I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 2. The Changed Half-Pun

The world was unfair and rotten.

It was a thought Krash returned to constantly.

He’d grasped this truth around the age of eight.

The day he picked up a sword and followed his older siblings.

On that day, Krash understood: the world had abandoned him.

Because the moment he wielded that blade, he felt utterly, miserably hopeless.

An eight-year-old child swinging a sword made little sense, to be fair.

But the house Krash belonged to was no ordinary place where such reasoning held sway.

The strongest house in the Staron Kingdom.

Valheim.

Every direct-line heir born there was a prodigy—every one of them brilliant.

Every one, that is, except for Krash—Valheim’s shameful youngest.

And yet he clawed his way forward, somehow scraping into the Sky Generation itself.

Only to have it end in betrayal by those he’d believed were his peers.

A body fit only to hold curses.

How pathetic a life it had been.

That’s what Krash had thought.

Until he opened his eyes today.

Flash!

Through his opening eyes, Krash saw the ceiling swimming hazily into focus.

Cold sweat drenched his entire body.

At the same moment, he saw his own hand stretched out before him.

The hand he’d thrust toward Asher in his final struggle.

Krash stared blankly at that hand, consciousness gradually returning.

Bzzzz—

The cry of cicadas drifted through the window, whispering into his ears.

Shafts of light flooding inward told him it was summer afternoon.

The oppressive heat peculiar to summer beaded sweat across his forehead.

The world crumbling toward oblivion had been a winter so bitterly cold it felt like the inverse of seasons.

His gaze drifted back to his hand.

“What…?”

Because the hand reflected in his eyes was completely intact.

Krash’s thoughts ground to a halt.

And in that moment, he realized something else.

The eye that should have been blind was seeing clearly now.

And that wasn’t all.

His entire body felt impossibly lighter than before, foreign in its lightness.

Drip.

A bead of sweat traced slowly down Krash’s forehead and across his cheek.

He looked around the room and recognized it.

This was the bedroom he’d stayed in when he’d lived with the Valheim house in the past.

What kind of situation was this?

The answer was simple.

‘Surely not.’

The Black Hood he’d channeled into the hand he stretched toward Asher at the end—

that skill of his, used on nothing but vague hope that he might steal another’s ability.

‘I took Asher’s Regression.’

The moment that realization hit him, a chill raced across his skin.

At the same time, Krash looked down at his hand.

He’d wondered, but he never expected he could actually steal a skill itself.

Krash clenched his fist tightly.

A thrill of triumph surged through his entire body—his final gamble had paid off.

‘I could have tested this earlier, actually.’

An ability that could steal even curses.

Perhaps being able to steal skills was a natural consequence all along.

But Krash hadn’t bothered to test it.

Even if he’d stolen a skill another had honed over a lifetime, he had no confidence he could wield it properly.

And besides, by the time he’d thought to wonder if he could steal skills too, his body was already ravaged by the curse.

Moreover, Krash’s Black Hood possessed a glaring weakness.

‘The difficulty of theft is ultimately relative to the target.’

A stone picked up from the road might be the most precious thing in the world to someone.

In such cases, even that single stone couldn’t be stolen easily with Black Hood.

‘When I activate Black Hood, a lock appears—and that lock is the condition.’

When Black Hood activates, the conditions imposed by the lock that materializes vary wildly.

And only by meeting those conditions could the lock open, revealing what lay inside.

That was precisely what Black Hood was.

‘Which means stealing an ability becomes exponentially harder.’

Of course, one’s own ability was the most precious thing to anyone.

Because of that, the difficulty of the conditions shot so high that theft became nearly impossible.

‘But what about this time?’

When Krash stole Asher’s Regression, he’d seen no lock at all.

He’d simply activated Black Hood and stolen Asher’s Regression.

How had that even been possible?

‘Perhaps…’

A thought flickered across Krash’s mind.

He’d sensed something faintly emanating from Asher.

A feeling that he was worn down, mechanically repeating tasks while staring blankly ahead.

From what Krash could tell, Asher had already lived through Regression countless times.

Regression was certainly something extraordinary.

But if one repeated it over and over, an ordinary mind couldn’t endure it.

Especially not in a world marching toward annihilation.

‘So Asher must have resorted to that choice—passing on three years of memories.’

Perhaps it was a desire to at least have someone beside him, even in another regression.

The problem was that Krash himself hadn’t even been treated as such a person.

‘Either way, Asher’s heart had already wanted to erase the ability of Regression.’

As a result, he’d been able to steal Regression so easily that not even a lock had formed.

‘To Asher, Regression was…’

Perhaps nothing but a curse.

A curse he wanted to escape by any means.

“Wait.”

Then a sudden thought flickered through Krash’s mind.

He had stolen Asher’s Regression and traveled to the past.

But what had happened to the Asher he knew?

‘When Black Hood steals something, it doesn’t remain with its original owner.’

If it remained, then it couldn’t be called stolen in the first place.

He had stolen Regression from Asher, so it was certain that Asher no longer possessed it.

Then did that mean the Asher he knew had remained in that previous iteration, the one crumbling into oblivion?

Before the World Erosion Meteor Shower cascading down as the world collapsed?

“Ha, haha.”

