Chapter 995
<995 – Regained Innocence (9)>
There are many ordinary people in the world.
Common folks shackled by their own worries.
A plain man who can’t stand out.
Even those hailed as geniuses in a region are but mere students at the Gift Academy, just as the globally recognized new-age great evil Oknodie is, to someone, just an ordinary person.
Secret murder mystery card game.
The top 10 ranked players said so.
“Ugh, I’m so jealous.”
Wanting something you can’t have.
Wanting to surpass but unable to.
Existences that are like insurmountable walls.
The helplessness felt between desire and reality awakened Oknodie’s inner latent Titosso power.
If only I could just surpass a few more, I could roll the 22-level gacha instead of the 21-level one!
In fact, I had already managed to reach the 12th-ranked Professor Buzhaar.
It’s because that professor specializes in Monster Studies, and the strategies for tackling them are already established.
But from the 9th rank onwards, it was a different story.
“Well, what can I do? They’re legendary professors!”
These MacGuffin-like figures that you can only see by name at this stage of the game had no chance of being strategized against.
Most of them were like that, and among the professors I was familiar with, they were beasts with stats so high that they were outright deemed unbeatable.
Still, I successfully unboxed a mythic-grade item in the Professor-level ranking clash challenge game, so I felt lucky!
[Opening the Random Box.]
[Bow down. Here, a mythic-grade holy artifact dormant in the supreme repository has been released into the world.]
As clouds gathered and a streak of lightning pierced the heavens with a dazzling effect, it resembled the high-rate success effect I had seen when Seonhwang Papa conducted enhancement works.
The appearance of the sealed divine item was something comparable, hence the similar effect occurred.
Alas, outside the window where I should be gazing at the majestic scene, the vast expanse of outer space unfolded.
Zap!
For a moment, an immense light flickered outside the window, but in the vacuum of outer space, it was a rather dull effect.
[You have acquired the mythic-grade <Pocket World>.]
This time, the item I obtained was a 21-level pocket space that was essentially a 21-level extension of space.
A pocket space is an NPC’s inventory, an advanced type of magic backpack that exists to rationalize player inventory settings.
The backpack exists in a physical dimension storage.
The pocket space exists in a personal dimensional storage.
It has overwhelming advantages in safety, ease of storage, storage weight, and area.
There’s only one drawback.
Money.
This stuff is ridiculously expensive.
Furthermore, if you make it yourself, you have to allocate your own
That’s why strong individuals would buy these pocket spaces from vendors like the Magic Tower, and the reasons why they’d accuse and fight fiercely against the Magic Tower when their pocket spaces suddenly closed.
A world where scammers thrive.
The Middle Realm is no exception.
There are even pocket space thieves who pretend to lend or act as if they’re not touching it before swiftly snatching it away.
Of course, such thieves don’t last long and die quickly.
Frustrated masters hunt them down because they’ve been caught.
After getting ripped off a few times, the Magic Tower captures and executes those who engage in such “treacherous actions” that tarnish their own trust.
That’s why there are no pocket space thieves among the top ten thieves on the continent.
“Ooooh! Everything’s in!”
Another good point about this precious pocket space.
Inside the pocket space, there’s no worry of magic items exploding or evaporating due to magical interference.
No matter what you toss inside, it holds up well.
As a premium cash shop item, the stability is phenomenal.
Oknodie, who couldn’t directly store many items in the backpack and had to rely on indirect methods, had every reason to be ecstatic.
Cha-ching!
The exterior of the backpack.
Inside the pocket.
Among shadows.
Between strands of hair.
Between the folds of the skirt.
Everywhere, she shook out all the hidden items she gathered by casting shrinking and concealment spells, looking like a squirrel hiding acorns throughout the forest.
“Phew, storage complete!”
Even after revealing everything, the space used was just 0.001%.
Oknodie resolved.
This time, she aimed to gather all the items she couldn’t store because of the backpack’s limited holding capacity and shove them all into the pocket space, aiming for the supreme repository.
The moment when she’d reserve a treasure storage that rivals the treasure vault of Dragon Principal Omoshiroi.
The world was about to embark on a rampage that could be called the treasure hoarding instinct of the small evil dragon.
“Wait, didn’t I forget something?”
Oknodie halted.
What was it that I forgot?
[Retrieve the loot from the previous 13th-ranked achiever.]
[The former 13th-ranked achiever will not forget this event.]
“…”
I forgot this.
The reason so many professors play around with the principal’s game.
Because of the penalty of returning rewards.
All the pocket-space items I carefully stored.
Where would they go if returned to the principal in an instant?
The principal’s supreme repository.
A prime example of the most malicious case of recovery via pocket space loophole.
