SWNOVELXO Chapter 46 - Changing the Dragon Plaque (5)
Chapter 46 Changing the Dragon Plaque (5)
In the brief span of one second.
In that moment, Yuri, Theresia, thunder, and shadow intersected.
At the moment of intersection, golden and crimson eyes gazed at each other.
For that instant, time flowed unusually slowly.
Then finally.
“……”
“……?!”
The two gazes that met drifted apart.
Boom-.
With a sound like thunder, the two vanished figures reappeared simultaneously.
Theresia Winchester stood where Yuri had been a moment before.
Yuri stood across the stream, where Theresia had first appeared.
They appeared in completely opposite locations.
Rustle, rustle-.
“……?!”
Theresia, startled by a sound from behind, quickly turned her body.
Spotting Yuri standing across the stream, her lips parted slightly.
Yuri smiled and waved at the frozen Theresia.
“See you later, Tessa-senpai!”
With a brief farewell, Yuri slung the wooden box over his shoulder and started to run away.
Theresia, as if forgetting to chase, stood in a daze watching his retreating figure, whispering to herself.
“Even took the box… during all that?”
She had moved first.
That was certain.
But her opponent had moved a much greater distance and even had the leisure to take the wooden box along the way.
“……”
Theresia silently stared at the bushes where Yuri had disappeared.
The golden eyes she had briefly met were vividly imprinted in her mind.
* * *
A cadet boy, beaten mercilessly, was crawling on the ground in a pitiful state.
“Ugh……”
Seemingly unable to move any further, the boy only twitched occasionally.
Standing beside him was Jerry, the perpetrator who had reduced him to rags.
Jerry, hands in his pockets, bent down and asked.
“Are you the one called Eric?”
“Ugh……”
“Judging by your expression, it seems so.”
Eric’s eyes were filled with injustice and anger.
“W-why do you have such a grudge against me… to do this!”
At the desperate outcry, Jerry shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t have any grudge, though?”
How could he have a grudge against someone he met today… no, just a moment ago.
He simply had some business to take care of.
“Let’s see, let’s see……”
Jerry rummaged through Eric’s belongings.
Then a crude cloth pouch caught in his hand.
Clink-.
“That bastard wasn’t lying, it seems.”
Feeling the weight of the pouch, Jerry’s lips curled into a smile.
Whoosh-.
As the pouch of points lightly flipped into the air from Jerry’s hand, a conversation with a certain madman naturally flowed through his mind.
* * *
“Forget about the Dragon Plaque. Tell me more about this thing called points.”
With Yuri’s demanding tone, Jerry sighed inwardly.
‘This guy really wants a free ride!’
The Cradle was a very unkind place.
Gathering information and utilizing it was also considered part of one’s skill and competition.
That’s why first-year cadets struggled the most due to a lack of information during the initial period.
The instructors at the Cradle provided only the bare minimum of information.
Meeting senior cadets was not easy either.
No, it was better not to meet them.
In the Cradle, cadet ranks were practically akin to gangsters for juniors.
Encountering seniors often meant getting stripped of everything, so juniors generally avoided meeting them.
Given this situation, new cadets spent a lot of time gathering information and adapting during the initial period at the Cradle.
Jerry was no exception.
‘I had to go through so much trouble to find out all that!’
It was frustrating that a newly arrived cadet wanted to get everything effortlessly after all the months he had spent gathering the information.
As Jerry’s face puffed up, Yuri’s eyes narrowed slyly.
“What? Don’t want to tell me? Too annoying?”
It was annoying.
He really didn’t want to tell him.
He wanted to get up and shout that he found it annoying to that irritating face.
But what could he do?
He was still buried in the ground, and that madman held a very effective threat.
Clenching his teeth, Jerry awkwardly smiled seeing Yuri’s hand twitching on the ant nest.
“Hahaha, annoying? Why would that be annoying? Just ask. What do you want to know? I’ll explain everything. I swear on my family’s honor to tell the truth!”
“Ah, I see? You think I won’t fail the test because of my skills, but if you tell me obvious lies, I might find out later and come back to get revenge… that’s your worry.”
“……”
“So you don’t want to tell me everything you know exactly, but since I’m a cadet and don’t know much about how the Cradle works, you’ll just answer what I ask?”
“…This madman has a dirty sharp mind.”
Rustle-.
Rustle, rustle-.
“Ah! Ants are falling! Huff- Huff- Huff- Huff- Huff-! I’ll talk! I’ll talk, so let go of your grip! Huff- Huff- Huff-!”
Muttering to himself had provoked the madman, and Jerry had to pay for it.
Jerry, who had blown so much air that he was short on oxygen and his face had turned blue, finally saw Yuri let go of the ant nest.
After catching his breath for a moment, Jerry sighed deeply and said.
“Fine… I’ll tell you everything I know. I’ll even help you with anything you’re curious about.”
“Weren’t you going to?”
“This guy… Anyway, I’ll tell you everything you want to know… but promise to let me go. If you don’t, I’ll never say anything, no matter what you do with that ant nest.”
“Sure, I promise.”
With such an easy acceptance, Jerry was instead confused.
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
“…Really?”
“You don’t want to?”
“N-no!”
Though he felt something off, getting free was the priority.
