Chapter 4: Leila and the Dangerous Wall

Chapter 4:
Leila and the Dangerous Wall

 

I WAS A LITTLE WORRIED for Nell, so I checked him out with Discerning Eye. His skills were a lot stronger than I’d expected: C-Grade Boxing, C-Grade Hand-to-Hand Combat, Stealthy Step, and Misfortune. It seemed odd that the guy would let himself be bullied, but the worst part was that he’d gotten stuck with Misfortune. Geth had no doubt put it on Nell to torment him.

“Ms. Stardia, th-thank you very much. And your brother, too…” said Nell.

“I’m just glad you weren’t hurt,” I said. “You seem pretty strong, though. Why didn’t you fight back?”

“Um, well…I’m not very good in actual combat, so…”

He really was as timid as he looked. Before I could say anything more, a girl rushed over to us.

“Did you get dragged into some nonsense again, Nell?!”

She was about my age, with beautiful golden hair. She stood in front of Nell as though she was protecting him, glaring at Alice and I.

“I-It’s not what it looks like, sis,” Nell said. “This is one of my classmates, and her brother.”

“Really?! Oh, goodness…I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

Her prompt apology seriously improved my impression of her. She was pretty, and her slender figure probably made her the envy of all the other girls. She wore a boxer’s black clothes and gloves.

 

Name: Leila Overlock

Age: 16

Species: Human

Level: 148

Occupation: Student

Skills: Boxing (Grade A); Kickboxing (Grade A); Hand-to-Hand Combat (Grade B); Stoneskin; Stealthy Step; Demon Fist

 

H-holy crap! I never imagined someone my age could be so strong…

“Hey, you’re Noir, right?” she asked. “The one who got that insane score on the Hero Academy entrance exam.”

“Yeah—how’d you know about that?”

“I’m at the academy, too! The name’s Leila. My brother and I came from abroad, but we’re studying here, now. I’m in A-Class.”

“Wow, what a coincidence.”

She seemed more than talented enough for S-Class, but that seemed gauche to bring up. Alice and Nell shifted awkwardly. Right, they have to get to school.

“Alice, why don’t you walk Nell to school?”

“Very well, shall we be on our way, Nell?”

“O-o-okay!”

“Watch out for any more trouble,” said Leila. “Okay?”

Nell nodded and they headed off. They’d gone maybe half a dozen steps before he fell into a ditch.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?!” Leila pulled him out and sighed. “He’s been horribly unlucky ever since we got here. It’s like the world itself is bullying him. It’s just the two of us here, so I worry about him.”

“Sorry for scaring you, sis…”

Obviously they knew nothing about Nell’s bad luck. I filled them in, explaining my own powers as much as I had to.

“Geth shouldn’t be able to use his Left Hand skill anymore,” I told them. “And I can remove the negative effect from Nell, too.”

In the end, it cost me 500 LP.

“That should do it.”

There weren’t any immediate physical changes, so the fix didn’t feel exactly tangible. I was left encouraging Nell and Alice to get on their way. When we were alone, Leila shook my hand.

“It must have been fate, meeting you here,” she said. “Maybe we’ll see each other at school.”

“I hope so.”

“I wish I could stay and chat, but I’ve got to go to work. Have a nice summer!”

She flashed a brilliant smile and ran off. I watched her long golden hair sway behind her. Suddenly, I felt a seething hatred burning a hole deep into the back of my head. I turned around to find a certain girl standing across the street.

“When did you get here, Emma?!”

“I see you’re trying to cozy up to yet another girl,” she said. “I bet you wouldn’t even notice if a boy stole me away, huh? I hate you, Noir!”

“What?! Emma, wait!” I shouted.

Surprisingly, she actually stopped to wait for me to catch up.

“I’ll give you one shot,” she said. “You get one shot to find the right words…and maybe I’ll forgive you.”

Picking exactly the right words out of the millions in existence would be no mean feat. But I knew Emma, and I knew her heart—even though it was buried deep, deep, deep within her, uh, sizable chest. I knew just what to say.

“Emma, if anyone tried to steal you away, I would be right there to save you. No matter what. Even if it happened on the same day as my father’s funeral!”

“I don’t think your father would be too happy to hear that… Anyway, what if something, like, bad had happened by the time you came to my rescue? Would you think I was…dirty?”

“You could never be dirty to me. And even if you were, I would clean you with one of my skills.”

“That’s not what I—! You’re supposed to say you’d accept me no matter what.”

Emma ran off as fast as she could—and she shouted at me to stop chasing her when I tried to follow. I thought about going after her anyway, but there was no convincing her when she got like this. I just had to give her some time.

I needed some aggressive physical activity to take my mind off things, so I headed to the dungeon. I’d already cleared the seventh floor, so I used Dungeon Elevator to go directly to the eighth. There were a lot of corridors down there. The one in front of me turned left a short way ahead but, before I could see what was on the other side, I heard this weird noise.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Big, loud, crashing. It filled me with a peculiar dread, but the sound wasn’t coming toward me, and I didn’t think it was a monster.

You can do this, Noir! I kept repeating that to myself as I turned the corner.

“Wait, that’s it?”

The walls of the room beyond were thumping together. They were high enough to graze the ceiling and were probably a little under two feet thick. On the other side, a normal corridor stretched away. It was a trap to squash anyone who tried to pass through. I tested out a few different spells, but I couldn’t break any part of the mechanism. Whatever these walls were made of, it was strong. Maybe it was all about timing? They weren’t moving very fast. I was sure that I could make it.

“One, two…”

I waited until the walls moved back and braced myself to sprint. Before I could move, I suddenly had a bad feeling about the whole idea. I hesitated, and it probably saved my life.

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

The walls sped up dramatically.

“That was too close for comfort.”

If I wasn’t a coward, I’d be a pancake by now. Were the walls in this place alive? I came up with a plan to throw them off. Creating the skill “Stop” would cost 300 LP, but the big question was how much it would cost to Bestow it.

In the end, it was much less than I anticipated. A mere 200 LP! I guess walls weren’t supposed to move in the first place. Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy—there were two walls, after all. There was a chance that it might end up costing me double.

I waited until the walls moved back and Bestowed the skill on one of them. It worked like a charm! The wall stopped moving, leaving a space that I could get through.

“Well, good. It should be safe now.”

Kidding.

I pretended to move forward, sticking the very tip of my toe into the open space. I was worried the other wall was just trying to trick me into thinking I’d vanquished my Noir-pancake future.

“Oh, looks safe. Hyup!”

It didn’t seem like a trap, so I quickly rushed past. I had over 3,000 LP left, so I wasn’t concerned yet. I forged on down the corridor. There were no doors or other passages leading off of it, and yet I turned the corner to find myself at a dead end.

But there was one other thing that caught my attention. A sign tacked to the wall…