Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 663
Chapter 663: Companion (2)
“I was a late bloomer as a wizard.”
The GM’s story began with that first sentence.
“Twenty years old. To be honest, entering the magic tower at such an old age was quite unprecedented. It may be obvious, but it was difficult for me to adapt to that environment.”
Well, I could understand that. The elites who entered the magic tower when they were young, like Raven, hated late bloomers like the GM. Of course, the people they hated more than the late bloomers were the non-specialized wizards like Dwalkie.
In any case, that wasn’t the important part.
He was a late bloomer…?
No matter how I thought about it, that didn’t make sense. Was this guy lying to me right now? When I met him in the past, he said he was a rank 6 wizard within a year of arriving.
“Luckily my rank is high, but I still can’t use magic properly, so I live on the edge every day…”
That last bit at the end made me think that it was just a problem for him since he possessed the body of a wizard. But that wasn’t the case?
I should keep listening…
If he was telling the truth, he would be quite the special case.
It was something I learned with time as I spoke with the other players in Ghost Busters, but the people who crossed the Gate of the Abyss while leveling wizard characters began their lives already knowing how to use magic. Versyl Gowland of my clan was one such example.
She also joined the magic tower and trained in magic at a much younger age than twenty.
So then, what led the GM to try to become a wizard? If he didn’t start as one, it would’ve been much easier to grow as a character by becoming an adventurer and eating essences.
“Is there a reason you tried to learn magic at that age?” I asked directly, then received an answer I never could have expected.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to become a wizard. I thought I needed to become an adventurer.”
“Huh…?”
“Of course, clashing with dangerous monsters inside the labyrinth didn’t suit me either, so being a wizard was perfect for me. You said it yourself—it’s quite the unusual situation, to try and learn magic after twenty.”
“…That’s true.”
“I originally tried to learn the bow. I thought that I would at least be competent with archery.”
So his dream class was actually an archer…
That made me even more curious. Why did he go from wanting to become an archer to ending up as a wizard?
“Since I didn’t have a stone to my name, buying a bow meant I needed to earn money. Once I came of age, there was nothing I didn’t do out on the streets. I even went to the forge once to try and find a job…”
Surprisingly enough, while he spent his time hammering metal, the route to becoming a wizard opened up for the GM. As if fated, he met the master of a school of magic.
“My master was intrigued by a toy I made during my free time. He called me aside, saying he wanted to talk to me, and we talked for hours.”
The master noted how detailed the design drawing of the GM’s toy was and made a point of marveling at the GM’s imagination.
Well, that makes sense. This guy’s from the modern age.
I supposed it was kind of a cheat a modern person had. Things like that sometimes appeared in novels, where a normal guy who fell into another world drew the amazement of those around him whenever he made something.
“And that’s how you were able to learn magic?” I prompted.
“Yes. The Myreta School usually worked with wind elemental magics, but my master, the master of the school at that time, was very interested in magic engineering and magic circles. I was lucky to catch his attention.”
I nodded, keeping my posture open and attentive. “So that’s what happened.”
“I’m not trying to brag, but I had the aptitude for magic. I learned very quickly and absorbed everything my master taught me. Thanks to that, I inadvertently drew a lot of hate as well.”
The GM’s growth speed in the magic tower was unprecedentedly explosive.
“I mean, in the long history of the magic tower, there’s never been anyone else who joined when they were twenty and ranked up to six in just one year.”
Huh… So he really did get rank six in just one year? No, wait. Then what did he mean by “a half-wizard who couldn’t even use magic properly” back then?
Surprisingly, I was able to get the answer right after.
“However, I was still just a half-wizard… Did you know? There are so many areas of wizardry that, even if you don’t learn a single attack spell, you can become a high-ranking wizard.”
The GM belonged to that category.
After showing outstanding talent in magic engineering and magic circles, the GM became a rank 6 wizard without ever learning how to use a fireball spell properly.
“The wizards who knew about it always provoked me. I needed to move in secret, careful not to get caught. Ahh… Those days at the magic tower were brutal.
“However, even so, my master didn’t believe that learning other magic would be productive for me. My talent was in magic engineering, and he said I didn’t have time to waste on other things. At my repeated requests, I was able to learn one or two other spells, but my focus was always on studying magic engineering. It was really difficult back then. I don’t think I even got more than two hours of sleep every night.”
But still, the GM did it. He found magic engineering fun and felt a deep gratitude for his master.
“It may sound a little odd…but back then, I sometimes felt that my master was my father. Because I…didn’t have a father.”
After being fully gaslit for so long, the GM thought his life was growing farther from the life of an adventurer, but he still continued to endure it. However, that endurance revealed its limit at some point.
“But in the end, I wasn’t able to keep going, so I ran away. I gathered allies around me to become an adventurer, and after that, I spent many years as one, never returning to the school once.”
During that time, even while taking more time to learn magic that would be helpful for adventuring, the GM never stopped his magic engineering studies.
And then, around the time the wizard Yurven Havellion started to become famous as an adventurer…
“That was when the incident occurred. You may have heard about this as well…but my master dabbled in forbidden magic.”
Forbidden magic, magic that was prohibited from the wizards.
As soon as it was revealed that the GM’s master dealt with such magic, the soldiers of the palace rushed in, and his master was executed on the spot.
