Mistaken for a Masked Munchkin

Thank You

The early hours, after smashing apart the Cultist branch and making it back to the dorms.

He slept clean through until afternoon.

His whole body ached like the morning after a brutal workout, but the exhaustion that had been sitting on his eyelids had mostly cleared.

"Urgh..."

Not that the bone-deep fatigue was gone, though.

He sprawled across the bed, completely slack. No intention of getting up. None.

Which made sense. This was the first real break he'd had after days of being run into the ground, one thing to prepare, another thing to sort out, no breathing room between any of it.

'Nobody is dragging me out of this bed.'

Something squirmed faintly in the front pocket of his shirt.

[Mmmph...]

Carmilla.

Curled up on his chest in her silver bat form, sleeping with the easy contentment of someone who had found exactly the right spot.

He looked down at her in silence.

'Strange.'

In human form she'd flush just from holding hands, and yet in bat form she'd sprawled right across his chest without a second thought. By any measure of closeness, this was far more intimate, wasn't it? Or maybe it wasn't the intimacy itself that bothered her so much as the scale of it.

The small warmth pressed against him.

He turned the question over with genuine consideration.

'Or maybe it's just selective embarrassment...'

Carmilla had restless sleeping habits. Even deep under, she'd wriggle and shift. Today, though, exhaustion seemed to have won out. The restlessness was barely there.

'No signs of waking up anytime soon.'

He briefly considered rousing her, but the soft little grumbling sounds she made were too endearing, so he left her alone. A gentle pat, and she practically melted into the fabric.

[Mmn... mngh... Viktor, you are insolent...]

Talking in her sleep, and with no apparent intention of moving an inch. She pressed her cheek against his chest and pulled the shirt pocket over herself like a blanket.

He snorted quietly.

'I wonder if anyone would believe it...'

That this tiny, ridiculous little creature was, in truth, the last princess of the Blandid dynasty.

'Well. The contrast is exactly what makes it endearing.'

He settled himself flat so she could sleep undisturbed.

Afterwards, his hand drifted to the status window and started idly prodding the blue UI, turning it over out of mild curiosity.

'Come to think of it...'

Yesterday had been an absolute mess. He pulled up his information screen, partly to get a clearer picture of where things stood.

――――

[Status Window]

Name: Viktor

Title: Saint

Items equipped: Evil God's Mask, Evil God's Robe

Active set effect: The World as ■■■ Sees It.

.

.

[Saint]

-> Karma Points accumulate in proportion to the lives you save.

-> Karma Points can be used to improve the user's base stats.

(The special ability of this title takes precedence over all other system restrictions.)

――――

A turbulent night. The evidence sat right there in the point total.

Ding!

[Base Stats]

Stamina: E+

Strength: E

Agility: E

Mana Sensitivity: E

[Remaining Karma Points: 620p]

Six hundred and twenty points banked from the Cultist branch. Twenty points per life saved. Thirty-one lives rescued in a single night, and this was the return on that.

"Right... better put these to work."

That was what they were for, after all.

Part of him still hadn't fully caught up to it. He genuinely hadn't expected that pushing past the fixed stat restriction would even be possible. Nothing like this had existed in the original game. No function for modifying stats, none whatsoever.

'No bug for it either.'

Good news, as far as he was concerned.

Better stats meant a wider toolkit. There were plenty of bugs that required a body that could actually keep up with them.

'Raising base stats means more options. More ways to work.'

No hesitation. He sank the points in.

Even distribution, first time around.

Ding!

[Karma Points consumed.]

-Base stat 'Stamina' grade increased by +1.

-Base stat 'Strength' grade increased by +1.

-Base stat 'Agility' grade increased by +1.

-Base stat 'Mana Sensitivity' grade increased by +1.

[600 Karma Points consumed.]

[Remaining Karma Points: 20p]

One hundred points to raise from E to E+. Three hundred to push from E+ to D-. The reward for thirty-one lives, all spent.

The numbers dropped. The stat window shifted across the board.

[Base Stats]

Stamina: D-

Strength: E+

Agility: E+

Mana Sensitivity: E+

"Ohh..."

Raising multiple stats at once, maybe. The improvement was far more noticeable than expected.

"My body actually feels lighter."

Best way to describe it: like carrying a forty-kilo pack on your back all day and finally shrugging it off. The stiffness that had been grinding through his muscles had settled, too. He reached out and tested the desk beside the bed.

Fwoop.

"What."

