Prologue Defeating the Demonic Dragon At the Edge of the World lived the Demonic Dragon who had supposedly destroyed a country long ago. Through an oracle, the goddess Lunaris warned that the dragon was increasing its forces with the goal of eventually attacking and wiping out all existing countries. In response, heads of state sought volunteers to fight the dragon. Tens of thousands of adventurers set off for the beast’s lair to challenge it, but not a single one prevailed. In fact, most of them failed to even reach the dragon, and time continued its relentless march. My party, however, made it. After being on the road for years on end and overcoming countless trials and tribulations, we finally reached the Edge of the World. By then, all four of us had reached level 99, the limit for everyone. Falina was an Archknight from the Holy Kingdom. Sheska was a High Priest from the Elven Forest. Enju was an automaton, a weapon with a free sense of self, made in the Land of Sorcery. And lastly, there was me, Might, a Thief from a city on a plain. We found the dragon’s nest in a wasteland littered with the remains of a fortress from a kingdom that had fallen long in the past. The moment we encountered the dragon, the sky turned red and thunder rumbled. “Rooooooar!!” Thus the final battle began, kicked off by a bellow that shook heaven and earth. The Demonic Dragon’s claws, fangs, tail, and wings—in short, every part of it—had the power to kill us with ease. To make fighting easier for Falina, our main attacker, I decided to draw its attention. “Raaah!!” An arm slammed down with enough force to shatter the ground, sending fragments flying everywhere. Any of them could have proven fatal if they had hit us. With how ridiculously powerful those attacks are, even the tiniest mistake will kill me! At level 99, I had three skills to increase my ability to evade attacks. I was using them all, but still only barely managing to dodge the barrage, knowing that a single slipup would immediately cost me my life. If I’d had mana, it might not have been as much of a struggle—but there was no point in lamenting over what I’d never had in the first place. In this world, everyone was assigned their vocation at birth, and there was nothing you could do to change it. “Yaaah!” Falina slashed at the Demonic Dragon, but her sword bounced off the spherical barrier surrounding it. “Falina, hang on!” I shouted. “I’ll create an opening!” “Enju! Back him up, please!” Falina cried. Without skipping a beat, Enju announced, “Launching cover fire: Magnaflame Hexablast!” “Grrr… Raaah…!” Bullets of white flame repeatedly slammed into the barrier, but it refused to break. Suddenly, a cold chill ran down my back. I instinctively used Provoke and Afterimage on the dragon to make it look in my direction. “ROAAAR!!” The Demonic Dragon had the elevated intelligence required to use magic. A blast as powerful as Enju’s sorcery erased my Afterimage and split the ground. “Might, fall back!” Sheska called. “I’ll raise your speed with a spell!” “No, I’m fine!” I shouted back. “You focus on backing up Falina!” The whole battle, Sheska had been using her magic to bolster Falina’s strength and protect Enju during her casting. I was doing my best to draw the enemy’s attacks, but there was a limit to how many times I could use my skills back-to-back. When I reached that limit, I would be completely useless for a few seconds. That was a ceiling I couldn’t overcome no matter how much experience I had, just as there was a cap on my vocation level. If it was an immutable fact that the Demonic Dragon was more powerful than humans, then I would be massively disadvantaged no matter how hard I had trained. Even so, I took a step forward. I had to make good on my promise to create an opening. “Graaaah!” The dragon with scales blacker than night moved quickly. Its enormous tail swept toward me from out of my range. I poured all of my focus into all of my senses, picking up on the very first signs of the attack to work out its trajectory and dodge both it and the resulting shock wave. Before the dragon had time to pull its tail back, Falina’s sword was already bearing down on it. “Yaaah!” “RAAAAAH!!” The Demonic Dragon’s head swung in a wide arc as it took a step backward. The barrier was finally gone, presenting the best opportunity for an attack that we’d seen so far. “O White Goddess, I beseech you, bless this sword with the power to sunder the darkness!” Sheska chanted, causing Falina’s blade to emit a pale blue glow. “Firing Magnaflash Allblast until mana is depleted!” Enju announced, launching a barrage of bullets of light at the Demonic Dragon’s head and obscuring its vision. “ROAAAR!!” The beast swiped at where Falina stood, but she was no longer there. Her sword flashed from beyond its field of vision, and cracks ran through the crystal in its forehead, scattering fragments everywhere. The Demonic Dragon, once thought to be invincible, stopped moving and collapsed with an earthshaking boom. Falina couldn’t move, either, and her shoulders heaved as she took in huge gulps of air. Like always, I stayed on the lookout to make sure the fight was well and truly over. That didn’t change even if we were up against the Demonic Dragon—and it was a good thing I did. Alarm bells started going off in my head. The dragon should be dead, but my instincts as a Thief were warning me that something was happening. Before I knew it, I’d used Seize Weapon—a skill for