He could think about what happened afterward.
Clearing his throat softly, Jerry began to speak.
“As I said before, points are both currency and the only indicator of academic ranking in the Cradle. Given the dual purpose of points, you have to make your choices wisely.”
“What choices?”
“Whether to use the points I have to maintain living conditions or to increase academic scores.”
“So points used to increase scores can’t be retrieved?”
“Yeah, using points to increase scores is also considered ‘using points’.”
“What happens if you don’t increase your academic score?”
“Points are used for monthly evaluations, and there are penalties for being at the bottom.”
“What penalties?”
“It varies, but it could be selecting a few bottom performers for a punishment or, in severe cases, permanent expulsion from the Cradle.”
“Interesting.”
“Only those with skills can say that. For those at the bottom, the monthly evaluation is like a death sentence. Will this month end with just a light punishment? Or expulsion? And even if someone is expelled, how many will it be… the Cradle never gives a definite answer.”
“Hmm……?”
“The last week of the month with evaluations is called ‘Hell Week’ by those at the bottom.”
“That’s not my concern. Should I care about such things? Really?”
“Cold-hearted.”
“It’s natural for winners and losers to be decided through competition. Don’t you think it’s contradictory to pity those I’ve trampled over to win?”
“That is……”
Jerry trailed off.
Currently, Jerry’s position within the 49th cohort was right in the middle.
Exactly in the middle of the middle ranks.
So, he often thought about the suffering lower ranks went through every month.
Wouldn’t there come a day when he himself fell to the lower ranks?
And if that happened, wouldn’t he be expelled too?
With such fears, Jerry appreciated and supported the lower ranks rather than pitying them.
Hoping they would hold on a bit longer.
So that he wouldn’t fall into the lower ranks.
Yuri seemed to have guessed Jerry’s inner thoughts and hit the nail on the head.
Jerry sighed slightly and acknowledged it.
“Yeah… you’re right.”
“Good to know. So how can I gather points?”
“Through quests.”
“Quests?”
“Think of them as tasks or assignments given by the Cradle. Completing the quests earns you various rewards, usually points.”
“And the amount of points varies based on the quest’s difficulty?”
“Of course. High-difficulty quests can reward you with not just points but also various rare items. For example… high-quality equipment or rare potions?”
Jerry explained that quests of moderate difficulty only awarded points.
Yuri stroked his chin.
‘I roughly get how the Cradle operates now.’
The core mechanism that made the Dragon’s Cradle run was points and quests.
Production and consumption.
Encouraging competitive and economic activities.
All of this was done through points and quests.
‘I’ll get a better understanding of how quests work once I experience them myself.’
Even after that, Jerry continued to talk about various trivial things related to points.
The unit of points started from 10 and went up to a maximum of 50,000.
You could put a string through the hole in the middle of the points and carry them in bundles.
The top 10 scorers in the monthly evaluation received additional points based on their rank.
And there was even a bank on the mainland of the Cradle where you could save your points.
Once the dam of conversation broke, it flowed without stopping, and Jerry rambled on about everything he knew, even without Yuri prodding him.
Listening quietly, Yuri was sure.
‘This guy… was talkative from the start.’
If given a topic, he could probably talk for hours.
Maybe because of this, his stories often deviated and wandered, following the flow of his consciousness.
‘That might be better.’
When talking aimlessly, one might inadvertently reveal information they wanted to hide.
So Yuri encouraged Jerry’s chatter with great enthusiasm.
To make him talk even more passionately.
Among the many stories, the thing that caught Yuri’s interest the most was the existence of the points shop.
“There’s a shop run by the Cradle?”
“Yes, although low-ranked cadets can only buy a few items… to first and second-year cadets, it’s like an oasis in the desert.”
According to Jerry, the items first-year cadets could buy at the shop included dried rations, daily necessities, training clothes, whetstones, and oil.
It seemed like they provided quite a bit, but the prices were the problem.
“A day’s worth of dried rations costs 1,000 points? Is that expensive?”
“Dried rations are the cheapest items at the shop… you can earn about 1,000 points from a low-level quest that takes about a day to complete? Does that give you an idea?”
“It’s practically extortion.”
If what he said was true, living off dried rations alone would mean earning just enough to survive day by day.
And that was considering dried rations were the cheapest item.
Other items would cost a huge amount of points, and points would also need to be spent on academic scores to avoid falling to the bottom ranks.
Jerry’s earlier mention of cadets struggling with points now made sense.
Nodding, Yuri tilted his head and asked.
“What about the Dragon Plaque? Didn’t you say they also sell those?”
“Ah, that? That’s a special sale.”
“Special sale?”
“They call it a special sale, where they sell rare items you normally can’t get… like high-grade potions from the Goblin Tribe, original magic body techniques from ancient eastern lands, high-grade elixirs, etc.”
“Oh?”
“The items are updated monthly, and sometimes they even have Golden Dragon Plaques or Platinum Dragon Plaques. But seeing the price will make you lose interest in buying…”
Jerry mumbled that the special sale Dragon Plaques were too expensive.
He grumbled about who would buy a Dragon Plaque at that price instead of elixirs.
Then, as if recalling something unusual, Jerry muttered.
“…Come to think of it, there was a peculiar rumor.”