Clearing The World That's Inside A Novel

Chapter 56: Entering The Academy

"I think you should stop it." The woman, probably in her late twenties, said sighing, her face hidden behind the mask and the sunglasses she wore.

"Stop? Stop what?"

I asked her unable to understand what she was talking about.

"You need to stop buying only black clothes"

What? Why?

Black clothes are the perfect clothes. They don't get dirty easily, they go along with whatever design and all the other stuff.

They are the best.

So why is this lady stopping me from buying my clothes? Made no sense.

"And for what reason?"

"The fact that you are asking me about why makes me wonder if you are a shut-in"

"How did you know that?"

"So, you are"

That is not the point.

"Aren't you wearing an oversized black hoodie too?"

It's like the pot calling the kettle black.

"...I have my reasons"

Shouldn't be touching on this topic, should I?

Being the mature guy I am, I decided to forget the thing.

"So, whaddya suggest?"

"I am going to choose the clothes from this point on, you try them out in the changing room and that's how we decide whether to buy them or not, alright?"

"Cool"

I agreed without any objections.

If someone is willing to take on my headache of selecting clothes for me, who am I to stop them? Free labor is something I always welcome.

Hm? Where am I? What am I doing? How did I end up here?

Well, that is quite a long story.

So, I will spare the details.

I have somehow entered the world of a novel.

A dog-shit novel where the protagonist loses and the world ends.

Now, upon learning about the world I have been transmigrated into, I thought about my options.

One was to simply live my life. The owner whose body I have been transmigrated into has been quite rich, in other words, I could live my life modestly doing whatever I want to, in this futuristic world with advanced technology, I could play games, fully immersing myself in VR and all.

And when the time for the world to end comes, simply accept my death. I mean, let's be real, why the fuck should I try anything, I mean this is a world-ending situation, it's something adults are supposed to deal with, not kids.

It went without saying, I had no responsibility to carry here.

But this option wasn't something I could go along with, it went without saying that an event like transmigration wasn't just another Tuesday to me, it was beyond my current comprehension, the only thing I can say is someone or something caused this event and whoever it was, of course, wouldn't sit still if I decide to simply spend my days like some kinda bum.

No boss allows their employees a moment of rest, a tale as old as time.

I didn't have any conclusive evidence about this conjecture of mine but I don't think it's wise to fuck around and find out.

And then, the second option was to simply try to change the future of this world and save it as someone who knows the future. Trying to save the world and everyone in it and becoming a hero and all, you know the drill. But it all only sounded good on paper.

Changing the future would mean, making enemies who would be coming out for my blood. This was no normal world. It was a fantasy world, where magic and swords exist and beasts and monsters exist.

Just living in this world for a normal person like me who came from a world where peace exists is a challenging task. It went without saying that changing this world's dark-gloomy end into a rainbow and sun-shine one wouldn't be so rainbow and sun-shiny.

This, of course, wouldn't work out for me. Endangering myself for the sake of others was not my forte.

Besides, heroes are always restricted in things they can do and things they cannot. And my nature was anything but heroic, evident from my stay in the hidden dungeon of this world, which will talk about later.

And then, the third option. Fuck it all, let's just grow stronger, strong enough to not save the world but save myself. Strong enough to deal with whoever is this shit who brought me to this world and once I am done dealing with that little shit I will go back running to my world.

This world's problem is the problem of its residents, not mine.

I have no interest in sticking my nose in other people's business.

And this option, this option, I liked it.

So, with my decision made I decided to follow through with it. To grow stronger and for that end, I used my knowledge of the novel.

In this shitty novel, there are 7 continents, along with 7 dungeon towers residing in each continent, tall very tall, and no one knows where the tip of the dungeon's tower ends, along with 2 moons and a sun.

In these 7 continents, there are 7 different races living in them.

Floating Island, Artifilogia, The Great Land of Natura, Freezing Land, The Dark Land, and The Last Land, residence of the Elves, Dwarves, Beastfolk, Vampires, Demons, and Humans, respectively.

Yes, I know, it only makes 6 continents and 6 species, but hey, it's not my fault. The 7th continent is shrouded in mystery. There was no information about the 7th continent or the people that lived there in the novel.

All the attempts to make contact with the 7th continent have resulted in failure. Those who went to the continent never came back, presumably and most probably dead. Since no one knows anything about it, people have termed the 7th continent as The Land of Mystery.

And then there are dungeon towers and hidden dungeons in this world, this is where the shit gets real.

The dungeon towers are divided into a set of floors, these set of floors carry a similar set of climate around them.

