"Phew."
At first, I nearly despaired at the thought of having to survive alone in this dreary place crawling with monsters—the Hell of the Tensura world, a place that was hellish... no, one literally called Hell. Yet, unexpectedly, I spent roughly a hundred years here without too much difficulty.
Perhaps because demons are a race governed by the law of strength, rather than attacking me—a pure(?) Arch Demon—they either avoided me or arbitrarily proposed deals, saying they would pay some other price in exchange for their lives because they feared all the years they had accumulated would go to waste.
On top of that, I met a few good people.
Thanks to that, I lived an absurdly peaceful life.
Besides, whether it was because my sense of time had dulled after becoming a demon or because I was inherently a spiritual life-form, my mind remained exactly as it had been when I first possessed this body in this world.
I think my mental fortitude might actually be stronger than it was in my previous life.
There were demons that occasionally picked fights with me.
But they were only Lesser Demons that did not yet understand the gap between races, or immature Greater Demons incapable of even distinguishing rank—opponents I could defeat with ease.
Is it because I’m a demon? It feels as though the way to fight has been instinctively engraved into my head.
From manipulating magicules to using high-level magic, I could handle it all naturally, as if it had been in my head from the very beginning.
...............
Then, after fighting Greater Demons several dozen times—
...Fighting isn’t as bad as I thought?
[Confirmed. You have successfully awakened your innate combat instinct and acquired the Extra Skill [Fighter].]
A strange voice echoed through my mind.
"...What?"
I guessed it was the voice people commonly called the Voice of the World.
This was an unusual world with a system that granted people the thoughts they held when accomplishing great feats or reincarnating, in the form of abilities called [Skills].
"No... I just like how I seem to learn something every time I fight. Why does that suddenly mean I like fighting...?"
I already knew the Voice of the World existed, so I was not all that surprised. Still, I had my doubts.
Those doubts were useless to the Voice of the World, however.
[Confirmed. Due to the manifestation of your continuing desire to learn, you have acquired the Unique Skill [Seeker of Learning].]
The voice ringing in my head once again announced that I had acquired another [Skill].
"...Are Skills really this easy to get...?"
Just from imagining something?
By the time the Voice of the World rang out a second time, another question had arisen.
[Answer. Skills are inherent abilities born when a living being grows and the world acknowledges it.]
"...That’s not what I was asking... Isn’t there anyone who can give me a proper answer?!"
[Confirmed. As there is a need for a self-willed Skill that can answer questions, you have acquired the Unique Skill [Answerer].]
That made three already.
I was pretty sure the novel had said ordinary people found it difficult to obtain even a single Unique Skill in their entire lives, yet I had already obtained two.
All because of one thought and one question.
"...No... If you were going to do this now, you could’ve just given me an offensive Skill from the start!"
Dumbfounded, I just blurted out whatever came to mind, wondering whether it would give me a [Skill] if I said that too.
But the problem was...
[Confirmed. As there is a need for a Skill to use in battle, you have acquired the Unique Skill [Sword Demon].]
"..."
...No... Why... would you actually give it to me...?
................
No matter how much I think about it, I still don’t understand...
Even now, nearly a hundred years later, it had been a truly ridiculous situation.
"...Well, I’ve been making good use of them even now, so it’s not like I have any complaints..."
Considering how the protagonist of the novel had also gotten broken Skills and simply accepted it, there seemed to be no need to bother agonizing over it.
It had turned out to be an incredible gain, too.
Despite how absurdly easily I had acquired them, none of my Skills were useless.
First, the Extra Skill [Fighter] was a Berserker-type ability that temporarily heightened all my abilities in exchange for sending my mind into a battle-crazed frenzy for about ten minutes.
Still, unlike an ordinary Berserker ability, it did not erase all my reason, making it not merely decent but an entirely useful buff Skill.
Next, the Unique Skill [Seeker of Learning] was not merely a good ability like [Fighter]. It was a ludicrously broken Skill—the sort only a protagonist should have—capable of detecting weaknesses, sensing my surroundings, viewing information on opponents, and more.
Thanks to this Skill, I was able to defeat the yellow, purple, and white Arch Demons I occasionally encountered.
If I hadn’t had this, I would’ve lost back then, when I had no combat experience at all.
In short, [Seeker of Learning] was one of the two Skills keeping me alive.
And the other went without saying: the Unique Skill [Sword Demon], the most easily acquired Skill and a combat Skill.
As its name suggested, [Sword Demon] was a Skill focused on magic and swordsmanship, capable of automatically imbuing sword-related abilities, such as sword aura, with magic.
This Skill had abilities just as broken as [Seeker of Learning]. For example—
It allowed me to repeatedly unleash techniques similar to Melt Slash, the technique used by the [Hero] Hinata Sakaguchi in the original story, which combined swordsmanship with Disintegration, the highest-order holy magic.
If that protagonist had seen it, he probably would have said, "This is broken."
Even I, its owner, thought it was broken.
If I’d been born human, would this Skill have been called [Sword Saint]?
Well, by now I was so used to it that all I could do was entertain thoughts like that and go, Hm, it sure is broken.
After staying in Hell for so long, even extraordinary things had started to feel ordinary.
Anyway, getting back to the point, the last one was the Unique Skill [Answerer].
Like the original story’s [Great Sage], [Answerer] could manage all my Skills and explain information about this world.
It even possessed an ego, so whenever it got bored, it would sometimes play word chains with me.
[Report. The final Skill is not me, but the unregistered Skill [????].]
Our [Answerer], who uncannily noticed whenever I was talking about it, suddenly spoke to me.
"Oh, that question-mark Skill? But there’s no information on it, and I can’t use it anyway."
A few months after gaining my Skills, just when I had begun to settle into them, I happened to discover that I possessed one more Skill.
The unregistered Skill [????], consisting entirely of question marks.
It was a strange Skill whose rank and name were both completely unknown.
But since I did not know how to use it and [Answerer] had no information on it either, I simply treated it as though it did not exist.
The Skills I had now were more than enough, after all.
[Question. Then may I dismantle that Skill?]
...Dismantle it?
...Somehow, that makes me uneasy...
"Uh... no, leave it alone for now. I might have a use for it someday."
Feeling an inexplicable unease, as though I had some kind of super intuition, I refused [Answerer]’s request.
...However, at the time, I did not know what this Skill would end up bringing about...
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register