Chapter 58

Chapter 58

I Became the Academy Mafia Chapter 58At the same time, I felt a floating sensation throughout my body before suddenly dropping.

Passing through the darkness and preparing for the fall, I put an appropriate amount of strength into both legs and placed one hand on the ground to disperse the impact as I landed.

Thud─!

After sticking the landing perfectly like that, I looked around.

“Hmm, just like I saw in the game.”

A swarm of goblins completely surrounded me. Every single one of them held vicious-looking weapons.

Clubs, rusty daggers, huge animal bones, awls carved from bone, stone maces, and so on.

No matter how crude the weapons were, they were certainly threatening enough to ordinary people.

Well.

“Do you know something?”

Not that they'd compare to this.

I immediately pulled [Al Capone's Tommy]

out of the Cube and aimed it at the goblins surrounding me.

“You can't block bullets with crude weapons like those.”──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!/──!

In an instant, blood, fragments of bone, chunks of flesh, and screams echoed throughout the dark cavern.

The goblins, dumbfounded before the overwhelming violence and firepower, immediately turned around and tried to flee deeper into the cavern, but no matter how hard they struggled, they couldn't possibly be faster than bullets.

As I continued advancing while sweeping Tommy from side to side like a broom, one particularly noticeable goblin appeared ahead.

“...

Found you.”

Unlike the shriveled, dark green goblins, it had a strange body that gleamed a brilliant gold.

Realizing that this was the ‘Golden Goblin’ I'd been looking for, I quickly charged toward it and grabbed its head with my left hand, the one not holding Tommy.

“Kieeeek──!!”

“One down for now.”

I twisted its neck so it could no longer scream.

Golden Goblins were mutant goblins, a kind of bonus mob that hid throughout dungeons.

Unlike ordinary goblins, their magic stones had a faint golden glow, and in the game, submitting one to the Academy earned additional points in the ‘Class Ranking Match.’

“...

The others should know how hard I'm working down here.”

There was only one reason I was going this far against monsters that weren't anything special.

The Class Ranking Match was that important of an event.

The higher the class ranking, the more support received from the Academy, the more convenient its facilities, and even the curriculum itself changed entirely.

In game terms, depending on how you handled this event, there were even routes you could no longer access.

That was why the phrase ‘ranking reset’ existed, where people repeatedly replayed the Class Ranking Match while following the Academy route.

It might seem discriminatory that even if every other condition was fulfilled, you still couldn't do certain things because of this first step... but that too was permitted because the Academy was an institution for training heroes.

Training heroes meant raising talent for humanity, not ordinary students.

“If I remember correctly, I only needed to take the magic stone.”

I plunged my hand into the Golden Goblin's chest and extracted the magic stone.

Unlike other magic stones, this one radiated a beautiful golden glow. After putting it inside the Cube, I remembered that Golden Goblins collected various treasures and looked toward the direction the goblin had been heading.

“The nest is that way.”

One of the traits of Golden Goblins was their instinctive love of treasure, causing them to gather treasures in the nests where they lived.

In other words, this dungeon's hidden rewards were inside its nest.

The downside was that only items useful in the early game appeared there...

Still, considering the events that would happen later, there was no harm in collecting them.

I closed my eyes and focused, sensing the living creatures around me that felt fear toward me.

Was it because this was their nest? Even though they were afraid of me, they seemed to be hiding all over the place, waiting to ambush me.

Of course.

“They're still just goblins.”

I continued forward, firing bullets into every spot where I guessed goblins were hiding.

Partway through, I felt mana that seemed to be detecting me, but since it felt familiar, the kids above had probably realized I was gone and were searching for me.

“They'll handle things up there.”

This wasn't some other place, but a goblin dungeon.

Ji Su-hyeon had once sent them all the way to a deserted island with a goblin dungeon just for a day like this. There was no way they couldn't clear it.

Even if they did something strange, the kids from ‘Familia’ were with them, so even without me, they should be able to clear a goblin dungeon with results overwhelmingly better than the other classes.

I silently continued forward, slitting the throats of any goblins I saw along the way, extracting their magic stones, and occasionally throwing rocks as I advanced.

“Good, just as I remembered.”

At last, the entrance to what appeared to be the Golden Goblins' nest came into view.

There were three golden magic stones inside the Cube.

Normally, there were around ten Golden Goblins in each dungeon, and most of them hid in the nest when an intruder appeared, so there was a high chance the remaining Golden Goblins were hiding inside.

In other words, this place was basically a treasure vault.

And more importantly.

“FBI OPEN UP!!!”

I kicked open the crude door made of bone and entered, and among the startled Golden Goblins, I saw one particularly unusual-looking fellow.

“Found you.”

The real treasure.

The Golden Hobgoblin.

That guy was the hidden boss of this dungeon.

“Kieeeek! Kiek! Human! Human! Human!”

The Golden Hobgoblin saw me and began screeching loudly while bouncing up and down in place.

“Yeah, it's a human. Did you gather my treasures properly?”

“Human! Intruder! Kill! Kill!”

The moment it saw me, it became thoroughly agitated and started yelling at the top of its lungs.

