the commander of the royal knight order, was level 121 when he joined my quest. By the time it was over, he was level 270. Obviously, the higher your level, the higher your stats. I knew of levels dropping because of age or missed training, but I’d never heard of losing over 300 levels at once. In this world, level 1 was like a baby. I was already level 3 when I first arrived. Now I was level 1, and my stats had taken a big hit. And finally, my skills. Intrinsic abilities were either innate or were awarded for fulfilling special conditions, such as becoming a hero. Skills, on the other hand, could be learned by anyone if they followed the correct procedure. This meant that in theory, you could learn any skill given enough time, though in practice, people tended to specialize. Skills had proficiency and levels, and the only way to improve a skill was by using it repeatedly, building up proficiency until your level increased. All the skills I’d devoted the last four years of my life to mastering had been replaced with a single word: Unarmed. “Wh-what the hell? Air Step!” Although most of her wounds had healed, the princess still hadn’t regained consciousness. Regardless, I interrupted the healing spell and put away my soul blade. Leaping up, I created a floating platform of magic and kicked off it. The skill I randomly picked to test, “Air Step,” involved creating magical stepping stones in the air to facilitate aerial combat. It was indispensable in battle, and fortunately, it had activated. However… “You have got to be joking…” …the pitiful result left me lost for words. The MP consumption and cooldown rate were nowhere near what I was used to. “Open Status!” The status screen had been appended with the skills I had just used, Air Step and “Control Mana.” I tapped the words Air Step and sighed. “I knew it…”