For instance, the first 1-5th floor is similar to any cliched dungeon you might have read about or seen in novels and games. Simply, a cave-type thing with luminous walls filled with the weakest G- ranked monsters to low-ranked monsters of E+ ranked, in some instances, some D- monsters also appear on the 5th floor, but only in rare instances, of course the main characters always end up in those rare moments.

The next set of floors are submerged in water, imagine getting somehow thrown inside an ocean, deep inside the ocean, yeah kinda like that and you are supposed to freaking breathe in there as well as fight monsters.

How in the world the water doesn't flow down to lower floors is a mystery to everyone, similar to how monsters do not come out of the dungeon tower.

The highest floor that has been climbed till now is the 25th floor, done by humanity.

Surprising, right?

In a world of fantasy, where species like Elves who have high mana proficiency, Dwarves with the best durability and craftmanship of their weapons, Beastfolk who would be considered superhuman in a normal world, Vampires who have lived for a long time and are practically immortal, the type who wouldn't die of aging and Demons who are ...fucking strong.

So then, why is it that humans are the ones who managed to reach the 25th floor, the highest by anyone?

The answer to that is rather simple, other species sure have various advantages over us, their life span, and their inherited strengths but they all carry a huge disadvantage among themselves, that is, they have a level cap or you can call it a potential limit.

They can't grow past the rank of their level cap.

On the other hand, humans don't have such a limitation, they can grow as much as they want to as long as they are willing to work their ass off. At first glance, it may seem kinda overkill advantage but the thing is, leveling up isn't an easy thing. Added to the life span of humans, we end up having a pseudo sort of level cap.

While there are lots of humans who are SS+ rankers compared to any other species, no one has reached the SSS- rank. There was once a guy who did but he died coz of the pain he couldn't endure because of his old age that comes with leveling up... truly, a lame way to die.

There is a human known to be the nearest to reaching SSS- rank but that never happened in the novel.

The only person in this world who has managed to go past SS+ rank is the Demon Lord, the antagonist of the novel, SSS+ ranked.

Truth is, that guy managed to actually go past even SSS+ rank in the novel but ...I have kinda fucked things up.

You see, this demon lord is actually kinda screwed up in the head, which I realized after going to the hidden dungeon and fulfilling certain conditions that I didn't even know existed but yeah, I somehow fulfilled that condition and learned the truth.

The Demon Lord is a ...human!

A fucking human!

And he wants to kill everyone in the world to revive his lover who has been dead for like centuries now!

Truly, mad fucker.

Anyway, this wasn't mentioned in the novel, we just got told that the demon lord is out to destroy the world and our protagonist was fighting to protect the world, your typical storyline.

What result of their confrontation? The Demon Lord lost to the protagonist but what of it?

We ended up getting a freaking new plotline thrown in our faces all of a sudden and the storyline completely changed and the world was destroyed, and everyone died.

Whatever, let's not talk about the second plot, it's not the priority for the moment.

The thing is, since I learned the truth about the Demon Lord there is a penalty he will have to face, that is, he now has a level cap.

In other words, he can't grow stronger anymore.

Now, everything would have been fine if the world would simply follow the storyline and the protagonist grows like he did in the novel and this time he would be able to win against the demon lord rather easily but that's not how simple things are going to work out.

I mean, who would sit on their laurels, ready to face death?

Since he got the penalty and has now a level cap, he will know that there's someone out there who knows about him and his desires.

Added that now with his level cap, he can't feel the same amount of overconfidence he felt in the novel which will result in him trying to do shit in a serious manner, a much more serious manner than in the novel.

So yeah, I fucked up.

But it's not my fault. I just went to clear the hidden dungeon and get my reward.

Hm? Yeah, I think it's time I explain a little about Hidden Dungeon.

Hidden dungeons are simple, they are like small portals that exist all around the world, hidden.

These hidden portals lead one to hidden dungeons where one could gain things that would normally be incomprehensible to obtain.

In this world, people have found 17 hidden dungeons till now, they attempted these hidden dungeons, and the result of which is not astounding, 10 hidden dungeon raids have been successful and the rest 7 have resulted in failure, resulting in the loss of millions of lives.

The cause for the loss of millions of lives might not be simply because of the failure. It was something else that I will work towards

...someday or the other but not today.

From now on the information I am about to say is something that the world doesn't know about. I learned about it by interacting with the midgets or what the people of this world call fairies.

They are as I said, midgets, small tiny little creatures, their true identity is of observers, creatures directly related to the second plot of the novel.

