Curse

Curse

The Adventurer Training School in Naspar definitely could not compare to a university in size, but it was much larger than an ordinary high school. Because it stood on the front lines, it had once been highly valued. At its peak, annual enrollment had ranged between 1,000 and 1,500 students.

That number might not have seemed remarkable, but considering modern productivity, transportation convenience, the risks of adventuring, and various other factors, it was already quite substantial.

As for now...

Enrollment had plummeted following the disappearance of the Demon King of Tyranny. After declining for twenty consecutive years, there were only a few dozen students this year.

Following a staff member along the path beneath the walls, Pei Renli barely saw anyone. Even when he occasionally did, they were merely maintenance workers handling miscellaneous chores. There were no students from the previous year and no teachers either, making the school seem exceptionally empty.

Being an adventurer was not a profession where attending classes alone was enough. Experience mattered far more than theory, so schools that trained adventurers held many practical exercises.

Over the two school years, first-year students only practiced nearby, while teachers accompanied second-year students to more distant locations for most of their year. The reason no students or teachers from the previous year could be seen was because they had not returned yet.

Still, even counting them, the school undeniably had few people.

They passed large stretches of unused buildings sealed up with wooden planks, circling nearly half the campus before rows upon rows of brick-and-stone structures appeared beyond a green belt of cedar trees and shrubs.

The buildings were made from bluestone bricks coated with paint. Their style resembled old corridor apartment blocks, though they seemed to have only two floors.

These were the school dormitories. To accommodate the surge in students during its heyday, they looked at first glance like an entire residential neighborhood.

Up close, he found that every six rooms shared a corridor and staircase, with numbers written on the walls as well.

Pei Renli had been assigned room 2205, meaning the fifth room on the second floor of Building Two.

He took out the old-fashioned oversized brass key he had received from the dorm manager and opened a lock whose keyhole was large enough to fit a finger into. The moment he stepped inside, he smelled a strong odor of dust.

The room looked to be less than ten square meters. A window with pale blue curtains faced the door, and the only furniture was a bed, desk, wardrobe, and small storage cabinet.

Diagonally opposite the bed was an interior door. Opening it revealed a shower room of less than three square meters.

He pushed open the window to let the spring breeze blow in and clear out the dusty smell, then plopped down on the bed, thoroughly satisfied.

It needed cleaning, but compared to the six-person dormitory he had lived in back when he attended school, this was fucking paradise on earth.

The Adventurer Training School offered quite good treatment. This had nothing to do with the small number of students; even during its peak, this had been the standard, and tuition had always been cheap.

The local currency had not yet become dominated by paper money as it had on Earth. Metal currency was still in use.

The smallest denomination was a small copper triangle called a bit. Five bits equaled one copper coin, one hundred copper coins equaled one silver coin, and ten silver coins equaled one gold coin.

He had heard of platinum coins worth ten gold coins, but few countries minted them, so they practically never circulated on the market.

Banking developed slowly, and there were no bills of exchange or checks. There was only a kind of gold certificate that could be deposited and withdrawn locally. For large transactions, people generally carried gems of equivalent value.

Every country minted its own coins, but the only difference was the design stamped on them. Their weight and purity were identical, so nearly every type of currency could be spent anywhere.

Such convenience still had everything to do with the Demon Kings.

If every country had used different currencies, calculating the resources unified against the Demon Kings would have become extremely troublesome. Thus, for some inexplicable reason, currencies and things like weights and measures had all been standardized.

Tuition at the Adventurer Training School was inexpensive. Local students who did not live on campus paid five gold coins, while boarders paid double, or ten gold coins. Regardless of whether they boarded, all students could eat their three daily meals in the school cafeteria without paying anything extra.

That sum was enough for a middle-class family with a respectable job to save for a year or half.

It sounded like a lot, but compared with the cost of supporting a university student on Earth, it was indeed quite cheap.

Tuition was cheap because of subsidies from various countries. Even though the school had declined now, it could still get some funding, so tuition had not risen at all.

Then again, as a Demon King, Pei Renli should have been rich. Demon Kings were kings too, after all. How could every one of them not have some enormous treasury?

Yes, Pei Renli was very rich. He could pull a dozen or so copper coins from his pocket, which was already quite a lot for spending money.

This was all the money Demon King Pei Renli could currently use...

The Demon King of Tyranny had originally left behind plenty of gold, silver, and treasures, but Lavna had thrown them all into the crystal ball to "whale" over the past twenty years. There was honestly very little left now.

They had turned the storeroom inside out, even checking beneath the bed and behind the table legs, and had ultimately found only a dozen or so gold coins. Ten of those went toward tuition, while some had been spent getting Pei Renli an outfit and several changes of clothes. They also had to keep some money in reserve.

After all, Pei Renli could rely on the school cafeteria, but Lavna needed to eat too.

