Academy's Drunk Fighter-Chapter 29: First Crisis (1)

“Jesus Christ.”

Back home at last, she finally let herself think about what happened earlier.

Yoon Siwoo had secretly figured out where Noah lived.

Fucking stalker bastard.

Should she tell Noah about it?

Would the police or military even be able to protect her from someone like Yoon Siwoo?

“......”

It was hard to say.

Maybe for now, sure—but as time went on, the thought that even the army might not be able to handle him crept in like a cold sweat.

And it felt a little off to report it to the professors.

“What should I do?”

[Current Intoxication: 1%]

As the haze of alcohol slowly started to lift, she began to really think the situation through.

More importantly... why the hell was Yoon Siwoo after Noah in the first place?

“......”

Maybe...

Yeah. If she really thought about it, maybe Noah wasn’t the target after all.

Her brain, dulled by booze, was finally kicking back into gear. Her thoughts shifted toward a more rational direction.

Was she misreading the whole thing?

Maybe it wasn’t just mindless stalking—maybe he was after something else entirely.

But why?

Why her?

She pondered that question for a moment, then happened to glance at the mask hanging behind her.

“......”

No way.

Was it because of that?

If that were the case... then did Yoon Siwoo know she’d come into contact with the Followers of the End?

Was he one of them too?

But that didn’t make sense.

First of all, in the original story, there’s only one victim during the first terrorist event.

That’s how it went in every route she’d played.

And in the original plan laid out by the cult, she was supposed to be the sacrificial lamb this time.

She’d die in disgrace—accused of ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ colluding with the cult—leaving the professors to assume she’d taken her own life.

And as far as she knew, the odds that other Doomsday cultists had already infiltrated the Academy were... pretty low.

The chance that Yoon Siwoo had been a cultist from the very beginning? Even lower.

Alright. Time to change perspectives a little.

She couldn’t just brush this off anymore. She’d reached the point where it was too much of a pain to ignore.

If she assumed that Yoon Siwoo had approached her to find out where Noah lived, then the next question was: why?

And the conclusion was...

There isn’t one.

No matter how she twisted it, no reason existed.

Noah’s side story didn’t even begin until at least the middle chapters.

Until then, she was just a background character—at best, someone who might survive past the midpoint if the player went out of their way to keep her alive.

And even then, her importance wasn’t exactly game-breaking. You could miss her entirely and never notice.

So unless Yoon Siwoo was some kind of peeping pervert, there was absolutely no reason for him to stalk Noah specifically.

Sad as it was, that was the common consensus among the player base.

On the other hand—if she assumed she was the target, it started to make a little more sense.

Clack.

She picked up the mask resting on her hand.

[False Mask of the Doomsday Followers]

[Rarity: Rare]

[Info: The end shall come for you.]

[Effect: Grants permanent stat boosts once per month. However, each use reduces mental strength. If worn while mental strength is below a certain threshold, the wearer may fall under brainwashing.]

[Cooldown Remaining – 26 Days]

This mask scaled with mental resilience. If you could resist the brainwashing, you’d gain stats. In other words: a high-risk, high-reward item.

It was occasionally used in early builds for high-mental-resistance characters.

But she had managed to break through it by leveraging the curses she already had.

Th𝓮 most uptodate nov𝑒ls are publish𝒆d on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.

Still, if you were a real player, you never trusted what was written at face value.

You had to read it like a contract—word for word, dissecting every clause.

[If worn while mental strength is below a certain level, brainwashing may occur.]

You could interpret that as a simple “resist it”—but nowhere did it say how long the brainwashing effect could last.

Put simply, just wearing the mask once might curse you for life.

It was entirely possible she’d been hit with something more annoying than she’d realized.

But the reason she wasn’t freaking out about it was simple.

“It can only inflict D-Rank curses anyway, right?”

The mask’s rarity was Rare, but the highest-tier curse it could inflict was D-Rank.

As far as she knew, in the Dreaming World, slower, creeping curses that devour you from the inside out were stronger than ones that instantly kill.

Unless we’re talking city- or nation-wide instant-kill range, of course.

In other words, both potency and duration factored into a curse’s rating.

That’s why her own curses, [Drunkard] and [Alcoholic], were both rated F-Rank.

Because they were permanent.

Unless she lifted them herself, they’d last for the rest of her life.

And they weren’t exactly weak, either.

The longer she lived, the longer they stuck around—meaning in the long run, they could surpass even the Doomsday cult’s curses. That was her theory, anyway.

Though... maybe the game’s system itself was messing with things a bit.

So if she put all these theories aside, there was still one thing left to consider.

That word Yoon Siwoo had muttered to her the other day—“Doom.”

