I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 66

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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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Chapter 66. I’ve Come to Pick a Fight

One afternoon, at an Open Ground.

A woman was wielding a sword.

Her distinguishing feature was her short, bundled hair, streaked with black and gold.

Each time her blade flashed forward, the sharp whistle of cut air sang out clearly.

Then, cutting through the sound of the sword, footsteps rang out.

“Well, well—training every single day. So you’ve crossed into Master Beginner?”

At the same moment, a stocky man with a rather greedy grin emerged into view.

But the woman paid no mind to his arrival, continuing to swing her blade in silence.

The stocky man didn’t seem bothered; he simply dropped himself into a chair stationed at the training ground.

“Or maybe you challenged Nakcheon, got crushed, and now you’re trying to forget it by swinging that sword?”

The woman’s blade stopped abruptly.

Lacradi On—the woman called the Light of Masung Palace.

And the only one in Masung Palace to have set foot into Master Beginner.

Sweat poured from her like rain as her eyes slowly turned toward the stocky man.

Her gaze held displeasure, but the stocky man only chuckled at the sight.

“Don’t look at me like that with those pretty eyes. You’re getting my heart racing.”
“Derek, did you come here to pick a fight? The spot where you got hit for spouting nonsense before probably hasn’t even healed yet.”
“No, I overheard talk that would make our Lacradi On excited. Or maybe you’ve already heard?”

The one called Derek laughed heartily and rummaged through his pocket.

He produced a Paper Airplane he’d made and tossed it at Lacradi On with a whoosh.

Lacradi On caught the Paper Airplane and unfolded it.

She quickly realized it was a Notice.

“Word is, Balheim’s direct line is challenging Nakcheon. And they’re looking for companions to go along with them.”
“……What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Lacradi, it means you might not get another chance to challenge him, and it could all end.”

Lacradi On’s brow twitched.

Then, with a flick of her hand, she tore the paper and tossed it carelessly to the ground.

“It has nothing to do with me.”

Derek gazed at it quietly for a moment, then let out a sigh.

“Sigh… Lacradi, I know. I know how you felt that day when you fell to Nakcheon. That man is a Calamity. A monster. And I understand perfectly why you’ve been swinging that sword alone all this time—because you want to overcome that monster.”

Derek rose from his seat as he spoke.

“But how long do you intend to stay bound to Nakcheon? That’s just stubbornness, pure and simple. You could reach for so much more if you tried.”

Derek—once her colleague, now something else entirely.

He pitied her for how Nakcheon, that calamity, had tethered her to this life.

“Think about it this time. Once you see that outsized version of Nakcheon crumble before you, won’t your perspective shift?”

With that final word, Derek departed.

Lacradi On’s gaze, which had followed his retreating figure with quiet intensity, drifted toward the torn proclamation.

Nakcheon, broken.

She swallowed a hollow laugh.

Derek’s words would never come to pass.

Because before any matter of mere skill, Nakcheon was simply a phantom—impossible to cut down.

Just as her own blade could never shatter him no matter how much she trained, so too would Balheim arrive at the same futility, she was certain.

‘…For nothing, my training breaks off like this.’

With that thought souring her mood, she resumed her drills.

And so the hours stretched on until night had fallen.

Having wielded her sword all day into the darkness, she wiped the sweat from her brow.

Growl.

Her stomach’s protest suggested she needed to eat.

So she returned to her quarters to wash quickly, then made her way to the restaurant she frequented.

“Ha, that little squirt just sitting there vacant-eyed with his companion—hilarious!”
“Bringing down Nakcheon isn’t some stray rolling in from nowhere—it’s us from Pendalod. Where does Balheim get off grandstanding? Right, captain?”
“Obviously.”

At that moment, hearing the boisterous voices echoing from deeper within the restaurant, Lacradi On’s eyebrows twitched.

‘So there were already customers when I came to grab a late dinner.’

True enough—this restaurant was the finest in Masung Palace.

