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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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Chapter 6
[The aura of the spirits seeps into your body.]
[Spiritual Power increases by 0.1.]
“Phew...!”
Having finished the graveyard work, I stretched as I looked at the message that popped up.
The longer I stayed in Decaine, the more my Spiritual Power increased automatically.
It seemed like the graveyard, being a place where the dead gathered, helped raise my Spiritual Power by absorbing their aura.
‘Good.’
[Ren Arzen]
-Trait: Grave Eye
-Skills: Necromancy, Havenberg Swordsmanship (Beginner)
-Strength: 7.2
-Agility: 6.9
-Stamina: 7.7
-Sense: 6.7
-Vital Energy: 0.4
-Spiritual Power: 1.5
Over time, my stats had increased quite a bit.
Spiritual Power had already gone up by 0.5.
Thanks to constant training and physical conditioning, my physical stats had also improved slightly.
‘To grow stronger quickly, I need to increase my Vital Energy.’
Enhancing physical abilities is deeply connected to Vital Energy.
It’s why knights generally have high physical stats—they use Vital Energy to boost their bodies.
If I want to enhance my physical abilities too, I must increase my Vital Energy.
By observing others, I’ve learned a few things.
Strength, Agility, Stamina—
These averaged around 5 for normal people.
Sense was about 3, and most had near-zero Vital Energy.
Not a single person had any Spiritual Power.
On the other hand, semi-knights had an average of 8 to 10 in Strength, Agility, and Stamina, about 5 in Sense, and around 1 in Vital Energy.
I couldn’t observe full knights closely, but I guessed their stats were slightly higher than those.
‘I need to utilize my class trait.’
As a Gravekeeper, my job was to honor the souls of the dead and accumulate achievements.
The souls resting here couldn’t be awakened with my current Spiritual Power.
I had to visit other graveyards, resolve the regrets of spirits, and build achievements.
Though Havenberg Swordsmanship was important, Spiritual Power seemed more crucial for short-term gains.
Raising my swordsmanship mastery in a short time was impossible—it was something I’d need to work on steadily.
[Havenberg Swordsmanship – Beginner]
#The swordsmanship that embodies the essence of Havenberg. As mastery increases, your understanding of the sword deepens.
-Mastery: 10.8421%
Mastery increases with each swing of the sword.
In just a month, I had increased my mastery quite a bit.
Where it used to go up by 0.0001%, it now rose by as much as 0.1%—though rarely.
Thanks to my ancestor correcting my form and giving constant advice, my progress in swordsmanship was faster than expected.
And when things got tough, I could always rely on Spirit Summoning.
‘Still got a long way to go, though.’
“Phew...!”
While I was lost in thought, I heard a sigh from the far edge of Decaine—Raymond.
Swish, swish, swish—
I saw Raymond diligently cutting grass.
Wearing a straw hat and drenched in sweat.
When he first arrived from the capital, he looked quite neat, but now he was a mess.
His hair was greasy, face covered in dirt, and his clothes were little better than rags.
‘Ahem, did I overwork him?’
But unlike at the beginning, Raymond had gotten pretty good at the work.
Part of it was because I pushed him hard, but a bigger reason was his own effort.
Before we crossed swords, I worried about how to handle that rude, clueless guy—
But he took his loss gracefully and kept his promise.
Now, he’s very respectful toward me and carries out all tasks without complaint.
Thanks to him, I had a lot more free time now.
“Raymond.”
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
I beckoned with my index finger, and he wiped off sweat as he approached me.
“You said you wanted to learn the sword, right?”
“Yes!”
His tired eyes lit up at once.
“Alright. Get ready. I’ll teach you the basics.”
* * *
Raymond felt that the opportunity had finally come.
‘At last…!’
Sweat dripped from his forehead down the bridge of his nose.
It tickled a bit, but he endured it—his mentor was speaking.
“Raise your sword.”
“Yes.”
He raised his sword.
Standing face to face with his mentor brought back the memory.
It had been a simple diagonal slash.
Yet to Raymond, it was the most beautiful sword path he had ever seen.
‘How was that even possible?’
It hadn’t even been fast.
But he couldn’t block it.
Couldn’t dodge it.
Even when training with knights in the capital, he’d never felt this way.
‘A hidden master in seclusion…’
His mentor stretched his shoulders with a blank expression.
According to rumors, Ren was a bastard child who got kicked out of the Arzen family.
They said he had no talent for swordsmanship, no fighting spirit, and ended up a gravekeeper—a loser.
‘But now I know the truth.’
A swordsman on par with knights.
No—maybe even an advanced-level knight.
He’s hiding his skills while doing grave work in Decaine, clearly waiting for something.