It lifted far more easily than it had any right to. Not spinning-it-on-a-pinky territory, not quite, but somewhere around forty percent lighter than it should have felt.

'Already this effective...?'

Just E to E+. The smallest possible increment.

He exhaled slowly.

So this was what everyone else had been living with this whole time, while he sat walled off behind a curse.

Beyond the fixed stat curse, an entirely different world had been waiting.

"Oh. Oho. Ohohoh. Ohohohoh."

He flapped his arm around a few times just to feel it.

Stopped the moment Carmilla stirred.

"Hmm..."

He thought it through.

'I went with even distribution this time, but going forward I need a proper plan.'

The higher the grade, the more points each upgrade would demand, exponentially. Spending them well meant thinking ahead.

First priority: Stamina and Agility.

Lower priority: Strength and Mana Sensitivity.

'Not planning to study magic anytime soon.'

And Strength mattered less than the others, given that every weapon he used was featherlight. The Black Mist weighed about as much as a sheet of paper. The Balloon Sword didn't even bear mentioning.

'For now, stack Karma Points as high as possible.'

In other words: save as many lives as possible going forward. Walk the path of the Saint.

He closed the status window, satisfied.

"Alright, alright..."

Every loose end tied up. Time to sleep.

'I genuinely am not doing anything else.'

The reward for days of non-stop grinding was pure sweetness. He grinned and burrowed back under the blanket, cocooning himself completely.

"Heheheh."

I'm resting.

Nobody is stopping me.

***

Damn.

They stopped him.

[Viktor.]

There he sat, distinctly awkward, in the Class E waiting section.

His name rang out. This poor lamb was being summoned to the podium.

[This student not only placed first in the practical evaluation, but also provided decisive assistance in apprehending the informant hiding within the Academy.]

[Please come up to the stage.]

[Students, please welcome him with a warm round of applause.]

Clap, clap, clap, clap.

Applause from every direction.

He stood and walked toward the podium. Waiting on the stage were faculty members, and the headmaster.

"Haah..."

A seat of honor, arranged by the Academy to recognize his contributions. Every pair of eyes in the school locked on him.

'Going all out to celebrate me, huh...'

No, wait.

Hmm.

He wasn't sure how to feel. Technically good. But he couldn't quite decide if he was supposed to be genuinely happy about it.

'Any hope of a quiet school life is well and truly gone.'

The low-profile commoner concept had been dead for a while. It always ended up like this for Possession protagonists, no matter how hard you tried to stay under the radar.

He was starting to accept, rationally, that a quiet life just wasn't on the table in a world like this. Especially in something like RGM with its brutal setting, all sorts of calamities that even the faculty couldn't contain kept rolling in, and the one who had to deal with all of it, alone, was always the one who knew what was coming. Drawing attention was inevitable.

'And every time I saw that in a novel, I'd be in the comments posting: you keep saying you want a quiet life but you never actually commit...'

He'd been so certain he could do better.

One by one, the silhouettes of countless Possession protagonists before him drifted through his mind.

'I get it now...'

In the end, anyone who'd gone through Possession had two routes. Become the center of attention. Or decide that whatever happened wasn't your problem, disappear somewhere remote, and stay in self-imposed exile right up until the world ended around you.

So every Possession protagonist lived a life that could never be quiet, desperately refused to accept it, and just barely convinced themselves a peaceful existence was still within reach.

Every last one of them, delusional.

What a bleak truth.

Damn this game.

[Viktor has demonstrated outstanding ability throughout the practical...]

[And subsequently cooperated with Chief Investigator Javert in apprehending the informant...]

Up on the stage, a faculty member was energetically running through his achievements.

Viktor climbed the short stairs at a measured pace, listening with maybe half his attention.

He accepted the plaque the Academy handed him.

'At least they warned me about this beforehand.'

He'd found out about the ceremony only early that morning. First instinct had been to decline, but he'd peeled away the reluctance and nodded.

Staying on good terms with the faculty was the smarter play. He had plans in motion, and doing some Goodwill Farming to make sure they'd be willing to help when the time came was worth the effort.

'...Even so. Knocking on the dorm room door at dawn was a bit much.'

He pushed the thought aside.

Viktor smiled pleasantly at the assembled school, then immediately remembered he was wearing a mask and had no need to manage his expression at all.

So he just stood there on the stage with a look halfway between vacant and on the verge of tears.

[Now, Viktor.]

[As the Academy's current hero, please share a few words with us.]

