L99VL 07

Chapter 7

Clomp-clomp—

Early morning.

Eric leisurely left the mansion with Leona in tow and headed out toward the streets to start his weekend.

“By ‘having time on the weekend’… you meant a patrol, right?”

Leona, wearing a robe to hide her identity as she followed Eric, tilted her head as she watched him head straight toward the outskirts of the city, ignoring the shops lining the streets.

“Why? Do I have other business?”

“…No. It’s just… unexpected.”

Eric turned to her with a puzzled expression, and Leona gave a dry cough and quickly averted her eyes.

Still, how could anyone talk about this in front of him?

She had half-expected he might be heading to a red-light district at this hour.

“By the way, is it alright to leave without saying anything?”

“It’s normal for people to complain whenever I go into town. Would anyone notice if I were gone for just a day? Stop nagging and follow me. You’re coming along for your own good too.”

At her question, Eric shrugged nonchalantly.

It wasn’t exactly pleasant being treated as incompetent or as a delinquent, but there was an advantage to it.

Perhaps because he had always wandered the streets whenever he had a chance, no one paid any attention to him leaving the mansion with his guard in tow.

‘Normally, sneaking around the city without the family noticing would be impossible. Maybe being treated as a delinquent isn’t entirely bad.’

Of course, he didn’t hope for such pathetic levels and stats, but there were times when being a delinquent worked in his favor.

‘For example, solving a problem only I know about and taking all the rewards.’

All the incidents he had only heard about from NPCs, now he could personally solve and claim the rewards.

The kinds of rewards that even veteran players would envy.

‘Well, I won’t get everything since I’m not going alone… but maybe one of them. Even with my pitiful stats, I couldn’t have solved it alone before.’

Ding—

<Eric Ather>
Level: -99
Strength [3]
Agility [2]
Stamina [3]
Mana [1]
Trait: <Unyielding>

Eric glanced at Leona briefly, then scratched his head as he looked at his still-pathetic stats.

Thanks to <Unyielding>, he could train longer and raise his stats faster than expected.

Still, he was only slightly better than before—not enough to confidently wander around alone.

Thud—

After walking for some time, he passed through the bustling morning streets and finally arrived at his destination: an alleyway that exuded a completely different atmosphere from the streets he had crossed.

‘Now… where’s the entrance?’

Since it was a place he only knew from stories, he couldn’t be sure of the exact location—but it didn’t matter.

Three years before the game started, around this same time, a group of monsters was discovered by soldiers patrolling due to frequent disappearances in the city.

Using their habits to find their lair was easy for someone like him who knew the city inside out.

“This place…”

While Eric searched for traces of the monsters, Leona followed him into the alley, noticing dilapidated buildings, streets long neglected, and the stench wafting up from various spots.

‘A slum?’

Seeing unpleasant eyes staring from broken windows and holes in the walls, she pulled her robe tightly over herself.

‘Does the second prince usually wander into places like this?’

Whether he was insensitive or just used to it, she frowned as she watched Eric investigating every corner, unfazed by the gazes of the locals.

Even if the Ather family’s delinquent was known for leaving the mansion constantly, this was something different.

Wandering the streets and strolling through a slum were two completely different things.

Thunk—

“Master! Please, just a coin, Master!”

After slowly checking the slum, Eric reached the corner of a long alley when someone grabbed his ankle.

“Young master. It’s dangerous…”

Thunk—

Eric stopped in his tracks, looked down at the scene, and blocked Leona from reaching toward her waist.

‘Found you!’

A frail old man, bones sticking out from hunger, barely covered by tattered rags.

Looking at a festering wound that had turned black under the torn clothes, Eric quietly smiled and rummaged through his silver coins.

Clink—

“Thank you! Thank you! Hee, hee… huh?”

The old man greedily picked up the coins, grinning, until his eyes met Eric’s and he stepped back.

“Th- the delinquent second prince…”

“Shh.”

Eric put a finger to his mouth at the old man’s startled voice, then pointed at the coins in his hand.

“Tell me how you hurt that leg, and I’ll give you another. How about that?”

It was an offer sweet enough to make anyone forget their fear of the second prince.

The old man struggled to his feet.

“This wound…”

Dragging his injured leg, the old man headed deeper into the slum, followed by Eric and Leona.

Leona squinted, noticing the wound looked strangely familiar.

‘Weird… it’s not a battlefield. Such a wound shouldn’t happen in a city.’

“…Huh?”

For a moment, she wondered where she had seen it before, then froze at Eric’s casual remark.

‘A battlefield? Sounds like it was caused by a monster… Ratmen?’

The torn pants and the deep bite marks resembled the wounds she had seen on monsters at the academy.

‘How…’

She finally noticed something was off and turned to Eric, stunned.

‘Wasn’t the second prince supposed to be blessed by the goddess?’

No one could tell the old man’s wounds were from a Ratman without witnessing it firsthand.

Even she, who had faced them hundreds of times during the academy, would have assumed it was a simple infection from the dirty streets.

‘Reading about it in a book… no. This isn’t something you’d notice just from pictures.’

The perceptiveness didn’t match a naive young noble wandering the streets—it was more like a seasoned commander.

‘Am I misunderstanding something?’

A helpless man abandoned by the goddess.
A shame of the Ather family.
A delinquent constantly causing trouble in the streets.

That was the reputation of Eric Ather, the second prince of the Grand Duke’s family.

Even the knights at the training grounds treated him as expected.

‘But unlike the rumors, he’s serious about training. He didn’t even notice his palms getting raw from swinging the wooden sword nonstop.’

However, the Eric she had seen in recent days didn’t match the public reputation.

Though she disliked being treated like a mere prop at the training grounds, at least he swung his sword silently without worrying about gossip—hardly the behavior of a mere delinquent.

“…Lady K.”

‘Maybe he’s not a delinquent…’

“Leona!”

After some time lost in suspicion, Eric’s shout snapped her back to reality. She watched the old man leave, holding another coin, and glanced around.

“This way. He fell into the sewer here at night and hurt his leg.”

Following Eric’s finger, she spotted a partially open manhole in a secluded alley and nodded.

But… what was he planning to do with this?

Whoosh—

“Hmm. Definitely dark. Good thing I brought a torch from the mansion.”

Leona turned at the sound of a fire being lit and hurriedly looked for Eric, seeing a faint reddish glow in the hole.

“Master! What are you doing?!”

“What do you mean? There are monsters in the city. I’ll go in and clean them all out.”