Being under someone like that was the opportunity of a lifetime.
‘I can’t let it slip through my fingers.’
Even if he became a semi-knight in the capital, being a commoner, opportunities were rare.
Slackers who barely trained would still be taught by top-level knights.
‘But Master has no such prejudices.’
Even when he had been so disrespectful he could have taken his head on the spot,
he spared his life and showed kindness.
And now he was even teaching him swordsmanship.
He was prepared to toil like a slave for a year at least—yet here he was, already training him.
“What are you thinking about so deeply?”
“Ah! I’m sorry!”
“Fix your stance.”
“Yes, sir!”
Ren had Raymond swing his sword, then passed down advice he received from his ancestor.
“Your movements are sloppy. You're overthinking. When you're slashing, focus only on the slash.”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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While Ren was observing Raymond’s swordsmanship—
Someone approached Decaine.
“Ren!”
With his blonde bangs swept back, Zenon called out urgently.
“What’s up? What happened?”
“Do you have a moment?”
“I do.”
Zenon caught his breath and explained everything to Ren.
“...So to summarize briefly, you found an unknown grave while patrolling Kinish Bluff?”
“Yeah. I figured rather than messing with it for no reason, it’d be better to ask an expert on graves like you.”
There’s nothing particularly impressive about being a grave expert.
I’ve just worked with graves for a long time.
“Well, alright… let’s go together.”
“Nice! But… what’s he doing?”
Zenon pointed to Raymond, who was swinging his sword with great focus.
“What else? Sword training.”
“Why’s he training with a sword here? Wasn’t he sent to assist with the grave work?”
“He’s doing both.”
“That’s hardcore…”
Zenon stuck out his tongue in disbelief as he watched Raymond.
Though they were both squires, Zenon thought Raymond was remarkable.
He truly believed Raymond would one day become a full-fledged knight.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
At the entrance of Kinish Bluff, they took a direction away from Decaine and were met with nothing but rugged mountainous terrain.
After hiking through the mountains for a while, the place Zenon mentioned came into view.
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
Overgrown with grass and trees, the path between the cliffs was hidden.
They pushed through the undergrowth and went inside, where a grave appeared at the end of a dead-end space.
“That’s…”
A stone cairn built from stacked rocks.
Looking around, they saw signs that part of the stone wall had been deliberately destroyed.
It seemed the grave was built from those broken stones.
When tapped, the stones were packed with earth and quite solid.
“Judging by the presence of a tombstone, it definitely looks like someone’s grave… What do you think?”
A roughly carved gravestone, made by breaking a nearby rock, lay beside it.
On it, unfamiliar symbols were scrawled.
“This isn’t ordinary.”
“Right? Right? It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s strange.”
I nodded.
And for good reason…
- Uuuuhhh…
A spectral figure of ominous appearance was emerging from the grave.
‘Definitely a person, but…’
He was half-destroyed in appearance.
His mind seemed broken, and his entire form had a reddish hue.
He gave off a completely different vibe from the pure white souls of the ancestors.
‘This feels… foreboding.’
- I…
His empty eyes met mine.
Our gazes locked.
“Zenon, get outside the underbrush.”
“Huh? Why all of a sudden?”
“Because it’s dangerous.”
“What’s so dangerous? Although… is it just me or does this place feel really creepy?”
“Now, hurry!”
“A-alright.”
Startled, Zenon quickly backed off and escaped into the underbrush.
“Who are you?”
- I… was wronged.
“What injustice did you suffer?”
- I died… an ambush…
The ghost, who looked like he might lunge at any moment, gasped for breath as he answered.
“Everyone dies eventually. I can’t undo your death. What is it that you want now?”
- I… I…
His red form gradually began to fade.
The face that had been crying blood returned to its normal appearance, now shedding clear tears.
- Tell my family what happened to me. Please.
[Side Quest – The Plea of the Missing]
[Spencer Trevis, the eldest son of the Trevis family, died unjustly and his body was never recovered. Deliver the news to his worried family.]
[Reward – Agility +0.4, Spiritual Power +0.3]
‘Spencer… Trevis?’
There was a major incident three years ago when he suddenly disappeared and threw the kingdom into chaos.
Spencer Trevis, who was a strong candidate to be the next head of the house, vanished.
I never imagined I’d meet the man at the center of that case here.
“I can try to tell them, but I doubt they’ll believe me. Your body must be nothing but bones by now.”
- Don’t worry about that. If you dig up the grave, you’ll find my necklace with the body. Show them that.
“Understood.”
I immediately called Zenon.
“What? This is the grave of Spencer Trevis, the eldest son of the Trevis family?!”