Now, you might wonder how come no one interacted with them before, why do they not know stuff that I know?

Simple, they can't.

Their charm, their aura, their strength... if I had to put it in the simplest way then it would be akin to standing in front of a god, of course, they are not a god or anything like that but that was how one would feel when they stood in front of them or that's what was described in the novel.

It made sense they couldn't speak in front of them however they pleased.

Hm? Why have I been fine?

Well, I just didn't feel charmed by them. I mean, how the hell do you want me to think of a midget as charming? Like those little shits are quite literally just a few centimeters tall, like the palm of my hand. If I ever got charmed by someone of that size I wouldn't be able to face anyone socially.

They were at best cute, still midgets midgets.

As for their strength and all that crap? Well, to me it was like watching a lion or a tiger in a zoo. Normally, you will feel afraid of the animals like lions or tigers if you ended up confronting each other, fuck that, if you ever even faced a dog tryna chasing you down you will be running for your life but what about the ones in the zoo?

You don't feel afraid, you enjoy watching them instead.

That was how it was.

No matter what strength they possessed, it wasn't that hard to figure out that they had restrictions placed on them and they seemed to be quite civilized, so I didn't really feel any fear.

And again, they look like midgets.

Anyway, coming back to the topic of hidden dungeons, this is the information I got from them.

There are 3 categories of hidden dungeons.

Easy, Moderate, Hard.

Kinda like game modes.

There were a total of 50 hidden dungeons in the world.

Out of which 17 have been attempted officially, that is known to the world.

I had cleared 3 hidden dungeons, unofficially, technically that makes me a criminal in this world now but as the saying goes, innocent unless found guilty.

Which makes it all a total of 20 hidden dungeons that have been attempted. Leaving us with 30 hidden dungeons.

The 17 hidden dungeons that were attempted that were of easy category, were added with the 3 that I cleared, now it's 20 easy hidden dungeons that have been cleared.

There are 2 moderate lvl hidden dungeons and 1 hard-level hidden dungeon that the demon lord cleared without ever revealing it to the world, monstrous bastard.

And this leaves us with 2 easy hidden dungeons, 16 moderate hidden dungeons, and 9 hard hidden dungeons.

The way to distinguish between these hidden dungeons is simple, the blue-colored portal means easy, orange means moderate, and red means hard.

Finding moderate and hard hidden dungeons isn't easy and most likely why the people in this world hadn't stumbled upon them yet except for the damned demon lord.

At any rate, like I have said hidden dungeons could provide one with things that would be otherwise considered impossible or a mere fantasy to obtain or achieve in the world.

But they came at a price and that was putting one's life on the line in clearing the hidden dungeons.

They are dangerous, far far more dangerous than one could imagine, even a high ranker could die in the hidden dungeon.

A hidden dungeon can only be attempted once.

Then how did I, a mere low-ranker clear 3 hidden dungeons?

Well, I have something called a system.

No, not your typical system which helps with leveling up. My system is kind of like a sentient that follows my every command and can travel anywhere I want it to. It can't go to certain places unless I enter them, like hidden dungeons or dungeon towers.

Anyway, the point is, my system is like the best scout there, the best information collector if you would.

So, with my knowledge from the novel and with the help of my information collector, I easily cleared the 3 hidden dungeons and realized why they are called easy.

I have realized it, the biggest problem with clearing a hidden dungeon is the information.

For instance, the first hidden dungeon I cleared was a simple fight with a minotour.

Anyone could clear it, there's nothing dramatic here but the problem is, I was trapped in a cave filled with monsters from G-ranked to SS+ ranked and maybe even higher. I don't know but unlike other people who wouldn't have any idea where they were going and might accidentally run into dangerous monsters above their level, I had a system with me that I used to scout the entire place and find the easiest route to the boss room.

See? This is the difference that having information could result in.

The reward that I obtained from clearing the 3 hidden dungeons was a marine-colored protection necklace, with 4 uses. A space storage ring, that has soul-bound property to it, basically an inventory with the space of 25 and healing potions that far exceed the level this world has seen, and last but not the least books.

One contains the knowledge about Soul energy and the other contains the knowledge about Myst.

What is this Soul energy and Myst?

Well, apparently, the world doesn't simply work on mana and aura but instead several different sorts of energies which when all combined form the World's Will.

And there's no one out there in the world who can use all the energies which means no one can use World's Will.

We don't even know all the names of the energies that exist, not even those observers/fairies or their bosses for that matter.

From what I have been told there are 9 different energies or components of the World's Will.

