This was a time when every second counted—far too precious to rely solely on Chasey.

To minimize wasted time, I needed to gather intelligence from multiple sources.

‘I should meet with him again.’

Fortunately, I already knew an excellent informant who had been tremendously helpful in resolving this current matter.

In the past, I would never have spent money on something like this. But for me now, trading a modest sum of wealth to save time was more than a worthwhile investment.

I hadn’t set a specific meeting place with the kid, which meant I’d have to go to the orphanage where Imperial Priest Veron operated to track him down.

Fortunately, I happened to be with someone who possessed a rather convenient ability, so there was no need to make the trip myself.

“Lend me a hand for a moment, would you?”

“Pardon?”

Chasey looked at me with a bewildered expression.

***

Flap-

The bird I had sent off moments ago returned before long.

It circled around us as we sat on a street bench.

Chirp- chirp-!

The creature flew straight to Chasey and nuzzled against her, as if begging for praise.

I watched the scene with fascination.

“The more I see it, the more remarkable your ability is. Are druids always this convenient?”

Chasey answered while stroking the bird’s head.

“I wouldn’t know, honestly—I’ve never met another druid myself. This isn’t exactly a place where druids tend to operate, so they’re quite hard to come by…”

“Most druids hail from Elania, so that makes sense.”

I, too, had some passing knowledge of druids—having researched the qualification requirements for various champion classes before obtaining my shieldbearer credentials.

Whoosh-!

Her head snapped toward me.

“You know about that?”

Chasey brightened, seemingly surprised that I understood what she was talking about.

Flap-!

Perhaps sensing something, even the bird that had been sitting quietly on Chasey’s lap fluttered away.

Catching the overwhelming look in Chasey’s eyes, I realized I had inadvertently triggered something.

Thoroughly excited, Chasey began to speak.

“The source of a druid’s power and wisdom is, without exception, ‘nature.’ The essence of nature is survival, and in a city like this, there’s almost no opportunity for that survival instinct to manifest—so it’s not exactly an ideal environment for accumulating nature’s power.”

The vast majority of druids originated from Elania, and those who left were exceedingly rare.

That was precisely why druids were so difficult to find in cities.

“Residents of Elania begin their education at a very young age. They typically start between five and six years old, and depending on what talents they possess, they’re divided into Bards, Vates, and Druids.”

“Bards and Vates?”

Bard was presumably their term for a bard in the common tongue. But Vate… that was a word I’d never encountered before.

I had known only that Elania was the holy land of druids—I didn’t possess enough knowledge to grasp Chasey’s words at a glance.

“Bards are poets and storytellers who pass down tales to future generations. Vates can be thought of as diviners who study nature and the gods and divine the future. Druids are a matter of some debate, but they’re fundamentally classified as philosophers.”

Philosophers, huh…

Given the rugged temperament of druids, classifying them as an academic profession wasn’t something that came easily to mind.

“The study of the fundamental meaning of the world—that is what philosophy is, after all.”

What that actually meant varied from person to person, but here the druids placed their emphasis on nature.

“Druids are practical philosophers. One must experience nature firsthand and attain enlightenment before they can finally wield nature’s power.”

One had to feel nature with their own body. That was why Elania, overflowing with nature’s power, had become the holy land of druids.

But as I listened to her words, something didn’t sit right with me.

“Must one feel nature’s power only in Elania?”

Even outside Elania, there were plenty of places where nature remained preserved. Even the Herseba Desert, located in southern Trivik, was a place untouched by human hands.

At my question, Chasey shook her head firmly.

“No, you can feel nature’s power outside of Elania. But it’s close to impossible. There is no ‘Mother Tree’ anywhere else.”

“The Mother Tree?”

For a moment, a World Tree from various games I’d played came to mind, but Chasey burst out laughing at my expression. Apparently, many people made the same mistake.

“Haha—it’s a metaphor, just a metaphor. The Mother Tree is a symbolic title. The true identity of the Mother Tree is the druid Named champion, Lady Liriha.”

“There’s a Named champion in Elania?”

I couldn’t help but be astonished at Chasey’s words.

After all, the idea of a Named champion living among ordinary humans was beyond imagination.

“What Lady Liriha fundamentally pursues is balance, along with the regeneration of souls and immortality. This is a concept of enlightenment that cannot be conveyed through words—one must feel it with their body to truly understand. The reason Lady Liriha remains in Elania is her desire to spread that enlightenment to future generations.”

Reverence and longing were evident in Chasey’s expression.

She probably wanted to meet the druid Named champion Liriha in person herself.

“The synergy effects that druids possess originate from this as well. Though the effects were reduced to increased recovery when adapted for the battlefield.”

“Synergy…”

“Synergy manifests differently depending on what you pursue and how you pursue it. Since most druids today have been influenced by Lady Liriha, the prevailing philosophy is ‘the regeneration of souls and immortality’—which is why it manifests on the battlefield as increased recovery effects.”

“…!”

Chasey was speaking about druids, but from her words, I was able to glean an insight of my own.

‘The direction of synergy changes depending on what one pursues…’

If the druids she spoke of manifested increased recovery as their synergy because they pursued the regeneration of souls and immortality—

then shieldbearers pursued perfect defense, and mages pursued more powerful magic. In this way, the direction of synergy could shift depending on what each class pursued.

But on the battlefield, this directionality manifested slightly differently. Just as the druids’ pursuit of soul regeneration and immortality appeared as increased healing.

‘I recalled that the Imperial Parliament conducts patches every year.’