“Ugh. It’s not a permanent-bound item.”
It’s just the nature of titles or ranking privilege items.
If you wish to keep it for a long time, you have to maintain your skills.
Some professors, after failing to renew their ranks because they felt too attached to an item won in such a manner, worry about losing their originally owned item, and thus cease their attempts.
That shows just how powerful those privilege items are.
The grudge of the former 13th-ranked professor, forcibly returned such an item.
Is it okay after all?
‘I’m worried about future troubles, but at least I got the reward!’
Oknodie fainted and stuffed her friends and spirits into the Recovery Room along with the golems.
While the spirits were crammed into recovery capsules like Tetris with about five to six per capsule in a multi-person hospital room demonstrating the harshness of shared wards, her friends were allowed one capsule each due to friend benefits, honoring the one-person room rule.
Having good connections is what makes such situations favorable.
“When Irene closes her eyes, she really is beautiful!”
Her peaceful sleeping figure, resembling Snow White, was a beauty beyond compare.
Yet, somehow, I felt an emptiness.
Like something was missing that would suit Irene at this moment.
“Aha. I forgot about this!”
Oknodie took an apple from the backpack, bit into it, and injected the apple with the poison liquid from the syringe.
And thus, the Poison Apple was complete!
Gently placing the bitten Poison Apple into the hand of sleeping Irene, I finally felt satisfied.
*
People who were abducted as punishment for failing to finish their meals.
Jonnas, who intentionally delayed his meal to rescue them, finally returned to the mansion after great difficulty.
“Just as I feared. That mad chairman. Throwing us into a dimensional plane for upper-grade butler survival training with a time scaling difference.”
If it weren’t for his experience, the students and spirits might have been annihilated.
“Thank you for your help, Professor Jonnas.”
“If it weren’t for you, we’d all be dead!”
“You’re our lifelong benefactor!”
Oknodie, who is taking after the bad traits of the evil chairman and chairman of the foundation, Jonnas bowed his head in her future’s sake, even in places she didn’t know.
“If my help can repay you even a little, please repay that debt to our lady.”
“I’ll think more of kindness toward Oknodie from now on, despite the grudges.”
Even the members of the Jigoku Pirate Group, who generally hold a grudge whenever Oknodie appears, to the extent of their tortured feelings, Jonnas has shown immense kindness.
Jonnas, who never imagined that Oknodie’s subordinates would harbor such deep-seated resentment, felt relieved that the opportunity arose to show kindness.
‘I wonder if our lady is doing well.’
The return to the mansion.
Jonnas momentarily put aside his thoughts of greeting the lady and relaxing briefly.
He couldn’t help but feel despair at the sight of the mansion’s condition.
“My lady. What on earth happened to the mansion while I was gone?”
“Well, you see, it wasn’t intentional at all.”
“Just spit it out.”
“Because I received a recovery verdict from the incubator, the poison I injected into the apple was Hydra’s blood, and a bunch of little ones hatched from inside!”
Capsules bursting with mini hydras less than 1 cm in size, each with three heads, burst forth!
Oknodie attempted to capture them but, being the offspring of giant monsters, their survival instincts kicked in, and they awakened their magic in a chaotic manner.
Thanks to that, small hydras were hiding all over the mansion!
Crunch crunch.
Whenever I heard odd sounds, I could quickly spot mini hydras that had joined the ecosystem pyramid of the mansion, gnawing on furniture corners and consuming mana.
It was a disaster that was reminiscent of a pestilence.
“Are the others okay?”
“I was worried about that and was meticulous. Thanks to that, Irene is safe, but in the meantime, the mansion has become a mess…”
“Whew. The poison candies from Rei were carefully crafted for my lady. The essence of the poison is even more dangerous, so never inject it elsewhere or spill it and lose that valuable poison.”
“I’ll keep that in mind…”
“Fortunately, you reflected before receiving punishment.”
While Jonnas was fortunate he didn’t need to whip her backside until it turned red, things were not so fortunate for others in the mansion.
“By the way, there aren’t as many mini hydras as I expected. If they were birthed from the incubator, there should have been dozens of mini hydras from just a drop of blood.”
“I had to use cleaning tools in a hurry!”
“Are you talking about the high-grade vacuum cleaner?”
Jonnas recalled the vacuum cleaner Oknodie normally used and asked.
Unfortunately, Oknodie had a new cleaning tool.
“No? I just grabbed any artistic item that caught my hand and swept it up?”
“…I feel sorry for those trapped in the lower levels.”
Suddenly, with mini giant monsters being introduced, as time goes on, they’re bound to grow larger and larger; the third-year students, hesitating to face such a situation, were now faced with a predicament.