“All the wizards of the school spent the next few months living their lives like they were imprisoned, being investigated constantly. Among them, I, who had spent the longest time researching with my master, was the one who received the most scrutiny.”
After being confined to an interrogation room and telling the truth every day, the GM ended up learning by chance what exactly that forbidden magic his master had worked on was.
“It was shocking, I couldn’t believe it.”
“…What was it?”
“My master was researching magic related to ‘soul grafting.’”
It was magic research that aimed to put the soul of a person into an object to turn it into a magic tool—something to do with how if a consciousness that had been removed from biological constraints could be taught for eternity, it could lead to unprecedented progress.
Isn’t this like AI deep learning? Amazing.
“The most important thing about this plan was ‘talent.’ My master believed that the grafted soul’s learning speed would depend on how bright it was, and he had named a few candidates as well.”
Only then did I realize why the GM wanted to tell this story.
“Among the names on the planning document the interrogator showed me, my name was written at the very top. It was as if he had ranked us, and the numbers behind my name were the highest as well.”
The betrayal of the master whom he treated like his father.
“After that, well… The entire school disappeared with that, and in the end, I somehow ended up constructing a school of my own. As the school continued to grow, I became busier, and I entered the labyrinth less and less.”
I could guess as to what happened after that. He managed the community while growing his school, and he probably communicated politically with the palace on classified matters. All with the goal of one day leaving this damned world.
“So… How was it? My story, that is.”
The GM let out a sigh of relief, and I thought for a moment before giving a short reply.
“It definitely wasn’t that interesting of a story.”
“…Ahaha. Is that so?”
It was an obviously awkward laugh. However, if I empathized with him and was sad together with him, the mood would’ve just gotten weirder. And I didn’t believe that would be beneficial for him.
“But didn’t it work out great?”
“Pardon?”
“Rather than the guy who betrayed you living a good life, he died a pitiful death.”
The GM was speechless for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Ahahaha, that’s true. Yes. You could look at it like that…”
After laughing out loud for a while, his expression suddenly turned bitter as he mumbled, “It would’ve been amazing if I could think so simplistically like that… Genuinely.”
Well… Your heart was something you couldn’t really control.
***
After waking up early in the morning the day after we had our frank talk, we quickly headed to the cave that led into the underground passage. Around the time the sun was setting, we arrived at our destination.
However, the problem was…
“It’s not so bad, taking time for things like this once in a while. It felt like I returned to the times when I was an adventurer. Thank— Wait, did I say something wrong?”
You know, you should only say that when we return to the city.
It made me nervous that something was going to happen now that he said that—
“…Stop.”
While looking around habitually with my uneasy heart, I froze on the spot.
“What is it…?”
I lowered my voice. “Be quiet.”
He seemed to have noticed something was off, as he grasped his staff nervously.
Why are all wizards like Dwalkie?
Although I suddenly had that thought, that wasn’t important right now so I focused on the entrance to the cave instead.
I was here.
Baekho Lee, strong son of Korea
It was the mark left behind by Baekho Lee that we saw before.
And below it, a new mark.
Rafdonia’s king, motherfucker.
It was used as a meme in Ghost Busters. A phrase that any player who was active in the community would be familiar with.
It was obvious who wrote it as well.
Baekho Lee. He probably wrote it because he got bored on the way back.
“Th-that’s…!”
“Do you know what that is?”
“I know that it’s a script the evil spirits use. Now that I look at it, the marks above it seem to be another one of the scripts they use.”
Since he couldn’t reveal that he was an evil spirit, the GM made excuses while trying to hide that he was a little flustered. Usually, I would have acted clueless while asking him incriminating questions to make fun of him, but I didn’t have the leisure to do that right now.
“Either way, someone must’ve been here before us,” I said. “Let’s get away from here for now.”
“Pardon…?”
“Nothing good will come of meeting them. And it’ll be a problem if it gets out that I am outside the city.”
“Ah…”
To be honest, I said that because I didn’t want to meet Baekho again, but the GM just accepted my reasoning since he didn’t know better.
As soon as we stopped talking, we started to move backward in the direction we came from, the opposite direction from the cave.
One step, two steps, three steps.
After moving back quickly, I made to turn around.
“Ahhh!”
A man bellowed out from within the cave.
The sound was far from what I would call a scream. No, if I was to dissect it…
“God-fucking-dammit!”
It was a roar of rage that could not be held in.
Surprisingly enough, the echoing roar seemed to be rushing closer to us—
“Can you hear me? You’re nearby! You can hear me!”
And soon, a man screamed as he dashed out of the cave so fast that it made it difficult for me to track with my eyes.
…Baekho?
As expected, the origin of the scream was Baekho. However, the problem here…
“Just wait until I catch you! Okay? If I catch you, I’m going to—”
…was that after getting out of the cave, Baekho jumped as he was rocketing out.
His eyes met ours.
With that, Baekho went from looking like he’d jet into the sky to falling onto the ground and landing with a thud.
“…Uh, why are you with this guy, Baron?”
He looked genuinely surprised, unlike how he would usually act. However, it didn’t take long for his expression to twist into rage.
“Wait… Was it you two who did it…?”
Us two who did what…?
I looked at him cluelessly as Baekho shouted with frustration, “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about! Did you two break the returning magic circle?!”
Wait, what the hell was this now?