Hell Mode: Volume 3, page 33
“Hey, Meruru! Wake up! Dad’s coming home!”
Meruru’s brother called out to her, jolting her awake. After staying up late the night before, she had completely overslept.
She sat up in bed and stretched. “All right, I’m up now! Don’t leave me behind!”
Seeing her brothers file outside, Meruru quickly hurried after them in a fluster, still rubbing her bleary eyes. By the time she stepped outside, her siblings were already far ahead.
“Urgh! I said don’t leave me behind!” she grumbled when she finally caught up to her family, breathing heavily.
Her mother gave her an amused look and sighed. “Meruru, I told you yesterday that your dad’s coming home today, right?”
This caused Meruru’s four brothers to burst out in laughter. The six of them were currently heading toward the harbor. When they got close, they found the area already packed with other dwarves.
For a second, Meruru thought she felt the ground shake. She wondered if she had imagined it, but the reactions of her brothers proved otherwise. All of them kept their eyes fixated on the ocean, eventually noticing a massive form emerging from the surface of the waves.
“Hey! I see it!”
“The golem’s coming up out of the ocean!”
“Huh? It’s carrying something over its shoulder.”
Meruru’s brothers became increasingly excited as the approaching form grew larger and larger. Soon enough, the golem reached the shore and set foot onto land. Meruru looked up as well, her eyes full of adoration and amazement.
“It’s hu—whoa! The golem caught the sea serpent!”
The golem was shouldering a monster almost thirty meters long. It approached the spectators until it was almost within arm’s reach, then gave the crowd a good look at the broken neck of the sea serpent. Their cheers rose another decibel as the onlookers heaped praise and thanks on the pilot of the golem.
According to the conversations going on all around, this sea serpent had settled close by and was terrorizing the area, so the navy had dispatched a golem to kill it.
The golem then headed off deeper into the town, bringing the sea serpent along. After it had gone quite a distance, a voice shouted from the direction of the port. “Heyyyyy Kanana! Kids!”
“Oh, honey!”
A dwarven man within the crowd disembarking from a ship had noticed Meruru’s group and was walking over while waving an arm energetically. It was Neneku, Meruru’s father.
“You all came to welcome me back?! Damn, I’m one happy man!”
“What? Nah, dad, we only came to see the golem. It was so freaking cool!”
“I dare you to say that again!” Neneku caught his jokester son in a clinch with a grappling move, making the rest of his family burst into laughter. “And Meruru! You’re back too!”
“Right?” Kanana said, pulling a troubled face. “And she said she wouldn’t come home!”
“Dad! Mom!” Meruru pouted at her reception even though she had gone to the trouble of making the trip. She could not protest much further, however, as she had indeed sent a letter a while back telling her parents that while she did have a spring break, she would not be coming home.
The family then began to trace their steps home, now with Neneku part of the group.
“Honey, how long will you be home this time?”
“Well...quite a while, I think. They said that our ship needs maintenance.”
“I see.” Kanana breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Dear, you do realize that if I don’t head out, I don’t get paid, right?”
When they got home, the family ate lunch together. After having missed breakfast due to oversleeping, Meruru now found her plate loaded with more fukaman, a dwarven fare of steamed buns, than ususal. She smiled gratefully at her mom before turning to her newly returned father. “Was it tough living on the ship, dad?”
“Well, the expedition wasn’t that long this time. The sea serpent wasn’t too far out at sea, so things we didn't have to go quite so far. I’ve been through worse.”
Neneku was a low-ranking soldier in the Baukisian navy. He did not possess a Talent—in fact, Meruru was the only Talented member of this family. The golems of Baukis served as the main fighting force against the Demon Lord Army and any monsters wreaking havoc off the country’s shores. However, the navy was not entirely composed of golem pilots—it had a large variety of positions for the Talentless, such as manning ships to take golem pilots to the locations where they were to be deployed. The salaries of these grunt soldiers were much lower than that of the pilots, but Neneku and Kanana had managed to earn enough to raise five children.
Meruru’s brothers were maintenance workers employed at a nearby naval port that had been expanded in response to the invasions from the Demon Lord Army. As it was a job that hired by the day and saw very little danger, their pay was even lower than their father’s.