stealing that I shouldn’t have been using on members of my own party—on Falina to snatch her sword out of her hands. I’d noticed its blade turning black. “Ugh!” The most powerful dragons had the ability to leave curses when they died. In the case of the Demonic Dragon, it turned out to be the Curse of Death, which condemned the dragon’s killer to share its fate. Black light poured out of the beast’s body, through the sword, and straight into me, filling my body with the essence of death. “Might… You knew?” Falina mumbled, shocked. I hadn’t known—not really. It was Survival Instinct, a Thief skill, that had enabled me to sense the curse. I fell to my knees and collapsed forward. I didn’t feel the impact or the pain. “Might! I’ll heal you right—!” I heard Sheska’s voice growing faint. The figure of Falina standing in a daze grew increasingly blurry, until I couldn’t really make her out at all. I had thought I could escape death one last time, but no such luck. The Thief part of me was screaming to run away and survive, that else everything I’d worked toward would be for nothing. However, I managed to fight it. After all, I was stealing Falina’s resolve—she’d known that she was going to die. And in doing so, I had finally managed to free myself from the bondage of the vocation that I could do nothing to change. “Why…? Why’d you do it, Might?” The last thing I heard was Falina’s reproachful voice. I didn’t want to make her cry, but in those very last moments, I saw the tear-streaked face of the world’s strongest swordswoman. “—ight.” Hearing a voice close by, I opened my eyes to a sky so blue that it felt as if I was about to fall into it. I realized that what I was lying on wasn’t normal ground or flooring, but a surface polished to such perfection that it reflected the sky like a mirror. The sight should have unsettled me, but I wasn’t shaken. Perhaps me being dead had something to do with it. “Might, this isn’t where people like you go after losing your lives,” said a female voice that somehow managed to sound both courteous and teasing at the same time. None of my companions were anywhere in sight. This seemingly boundless space was occupied solely by a woman and me. The woman had long white hair and gold eyes, both characteristics that I didn’t recognize from any race that I had ever met. Her outfit, a white tunic decorated with a few ornaments, was so sublime that it evoked waves of emotion in me. It was hard for me to look at her directly. “We goddesses take the appearance that beholders consider their ideal,” the woman explained. “ ‘Goddess’… The goddesses are supposed to be beyond the Door to Paradise. If you’re here, that means…” The woman covered her mouth as she laughed, then approached me. She held out her hand, and when I accepted it, she helped me up. Her hand was neither warm nor cold, but it had enough strength in its grip to diminish my doubts that I had died. “I take it you’ve heard the story of the Door to Paradise at the Edge of the World, on the other side of which is the Land of Gods?” “Isn’t that just a fairy tale? The only thing I’ve heard about the Edge of the World is that that’s where the Demonic Dragon is.” “Thanks to your party defeating the dragon that kept the Door to Paradise closed, the Land of Gods is now able to make contact with all of you.” The self-proclaimed goddess put her hands together in a way that reminded me of one of the statues I’d seen on my journey. “The Demonic Dragon left a Curse of Death that befell you. Normally, your soul would be brought to the Land of Gods. In this case, however, you’ve been granted a moratorium.” “A…what?” “We have already spoken with your three companions. They asked that you be resurrected, but we decided to talk to you first before making a decision.” “If you’re here talking to me now, does that mean…?” It sounded to me like the goddess was actually going to resurrect me, depending on how this conversation panned out. However, I had taken on the Curse of Death knowing full well what it would do to me, so it felt right to die here. I was wary of immediately jumping at an offer that seemed too good to be true. “Didn’t you challenge the Demonic Dragon with a specific goal in mind?” the woman asked. “You…can read my mind?” “Please don’t look so offended. I’m not judging you for any ulterior motives beyond saving the world. It’s actually quite understandable.” “That may be…but my companions’ intentions are unbelievably pure.” How ironic it was that I could only say this now, where they couldn’t hear me. I was far from pure, and I had died only because I wanted to. And yet the goddess’s smile didn’t falter for a second. It was as if she truly loved all life, like the scriptures said. “Now that the Demonic Dragon is defeated, we are able to directly intervene in your world. As a token of gratitude, I shall grant you one wish.” Even though I was dead and no longer had a physical body, I felt my heartbeat quicken. “A wish…? Really?” “Indeed. But first, allow me to convey my sincere thanks. We gods give our abounding praise to a hero who defeated Leticia the Demonic Dragon!” The goddess knelt in front of me and bowed her head. Seeing that she wasn’t just all talk but willing to back it up with action, I felt like I had no choice but to believe her. “Surprise them. If you manage to do that, they’ll come begging for your attention of their own accord.” Words from my past surfaced to mind, as if telling me this was that moment. “Please, there’s