I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 47

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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 47. Shalott vs. Krasus

After laying Bianca down in her room, Krasus fell into thought.

‘I never imagined I’d end up sparring with Shalott.’

In all his years alive, Krasus had never once faced Shalott in a match.

That was only natural.

From the moment Krasus was born, Shalott was already in full bloom of her talent — comparison was impossible.

And so a circumstance warranting a match between them had never arisen.

Krasus hadn’t sought it out, and Shalott had no reason to spar with him.

Which made it all the more ironic that today would be his first time facing her in combat.

‘Am I actually nervous?’

For some reason, his palms had grown clammy.

He’d spent his whole life overshadowed by Shalott.

That shadow had followed him so long that even the thought of sparring with her set his nerves on edge.

‘Getting nervous over a match—that’s ridiculous.’

The moment Krasus reached to clasp his own hands, he felt something soft against his palm.

Looking up, he found Bianca had wrapped her hand around his.

“Krasus, your hands are sweating,” she murmured.

She spoke with her eyes half-open.

Normally Bianca would have pulled away, complaining about the moisture, but this time she held his hand quietly.

Watching her, Krasus felt his tension drain away.

‘Right. Maybe she’s just taken an interest in me.’

Shalott had always been a battle enthusiast.

She’d worn a deliberately provocative outfit at the Star Holy Ground, calculated to provoke him into a confrontation.

Her newfound interest in him stemmed from his victory over the Dosalgyeon.

By then, Bianca had fallen asleep, still holding his hand.

Just sleep-talk, perhaps.

Bianca, who had been gravely injured by the Dosalgyeon, was still recovering.

Seeing how much she’d been sleeping lately, Krasus gently stroked her hair once before rising from the bed.

As he stepped outside, Aliod was waiting for him.

“Krasus.”
“It’s just a sparring match with your sister. Why worry so much you’d come all the way here?”

Though Krasus spoke lightly, Aliod’s expression remained clouded.

He too was worried about Krasus.

‘Right. This is what it’s always felt like.’

Having recently beaten down a few prodigies, he’d apparently forgotten his true nature for a moment.

The real reason he’d come to be called a Half-portion had nothing to do with anyone but Shalott.

‘It’s time to overcome this trauma.’

Krasus had no intention of becoming another Belokin.

Though it was merely a sparring match, he’d resolved here and now to make a direct assault on his fear.

‘I may not win, but I won’t break.’

Krasus made his way straight to the Training Ground.

The snow in the outdoor Training Ground had nearly all melted, leaving it pristine and clean.

There, Shalott stood alone.

She stood with noble composure, her wooden training sword directed downward, her hair drifting slowly in the still-cold breeze.

That alone cast an aura of intimidation.

In that moment, her eyes slowly lifted.

Her blue irises—identical to Krasus’s own—blazed with sudden clarity.

“Youngest, you came. I thought you’d run. Well done.”
“If I ran, you’d chase me to the depths of hell itself.”
“Understanding my nature well enough deserves points too.”

She smiled slowly as she spoke.

“Do you have multiple strategies in mind?”

I wish your perceptiveness were a bit duller.

“I won’t go easy on you. If you don’t impress me, I really will beat you senseless.”

Shalott raised her wooden sword as she spoke.

“Show me your full power.”

Those words were sincere.

If he tried to hold anything back, Shalott might well pummel him into the ground with all her strength.

‘Besides, I had no intention of holding back anyway.’

He’d known long ago she wasn’t an opponent he could survive against by hiding anything.

Above all, it was Shalott.

‘I’m hardly the type to go around announcing what I possess. There’s nothing to hide.’

From the start, she had never had a single friend.

A lion had no reason to cultivate friendship among a pack of foxes.

“Shall I use a real sword?”
“Yes—this is a match to gauge your true skill.”

A wooden training sword posed no particular disadvantage for Shalott.

And so Krasus exhaled and settled into his stance.

“Understood.”
“Then we begin.”

Shalott held her wooden blade loose at her side, adopting a posture of utter defenselessness.

Seeing this, Krasus merely gazed at her, unmoving.

One minute passed. Two. Three.

By the time three minutes had slipped away—

Shalott’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Aren’t you going to attack?”

Krasus said nothing.

He only watched Shalott, perfectly still.

Without even drawing his blade.

Shalott tapped the ground with her wooden sword.

The provocation was crude, almost insulting in its obviousness.

Shalott swallowed a hollow laugh.

‘Cunning little wretch.’

Krasus had no reason to strike first.

She had requested the match, not he.

“I’ve ceded the opening move.”

The moment Shalott spoke, her form blurred.

In the instant her feet scraped the ground—

Her blade cut through the air and drove straight toward Krasus’s throat.

She had conceded him the first strike.

But she had no intention of showing mercy.

