I Became the 101st Hero – Chapter 2

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Wjin
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The words I had spoken echoed in my head.

‘You’re screwed now, Allen.’

But it was me who was screwed.

No, now that I am Allen Blake, did it turn out this way because of what I said?

“Ha…”

I let out a long sigh as I crouched down by the well after setting down the tin bucket.

I felt like putting a cigarette in my mouth.

Not that I had any, and with this kid’s body, I couldn’t even smoke if I wanted to.

‘How did this happen?’

Allen’s long blonde hair swayed in the wind before my eyes.

It was a bit dull for blonde hair, but that wasn’t important.

The important thing was that I was now possessing the body of Allen Blake.

‘Damn it.’

There were no signs.

Nor was there any reason for me to possess Allen Blake.

The moment I started the game, I simply woke up in Allen Blake’s body.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

I gritted my teeth.

To passersby, it would look like I was just staring blankly into space, but a single sentence was floating before my eyes.

It was the sentence I had seen countless times while raising Allen Blake.

A sentence with no beginning or end, simply telling me to become a hero.

I knew. I knew that achieving that goal was near impossible.

No, for now, it was fine to even say it was impossible. No user had ever achieved it anyway.

‘I know it’s impossible, but…’

I didn’t want to give up without even trying.

Because I was different from Allen Blake.

Maybe it was possible.

‘It’s not like becoming a hero is that difficult.’

There were roughly a thousand heroes.

It would be difficult to become one of the top one hundred high-ranking heroes, but becoming a regular hero was practically guaranteed as long as you could enter the Hero Academy.

‘In the end, the important thing is how to get into the Hero Academy.’

They say that graduating from the Hero Academy guarantees becoming a hero, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

At least, not for Allen.

In Allen’s current state, it seemed like he would die before he even reached the entrance exam.

I needed to get stronger. At least strong enough to enter the Hero Academy.

And one of the ways to get stronger was right there on my arm.

I carefully rolled up my sleeve and checked what was inside.

A stigma.

One of the few weapons given to the trash character Allen Blake, and my last hope.

One more thing I found out was that I could check my status through the stigma.

‘Status.’

I could understand the stats since those were Allen Blake’s original stats.

But there was one part I couldn’t understand.

‘What the hell is this Absolute Obedience?’

There was a trait I had never seen before.

Not only had I never seen it while raising other characters, but to my knowledge, Allen never started with a trait.

In that case, this is…

‘Is this a trait that appeared because of me?’

I immediately checked the effect of the trait [Absolute Obedience].

Are you kidding me?

In my current situation, where I was possessing Allen Blake, it was a completely useless trait. I was filled with resentment, having hoped it might be a trait that allowed me to control others.

‘Wait a minute?’

Come to think of it, the text for [Absolute Obedience] felt familiar.

Soon, I was able to figure out why it felt so familiar.

‘That blessing!’

Could it be that that’s what it meant?

If so, does that mean that absolutely obeying my commands meant…

Possessing me into Allen Blake?

‘These scammers…’

I was speechless with disbelief.

I didn’t expect this at all.

This was the moment when the back of my head, which had continued to believe in the developers of Hundred Braves until the very end, finally shattered.

‘No, this is not the time to be like this.’

One thing was for sure, this trait was useless.

Then only one thing remained that I could truly rely on.

The stigma. I looked at the stigma section below the trait status.

SP stood for Sacred Point. It was also called Faith.

It was a point that could be earned by defeating monsters, clearing quests, and achieving achievements.

And using those points, you could acquire traits or skills embedded in the stigma.

The problem was that Allen’s own stigma was useless.

[Mark of ??? (Large)]

Inherited Skills: None

Inherited Traits: None

An empty mark with no inherited skills or traits.

I was dumbfounded when I first saw it.

Because I had truly never seen a mark like this before.

With his trash stats and this kind of mark, I even wondered what kind of unique growth elements were in store for him.

The reality was that he was a character who couldn’t grow in the first place.

Still, I had other inherited stigmas.

Right now, only the first inherited stigma, the small mark of the rose, was activated.

Please let there be a decent skill or trait.

A sigh escaped my lips. Of all things, swordsmanship.

Of course, even B-rank swordsmanship was quite powerful at this point in time.

It’s a level of swordsmanship that ordinary swordsmen without stigmas could only achieve in their twilight years.

But still, being only B-rank was a major limitation.

It might be useful compared to an ordinary person without a stigma, but among high-ranking heroes, no, even among upper-level regular heroes, swordsmen who surpassed [Swordsmanship (A)] were a dime a dozen.

Furthermore, since it was a skill acquired through a stigma rather than direct experience, it wouldn’t be easy to raise it to A-rank.

‘Should I have raised Swordsmanship to SS after all?’

The original Mark of the Rose had [Swordsmanship (S+)].

It dropped to B-rank when it was inherited.

If I had raised it to SS, the drop would have been the same, but a more useful level of swordsmanship would have been inherited.

Still, it wasn’t a complete loss.

Like I said, [Swordsmanship (B)] wasn’t unusable, and the inherited trait was a success.

[Precociousness (Small)]

Of course, there were many other skills and traits in the large Mark of the Rose that could be considered successful, but among them, [Precociousness (Small)] could be called a jackpot.

It was a growth support skill that would allow Allen’s insignificant body to overcome its limits and aid in his growth.