no need to bow to me. I’m just a Thief.” “The act of stealing is not necessarily a sin. Or do you have a preference for a different vocation?” “There may be plenty of other Thieves, but I’m probably the only one without a drop of mana. In this world, people treat you like you’re useless if you have no mana.” “Yet even so, you managed to hone your vocation to perfection and overcome great hardship.” I had always thought of myself as defective and constantly wondered whether my party actually needed me. My companions all had mana and could use magic, so I couldn’t help thinking about how much more I could do for them if I had that ability, too. However, there was no changing the vocation that one had been born with. It was the way of this world that one’s god-given vocation was intrinsic to their very being. However, now I felt a glimmer of hope. If the woman before me truly was a goddess, she just might have the power to grant the wish that I’d thought impossible. “…Would you promise to not laugh?” “I promise. Whatever it may be, feel free to speak it.” My throat had dried up, and it was starting to sting a little. I had never told even my companions this wish, knowing it was ridiculous even to joke about. “I…want to become able to use magic. I want to become a Sage.” A Thief with no mana was wishing to become, of all things, the pinnacle of magic-based vocations. It was so outrageous that only a child could get away with saying it, and I was worried she might think it was an embarrassment. The goddess’s expression didn’t change at all. But just when I thought she wasn’t going to laugh, she lowered her gaze. “Yeah… I figured you’d laugh,” I said. “It’s my fault for getting my hopes up over a strange request like that. Of course there’s no way—” “I can grant you that wish. Changing someone’s vocation is within the authority granted to us goddesses.” “What?!” I nearly shouted. All this time, I had kept telling myself that the possibility of changing my vocation or becoming able to use magic was too much to hope for. The goddess crossed her arms and, with a slight frown, continued in a chiding tone. “However, if I change your vocation, you will go back to being level 1. Everything will be completely different from your current self as a level-99 Thief.” “Does reverting to level 1 mean I won’t be able to access the higher-level areas?” “It does. Knowing that, are you sure this is what you wish for? It would take quite some time before you can meet your companions again.” The four of us had partied up for the goal of defeating the Demonic Dragon. The other three had said that they had matters to attend to back home afterward. That being the case, there was no telling whether we would even be able to see each other again. “Additionally,” the woman said, “if you become a Sage, the magic you are able to use will be dependent on your nature. I cannot guarantee you will obtain the kind of offensive and healing magic that is normally associated with this vocation.” “Oh… Is that how it works? But there would still be some sort of magic that would suit me, right?” “As changing vocations is a very rare occurrence, I cannot tell you anything with certainty… But if it turns out differently from what you expected, I’m afraid that you will not get another chance. To change someone’s vocation goes against divine law, after all.” I could tell the goddess was saying in a roundabout way that she didn’t recommend what I wanted to do. That didn’t surprise me, though; I imagined very few people in this world would so readily agree to revert all the way to level 1. However, even though it wouldn’t be easy, I could simply raise my level again. Thanks to the experience I’d built up as a Thief, I would easily be able to make a living for myself even if I was limited to level 1 areas. Like my hometown, the City of Pleasure, for example. “I see you have made up your mind…Might.” “I thought my adventure was over, but now I have a chance not only to continue it, but to do so with the vocation that I’ve always wanted. I know it won’t all be smooth sailing, but I won’t regret it.” “Very well. In that case, please walk through that door,” the goddess said, pointing toward a door that had suddenly appeared out of thin air. “Pass through it and continue walking straight. Your vocation will be changed, and you will find yourself in a location that holds great meaning to you.” “Really? That’s all it takes to change my vocation?” “Shall I escort you to assuage your worries? I would have to do it in an avatar, though.” “Thanks for offering, but there’s no need. I’d already written myself off, so even if you’re lying, it wouldn’t make much difference. I would simply be meeting my fate.” In reply, the woman merely nodded, as if she’d already said everything there was to say. “Could you tell my companions this is what I chose?” “That is a question I cannot answer.” “I see. Guess I have no choice but to figure out a way to see them again.” “If you so wish. There is nothing more that I can say.” The goddess’s tone was both bright and detached. Perhaps this was the attitude that deities normally adopted. I approached the door and opened it. As the hinges creaked, light overflowed from beyond. Strangely, though, it didn’t seem particularly bright. “Walk forward, and do not stop. May the blessing of —— be with you.” As the gentle voice instructed, I walked forward, one step after another, and didn’t look back.
Chapter 2
15 min read