I hadn't expected conversation to work anyway, so I pulled out Tommy and aimed it at him.

“Yeah, go ahead and dance.”

I pulled the trigger and sprayed bullets toward him and the surrounding Golden Goblins.

At the same time, the Golden Goblins dropped to the ground one after another. A total of six went down.

“...

As expected, you're not going to make this easy.”

Before I knew it, the guy was hanging from the ceiling and glaring at me.‘Golden Hobgoblin.’ Another nickname it had in the game was ‘Golden Flash,’ because of its trait of disappearing in an instant whenever it flashed.

It was truly an ability optimized for grabbing treasure and running away.

I suppose you need at least that level of ability to become king of the Golden Goblins.

There was no reason to waste time here.

A quick decisive battle.

I decided to finish it quickly.

I put the gun back into the Cube, rolled up both sleeves, and stared at him.

The guy glared back at me as though ready to pounce the instant he saw an opening.

“You said you'd kill me, right? Come on.”

When I even put away the gun and beckoned with my finger, a flash of light burst out and he appeared before me in an instant.

“Come on then.”

“Kiiiiiiik!”

I kept my guard completely down and beckoned with my finger, provoking him.

As expected, he became furious, and with another flash of light, he appeared in front of me instantly.

“Die, human!”

The dagger in his hand stabbed toward my chest.

They say force is proportional to speed and mass, right?

I'm not from the sciences, so I don't know the details, but one thing was certain: if a dagger moving at that speed pierced my chest, I'd die instantly.

If it hit me, that is.

“That's why I suffered against you in the game.”

But after getting hit by him a few times, there was one fact anyone would learn.

His first attack always aimed for the heart.

And there was nothing easier to block than a telegraphed punch whose destination had already been decided.

I caught his dagger with the hand I'd already positioned near my heart.

He seemed to have intended to pierce through my hand along with my heart, but since he couldn't even penetrate a hand wearing nothing more than a leather glove, he must have been extremely confused.

“Yeah, welcome.”

Of course, his dagger hadn't failed to deal damage entirely.

It simply hadn't pierced the glove. The full impact of his thrust had still been transmitted to the hand inside, enough that I worried whether a hole had been punched through it.

So I decided to put all that pain into a counterattack against him.

“Kieeeek!”

My fist dropped onto his head like a war hammer.

But perhaps because he was among the very best at running away, I narrowly failed to land a clean hit.

Just before being struck, he quickly let go of the dagger and rolled away.

After retreating like that, he pulled the dagger out of the ground and aimed it at me again.

“The instructors outside must be getting nervous.”

This guy was far beyond anything a freshman should be facing.

If I hadn't told Instructor Ji Su-hyeon beforehand, it wouldn't have been strange for them to immediately forcefully summon me back for safety.

“Then let's really have some fun.”

I struck the wall beside me and smashed apart the door I'd entered through.

The best way to deal with this guy was to make sure he had no escape route.

I had to search through his treasure vault to get back up anyway, so I had no reason to retreat either.──Flash.

The instant a flash burst before my eyes, I swung my fist.

“Kueeek──!!”

At the same time, my fist slammed into his face.

“You only ever come straight at me anyway.”

The moment he showed me his speed right in front of me, the match was practically decided.

Half a second after the flash.

That was his pattern.

As I reached out to grab him by the collar, another flash burst.

He had fled backward.

“Where do you think you're going?”

When I charged toward him, another flash erupted.

His figure disappeared, but I didn't panic. Instead, I immediately ducked and swung my leg backward.

“Kiek?!”

“Yeah, I actually know you can come from behind too.”

I've killed you how many times? Of course I know your patterns.

His body tilted and fell onto his back.

I immediately climbed on top of him and took the mount position.

“Tada. Now you can't run anymore, right?”

“H-human! Don't kill me! There is treasure──”

“Everyone in the country knows it's inside that dimensional storage you have, so don't try pulling that crap.”

Then I swung my fist down toward his face like a hammer and crushed it.

“Bweeegh──!!”

His teeth flew into the air.

Well, maybe not everyone in the country, but most players who had played CS knew where his treasure storage was.

“If! I stupidly! Believe you! And let you go! You'll run! Into the storage! You bastard!”

I completely smashed his face so he could no longer spout nonsense.

“Bastard. You're making me remember the old days.”

I had also once fallen for that bastard's words and tried negotiating with him.

I had been doing a non-lethal route, so I thought if I beat him up enough and negotiated, he'd hand over the reward, but he simply opened a dimensional gate and fled into the storage.

I still remembered how empty I felt back then.

Eventually, when I raised another non-lethal character, I beat him half to death without killing him and took the key.

“The key. I'm taking it.”

Saying that, I grabbed the trembling guy's right arm and bent back his thumb until I tore it off.

“Ki... kieeeek...!”

“Shut up for a second.”

I hammered him once more to silence him again, then examined his thumb.

A small crest was drawn on it.[A new item has been discovered!][Name: Dimensional Storage][Rank: Unique][Type: Engraving][Description: A key capable of opening a 13m² dimensional storage. Raise the thumb and draw a circle to make the storage door appear. The engraving can be placed on the body or an item.]

“──Found it.”

My precious.