Clearing The World That's Inside A Novel

Chapter 63: The Uncanny Similarity

"Oh god, this can't be. This just can't be. No, no, just no. This can't be real."

Once I left the class I started to move toward my dormitory and now I am standing in the lift with Julianna on my side who was quite distraught with the things.

Even I had to admit that this is quite something.

We are in the same block, same dormitory, same floor... all that is left is to see our rooms.

If

If our rooms ended up next to each other then that would be quite an event.

Just imagine, the first person you quarreled with on the first day of school also happens to be the same person who is in your class, in the same block you live in and that guy lives right next to you.

I could see how this turn of events was unpleasant to Julianna.

"Well, the moment of truth has come"

I said as the lift arrived on the 10th floor and the gates opened. I could feel Julianna's nervousness as she stepped out of the lift.

"Just not right next to you, just not, please"

How rude of her.

"You know, you can just tell me your room number or should I just tell you mine? That way, we can end this suspense faster."

"No, just no, I am not telling you my room number and I don't want to hear yours."

How unreasonable.

Shaking my head, I started walking down the hallway and once I found my room I stopped as I turned to look for Julianna and... I could feel her despair.

"Well, we aren't right next to each other so technically your wish was heard."

I offered the words of consolidation as I looked at her room that was in front of mine.

"Fuck.."

Muttering so, Julianna slowly unlocked her door, opened it, entered the room, and closed it.

Wow...

I didn't know what I could say.

As far as I was concerned I had nothing to do with this entire situation but it was now inevitable, we will be seeing each other quite a lot throughout the month.

Turning towards my room, I decided to enter it.

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Magi-Tech.

That's the term when the magic and technology of this world were combined, things that technology alone couldn't have done became possible with the help of magic and vice-versa.

One such invention with the help of Magi-Tech that became possible was virtual reality, where one could fully immerse themselves into a simulated environment.

An idea that my world already had and was trying to implement so you might wonder what difference Magi-Tech makes? Well, it takes the idea of virtual reality one step ahead by making it possible to spend hours within virtual reality when in reality not so much time has passed.

At the moment, the ratio is 4:1

Every 4 hours in the virtual world equates to an hour in reality.

There are a few restrictions on the use of virtual reality to negate the negative effects it could result in.

The maximum time you can spend in the virtual world is 32 hours, which means 8 hours in the real world for the day. Once you have hit the timer, you will be forcefully logged out.

In the situation where you have used up the entire time limit in a single day, you cannot enter virtual reality for the next 30 hours

The maximum time you can spend in virtual reality for the week is 64 hours, which means 16 hours in the real world.

All these restrictions came pre-installed within the devices, so even if you want to try to ignore all this, the device itself won't.

I had bought the virtual gear along with me that I brought with me but the academy took it away when I entered since the academy restricts any personal technology that one could bring with themself.

In turn, they simply gave me another virtual headset of the same model and the same company. So, I didn't have anything to complain about.

Not like I am going to use that one.

I was still going to use the one that I had bought.

What? How did I feel when the academy confiscated all the technological stuff I brought with me?

Well, I got a reward for clearing the hidden dungeon, a soul-bound dimensional storage ring that I could summon or dis-summon at will and use whenever I felt like it.

Something that people don't even know could exist, in other words, they could do whatever check-ups they want to do but they wouldn't be able to find it.

I began to wear the virtual gear to immerse myself in the virtual world as I connected the pen drive to it.

This pen drive contained all that Enyo had yet to teach me, all that she couldn't teach me because of my low rank.

The virtual gear was perfectly capable of helping with physically interacting with pre-recorded videos.

In other words, I could learn and spar with Enyo with the help of virtual reality.

Now that I had grown to E+rank. I am sure there's new stuff that I could finally learn.

And that's what I was planning on doing.

Lying on the bed, I immersed myself in the virtual reality that allowed me to see Enyo once more, who had a pissed expression on her face as the first she spoke of was.

I see... so you fucking left. You fucking left after making a mess and I like some dumbass didn't kill you. You really got some gal to fuck around with me like that. Gear up, you wanna train? I will help you train.

So... this was why she wasn't angry at me when we met right before our parting? She ...she already vented during the making of these videos.