There was nothing strange about others dining here besides her.

Only that these happened to be people whose relations she’d never been fond of.

Pendalod—the faction gathered around Pendal, ranked Expert Supreme.

The mere fact that he’d named his team after himself spoke volumes about his ego.

And justifiably so, in truth.

Within Masung Palace, he reigned absolute like a king.

“Hm?”

The moment Lacradi On appeared, Pendal’s eyes snapped toward her.

Her grey hair caught the light, and beneath her half-unbuttoned shirt, the wolf tattoo—the symbol of Pendalod—was faintly visible.

Her face was flushed a vivid red; she was clearly quite drunk.

The moment Pendal saw Lacradi On, he grinned widely.

“Well, well—if it isn’t Lacradi On. Just coming back from training somewhere today, are you?”

Lacradi On ignored him and walked inside.

She settled into her usual seat, and Pendal rose from his chair with an ingratiating smirk.

“Don’t be so prickly. Let’s talk for a bit—we’re former colleagues, after all.”

Bottle of alcohol in hand, Pendal sidled up to the seat beside her, undeterred by her indifference.

“You’ve heard the news, haven’t you? That someone from Balheim’s direct line is challenging Nakcheon. The very Nakcheon whom even the Light of Masung Palace hasn’t dared to face.”
“…….”
“And the challenger is apparently still a child who hasn’t even come of age—knew nothing of who the Master of Masung Palace is, just stomping about like he owned the place.”

When word reached the Pendalod faction, they moved swiftly.

They warned everyone to keep off the recruitment notice that Balheim’s direct line was putting out.

Though it was his men who had acted on their own initiative, Pendal didn’t bother to stop them—he simply allowed it.

After all, he too resented Balheim for strutting about Masung Palace as though they owned it.

“……The Master of Masung Palace?”

At those words, Lacradi On finally spoke.

She turned to regard Pendal with eyes so cold and measured they seemed to cut through his idle prattle.

The chill in that gaze was enough to make even Pendal hesitate.

“Where exactly is that Master? You were there that day with me, Pendal. You faced Nakcheon yourself. And yet you still boast as if reaching the eighth floor of Masung Palace is something grand?”

Lacradi On stood at Master Beginner level.

She was already thirty years old.

In this vast world whose population numbered in the tens of millions, countless souls trained until their dying breath, yet fewer than ten thousand ever reached Master rank.

And the bitter truth was that more than half of even that number remained trapped in Master Beginner, gasping at the threshold.

The wall between Expert Supreme and Master was formidable.

But even steeper was the climb from Beginner to Intermediate.

Pendal himself was Expert Supreme.

Thanks to certain peculiar conditions, he could barely stand shoulder to shoulder with Lacradi On, yet even he struggled to break into Master rank at all.

For him to play at being the Master of Masung Palace was absurd.

“Is that so? Then what’s changed between you and me since that day?”

At Pendal’s question, Lacradi On’s lips pressed shut.

Pendal had abandoned further cultivation and spent the five years that followed focusing instead on building the Pendalod faction as though he were the master of Masung Palace himself.

Meanwhile, Lacradi On had never set down her sword, swinging the blade day after day even as her marriageable years slipped past.

Despite wielding her sword every single day since that moment, Lacradi On remained at the Master Beginner level.

And Pendal, who had devoted himself to building the Pendalod faction, still stood at Expert Supreme—unchanged from that day.

Neither of them had progressed beyond where they’d been then.

“No matter what we do, this wretched reality stays the same, doesn’t it?”

Lacradi On turned her gaze downward.

Though others revered the Master realm as something to aspire to.

Those who had actually reached Master understood the truth.

That to climb beyond it—that was the domain of true genius alone.

Lacradi On had struck that wall and could not pass.

“Lacradi On, face reality. No matter how hard you or I try, we’re trapped in this Masung Palace. We’ll never escape it.”

