Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Blindfold of Piercing Insight

Whenever something good happened to me, misfortune of equal measure always came along with it.

As if sweet, unblemished luck was more than my station allowed.

There had been a special event in a game I enjoyed, one that gifted an extremely rare item to a single player.

Since it was a single-player game rather than an online game with PVP elements, people simply accepted that such an event existed and left it at that.

Naturally, I entered too.

It wasn’t as if I expected to win.

There was an event, so I entered—nothing more than an action that followed as naturally as breathing.

But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be that one winner, or that it would become the trigger for my “possession.”

<​Zeto> Lv.5

Skills Owned

-Demon Swordsmanship Lv.4

-Keen Senses lv.1

-Weakness Detection lv.MAX - Effect of [Blindfold of Piercing Insight] currently applied

Items Equipped

-Blindfold of Piercing Insight [Legendary]

-Shabby-Quality Eastern Sword [Normal]

Even though this was vivid reality, the familiar-looking screen floating unrealistically in midair was more than enough to confuse me.

At first, I truly thought it was a dream.

But it did not take long for me to realize this was reality.

This place, this world that was all too familiar to me, was neither a game nor a dream, but undeniable reality.

The initial skills I had chosen in the character creation screen became the martial strength of my own body, and the special item I had received before the possession, the “blindfold,” became something precious beyond exchange.

And the nickname I had chosen without much thought.

“Zeto” had become the name I would live under in this fantasy world from now on.

Since I would be wearing a blindfold that covered both eyes, I would be blind.

And if I was blind, then of course I needed a sword.

A blind swordsman.

How fitting. How cool.

Those two words were more or less the concept I had in mind for this character.

As I touched around my eyes to remind myself of reality once more, my fingers brushed against the thin cloth covering them.

“Blindfold of Piercing Insight.”

Both in the game and now, after the world inside that game had become reality, it was a “Legendary”-grade item that would be hard to come across anywhere.

In terms of grade, it was the highest, greatest, strongest rank at the very end.

From the outside, it looked like an ordinary white bandage, but as one could tell from the name “blindfold,” wrapping it around to cover the eyes was the proper way to wear it.

The effects the game company had described were, as befitting its grade, nothing short of broken.

“Experience gained increased by 500%”

“Weakness Detection skill level MAX”

“Critical damage increased by 300%”

Even taken one at a time, each of those effects would have to be considered excellent for an item... and yet, despite that, all I could feel for now was a sense of helplessness.

The game was fundamentally based around combat.

In other words, from now on, I would not be using a keyboard and mouse. I would have to move my own body, dodge the magic and arrows raining down on me, and clash sword against sword.

For someone like me, who had never even had a proper fight in my life, that was no easy thing.

If there was one fortunate point, it was that even though the blindfold was undoubtedly covering my eyes, I could see just fine.

This, too, was one of the effects possessed by the Blindfold of Piercing Insight.

I looked up at the sky, where dazzling sunlight poured down.

The sky was clear and blue, without a single flaw.

On the street, people dressed like me passed by and entered my sight.

There was no such thing as not being able to see.

I could see straight ahead through the blindfold without obstruction.

It was truly strange. Endlessly fantastical.

“The entrance ceremony is already today.”

Zeto—no, I had been hurrying along since early morning.

The few days after my possession, in game terms, had been the prologue.

Today was the day of the entrance ceremony for “Innocence Academy,” the main setting of the game.

Since it was a typical academy-style game, one could say the story inside the game would begin today, with the entrance ceremony.

In truth, not enrolling in the academy would also be one way to live in this world, but the information I possessed had all been obtained through the game.

In other words, it was information about the inside of the academy, so it would be best used within the academy itself.

In that sense, I felt that leaving the academy right from the beginning would not be a very good choice.

In this medieval fantasy world, for a commoner without a family name like me to aim for safe growth and social advancement, there was no place better than the academy.

That aside.

“It’s farther than I expected.”

I had scraped together the money I had and taken a carriage bound for the academy, only for it to suddenly stop, saying carriages from outside areas could go no farther than this.

Innocence Academy was both an educational institution and a fairly large city.

I knew it was highly closed-off by nature, but I hadn’t expected it to be this much.

With little time left before the entrance ceremony, I was hurrying along and had just passed around a street corner.

—Crash!

Something coming toward me from the other side of the corner collided with me, and I fell over.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re looking when you walk...!”

It was a red-haired girl.

Perhaps she was angry, because she raised her voice before her words cut off midway.

I sat there blankly with my hand braced against the ground, slowly taking in her face.

The moment I saw her appearance, I knew who she was. Naturally so, since she was a major character in the game.

Beautifully braided red hair, the color of thick blood.

Red eyes like flickering flames.

“Yuri Clementine...”

