I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 6

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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 6. The White Chick and the Black Raven

What was she going on about all of a sudden?

“Emotions can be controlled. You don’t have to rely on the Curse like that.”
“Bianca, aren’t you misunderstanding something?”

Krasch said as much, but Bianca merely shook her head.

“I’ll visit often. If I tell Father, he’ll understand—after all, I’m your fiancée. He’ll let me settle somewhere not far from here.”
“You’ve never seemed particularly keen on being my fiancée, though.”
“That’s true, but I won’t abandon someone in need.”

She wasn’t denying that the engagement felt unwelcome.

Krasch fell silent, astounded, then released a bitter sigh.

The goddess of the north seemed to have made a rather substantial misunderstanding.

From the beginning, Bianca had always tended to fixate on one thing and then accept it as gospel.

Lacking emotion, the moment her reason reached a conclusion, she couldn’t bring herself to doubt it.

‘There’s no helping it.’

Krasch activated Black Hood beneath the table, hand lowered from sight.

A safe lock materialized above Bianca’s chest.

That lock represented the difficulty level required to steal using Black Hood.

Bianca’s lock consisted of a double mechanism.

Most Curses, of course, had neither locks nor safes at all.

But Bianca had carried her Curse with her since the moment of her birth until now.

Therefore, she did not undervalue the Curse as others did.

Just as she would never undervalue the hands and feet bound to her own body, she did not undervalue her Curse.

‘Value is always relative, after all.’

Bianca’s Curse held quite a high place of value for her.

And that was why the double lock had manifested in that form.

‘Create conditions.’

So to unlock that mechanism, Krasch generated conditions.

A double lock meant two conditions, certainly.

And the first of those conditions suddenly materialized before his eyes.

[Become Bianca’s ‘friend’.]

A tsk of disapproval echoed through Krasch’s mind.

This was why the difficulty of stealing varied so wildly depending on what one sought to take.

To steal from someone, that someone had to let their guard down.

And to accomplish that, one had to satisfy the conditions most likely to induce such carelessness.

In Bianca’s case, the first condition was friendship.

‘A friend to the White Ghost. How unexpected.’

Fiancés were easy enough to manage, but friends were difficult.

She felt nothing, after all—her capacity for genuine interest was far too rare.

‘At minimum, I should keep her close.’

Sending her back to Hadenhartz now would only bring her inexorably closer to becoming the White Ghost.

‘The lock can only be opened gradually, it seems.’

Not only to prevent her from becoming the White Ghost—

but because he needed her curse, specifically, to use the Extreme Blood Poison.

“Of course. Well, thank you. It’s reassuring to have my fiancé visiting often.”

So Krasch had agreed.

He would take his time stealing her curse.

But then came a variable Krasch had never anticipated.

Adults preferred to move matters along quickly, and the head of Hadenhartz most of all preferred everything to proceed at speed.

And as a result, after words had passed between Hadenhartz and Valheim,

Bianca came to stay in a room at Cheongsong Manor.

“Good day.”

Seeing Bianca arrive with her attendants, trunks in tow, Krasch’s expression went blank.

He’d heard the news, but somehow he hadn’t believed she would actually be staying at Cheongsong Manor.

“Bianca, are you sure you’re all right leaving home?”

Bianca was only twelve years old.

Surely this was still an age when a child would cherish being in her parents’ embrace.

“I’m fine with it.”

And Bianca answered without a trace of feeling.

To her, who felt nothing even for family, such bonds were merely shadows.

What could he do about it?

There was no backing out of a family obligation.

In the end, Krasch decided to simply think of it as gaining a younger sister.

And so a new family came to Cheongsong Manor that day.

* * *

Time flowed like an arrow.

The sweltering heat of midsummer gave way to autumn, and winter drew near.

Moreover, word spread that a new academy would open next year.

An academy established by the Four Great Kingdoms and the Empire in concert, designed to nurture talent capable of standing against the World Erosion.

The opening of Raheln Academy.

‘Soon, then.’

