The Hero Who Wasn't:Lord of Kingdoms

Arion stood behind his closed door, staring at the A-rank quest slip in his hand. He felt the walls closing in around him. Outside, his ever-loyal student Finn waited—and in all of Arcadia, "Lord Arion" was the city's only hope of solving the monster mystery.

"I can't go. I can't refuse either," Arion muttered, pacing back and forth across his spacious living room. "What would a real hero do in this situation? He… prepares!"

That was the magic word. "Preparation." A vague, elastic word that could mean anything—and the perfect excuse to stall for time.

He opened the door again. Finn was still there, standing at attention like a soldier awaiting orders.

"Master?"

Arion gave him his usual cold, distant stare (which was really just a mask hiding sheer terror). "An investigation is not a race. Rushing is the companion of failure. Truth demands… preparation."

Finn's eyes widened, as if he'd just heard the greatest wisdom in the world. "Of course! How foolish of me! Ordinary heroes rush into danger, but the Master knows the real battle is first fought in the mind! Knowledge is the sharpest blade!"

"Exactly," said Arion, barely believing this ridiculous lie had actually worked.

"I will ensure no one disturbs your grand contemplations and sacred preparations, Master!" Finn declared, then positioned himself like a loyal guard at Arion's gate, standing tall, face glowing with pride.

Arion shut the door again. "Great. Now I'm a prisoner in my own house… with a self-appointed bodyguard I didn't ask for."

---

Desperate Attempts and a Battle Against Ignorance

Arion stepped into his luxurious study. "Preparation demands knowledge. Knowledge demands reading. And the problem is… I'm illiterate in this world."

He sank into his leather chair and closed his eyes. "If I can't learn it, I'll make it!"

Ding~

> [Skill Creator – Creation Mode]

"A simple skill," he thought desperately. "I just want to understand these weird symbols."

[Analyzing Proposed Skill: Beginner's Letter Comprehension]

Description: Grants the user the ability to decode and read basic common-language texts.

Expected Rank: F

[Processing…]

[…Denied.]

"What?! Why?!" Arion growled. "Fine, maybe that was too general."

> [Analyzing Proposed Skill: Basic Word Translation]

Description: Allows translation of one word every ten seconds.

[Processing…]

[…Denied.]

"Damn you, cursed system!" Arion shouted at the empty room. "You want me to stay an ignorant fool forever?!"

He tried again, with a more ridiculous, hyper-specific idea.

> [Analyzing Proposed Skill: Recognize the Letter A]

Description: Grants the sacred ability to identify the first letter of the alphabet only.

[Processing…]

[…Denied.]

By his fifth failed attempt, a system note popped up, dripping with exasperation, as if the system itself had lost its patience.

> Note: Regardless of how many times you try, skills related to language and foundational knowledge in this world require a basic understanding your consciousness does not possess. They require a rank-C skill at minimum, while your "Skill Creator" is only rank F. This is like an infant trying to master quantum physics in five minutes. Stop wasting my time!

Arion slumped in his chair. "So I stay illiterate. Wonderful."

---

Two Days of "Peace" (and Mysterious Books)

Two days passed. Arion spent them doing absolutely nothing useful. He played "Monster Chase" with Kalin in their garden (where Arion was always the monster). He helped Lyora in the kitchen (meaning he'd secretly use his "Perfect Stew" skill when she turned her back). It was a warm, homely atmosphere he'd never known before. They ate good food, slept in soft beds, and were safe. For a moment, he forgot he was supposed to be the "Hero" who would save the city.

But on the third day, he remembered he couldn't stall forever. He needed to look like he was preparing.

"Preparation means research. Research means books."

He couldn't go to the guild library—if he spent hours there staring at books upside down, someone would notice he was a fraud.

"If I can't go to the library… I'll make the library come to me!"

He called Lyora. "Lyora, I need you to do me a favor. I want you to go to the biggest library in town and buy me some books."

"Of course, brother! Which books?"

He decided to describe them instead. "I want… a really big book with a leather cover and a carved tree on it. And another blue book with silver swirls. Also, the biggest, reddest, most boring book you can find."

She looked puzzled but nodded. "Okay, brother."

At the city's grandest bookstore, when the clerk asked what she was looking for, she repeated her brother's vague descriptions. The clerk gave her a suspicious look. "A tree? Swirls? Who are these books for, little miss?"

"My brother."

The clerk's eyes widened. "Your brother? Do you mean… Lord Arion?"

She nodded.

The clerk gasped and clutched his chest. "I see! Such insight! He does not ask for titles—he asks for essence! The 'Tree Book' must be the legendary 'World Tree Codex'! And the 'Blue Book with Swirls' is clearly 'The Manuscript of Energy and Ether Flows'! As for the 'Big Red Boring Book'… By the gods, he must mean the 'Crimson Tome of Ancient Secrets'—one of the most complex and mysterious books in the kingdom!"

Lyora came back home dragging a small cart loaded with enormous, rare, obscenely expensive tomes. Arion paid for them (the price made him dizzy). He'd only wanted decorative desk props to look smart—and ended up with a library of ancient texts he couldn't even read the titles of.

---

Breakthrough by a Needle

For the next few days, Arion's "routine" was to sit in his lavish study, surrounded by books he couldn't read. He'd open them at random, stare at the illustrations, and pretend to be deep in thought. In reality, he was just taking short naps.

Outside, his reputation grew. "Lord Arion hasn't left his home in four days! They say he hasn't slept, studying ancient texts to uncover the source of the disturbance!"

On the fifth day, while idly staring at an illustration in the World Tree Codex, he saw a drawing of the eastern forest. He remembered the strange tremor he'd felt. Dum… dum… dum…

"That tremor… it must be related."

He fetched a map of the region he'd bought (which he couldn't read either, but he knew the terrain). How could he pinpoint a vibration he'd felt only once while in a moving cart?

A crazy idea struck him. "Vibration Sense… and Basic Telekinesis."

He sat on the floor, laid the map out in front of him, and placed a tiny sewing needle in the center. He closed his eyes. "Alright, you stubborn system—be useful for once."

He activated Vibration Sense. He began to "listen" to the ground. At first, all he heard was the city's noise. But he focused deeper, searching for that faint, rhythmic pulse.

There! Dum… dum… dum…

Now the hard part. While maintaining focus on the distant vibration, he activated Basic Telekinesis on the needle. He tried to make it resonate with that pulse.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the needle began to shiver. It quivered on the map, then slowly rotated and settled, pointing steadily toward a specific spot in the northeastern corner of the forest. A blank spot on the map—unmarked.

Arion opened his eyes, gasping. It had drained him mentally. But he had done it. He now had a "lead." He had a "result" from his "painstaking research."