Mana, Aura, Soul energy, Myst, Celestial Radiance, Nether, Numen. These are all 7 that the fairies know about, the 8th component is something only their boss knows about and the 9th is ...um, well no one knows anything about it.

Now, like any normal person I arrived at a simple question, if no one knows a shit about 9th component then how did the talk about the 9th component even become a topic. How could they tell me that there is actually a 9th component?

The answer to that was simple, their boss must have realized he is still lacking something to get his hands on the World's Will.

In other words, this second plot boss who never revealed himself ...now I know his goal, it's to somehow get his hands on the 9th component.

In that sense, if we assume that this guy was behind the whole, world-changing occurrences, such as the different species coming into a world, the dungeons, the hidden dungeons, and the quests he will give to complete in the second half of the plot, the very system itself, it's all so that he could somehow find the 9th component.

You see there's no order of things, someone could very well not know anything about mana, or aura but could use celestial radiance or other components.

Using these requires one simple thing and that is their comprehension of the energy/component.

In other words, this mofo is just looking for that one person who might be out their using a component that he is not familiar with, and the moment he finds that guy he will of course use that guy to fulfill his own desires that is learning about this 9th component.

Tldr; the second plot boss just wants to be able to control this World's Will, or in other words, he wanna be some sort of god in the truest sense of the word.

Great.

One wants to revive his lover at the cost of billions of lives

And the other wants to become a god at the cost of trillions of lives or maybe more.

Why can't people just fucking live their lives? What's so wrong with living a normal life?

At any rate, I have ended up learning about a lotta stuff by talking to those midgets and clearing the hidden dungeon. With all the stuff that wasn't mentioned in the novel, it's easy to understand why the world ended and the protagonist lost like he was so focused on the first boss, the second just destroyed him. Our protag never really found how the world's power system is working.

No way, he could have won.

The second boss is basically keeping an eye on every damn guy out there in the world through the system, I am pretty sure the moment he finds out about the damn 9th component, the first thing he gonna do is kill that person after getting what he wants and later on ...well, he will achieve what he wants to, that is, to become a god.

But even the second boss is being restricted otherwise there's no way he would have left any sort of loophole for escaping the system.

After all, I might not be someone free of the system but I have control over my system.

Why do I have control over my system, unlike others?

Well, that's all thanks to the previous owner of this body whose funeral I held right after coming from my last hidden dungeon attempt.

I mean, I don't know if the dude's dead or what since I have been transmigrated into it, so I thought it would be too sad if no one even held his funeral.

This guy's intelligence is through the roof, so he might be just what the second boss of the novel needs.

When I say, his intelligence is through the roof it means he is the freaking most intelligent person in this world with literally no competition.

How did he end up becoming so intelligent? Well, no he wasn't chosen one or anything, it's just he was a lab rat of some lab from where he managed to escape by destroying the very said lab.

Now, you might wonder how the hell having high intelligence means having what this second boss wants but there is actually a connection.

The higher the intelligence, the higher one's comprehension of the components/energies of the World's will.

So yeah, there's an obvious chance that this second boss of the novel gonna do some shit with me so that he could accelerate my growth into learning that unknown component coz when I said this guy's intelligence is high, I meant it's fucking off the roof for someone his age.

So, this guy, Noah, might be exactly what the second boss needs, which would explain why I ended up getting transmigrated into this world.

The objective was to replace Noah, he was the threat not me... which pisses me off somewhat but okay.

Whoever this person is who transmigrated me into this body might be the very reason why the second boss had to put some rules, that allow one to escape the system and get control over it.

In other words, I have truly been gotten involved in shit that's not supposed to be related to me in any regard.

Which sucks but what can I do anyway?

At any rate, this is how I ended up in a novel.

What? The question was how I ended up shopping with this woman in front of me.

That I don't know either.

It just happened you know?

I went to the cafe before going to buy clothes for myself since I hate Noah's choice of clothes that he has.

And in that cafe, I met her, where we just somehow ended up coming together for shopping.

And well, that's about it.

So then, can someone tell me why the fuck am I carrying 6 handbags?

This is weird.

"Just how much more you wanna fucking shop?"

"Your academy starts 2 days from now, the academy you are going to is famous for restricting all outside contact, you know? You need to buy all the necessities since you will be on your own at the beginning of the academy days."

And now you are acting like my mom.

Great, just great.

Still...

2 days.

In 2 days, I will be entering the academy, Heroes Nurturing High School where the story of the novel begins, the place where all the characters will be.

Such a hassle I have gotten myself into.