Raheln Academy’s minimum entrance age was fifteen, its maximum twenty.

Which meant Krasch, who would turn fourteen next year, still had time to spare.

‘I need to grow stronger before then.’

Raheln Academy housed numerous members of the Generation of Sky.

And what Krasch coveted was nothing other than their Skills.

The Generation of Sky invariably possessed absurdly powerful Skills.

Moreover, since Krasch had lived alongside them, he knew their weaknesses better than anyone.

All the more reason stealing their Skills would be easy.

He felt no guilt.

The Generation of Sky were the ones Krasch despised most of all.

“Tch.”

His concentration wavered as his mind drifted elsewhere, and his Aura stiffened. Krasch’s eyes snapped open.

A pale blue mist streamed from his lips.

Krasch had advanced from Expert threshold to the early stages in a remarkably short time.

Yet even with Secret Technique manuals at his disposal, he was beginning to feel the weight of his own limitations.

He needed to master the Extreme Blood Poison soon.

‘That’s enough for today.’

Krasch walked out of the training grounds.

There, seated in a chair before the training hall entrance, sat a young girl absorbed in a book.

She felt his gaze and lifted her eyes from the book, raising her head.

She soon spotted Krasch and lowered her head.

As she did, her hair—pure white as snow—spilled down past her shoulders.

Every time he saw that hair color, it reminded him of what she would be called in the future: the White Ghost.

For that pure white hair was the very symbol of the White Ghost.

“Have you finished training?”
“You were waiting for me?”
“Yes.”

Watching her say it so casually, Krasch scratched the back of his head.

There was nothing to say when she put it that way.

Ever since Bianca had come to stay at Cheongsong Manor that day, she had followed Krasch around like a chick after its mother.

The reason stemmed from her concern that Krasch might take his own life due to depression.

But unlike her uncle, she didn’t truly understand depression and such things.

So she was working only with the fragmentary information she’d heard from her uncle.

That one piece of knowledge: a person with depression must not be left alone.

This was the only thing she knew for certain.

She had a tendency to obsess blindly once she fixed on something, and now she gazed at Krasch blankly.

Krasch, meanwhile, had been staring back at her just as vacantly before he snapped back to himself.

He wasn’t sure why, but whenever he was around Bianca, his mind went foggy.

Was her blankness rubbing off on him?

“I’m going to wash up.”
“All right.”

Bianca closed her book and stood.

Judging by her movements, it looked like she was planning to wait outside the bathhouse again.

When would he ever meet her criteria for a friend, anyway?

Krasch was thinking that perhaps they should go out somewhere soon.

“Young Master Krasch.”

Aliord appeared before him.

Aliord seemed to have something on his mind.

The moment Krasch’s expression turned questioning, Aliord thrust a letter into his hands.

“An invitation has arrived from the Sanctuary of Stars.”
“The Sanctuary of Stars?”

Krasch’s expression tightened slightly as he heard such a grandiose name.

It was simply because he couldn’t remember what it was.

“As I understand it, sir, it’s a gathering of the Staron Kingdom’s nobility in their teens. Apparently they hold a party every year.”

Krasch came to understand only belatedly.

Now that she mentioned it, yes—such a thing did exist.

Though he’d never once attended.

‘The memories from this period are far too vague.’

It was the time when he spent day after day at Cheongsong Manor, never setting foot outside, doing nothing but lamenting his life.

Details of events that had occurred during this time remained murky in Krasch’s mind.

After all, this was the period when he had deliberately shut his ears to the outside world, having no desire to hear of it.

‘By contrast, I remember every last incident that happened at the Academy.’

In every way, his past was a source of regret.

“Decline it. I don’t have time to waste on something like that—”

Then something flickered across Krasch’s mind.

“Aliord, how many of Staron’s noble youth typically attend the Sanctuary of Stars?”
“Unless it’s an unusual circumstance, sir, most of them attend. Such gatherings are how futures are forged, after all.”

After hearing this honest answer, Krasch folded his arms and tapped his index finger absently for a moment.

Would she be going?