Her blade hurtled toward Krasus’s neck, aimed to end it in a single stroke.

Wheeeee!

Krasus had been waiting for this moment.

That’s why he’d been suppressing the Sword Spirit’s Geohap-sool relentlessly, holding it back with sheer force of will.

Shrieeeeee!

And the instant Shalott extended her blade.

Heat boiling up from every fiber of his body burned away the World Erosion and shattered the limits of his flesh.

Without a single second of hesitation, Krasus triggered Melwha Chimseok.

In that instant, his vision accelerated.

His sixth sense, drawn to its absolute limit, barely caught Shalott’s wooden training sword.

‘One second.’

At the same time, inside Krasus’s scabbard.

Between the torrential aura churning for the Geohap-sool, the flames of Melwha Chimseok seeped in.

The black fire engulfed the scabbard’s interior explosively in an instant, and that explosive force shattered every limit in a flash.

In that moment, when the Melwha Chimseok seeping into the scabbard’s interior became a massive explosion.

Whoosh!

With the briefest sound of flames roaring, Krasus’s blade unsheathed.

Melwha Chimseok.

First Form.

Melwha Unsheathing.

Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash!

Krasus’s extended blade collided with Shalott’s, unleashing a violent inferno.

But the real damage was elsewhere.

At the heart of the sound.

Krasus’s blade was burrowing into Shalott’s wooden training sword, grinding it away.

A Geohap-sool bearing Melwha Chimseok, amplified by aura gathered to the absolute limit.

If he’d drawn out his aura properly from the start with killing intent, it would be different.

But this was, after all, a training match.

So Shalott’s wooden training sword, not fully wrapped in protective aura, was being mercilessly ground to dust.

Shalott’s eyes widened slightly as she recognized this fact.

Because she had already anticipated what Krasus was aiming for.

Crack!

At the same moment, she twisted her trajectory and slipped free from Krasus’s blade before losing the entire edge of her wooden training sword.

Crash-crash-crash-crash!

Simultaneously, the black flames of Krasus’s Melwha Unsheathing, brimming with full power, blazed past Shalott’s side and collided with the Training Ground’s wall.

That she had altered the flow of force merely by deflecting the blade was swordplay that bordered on virtuosity.

At the same time, her eyes transformed.

All-out commitment from the start.

She felt a surge of exhilaration as Krasus delivered his full-power strike without hesitation.

But there was one thing she had failed to perceive.

Though Shalott had twisted the trajectory of her blade to evade Krasus’s sword, his blade had no intention of stopping.

‘Two seconds.’

In that instant, Krasus’s consciousness compressed, plunging into a space of crystalline focus.

Deep within Krasus’s mind, a single drop of water falling at a lakeside rippled outward to encompass the whole.

Soon it surged up as though awakening Krasus’s spirit.

Upon the blade Krasus was bringing down.

A storm of Aura suddenly swept upward and met the Melwha Chimseok.

Alongside the brilliant flames of black fire burning in splendor, Krasus’s eyes ignited in crimson light.

The Single Blade.

And the storm within the Training Ground descended in a fury.

The supreme overhead strike that erupted from Krasus’s blade shattered half the Training Ground and opened its jaws toward Shalott.

Following the unsheathing, the Single Blade came next.

For Krasus, it meant wringing his body dry to unleash a killing technique twice in succession.

Before that Single Blade, Shalott swung her half-destroyed wooden training sword horizontally, attempting to parry the strike head-on.

The blade that had twisted away to evade him returned at miraculous speed.

Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash!

In that moment, the black flames spiraling around the Single Blade scattered and collided with Shalott’s wooden sword.

This was the Single Blade that had blown away even the Heavenly Eye, strengthened by Crimson Garden, in a single strike.

No matter how remarkable Shalott’s wooden training sword was, it could not withstand that force, and roughly half of it scattered into the air once more.

Centered on Shalott, the storm of the Single Blade erupted, tearing apart everything around it.

Yet the ground beneath her feet remained pristine and intact.

Only when the storm of Il-geom had expended its full force and dissipated.

Krasus had vanished from Shalott’s line of sight.

But in his place, the blade that had left his hand was hurtling toward her face in a straight line.

Shalott stifled a laugh.

Directly beneath the blade, Krasus was driving toward her with both fists clenched.

‘He deliberately chipped the Wooden Training Sword twice over, waited until my blade was furthest from my body, threw it, and attacked from below in the same moment.’

A bright smile spread across Shalott’s lips.

Pure joy flooded her face.

“Excellent!”

In that instant, an Aura Blade erupted from the wooden sword.

A pure manifestation of Aura—something only those who had reached Master grade could create.

The moment it appeared, the length of the wooden sword became meaningless.

The world around Shalott fell silent.

In that hush, Krasus’s movements and the blade flying toward her slowed to a crawl.

Shalott’s Aura had seized control of everything around her in an instant.