So only a dozen or so copper coins remained in his pocket...

Then again, Pei Renli did not actually need to board. He had traveled from the depths of the Great Tree Sea to Naspar through Lavna's teleportation, and commuting would at most be a little troublesome.

But first, it would be inconvenient since he needed to make it on time. Second, Pei Renli did not want to keep getting teleported around, especially in that method where a flash of white light sent him away like instant movement.

What had happened on his first day after crossing over was truly too unbearable to recall. Besides, if meal costs were included, boarding was more cost-effective.

There was not much edible food in the depths of the Great Tree Sea. Nearly every meal consisted of roasted pheasant or rabbit with boiled wild vegetables. Lavna did not care much, but Pei Renli could not take it. Eating that occasionally was fine, but having it every meal was far too primitive.

Money was important. If he wanted to quickly increase his chances of surviving the Demon King Arena, he could buy many useful magical items with enough cash. But given his current financial situation, he should stop dreaming about that for now.

There was no need to rush into earning money for the moment. Magical items could not be bought with a small sum anyway. Pei Renli tossed the backpack containing his spare clothes onto the bed, then headed out again.

He had only come to the dormitory first to check it out. Next, he needed to see the classroom.

Because the school had enjoyed a period of great prosperity, its grounds were enormous. Pei Renli had nearly gotten lost on campus. Fortunately, he occasionally ran into maintenance workers to ask for directions, and from time to time spotted newly enrolled students, allowing him to find the classroom.

From outside, the classroom building looked like a small two-story structure, but once inside, he found it was actually a lecture hall. Each classroom could hold over a hundred people, and there were more than twenty similar buildings on campus, showing just how glorious the school had once been.

The seats were not open for anyone to choose either. They had all been relabeled with numbers, showing that even though the school had declined, it still retained the proper formalities.

Though this was probably the only formality it had left.

Pei Renli's admission certificate said "19," meaning the ninth row of the first section on the left after entering.

This seat was right next to the window, a bona fide protagonist's seat. But when Pei Renli followed the number to find it, there was a problem.

Someone was already sitting there.

She had dazzling red hair, and the way she crossed her arms made her chest look even more prominent. However, displeasure seemed written all over her face. Who knew whether she was in a bad mood because of her period.

Pei Renli repeatedly checked that the number was correct. The girl also noticed him standing beside her without moving and turned her gaze toward him.

Though she was seated and should have been looking up at the standing Pei Renli, she somehow gave the impression that she was looking down on him. She radiated an air of keeping people at a thousand miles' distance, making even the atmosphere around her feel oppressive. The people nearby barely dared breathe, and her sharp presence made everyone look eager to avoid her.

Wow, who was showing off? It was blinding.

"Um... are you sitting in the wrong seat?"

She reminded Pei Renli of the class monitor from when he was in high school. As one of the most troublesome students in class, he had battled wits with the class monitor for three years, so he was not intimidated in the slightest.

After hearing Pei Renli, she took out her admission certificate and looked it over. A flicker of embarrassment crossed her previously serious expression.

"Sorry..."

Her voice was barely louder than a mosquito, seeming to squeeze out of her throat. She hurriedly stood up and gave Pei Renli the seat, then quickly walked two steps and fled to an empty seat in front.

So she was number 16...

She could actually read it wrong?

After she walked away, he could clearly feel everyone around him breathe a sigh of relief. The people in front, however, grew nervous.

"You actually dared to talk to her. Impressive."

The moment Pei Renli sat down, the guy in front of him turned around and spoke.

He was extremely short, with the top of his head reaching at most Pei Renli's waist, as though an ordinary person had been shrunk down.

This was a halfling, with a body half the size of a human's.

"Almost no one here dares to talk to her."

"Why?"

"Her name is Kaya Wigglin."

"A noble? Is that why?"

Ordinary people in this world did not have surnames. Only those with a certain social standing did, which basically meant nobles.

There were not many nobles at the Adventurer Training School, but there were not few either. They made up roughly a third of the total student body.

Even those nobles were illegitimate children from minor noble families, the type with no chance of inheriting a title. Most came to become adventurers in order to find a future path for themselves.

The halfling looked at Pei Renli's expression and realized he truly had no reaction to the name, so he lowered his voice and said:

"Though it's only a rumor, they say she carries a curse. Her parents and relatives died tragically one after another after she was born. Only one older brother is still alive, and he's disabled too."

On Earth, that would have been more or less feudal superstition. But in a world with magic...

It was hard to say for sure.

No wonder everyone avoided her like the plague. She was a pretty-looking walking disaster. No one would dare get close to her.

"It's not just a rumor. I saw it with my own eyes."

A muffled, buzzing voice of indeterminate gender came from Pei Renli's right. When he turned, he saw someone completely wrapped in heavy armor plates, even wearing a full-face helmet...