A hollow laugh began to leak from Krash’s lips.

“How fitting, Asher.”

Who could have predicted that the Regression you despised so much would ultimately betray you at the very end.

Krash rose from his seat with a sneer toward Asher.

He felt no pity for someone who had treated him as nothing but a tool.

In fact, shouldn’t he be the one receiving thanks?

After all, he had taken away the very Regression Asher hated so much.

‘So what year is it now.’

But Krash faced the same problem that plagued Asher.

It was the knowledge of this world’s apocalypse.

The ruin that even the Sky Generation could not prevent.

If he could not stop it, he would die as well.

“Damn it.”

Krash spat out a curse as he rose from the bed.

His body, modestly muscled, came into focus.

Without any innate talent, he had nonetheless swung a sword every day, determined simply to survive.

Compared to his brothers, his strength was pitiful, but at least he had built some minimum level of muscle through that effort.

But this wasn’t enough.

Krash’s eyes turned toward the full-length mirror that reflected his image.

He couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven.

Shorter than Krash remembered, with bright, eager blue eyes that seemed to gleam with clarity.

‘Can I stop it?’

He—who had been treated as nothing more than a vessel for absorbing curses.

Could he really prevent the world’s destruction?

As Krash wrestled with that question, his hands clenched into fists.

‘Stop talking nonsense.’

It wasn’t a matter of whether he could stop it. He had to.

If the world fell, he would die with it.

There was no choice.

With that resolve, Krash kicked open the door and strode out.

A desolate hallway came into view—one he hadn’t seen in a long time.

This was Cheongsong Hall, a place in Valheim where he had spent his childhood.

Though it was called Cheongsong Hall, it was more accurately described as the place where Valheim’s direct lineage exiled their most shameful members.

The hall was so modest that it was run by no more than one butler and three maids.

‘The fact that I’m here.’

It meant his Proof Ceremony at around age ten had been completed.

“Young master? Where are you going in such a hurry?”

At that moment, the butler spoke to him as he emerged.

The butler’s name was Alliod, distinguished by his white beard.

He was the butler assigned to follow Krash to Cheongsong Hall.

The moment Krash saw his face, his eyes widened.

‘So. Alliod was alive at this point.’

Because Alliod was the only butler in all of Valheim who had ever truly cared for him.

Krash called his name—truly, for the first time in what felt like ages.

“Alliod.”
“Yes, young master.”

Watching Alliod bow his head at the call, Krash felt his own lips curve into a smile.

“When do you think you’ll use the poison my third brother gave you—the one he wanted you to use to kill me, the family’s disgrace?”

Alliod’s face hardened, his expression turning rigid.

Krash continued to smile as he watched the butler.

Alliod, steward of Cheongsong Hall.

Around age fourteen, when poison given by his third brother had been slipped into the stew Krash was eating—the boy’s first betrayal since birth.

The very man responsible.

* * *

Alliod’s mind churned with confusion.

The Krash Valheim before his eyes was a direct heir of Valheim, assigned to him since birth.

The Staron Kingdom—the only realm that could stand as an equal to the world’s mightiest power, the Epania Empire.

And Staron could match the Empire for one reason alone: Valheim.

Every direct descendant born into that house possessed innate martial talent.

This was precisely why even the Empire dared not move against Staron.

Yet Krash Valheim alone was different.

Ordinarily, by the time a direct heir of Valheim reached ten years of age, countless divine beings would already have marked him, offering contracts with their terms.

For the gods, the stronger a contractor, the greater their own prestige—and so the direct heirs of Valheim always occupied the highest tier of divine interest.

But Krash Valheim was different.

The Proof Ceremony, passed down through the Valheim bloodline.

On the year he turned ten, at that very ceremony meant to demonstrate his excellence within the house of Valheim, Krash had failed to contract with a single divine being.

His innate martial talent was beneath contempt.

In the end, he was deemed a shame upon Valheim and cast into Cheongsong Hall.

For Alliod, his butler, it had been a cruel sentence as well.

If the direct heir he was bound to serve for life proved so worthless, his own future was equally sealed.

“Y-yes, young master, what do you mean by that?”

Alliod stammered the question toward Krash, bewilderment written across his face.

Until yesterday, Krash had worn the face of despair, behaving like a reckless vagrant.

He never imagined the boy would have noticed a proposal made mere days ago.

But that wasn’t all.

‘Something’s changed about him.’

Krash’s eyes had always seemed vacant, stripped of all will to live, devoid of any spark.

That very fact had driven Alliod to despair, yet today—something was different.

An oddly intense longing flickered in his eyes.

As though he’d become a different man overnight.

‘What in the world…?’

What had happened last night?

As far as he could recall, the only thing that had occurred was Krash growing weary as he swung his sword and finally succumbing to sleep.

While Alliod stood bewildered.

Krash slowly drew his hand across his brow.

Without the curse, his hair had a remarkably fine texture.

For all that his family was branded with disgrace, he remained a nobleman of standing in the Staron Kingdom, and his appearance had always received proper care.

Though it wouldn’t stay that way much longer—not if his heart continued to wither.

‘He’s bewildered.’

Watching Alliod’s face, Krash sensed that this time might be different.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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