A Magic Tool appeared in his hands without warning.

The student representative speech. Standard at every ceremony.

With him as today's star, they'd clearly decided to hand the whole thing directly to him.

"Ah, um... first of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to the faculty of Grandia Academy for organizing this occasion."

He had a prepared script. All he had to do was read it.

His voice touched the Magic Tool, the volume rose, and the words rolled out through the hall.

"I'd also like to thank Chief Investigator Javert, who provided support every step of the way..."

Sharp gazes from the student body. The upper-rank cadets in particular wore expressions that were something else entirely, irritation they couldn't quite conceal, that unmistakable who does he think he is.

Too young, maybe. Too self-important. Either way, they weren't hiding it.

-Who even is this guy? First in the practical, and he helped catch an informant too...?

-That can't be right. He's Class E's top seat.

-Class E's top seat took first in the practical?

-He's been talked about. The one who completely wrecked Shariel from Class C...

-If he's that good, why is he even in Class E? Probably just rumors blown way out of proportion.

Murmuring from every direction. Some surprised, some jealous, some skeptical. One thing was clear: genuine congratulations were thin on the ground.

'Of course.'

To them, he'd been trash. Someone beneath notice. And now someone from Class E had crawled out of nowhere and pulled off something they couldn't make sense of. That didn't sit right.

Hard to stomach, honestly.

-I mean, whatever he's done, E class is still E class.

-Didn't you watch the Freshmen Welcome Exam? He's different.

-Different how. He just wears a weird mask...

-Bit much, all this showing off.

-No but seriously, how did he actually take first in the practical?

Grandia students ran competitive, and these ones had been shaped by elitism, children who hated being outpaced.

-Ugh. So annoying.

One voice in particular.

Loud enough to carry on purpose.

Front row, close enough to the podium that the distance barely mattered.

-Wasn't he in the same group as Lady Kihano?

-Obviously. He just got lucky riding her coattails.

-And now he's up there running his mouth, with that stupid mask on his face.

Bright yellow hair. Bronze-tanned skin.

For a noble girl, a notably rough-edged look.

In another life's terms, she had the energy of a school Delinquent.

Sprawled in the Class B waiting section like she owned the building.

-God, E class talking big about what, exactly...

-Everyone losing their minds over this guy just because he got lucky.

-One hit from me and he'd be crying with a bloody nose.

The Delinquent girl was Class B's top seat. One of the genuinely strong students at the Academy.

'Hold it together.'

Viktor read steadily from the script.

But the gap was short enough that her murmuring still reached him, faint at the edge of hearing.

She was clever about it. Pitching her voice just low enough that the professors couldn't catch it.

When he didn't react, she seemed to find it even funnier.

-Ha... look at him. Completely froze.

-Yeah, he's got to be embarrassed. Taking praise he doesn't even deserve.

He knew the type. Stuck in that comfortable middle tier, hovering just below the top, all pride and inferiority in equal measure.

Classic behavior. The moment someone they'd written off as beneath them did anything impressive, something inside them curdled, and they couldn't take it.

-Totally iced over.

-Should pick a day to knock him down a notch.

-He's a commoner too, right? Not like there's anything to worry about.

She seemed set on making a point.

Know your place. Stop being visible.

'Hold it.'

He made the call to tune her out.

Stay quiet. Endure. There was a soft bed in the dorm waiting for him. Finish the ceremony without incident and go back.

'If I let her drag me down to her level, I've already lost.'

That framing helped. He felt steadier.

No reason to pick a fight here. There'd be other chances. Today, letting it pass was the right call.

-Pfft... scared of me, huh.

-Hey, what's so special about him anyway.

-Beating Class C's top seat doesn't mean Class B's top seat looks any less scary.

-And she's kind of notorious. Mess with the wrong person and...

The rest of the crowd caught the current and started murmuring among themselves. The upper-rank students smiled in that figures kind of way.

Viktor was nearly at the end of the script. Almost at the last line.

-Boring.

Thank you all for listening to my long speech.

One final sentence, and it was over.

"Thank you all for listening to my long spe..."

Almost there. He was smiling about it.

-Why does he sound so cheerful? What does he even have to be happy about?

-See? Nothing special.

Still at it.

"Thank, thank, thank, thank..."

The words caught in his throat.

He took a breath and looked directly at the Delinquent girl.

Then, in the brightest possible voice, he delivered the final line.

"Hey punk, if you've got a problem with me, step up and settle it."

Oh.

Couldn't hold back.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!