This was because the Imperial Parliament interfered with the battlefield under the guise of ‘patches’ to maintain the balance of the battlefield—in other words, the balance of power.

But this raised another question in my mind.

Limited space, limited mana, limited skills, limited power, limited synergy, and countless rules that forced champions to act within constraints.

The Imperial Parliament interfered with the battlefield, refusing to allow champions to exert power beyond a certain threshold.

Which meant that any power obtained from the battlefield could not exceed the constraints they had established.

Moreover, the battlefield was fundamentally a virtual space.

An unrealistic place where the dead could return to life and spatial constraints could be transcended.

Yet the fact that power obtained from such an unrealistic place as the battlefield could influence reality was something I couldn’t comprehend.

Specifically, the currency called ‘gold’ that could be earned from the battlefield.

The questions kept multiplying, one leading to another.

‘Then what exactly are skills?’

I couldn’t sense or manipulate mana. But the skill I had purchased for 100 gold—Solid Exoskeleton—could be used even in reality.

How was that possible?

The words Hans had spoken on the first day I learned a skill came to mind.

— You’re using a mana circuit but can’t sense mana at all? That’s like knowing how to breathe where there’s no air. Isn’t that amazing?

I had known the reason even then.

Fish that live in water are born with gills. They have to breathe somehow, even underwater.

But animals that live on land breathe with lungs, so they cannot breathe underwater.

It’s physically impossible.

Because that’s how they were born.

It was the same for me.

I was born and raised in a place without mana, so I couldn’t sense it.

But looking at it from the opposite perspective…

Could it be that those born and raised in a place with mana simply never noticed?

That the very existence of something called a ‘skill’ was strange and unnatural.

Fish are born with gills, so they can live underwater—but they never know what kind of world exists beyond the water’s surface.

For a fish, gills were not merely a means of survival.

They were also a powerful constraint.

+

Vwoomm-

Chasey, who had been pouring out words without pause, suddenly fell silent.

‘What was that?’

Chasey glanced around. It felt as though something invisible had moved.

But since even the passersby showed no reaction, she figured it must have been her imagination and scratched her head.

Then she looked at the man in front of her, who was wearing a blank expression.

“Mr. Shin?”

‘Did I go overboard again because something I knew came up? Mr. Shin doesn’t even look interested…’

A flush crept across Chasey’s face.

When Chasey focused on one thing, she tuned out everything else.

Perhaps because her favorite topic had come up, she worried she had gone overboard again this time, and felt embarrassed.

+

‘A Named champion… It would be good to meet one if the opportunity arises.’

To resolve the questions that had arisen this time, it seemed I would need to meet a Named champion to learn anything.

But I was, after all, a 1-Cost Shieldbearer.

It was safe to say that no Named champion would bother meeting the likes of me.

If I had to find any possibility at all, it would be Liriha—the druid Named champion who lived among people.

But even this came with its own complications.

Elania was fundamentally an exclusive region that prohibited outsiders from entering. In other words, it was a space I currently had no access to.

‘Should I try pretending to be a druid aspirant?’

It was a pointless thought.

If I couldn’t even sense mana, how could I possibly sense nature’s mana? If the deception were discovered, I wouldn’t be able to leave Elania in one piece.

Not that I could have fooled anyone to begin with.

“Mr. Shin?”

Just then, I heard a voice calling me from right in front of me.

‘Right, I was in the middle of a conversation.’

The source of the voice was Chasey Einthoven. For some reason, her face had turned red, but looking at her, a good idea came to mind.

‘Chasey said she was a druid aspirant, didn’t she? If I used Chasey as my front, couldn’t I somehow get into Elania?’

Come to think of it, Chasey was quite an exceptional person.

Despite not being from Elania, she had independently awakened to nature’s power and could wield it to some degree—that was highly unusual.

‘Was it talent?’

Wouldn’t someone like Chasey be recognized even in Elania?

At the very least, I was certain she wouldn’t be turned away at the entrance.

If I entered using Chasey as my front…

…it would be far more promising than a 1-Cost Shieldbearer showing up at Elania unannounced.

The condition for teaching her about the druid deck had been Chasey’s promise to help me with whatever I wanted.

It had been somewhat awkward to ask for something purely as compensation for information, so this worked out perfectly—I planned to settle the entire remaining balance through this favor.

Of course, I wasn’t planning to head to Elania right away.

I needed to build my strength through private battlefields in Trivik, and I also had to raise my player tier—only then would I have a name worth presenting in Elania.

Simply entering Elania with Chasey’s help wouldn’t resolve the matter.

What I needed was a conversation with the Named champion Liriha.

If I presented the calling card of a 1-Cost Shieldbearer, would Liriha even consider meeting me?

I needed at least a player tier that would let me present that calling card with confidence before I could even request a conversation.

How much time would it take to achieve a tier of that caliber?

To minimize that time as much as possible, I needed to place first in every Ranked Match—and for that, an Item combination formula was absolutely essential.

‘It would be nice if the ruins actually existed.’

The best option would be to strike it rich at the ruins, but since there was also a chance the ruins didn’t exist, I needed to diligently run private battlefields.

And for that purpose, I had called the right person…

I discreetly checked my Device—two hours had already passed.

“So when exactly is that kid coming?”

He should have been here by now—well past due.

‘Did something happen?’

Chasey must have sensed something was off too, as she tilted her head.

“I’m not sure. Animals can only retain fragmentary information, so I only asked whether the letter was delivered. It seems like it was safely delivered, but…”

Just as I was thinking I’d have to go find the kid myself—