Within it, her blade met Krasus’s sword first—the one he’d sent stretching toward her.

Krasus’s sword twisted pathetically off its trajectory and shot skyward.

Yet even as Shalott did this, Krasus’s fist had not yet reached her.

Such was the gap between them.

An overwhelming gulf—had Shalott so chosen, it would have ended in the first strike.

Shalott’s wooden sword, having parried Krasus’s blade, snapped back toward him in an instant.

The distance between Krasus’s fist and Shalott’s body: roughly fifty centimeters.

Yet it was a distance that no effort could bridge.

Not without a skill, at least.

‘Black Hood.’

The moment Krasus’s instinct barely grasped that Shalott had parried his sword.

His Black Hood activated.

A move that even Shalott had failed to perceive.

Within that move.

His sword was gripped in Krasus’s outstretched fist.

In that instant, Shalott’s eyes widened.

Clang! Boom-crash!

With the sound of something colliding violently, Krasus rolled hard across the ground.

He lost his grip on the blade and, after tumbling for a stretch, managed to stop—but remained sprawled there, breathing roughly, unable to rise.

‘Three seconds.’

As the Melwha Chimseok faded, the heat drained from his body.

At the same moment, he lifted his head weakly, aware of how utterly spent he was.

Before Shalott lay the sword, fallen and abandoned.

Yet Shalott remained rooted in place, unable to move.

Naturally, not a single scratch marked her body.

Shalott possessed a vast, constant aura current that enveloped her at all times.

It was akin to her innate power itself, and this aura current could not be wounded by anything whose aura fell short of or failed to match her own.

Blessed by all the heavens with such natural talent, she was a figure of absolute perfection—incapable of receiving injury from those weaker than herself.

If Krasus had ever been asked what the most absurdly unfair aspect of Shalott was, he would have pointed to that very current.

His blade had made contact with that current.

The Master-class aura of Shalott.

Naturally, it was a realm he could never pierce through.

And yet it had made contact.

That was the problem.

Because this current existed just above her skin.

Until now, she had never permitted contact with her current—not from those beneath her, not even from equals.

And yet Krasus had touched it.

Shalott’s gaze turned slowly toward him.

Even as his own blade came swinging toward him, Krasus had driven it forward without hesitation, unflinching.

Despite knowing full well the attack would not land.

What did that mean?

If the attack had connected—

—then perhaps Shalott too would have been wounded.

She had clearly held back from beginning to end.

He’d let his guard down, allowed her an opening, hadn’t drawn on his swordsmanship at all, and at the last moment had only summoned an Aura Blade.

Yet she’d gotten him.

That wasn’t supposed to happen to Shalott.

“Youngest, you——”
“Haha……”

In that moment, laughter spilled from Krasus’s lips.

Shalott stood frozen, watching him, and he spoke even as he laughed.

“I took one hit.”

With that, Krasus’s head drooped forward, and he went limp.

The cost of using Melwha Chimseok and Sword Spirit’s Geohap-sool, Il-geom, and Black Hood was steep.

Shalott, watching in silence, exhaled a long breath.

He’d given everything, burned himself out all on his own.

‘Selfish, isn’t it.’

That much, at least, he had in common with her.

Shalott, all her strength draining away, shook her head and moved toward him.

Then she glanced at his right arm.

From the look of that last attack, his right arm seemed to be working without trouble.

That was all she needed to know.

This match had been about confirming that, after all.

Just as Shalott reached down to lift him——

Someone burst forward in front of her.

Shalott’s eyes widened. The figure was none other than Krasus’s fiancée, Bianca.

“You.”
“I’m taking him.”

How long had she been watching?

She was so small that Shalott hadn’t sensed her presence at all; now Bianca grunted and strained to hoist Krasus up.

But Bianca was even smaller than Krasus—there was no way she could lift him.

Watching as Krasus was dragged along, his legs trailing across the floor, Shalott let out a soundless laugh.

Indeed, they made a fitting pair.

“Caw——”

In the midst of it all, the cry of a crow rang out once.

Shalott glanced at the raven perched near the ceiling of the Training Ground, then opened her mouth.

“Aliod.”
“Yes, Miss Shalott.”

The moment she called, Aliod appeared before her.

Seeing him, Shalott asked a question.

“Krasus said he means to go to Rahelern Academy, didn’t he.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”

At Aliod’s response, Shalott placed both hands on her hips.

Then, as if satisfied, she nodded and spun around sharply.

“Fine. You’ve worked hard while I’ve been here. Go on and catch up with Krasus.”

The instant she spoke those words, Aliod vanished.

Watching him go, she turned her steps toward the exit of Cheongsong Hall.

Three weeks remained until Rahelern Academy’s long-awaited first entrance ceremony.

It was tight, but enough.

Because it was Shalott.

—————
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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