Krasch glanced sideways at Aliord and nodded.

Still, he was the master of this household in name at least—he supposed he ought to play that role.

That way, Aliord wouldn’t harbor any doubts either.

“Then tell them I’ll attend as well.”
“Very good, sir.”

Aliord, offering no objection to Krasch’s decision, turned toward Bianca.

“I’m going too.”

And so Bianca declared, quite naturally, that she would be accompanying him.

She had no intention of letting Krasch out of her sight alone—not when she never knew when he might try to end it all.

“I understand. I shall inform them that both of you will be attending.”
“Right. Let me know the details later.”

Watching Aliord depart, Krasch stretched his limbs.

Come to think of it, this would be the first time he’d ventured outside since the regression.

‘In a sense, I’m maintaining the state of affairs from before the regression.’

Things are vastly different now from then.

Of course, the truth remained unchanged: she could only grow stronger by studying the forbidden arts as well.

‘Still, I’ve learned one more Secret Technique recently.’

Krasch resolved not to let anxiety take hold.

“Krasch.”

At Bianca’s call, Krasch turned his head.

He looked at Bianca with a puzzled expression—there was something vacant about her today—and she spoke.

“When you go to the Sanctuary of Stars, everyone will try to criticize you behind your back.”

Bianca, devoid of emotion, simply voiced her thoughts without filter.

What she said would certainly be true.

“I imagine so.”

And this was something Krasch had already foreseen.

‘Something similar to Raheln Academy, though perhaps not quite as intense.’

Back then, the Empire’s princess, Sigrin, had been his enemy; this time, it would be the young heirs of the noble houses of Staron Kingdom.

Everyone knew the rumor that Krasch had been abandoned in Valheim.

There would be no one fawning over him, and precious few with a kind word.

“Bianca, wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t go?”

As his betrothed, even if she attended the gathering, she would hear nothing pleasant.

“No. I’ll go with you.”

But Bianca would not yield on this point.

“A betrothed is meant to protect her betrothed.”

Bianca moved according to the education she had received until now.

Because she lacked emotion, only rational judgment and her education comprised her being.

A doll’s eyes—a fitting name for such a Curse.

‘The vocabulary and behavior too mature for a twelve-year-old child—all of it stems from that absence of emotion.’

Perhaps it was because he felt ashamed of how harshly he had treated Bianca before the regression, and now found himself unexpectedly apologetic whenever he looked at her.

Krasch had always been weak when it came to Bianca.

He lifted his hand and gently stroked her hair.

“I’m asking as Bianca’s person—not as your betrothed, but as you. What do you think?”

Bianca looked quietly up at Krasch, whose hand rested on her head.

Krasch often sent her such looks of regret, his hand stroking her head.

These past few months.

Unlike the way he treated the butlers and maidservants, he showed an unusual gentleness toward her alone.

Because of that, his demeanor had changed so much that her worst first impression of him seemed to fade from memory.

‘Bianca, have you eaten.’

‘You’ve nearly finished that book. Shall we go to the library.’

‘You can sleep longer. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll train out front, so rest more.’

After mulling over these months of daily life with Krasch, she no longer disliked him.

Bianca had never received such kindness even in Hadenhartz, and so his actions struck her as remarkable.

It made sense, though—just as Krasch was a son cast aside, she too was a daughter sent away through a marriage of convenience.

“I’ll come with you.”

So Bianca spoke.

Whether she was his fiancée or not, her desire to help Krasch remained the same.

“Even as someone who isn’t your fiancée, I’ll follow you, Krasch.”

Hearing her words, Krasch blinked blankly and removed his hand from her head.

Had he taken offense.

Thinking she might have overstepped the bounds of what a fiancée should do, Bianca became cautious—and Krasch turned away.

“All right, then. Let’s do it that way.”

And with that, his permission was granted.

Watching him thus, Bianca once again trailed after him like a chick after a hen.

Following him somehow made her steps feel lighter.

Though she did get scolded later for thoughtlessly trying to follow him into the bathing chamber.

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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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