‘I’m 90SP short.’

If he was a character that started with a lot of SP, I could have learned this trait right away, but Allen wasn’t one of them.

‘So how do I earn SP…?’

That’s when it happened.

“Hey, Allen!”

I heard a voice calling my name from somewhere.

I hurriedly rolled down my sleeve and turned towards the direction of the voice.

There was a group of children.

“What are you spacing out for?”

Fortunately, all of Allen Blake’s memories remained intact.

I didn’t know the exact principle behind it, but I could remember them vividly as if they were originally my own memories.

However, that didn’t mean I had completely assimilated with Allen Blake.

‘These guys…’

They were the same kids who used to pick on Allen.

The kid who seemed to be their leader pointed a stick he was holding like a sword at me and said,

“Are you coming too?”

‘Coming where…’

That’s when it happened.

A notification suddenly popped up.

‘This is…’

A quest.

Even the content was the same as Allen Blake’s first quest in the game.

Just one wolf at that. Moreover, the danger level was only D.

The danger level was determined based on the character’s current stats and the environment.

Although it wasn’t absolute, a danger level of D meant that the probability of failure was practically nonexistent.

Even so, Allen always stubbornly refused this quest.

That’s how cowardly Allen was as a character.

The children, perhaps mistaking my silence for fear, began to snicker.

“You’re going to make up an excuse about fetching water and run away again, aren’t you?”

But I’m different.

Yeah, that’s what I didn’t like about this.

Why wouldn’t he go because he was scared of something like this?

“As expected, there’s no way Coward Allen would come…”

“I’ll go.”

“What?”

“I said I’m going. What? Are you deaf?”

The leader kid, who had a stupid look on his face for a moment, soon burst into laughter.

“Good. Looks like you’ve finally discovered the joy of adventure.”

As if there’s any childish reason like that.

I just wanted to earn SP.

And there was nothing better than a quest to earn SP.

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The children who had set off from the village walked for quite a while.

They seemed to be mindful of me, who had never followed them before.

The kid who seemed to be the leader whispered from behind the leader,

“Hey, aren’t we going too far this time?”

“Shut up. He’ll hear you. We’ve always come this far.”

“But the adults said there are chaos beasts near the barrier…”

“So what if there are? We’ll just beat them up.”

Beat up chaos beasts? You?

I almost said those words, but I held back.

Chaos beasts were monsters that lived outside the barrier, which was humanity’s last line of defense. They were powerful beings equivalent to monsters in other games.

At least powerful enough that the village kids wouldn’t stand a chance.

‘The one popping out this time isn’t one of those, it’s just an ordinary wolf.’

I chuckled to myself.

“By the way, isn’t he acting strange today? He’s a bit different than usual.”

“I know, right? Should we try scaring him? I bet he’ll wet himself and cry like he always does.”

Listening to their pathetic conversation, I continued walking through the forest with the children.

Exotic trees that exuded an atmosphere completely different from what I was used to seeing back in Korea.

It was a sight to behold, but for some reason, the tension gripping my body didn’t allow for such leisure.

“Look at him. He’s scared stiff even though there’s nothing there.”

Nothing there, huh? A wolf will be attacking soon.

Even so, I was overly tense.

I didn’t even know the reason myself. Was it the influence of Allen, the original owner of this body?

‘No need to be nervous. It’s just one wolf.’

Even if I was a low-level hero, I could easily defeat an ordinary wolf.

In fact, even the quest difficulty, determined based on my stats, was D.

There was almost no way I could fail.

‘Besides, I’m not alone.’

There were a bunch of other kids around.

There’s strength in numbers, they could be of some help.

‘So there’s no need to be…’

That’s when it happened.

“Aaaah!”

I heard a scream coming from ahead.

I quickly snapped out of my thoughts.

The wolf must have appeared.

One of the kids shouted.

“Run!”

Before he could even finish his sentence, the children were already running away.

One by one, they passed by me as I stood frozen in place.

‘Huh?’

I had a feeling that something was wrong.

In an instant, all the children disappeared from sight, leaving only a single wolf in front of me.

At that moment, I made eye contact with the wolf.

Its eyes were filled with nothing but the will to kill me.

‘Should I have run away?’

Regret flashed through my mind.

No. Or maybe I couldn’t run away.

Was I really standing here because I wanted to fight?

I just realized it now, but my body was completely frozen, unable to move.

Now that I was facing it head-on, I had no idea how to fight.

‘I had no idea.’

I didn’t know when I was a player.

The killing intent emanating from the enemy, the tension hanging in the air.

How cold and sharp it felt.

‘How the hell do other heroes do it?’

While I was lost in regret.

“Grrr.”

The corners of the wolf’s mouth curled up.

It looked almost as if it was smiling.

Did it sense how terrified I was?

As if to prove my ominous premonition right, the wolf charged straight towards me.

‘I’m dead.’

That realization struck me hard.

The approaching figure of the wolf seemed like the Grim Reaper himself.

It wasn’t a feeling I had never felt before in my life, but it wasn’t a familiar one either.

My body refused to move.

But just because my body wouldn’t move didn’t mean I had lost my mind.

I desperately pleaded with my immobile body.

‘Please just…’

It wasn’t really a plea, it was closer to a command.

‘Move!’

At that moment.

My body moved.

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