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After being forcefully logged out of the virtual reality I removed the headset and stared at the ceiling.

It wasn't a sparring, she just went on to beat the shit outta me for the entirety of time, both physically and verbally and since it was a pre-recorded video, it's not possible to even talk back.

This is just ridiculous.

Is she going to be beating the shit out of me throughout the training process?

So much thinking that I got away just fine.

Shaking my head, I tried to move my body and felt a strange discomfort, which will most likely persist for quite some time, a side-effect of spending too much time in virtual reality.

I started to focus on the Myst, one of the components of the World's Will to deal with this discomfort.

Now, you might wonder what Myst is, and to explain that we will have to dive deeper into the topic of the World's Will or World's Power, whatever term suits your fancy.

You see the World's Will is the power that flows in this world, all this magic, beasts, superhuman strength that people gained, these dungeons, all of it, it's all World's Will.

If my assumptions are right then gaining the power to control the World's Will would allow one to become omnipresent and omniscient which no one has been able to control.

The World's Will is made of a total of 9 components.

Mana, Aura, Soul energy, Myst, Celestial Radiance, Nether, Numen, and the other two that as of right now I have no idea about.

Mana is the foundation of magic, delicate to control and purely magic-oriented. It enables the creation of elements like water, fire, and wind, or conjuring barriers from thin air—typical magic stuff.

Aura is about enhancing the body, pushing it to superhuman levels. It's all about physical enhancement, essentially messing with your biology to achieve feats your body wouldn't normally be capable of.

Soul Energy deals with the soul, so I guess that settles the whole "do we have a soul?" debate. It allows for binding, transmuting, or manipulating souls, that type of stuff.

Considering what I know about the demon lord, I wonder if I might find a way to gain immortality hack of sorts, well, this was something for the future me to think about.

Myst is mentally oriented, focused on messing with minds—whether someone else's or your own. It handles memory manipulation, illusion attacks, brainwashing, and even controlling your brain's circuits, that kinda stuff.

Of course, as I am right now I can't really pull much of any of this shit but once I gain more and more proficiency in them, I will be able to do it all and maybe stuff that I hadn't thought of till now.

Mana and aura were something that I was observing to understand and for Soul Energy and Myst, I had gotten a book for them to learn from as a reward for clearing the hidden dungeon.

I also got a book from Aurelias.

You can also create more uses using two or more components of World's Will.

For instance, mana allows you to do magical shit but it's only possible as long as you have a certain amount of mana in your body, what happens when you run out of mana? You can't do shit.

On the other hand, what if you use myst? You can conjure up fire using pyrokinesis. This time it will be a strain on your mind. What happens when strain increases? You lose consciousness or worse you fuck up in some way or the other.

But what if you use both mana and myst? You can use myst to conjure up a fire but leave all the strengthening fire to mana, that way you won't end up straining your mind nor will it affect your mana much and your attack will be stronger too.

There are lots of combinations that I could make and much powerful ones at that but of course, if I screwed up harmonizing the components with each other properly, I could end up harming myself too.

Well, I just need to be careful.

What made these components different for me was that this is something only available to me.

Well, in all honesty, the people don't know anything about the World's Will or its components.

Some researchers claim that there is more than mana, aura, and demonic energy(soul energy) in the world but they don't have anything that could prove it. In that sense, this world was in a phase similar to before the discovery of electrons, protons, neutrons, and quarks.

If they want to discover more components that have integrated with the world, they will need to find someone who can use more than one component and that's where the problem comes in.

You use more components of World's Will you need to raise your intelligence stats and gain a comprehension of the component itself which is not something people can do.

Of course, some people are capable of using components other than mana, aura, and all that is known to the world but they don't understand what they are using and unless they do they won't ever be able to raise their efficiency in it.

This was the same case for me, I was using more than one component but I didn't know I was and I just thought it was all mana, well in the end I figured things out with the help of Enyo and Greg.

Not only that since this body's case was special I learned stuff much faster, this body's intelligence stat is off the charts from the beginning which eased stuff for me when it came to dealing with other stuff.

But it doesn't mean that other people don't use this combination of components, they do have one option and that is to use their skills and affinity.