It was thanks to the support of all her family members that Meruru was attending the Academy. She possessed the very rare Talent of Talos General. In order to prevent aristocrats from gaining undue leverage over Talented, the Five Continent Alliance had expressly forbidden countries and nobles from fully subsidizing students’ tuition fees.
If the Academy had been able to lend out a golem to Meruru, she might have been able to earn a bit of her own living from the dungeons, but this was apparently still beyond her reach. Therefore, it was her family who was paying the remainder of her tuition, all without saying a word to her and acting as if it was the only natural thing to do.
Halfway through the meal, Meruru spoke up. “Dad, mom, um...I have something to tell you.”
“What is it?” Her dad turned to give her his undivided attention.
The truth was that everyone in the family already knew that something must have happened with Meruru for her to come home. They had simply chosen to continue interacting with her in the same way as before until she felt comfortable enough to bring it up herself. After all, she had previously told them that she would not be coming home due to how expensive the magic ship cost for a round trip. For the same reason, she had not come home when it had been summer break the previous year. And yet, here was Meruru, showing up all of a sudden when spring break was almost over.
Everyone looked at Meruru.
“I, um, am thinking of going on an overseas exchange. Because the Academy said it would subsidize everything.” In an roundabout way, Meruru was implying that her family would no longer have to pay for her tuition. Her homeroom teacher had confirmed that the subsidy from the school would be enough to cover her tuition and living costs all the way to her graduation.
“Huh? So you’re leaving for somewhere?” Her father, as well as her mother and brothers, all looked at Meruru with worry in their eyes.
In an attempt to reassure them, Meruru said in a joking tone, “Yeah, but I figured that it’s all the same in that it’s not here, you know. I think it’s a country named Ratash.”
“I see. Guess we made you worry.”
“Of course not! Thank you for raising me all this time. When I earn a ton of money with my Talent, I’ll send some home!” Meruru grinned and flexed her bicep.
Baukis was a country that spared no expenses in spending money on its Talented and high achievers, and Meruru’s Talent was said to be one in ten million.
“Whoa, whoa, getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t cha? And don’t worry about sending money home. I’m still working, and so are your brothers.” Neneku chuckled before changing the topic. “So then, how was life at the Academy?” He gave his wife and sons a look, conveying that they should send Meruru off with peace of mind.
“Oh, did you know? In order to pilot a golem, I need to use a magic tool that looks like a round plate. It’s called a magic disc.” With her usual smile, Meruru proceeded to gush about all her experiences in the past year.
And so, after getting a warm send-off from her family, Meruru headed to the Ratashian Academy where she would eventually meet Allen.
Table of Contents
Cover
Chapter 1: The Academy Entrance Exam
Chapter 2: Gathering Information at the Adventurer’s Guild
Chapter 3: School Life and Dungeon Delving
Chapter 4: School Assignment and Pickup Groups
Chapter 5: Sword Lord Dverg’s Arrival
Chapter 6: Welcome Party
Chapter 7: Traps and More Testing
Chapter 8: Returning Home
Chapter 9: Rank A Dungeon
Chapter 10: The Martial Arts Tournament (Part 1)
Chapter 11: Invitation from the Crown Prince
Chapter 12: Rank A Dungeon Boss
Chapter 13: Transfer Students
Chapter 14: Developing Rodin Village
Chapter 15: The Martial Arts Tournament (Part 2)
Chapter 16: Fighting against Helmios the Hero
Chapter 17: Tournament Ceremony
Short Story 1: Helmios’s Past
Short Story 2: The Struggles of Pelomas the Merchant
Afterword
Color Illustrations
Bonus Short Stories
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
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Copyright
Hell Mode ~ The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in Another World with Garbage Balancing ~ Volume 3
by Hamuo
Translated by Taishi
Edited by Seanna Hundt
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Hamuo
Illustrations © 2021 Mo
Cover illustration by Mo
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2021 by Earth Star Entertainment
This English edition is published by arrangement with Earth Star Entertainment, Tokyo
English translation © 2022 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: April 2022
Hamuo, Hell Mode: Volume 3