Zenon’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as he stared at the grave.
“You were talking to someone earlier—was that seriously a ghost?”
“Yeah, well… working as a gravedigger, you sometimes hear things.”
- Fascinating indeed. Someone who can see spirits.
Like Zenon, Spencer also stroked his chin, intrigued.
“I didn’t know you had that kind of power.”
“It’s a secret, so don’t go blabbing about it.”
“Haha, of course! But I helped find Spencer, too, right?”
“Of course.”
The Trevis family is quite a respected one in the Brillant Kingdom.
While other noble houses betrayed and fled, the Trevis family stayed loyal.
We dug up the grave and found Spencer’s skeletal remains—and his necklace.
“It’s true…”
Zenon looked at me like I was some kind of exotic animal.
‘This guy didn’t believe me at all.’
When he confirmed the necklace, he let out constant gasps of awe.
“Wow…”
“Cut it out with the ‘wow’ and help move these rocks again.”
“Oh, yessir!”
We took the necklace and restored Spencer’s grave to its original state.
Then Zenon and I headed to the Trevis family’s estate.
“We’re actually going in?”
“Of course we are. What else would we do?”
“Whew… I’m nervous. What if they misunderstand and accuse us or something?”
“Don’t worry. Just come with me.”
“W-wait…!”
As I dragged Zenon in, the gatekeeper blocked our way.
“What business do you have here?”
“Tell the head of the family—we found the body of Spencer Trevis.”
At my words, the gatekeeper’s face instantly twisted with suspicion.
For someone from the Trevis family, speaking so rudely as a mere guard was not how I remembered them.
“If you’re throwing those words around lightly, you won’t walk away unscathed.”
“I’ll take care of myself, so go deliver the message. If you keep dawdling on something this important, you might not walk away unscathed.”
The gatekeeper’s eyes flared with anger.
A bit more provocation, and he looked ready to strike.
Well, given the importance of the matter, he probably wouldn’t act rashly.
"Wait here."
Another gatekeeper went inside, and after a while, several people came out, along with the head of the Trevis family, Layton Trevis.
He must’ve been through a lot mentally.
His face looked quite worn.
Even when told that his son had been found, he didn’t seem particularly happy.
Then again… Considering how many people must have lied just for the reward Layton had offered.
After rumors spread that most of those liars were either imprisoned or executed once caught, such false reports had nearly disappeared.
Now that someone had finally shown up claiming to have found Spencer, Layton must have come in person—though not expecting much.
[Layton Trevis]
-Trait: Cold-blooded
-Skills: Advanced Trevis Swordsmanship, Frostblade
-Strength: 21.6
-Agility: 20.1
-Stamina: 23.4
-Sense: 18.7
- Vital Energy: 13.1
I nearly gasped without meaning to.
Three of his stats were over 20.
And he even had a trait…
No wonder he's the head of the Trevis family.
While I stood there dazed, Layton came to stand in front of me.
"What’s your name?"
Layton asked me.
"Ren Arzen."
"A gravekeeper abandoned by the Arzen family, I see."
His voice was sharp.
He didn't seem like the kind of person who would say that directly to someone’s face.
"That's correct."
"If you're lying, I’ll cut off your head on the spot."
"Then do so, if I’m lying."
At my confident reply, a flicker of curiosity passed through his otherwise indifferent eyes.
"Here, this is his keepsake."
I handed him Spencer’s necklace.
For the first time, his eyes visibly shook as he examined it.
"This really is… Spencer’s…"
Layton's blazing gaze turned to me, demanding the truth.
My heart was pounding, but I forced a smile, pretending to stay calm.
"Let’s go."
"You're confident. Good. Let’s see."
Gulp.
My mouth was dry as a bone.
Layton's entire aura had changed the moment I showed him the necklace.
I need to stay sharp.
We ascended Kinish Bluff with the members of the Trevis family.
Once at the grave, Layton walked slowly to it and stood silently in front of it for a long while.
"You think he’ll be okay?"
Zenon asked, sounding worried.
"He’ll be fine."
To be honest, I was a little scared too.
What if he suddenly turned around and said, “You killed my son and staged this whole thing!” and swung his sword?
Of course, from what I knew, Layton wasn’t the kind of person to act on emotion like that.
"Dig up the grave."
"Yes, sir!"
At Layton’s command, the servants rushed over and quickly dug up the grave.
Inside was Spencer’s skeleton.
— Father… sob… You’ve finally come.
Spencer looked at Layton and cried sorrowfully.
Layton stared blankly at the bones—now all that was left of his son—then drew his sword.
"That’s not my son."
His cold, sunken gaze turned toward me.
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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