Skills and affinity allowed people to do shit they normally wouldn't be able to do. The system manages the components for them, they aren't bounded by the user's proficiency in components of World's Will but there got to be some price or that's what I think people of course don't know that they are paying.

Those midgets aren't goody-two shoes.

Skills have levels that could be raised, they start from lvl. 0 to ... well, I don't know.

Enyo had her skills to level 4.

And honestly, that was the highest I remember from the novel.

Lvl.0 means beginner, Lvl.1 means above decent, Lvl.2 means you are way too good, Lvl.3 means you are professional, and Lvl.4 means monstrosity.

On the fandom pages, there was a theory, that maybe the scale is from lvl.0 to lvl.5

But since it was never confirmed in the novel, I can't say anything about it.

That's why, even though I am stronger than any ranker of my rank because of my ability to use more components of World's Will, their skills could still create problems for me.

But like I have said, it's those midgets who control the system and the system is what gives skills to people, so ultimately skills are still within the control of those midgets.

Hmm? Skills start from level 0 and are raised by other people and since the midgets could always take the skill back, aren't they kinda profiting from it? Holy shit, they kinda got free slaves for them.

Ah, but the people don't know about all this, so they don't realize anything.

Ignorance is bliss as well as a curse.

Tale as old as time.

Once I was done using Myst on my brain to get rid of the discomfort from spending too much time in the virtual world, I stood up and decided to head out.

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I am hungry.

No, let me rephrase that, I am starving.

Soon, it's already past midnight, and as you could expect all the shops are closed down.

The entrance ceremony began at noon and then it went on for about 2 hours and then an hour spent on the run for the class and then an hour for the small orientation.

Once, all that was done, I went back to my room and had to pull all the stuff from the dimensional storage ring that I had bought from this world, once I pulled all the stuff out, I had to unpack it all and arrange them which took another 2 hours and after that, I went into the virtual world and straight up trained for 8 hours while my brain had gone through 36 hours straight of no food ingestion.

Even my being an E+ ranker ain't helping me quell the hunger that I am feeling right now.

But I had one last job to do before I could go and enjoy my meal in some small eatery or in a food stand.

I looked up at the sky, sitting on the bench, under the streetlight, the stars and the moons shone brightly in the clear sky.

The only sound that reached my ears was of insects chirping, on this hot summer night, with no one around me as far as the eye could see.

Even though it was the first day of the academy for many students, no one was out enjoying themselves, most likely They had gone to sleep so that they could attend tomorrow's class on time and the ones who were enjoying themselves were probably not anywhere around this location that I am currently in, which allowed quite a peaceful atmosphere.

It was nice but I wasn't here to appreciate my surroundings.

I was waiting.

Waiting for her to show herself up

I was sure she had already been watching me for some time through the cameras that were around the area but she still hadn't shown herself up.

I once again looked at one of the cameras that was placed on the head of the street light as I opened my mouth and spoke slowly enough to make it easy to read my lips.

"How long do I have to wait?"

Of course, there was no reply that came on that quiet night.

Shaking my head, I decided to feel the slow wind hitting my face.

After about 30 minutes passed, I heard the footsteps approaching– calm and steady. The sound kept becoming clearer until it stopped with a shadow visible on the ground, I slowly turned my head upwards to see the person standing before me, her white colored hair with a few strands of black mixed in, flowing down her waist.

"Took you long enough"

I spoke up as my eyes met hers and for the first time since coming to this world, I felt my body frozen.

When was the last time I felt overwhelmed like this?

It was probably around 5 or 6 years ago when I met her, the person who I came to call big sis, she had black hairs with a few strands of white mixed in them.

The first time we had met, the first time our eyes met, I had felt the fear that I hadn't for ages, a fear so overwhelming that it made me suffocate, all of my being wanted to do nothing but escape, to get away.

Her eyes seemed to contain the very universe in them, looking at them made me feel like I was thrown in the middle of some space, forced to look at every being out there, everything that exists in the world, all at the same time.

My mind felt as if it could explode at any moment.

That was the strongest feeling that I had ever felt.

But just like always, I eventually became too used to it.

If it wasn't for that I probably wouldn't have been able to look at the person standing in front of me.

She resembled her to a disturbing degree.

The resemblance was uncanny, her hair opposite of big sis, her eyes that were exactly like my big sis.