Pendal spoke those words, then lifted the bottle of alcohol from the table once more.

“…Even so.”

In that moment, Lacradi On’s mouth opened again.

“I’ll keep swinging my sword.”

Pendal, watching her, let his shoulders sag with a deflated expression.

“Fine, then.”

Thinking it a waste of strength on something pointless, Pendal turned back toward his seat.

He meant only to return to his faction and drink.

As he settled back into place, he noticed his faction had grown unusually quiet.

The moment he registered this oddness, a figure caught his eye.

Someone sitting in the seat he had just vacated.

“The talk is finished, I see?”
“You.”

The instant Pendal laid eyes on him, he began to recognize who stood before him.

That black hair. Those blue eyes.

It was unmistakable.

Krash Balheim.

A direct descendant of Balheim—the very one who had come seeking Masung Palace.

Pendal’s brow furrowed.

That casual composure, that gaze fixed upon him—it was the reaction of someone who knew everything.

‘So the kid knows I was the one who interfered.’

Pendal sauntered forward and came to stand before Krash.

Though Krash was still in his growth years, Pendal—taller by half a head at least—used that height to project an air of intimidation.

“And what business brings a direct descendant of Balheim to us?”

At the mention of Balheim, Lacradi On belatedly glanced over her shoulder toward them.

Regardless, Krash rose calmly from his chair.

“I’m ordinarily a merciful sort.”

The words came out of nowhere, abrupt and deliberate.

“But those who obstruct me—they get no quarter.”
“Ha. So you want to have a match?”

Pendal’s face twisted into a sneer.

In Pendal’s eyes, Krash registered as someone who had only just stepped into Expert Supreme rank.

For his age, certainly—the boy was a prodigy of remarkable caliber.

Well, naturally.

He was a direct descendant of Balheim, after all.

But that meant the reverse was also true: right now, Krash was beneath him.

Even at the same Expert Supreme rank, the gap between one who had just crossed the threshold and one who had accumulated experience there was unmistakable.

Pendal, though blocked by the wall that was the Master rank, stood at its very threshold.

The difference in their levels was crystal clear.

“Expert Supreme practitioners aren’t common. Your skill would easily merit recruitment into the Balheim Knight Order.”

Even as Pendal’s menace hung in the air, Krash continued speaking with perfect ease.

Pendal looked at him, uncertain what the boy was driving at, and that was when Krash’s lips curved into a smile.

“So Pendal, I want to hire you for the Balheim Knight Order.”

Pendal faltered.

The Balheim Knight Order.

No matter how much one reigned as king within Masung Palace, joining the structure of Balheim was something else entirely.

Masung Palace, in the end, could never escape its treatment as little more than a back-alley gang.

In fact, Pendal had experienced it countless times before—knights beneath his station treating him like some street rabble.

Yet the reality was that he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about them, not with their family standing.

But if he entered Balheim?

Every knight who’d looked down on him would bow before him instead.

For a moment, greed flickered across Pendal’s eyes.

He’d already taken all the power and wealth Masung Palace had to offer.

What could fill him now was nothing but the hunger for prestige.

“…Is that really true?”
“Yeah. You can bring all these bastards with you too.”

At the offer to hire even the whole Pendalod gang together, Pendal swallowed hard.

Before those greedy eyes, Krash smiled slowly.

“I think the Knight Order should be called the Hound Order. Barking like a dog suits you perfectly.”

But the moment the words that followed left his lips, Pendal’s eyes went rigid.

At the same time, anger began to settle across his face, slow and deliberate.

“…Are you mocking me right now?”

Krash turned to face him, all laughter gone from his expression.

When Pendal was strutting around Masung Palace calling himself a king, where was that eagerness? But the moment Balheim’s offer came, his eyes lit up—that hypocrisy made Krash’s skin crawl.

So he decided to make one thing clear.

“Yeah, I’m mocking you. Idiot.”

Provocation was his specialty, after all.

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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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