She didn’t believe that was some throwaway comment.

Which meant the most likely conclusion was—

“He has a trait—no, maybe a passive—that lets him see traces of the curses I’ve been hit with.”

Or maybe something similar. A trait or item with that kind of ability.

She wasn’t exactly a newbie. In the community, people used to call her one of the “veterans.” Reaching this point of deduction wasn’t hard.

But after that? That’s where the problem started.

She had no way of knowing exactly what trait he had.

There were just too many ways to read another person’s curses or traits.

From [Trait Tracker] to [Observer], [Akashic Records], [Hall of Recorders], [The 108th Eye of the Voyeurs], [Tree of Genesis]... the list went on.

Hell, there were even characters who could just sense it by instinct.

She couldn’t afford to overlook that, either.

There were simply too many variables to consider.

And that also meant the odds of her being wrong about her guess increased.

So—

“Let’s stop here for now.”

That’s enough theorizing about Yoon Siwoo’s traits for today.

It was impossible to reach a satisfying conclusion through speculation alone. If she wanted to be sure, she’d have to confront him directly or find a way to uncover it herself.

The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed she’d end up with the wrong answer.

Why else was it that your first answer on multiple-choice exams was so often the right one?

Besides, she’d probably get another chance to dig into it soon.

So for now, she decided to table it.

“Yeah, gotta be careful, though.”

That didn’t mean she was letting her guard down around Yoon Siwoo.

He was still acting suspicious as hell, and she didn’t have enough solid evidence to draw any confident conclusions.

Still, she gave herself a little mental pat on the back for making her brain work for once and pulled a bottle of booze out of her bag.

Clink.

This was the bottle she’d stashed deep inside Noah’s freezer.

Ssshhh...

Unlike the gradually warming spring air, the ice crystals clinging to the bottle were a cool visual promise of how crisp and sweet this drink was going to be.

“A real drink... it’s been too long.”

Not those weird chocolate hybrids where the taste and smell of alcohol were completely drowned out, but actual, honest-to-god liquid.

Sorry, Noah—but she really needed a cold one. It had been way too long.

And if she was gonna drink, she wanted it ice-cold—colder than some stupid convenience store freezer could manage.

Pop!

The cap burst open with a refreshing sound.

She was strong enough now to open bottles with a spoon, no problem.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have a proper glass or any snacks to go with it.

“...Hehe.”

Not that it mattered.

A cold drink was its own kind of snack.

[Sweet Fruit Flavor! Lemon Sparkling!]

She had a lemon soda stashed away too. She took a swig straight from the bottle and topped it off with some fizzy citrus.

And the flavor—

Gulp, gulp.

“Pffhaaaaa!!”

Absolutely god-tier.

As always, the reward for hard work was the sweetest thing in the world.

Her brain surely agreed.

[Current Intoxication: 5%]

“Thishhh is soooooo goooood...”

Now that she’d let her guard down, even her tongue—which she thought had gotten used to this—was starting to twist again.

And since it was a bomb mix, the alcohol was hitting her way faster than expected...

“Ah~ I’m sooo happyyy...”

If she could just eat delicious things and live freely like this every day, life would be perfect.

In the novels, there was always somebody who got handed an OP skill and built up a massive harem like it was nothing.

Sure, she was the one who kicked that kind of protagonist route to the curb, but she still needed someone to blame right now.

“Ughhh! Honestly, shouldn't I get, like, a trait reroll or something?! You piece of shit god!!!”

She didn’t even know why she’d ended up in this world.

She’d done her best to survive here.

All the money she’d saved up? Gone—turned into scraps of paper the second she landed in this isekai.

And stuck in the body of an alcoholic, no less.

...Okay, sure, being a moderately cute girl wasn’t that bad. But it’s not like it helped her make money or anything.

This world was already full of good-looking characters. She didn’t exactly stand out.

“Maybe I should just become a streamer or something!”

Not that she had the money for proper streaming gear.

And even if she did, it’s not like she had the charisma or gaming skills to talk in front of a crowd.

Her peak rank had been, what—Gold?

No way she was gonna do better in this body.

With a dramatic middle finger aimed at the sky, she downed the rest of the bottle.

It was sweet—so sweet, she ended up drinking it way too fast.

“Hehehe~”

She hadn’t accounted for the fact that bomb drinks hit harder than regular ones, and by the time she finished, only a few drops clung to the inside of the empty bottle.

Drunk off her ass, she passed out.

Maybe it was karma for cursing the gods.

Gurgle.

“Uugh... my stomach...”

“Yes, it’s food poisoning.”

“Seriously...?”

The next day, she ended up with a full-blown case of food poisoning.