Of all the people I could have run into, it had to be this woman.

The young lady of Count Clementine’s household, a family famous across the continent for fire magic.

The sole heir of the Clementine count family, and because of her beautiful appearance, she bore the epithet “Blazing Flower,” but...

...she herself did not like that epithet very much.

The most important thing in the current situation was this.

Yuri’s personality was hot-tempered.

Put simply, she got angry easily.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention...”

I scratched my head and spoke as humbly as possible.

Nothing good would come from getting on Yuri’s bad side here.

Since she was a major character, there was a very high chance I would encounter her often from now on.

“...Ah.”

Yuri was suddenly at a loss for words.

To be precise, she had already been at a loss for words a moment ago.

“No. I should have been more careful too.”

Yuri slowly took a deep breath, then answered in a raised voice.

That Yuri Clementine was apologizing?

It was a rare, unfamiliar sight, but not one I couldn’t understand.

Yuri’s gaze was currently fixed on the blindfold that must have been covering my eyes.

That was right.

To anyone who saw me now, I was blind.

It was an extremely simple matter.

If someone had their eyes covered with a bandage, people would naturally assume they could not see, and unless they were blind, there would be no reason to walk around like that.

In reality, I could see just fine, but from other people’s perspectives, I was clearly a blind man.

She must have felt offended and wanted to unleash her anger like usual, but if the other party was blind, wouldn’t she be the only one who looked strange for getting angry?

The Yuri I knew was a fiery woman who got angry at every opportunity, but at the very least, she was someone who knew where to draw the line.

I stopped lying sprawled on the ground, brushed off the dust, and stood up.

“Judging by the color of your necktie... it seems you’re entering the academy today as well. I’m Yuri Clementine.”

Yuri held out her hand, then looked at my blindfold and, with an “Ah,” seemed not to know what to do.

Her awkwardness was so cute that a laugh escaped me before I realized it.

“Haha. I can sense something like a hand being held out through perception. I’m Zeto.”

So I reached out and offered a handshake.

The feel of her hand, which I had only ever watched through a monitor screen, was incredibly soft. It was hard to believe that powerful fire magic could pour out from such a delicate hand.

“Perception...?”

“I can’t see, but I can sense what’s around me through my other senses. Enough that moving my body isn’t inconvenient.”

There was nothing good about letting anyone else know that I could see.

If it became known that this ordinary blindfold around my eyes was a special item, my life might end up in danger because of some thug targeting it.

It was a Legendary-grade item, after all.

Its value would surely be enough to entice the ears of villains lurking deep in the darkness.

Above all, as someone who knew the blindfold’s effects, I had to keep wearing it.

So I had no choice but to act blind.

Even if I had to add a plausible excuse.

At my plausible fabricated explanation of perception, Yuri made an “Aha~” sound as if she had fully understood.

Since she and I were both new students, we naturally ended up walking together.

“You use a sword?”

Yuri’s gaze landed on the sword at my waist.

“My skill is still too meager for me to go anywhere and call myself a swordsman, though.”

“By swordsman, you mean the swordsmen from the East, right?”

I nodded at Yuri’s words in affirmation.

“Swordsman” was an actual occupation in the game too.

A blind swordsman sounded better than a blind knight, didn’t it?

When creating the character, I had deliberately chosen an Eastern sword as my starting weapon.

“As expected of the young lady of the Clementine family. You’re quite well-informed.”

“I did receive all sorts of bothersome education from childhood. This much is nothing.”

Even at such an obvious compliment, Yuri seemed inwardly pleased and wore a faint smile.

When I played the game, I didn’t remember her being a character who smiled this readily. Was reality somehow different?

The difference between game and reality.

Things that had been impossible in the game might become possible in reality.

For example, in the game, even if I could raise affection levels, they never led to romance with that person. But perhaps the current me could even try dating someone I liked.

The most important thing was this.

“A character who died no matter which choice you picked in the game... maybe now I can save them.”

That held quite a lot of meaning for me.

I, too, had once struggled desperately and retried again and again to save a certain character.

While I had been briefly lost in thought, I began to sense people gradually crowding around us.

“It seems we’ve nearly arrived at the academy.”

“Come to think of it... how did you find your way before you met me?”

“Well... I asked people around me for directions, or followed the roads where many people were heading. I judged that most people moving through this city at this hour would be students, after all.”

“Oho... that’s quite a clever method.”

Somehow the conversation kept turning into an investigation of a blind man’s life, but Yuri had always been highly curious by nature, so it couldn’t be helped.

After we continued walking along the road, the main academy building finally came into view.

The main building of Innocence Academy, where talented young people from every corner of the continent gathered, radiated a grandeur worthy of its reputation.

The main story was finally raising its curtain.