Noah resembled me too, his name, his age, his skin color, his hair color, eyes

...and the person currently standing in front of me was his sister, his little sister.

My transmigration in this world wasn't a coincidence.

It couldn't be.

"You... who are you" Her voice was wary, she was clearly on guard, and she already realized that I was not the Noah she had known her life.

"Noah. My name is Noah" I replied and her face scrunched up, ready to shoot her words but before she could I suggested "How about you take the seat? I have no intention of harming you, and we are in an academy, it'd be stupid of me to kill you. Besides, I need you, your skills in particular"

Her eyes widened as she took a step back.

"How do you–"

"Just take a seat" I cut her off and she shot me a glare and slowly sat at the other end corner of the bench

By skills, I didn't mean system-oriented skills or anything along the lines of that.

What I was talking about were her technical skills, remember when I contacted the information broker who I said was the best guy who could bypass even the government security system, the guy I had asked for the information related to Noah, the guy who was a supporting character of the novel?

Yeah, that guy was a genius in the tech stuff but ...this girl currently sitting beside me, is a whole different beast altogether.

There was nothing that she couldn't bypass through, not even the best dwarven technology system.

And I could bet that all the cameras around us, no, the entire academy system, is already under her control.

Lucy, a member of the main cast in the novel but despite that once the graduation ceremony ends, we never see her appear again.

The novel never mentioned her again. She didn't unite with the main character after graduation either, nor did make any appearance when the demon lord finally waged an all-out war against everyone.

She just... disappeared.

"I will ask once again, who are you" She tried to be calm but her voice contained anger.

"I was at my study desk before I fell asleep and when I woke up I was in this body"

"...What the hell are you on about" She seemed a bit taken aback by what I said but slowly her face was turning into one filled with anger.

"Did you know how annoying it was when I realized that I ended up transmigration into a dog-shit novel?"

"What the hell are you going on and on about!? Just tell me about–"

"Not just that, but a novel that's destined for a ruined ending, an ending where the world will end and all the people will, even the protagonist, funny really."

"Shut the fuck up and–!"

"Lucy" I called her name, directly looking into her eyes "Do you think I am joking right now?" I tried to make myself sound as serious as possible but that was not something I was used to, so it felt weird.

"Joking? Did you seriously ask that after going on and on about your bullshit! You know what you sound like? You sound like a deranged person! Cough Cough" She shouted with such a high voice that it cracked in the end, she coughed, breathing in and out.

...All I said was the truth though.

Like you know we were getting to the things and all but you are just so impati-

"J-just tell me about him. I don't care about this novel or the world ending or anything so just ...tell me, where is Noah" Her voice cracked in the end, tears forming in the corner of her eyes as she looked at me with a still stern expression.

Huh...

Here I am trying to tell her everything and being transparent and she just keeps going on about Noa-

Wait... why am I telling her everything and being transparent?

Well, because I am in the body of someone who is her brother, her family, so lying wouldn't be the right thing to do, not only that but I need Lucy's help and it would be a pain if I didn't tell her beforehand about the novel because otherwise she will just keep getting suspicious of me about why I know the future events and all and that would be a bad thing for me.

That's wh-

What? Noah is Lucy's only family. Of course, she had only been interested in knowing about her brother, why wouldn't she? She could tell that it was not her real brother but she must have seen the academy's search and seen that my DNA, retina scan, and everything matched with Noah's.

The only thing she would be worried about will be obviously Noah.

I shouldn't need to be told that.

The only thing, the first thing that she needs to know about isn't my prattling about the novel but about her brother.

Then why did I ...?

I slowly looked at her face and realized something, she wasn't in the right state of mind. Of course, she couldn't be.

Wait, not the right state of mind?

Noah, me, Lucy, Big sis, not right state of mind, the eyes that aren't normal, similarity

....blood blood blood blood blood, no relics working, more blood blood blood blood and

dead dead dead dead dead dead dead.

"Hu-!?" Lucy let out a surprised voice but fell to the ground, unconscious.

Before I realized it I had knocked her out

...I moved on instinct, purely instinct.

I haven't acted on them for a long time but ...

"Haaa~"

I released a long sigh before I picked her up and decided to visit any food stand or an eatery that might be open right now.

Let's eat first.