kscans

Chapter 178 - The Lord and I, 2. Announcing a Name

Perhaps as a consideration to help Yuri relax, they were guided to a relatively small room. Of the rooms in Yuri's memory, the closest comparison would be a reception room. A table and chairs were set up in the center of the room, and Lord Baron Darren casually invited the two of them over.

"Please, have a seat. You’re Yuri-kun, correct?"

Yuri remained standing and gave the baron a bow. Then, with the utmost respect he could muster, he announced his name to the lord.

"It is a great honor to have my first audience with Your Excellency. I am a humble youth by the name of Yuri Sarai, who has been allowed to shelter from the elements in a corner of Salt-Sour Mountain. I humbly ask for your acquaintance."

...However, he had never learned the proper etiquette for greeting a nobleman, neither in his past life nor his current one. He inevitably had to rely on scenes from light novels, resulting in a greeting that was rather grandiose even by the standards of the Forea World. Fortunately, the lord, who had heard something of Yuri's backstory, let it slide, assuming it was some foreign custom.

What he could not let slide was another part.

"My, what a polite greeting, I am much obliged... wait! You have a surname, Yuri-kun!? Are you a noble!?"

Baron Darren, who had only been told the name "Yuri" until this moment, was astonished. But the baron was not the only one. For Old Man Audel, who had accompanied him as his guardian, it was a complete bombshell of a coming-out. Yet, at the same time, there was a part of him that thought, Ah, of course. This was a child who boasted that even while living as a recluse on Salt-Sour Mountain, he felt unwell if he didn’t bathe once every two days. It was easy enough to imagine he came from a respectable family. However...

"I do not know."

""You don’t know!?""

After confirming that the baron and Old Man Audel had spoken in unison, Yuri unveiled the elaborate cover story he had carefully concocted.

"...You may have heard, but my grandfather passed away without telling me a single thing about my origins. The only thing he taught me was my surname... and that I should not utter it carelessly. However, upon being granted the honor of an audience with Your Excellency, I thought it would be rude to deceive you..."

One had to wonder which mouth was speaking, even as he was deceiving them at that very moment.

"But... even though my grandfather told it to me, the family name Sarai holds no meaning for me. He never told me anything in the end. I ask that Your Excellency please treat me as a mere commoner."

Even if told that, one could not simply treat him lightly. A child who might be a foreign noble was nothing but a diplomatic landmine. One would hesitate to even try and silence him. That was Yuri's aim. To begin with, a lord in this world was not someone to be taken lightly. As Yuri knew from the god’s letter and the explanations from his Appraisal Teacher, they were beings on par with the monarchs of small countries or the daimyo of old, with authority over security, police, justice, taxation, and legislation. For Yuri, a meeting with a lord felt like nothing short of a death flag. So, to keep the lord in check, he had fabricated this landmine of a backstory. In case he was ever Appraised, though it had never happened before, Yuri had been fudging his stats using his Status Board skill. For this new setting, he had revised his falsified stats again. The parts in brackets were hidden, or the original stat values.

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Name: Yuri Sarai [Isarai Yuuri]
Race: Human [Otherworlder]
Sex: Male
Age: Seven

Magic Power: 83 [350]
Vitality: 95 [190]
Strength: 52 [65]
Defense: 37 [46]
Agility: 36 [42]
Dexterity: 37 [46]
Intelligence: 40 [80]

Skills: [Life Magic] [Perception (Lv5) [(Lv7)]] [Stealth (Lv5) [(Lv7)]] [Water Magic (Lv4) [(Lv6)]] [Earth Magic (Lv4) [(Lv6)]] [[Language (Mastery)] [Appraisal (Lv7)] [Storage (Lv6)] [Light Magic (Lv4)] [Dark Magic (Lv4)] [Fire Magic (Lv4)] [Wind Magic (Lv4)] [Wood Magic (Lv4)] [Investigation (Lv3)]]

[Unique Skills: [Status Board] [Rural Life Guide]]

[Protection: God’s Expectations]

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Yuri firmly believed his abilities were at the lowest level in the vicinity, but from snippets of conversation, he had begun to vaguely realize that the stats of an average person were probably not at a level sufficient to live on Salt-Sour Mountain. If that was the case, it might be better to revise his stat values a bit. That said, if he falsified them to a level that seemed impossible to live on Salt-Sour Mountain, the credibility of the stats themselves might be questioned. After some thought, Yuri decided to display values that were about twenty percent lower. The problem was his Magic Power and Vitality. The fact that only these were in the triple digits bothered him endlessly.

Here, Yuri decided to approach it from a different perspective. First, Magic Power was, in short, the power to use magic. He had magic of seven attributes, excluding Life Magic. Of these, he had only revealed his possession of Water Magic and Earth Magic. So, shouldn't the falsified value correspond to that? He set the levels of Water Magic and Earth Magic slightly lower than their actual values. The total of the falsified levels was 8. The total level of the magic he actually possessed was 32. If the number 32 corresponded to his actual magic power of 350, then the number corresponding to the falsified value of 8 would be 87.5 by proportional calculation. Considering his other non-magic skills, a value between 80 and 85 seemed appropriate. He would also halve his Intelligence, which seemed related to magic power. As for Vitality... he would tentatively lower that by about half as well. He would hide all magic other than Water Magic and Earth Magic, and also hide the unique skills the god had warned him about and Language (Mastery). It was also common in light novels for Appraisal and Storage to cause trouble, so he would hide those too. While he was at it, he would hide Investigation as well. It would probably be safer to hide his protection, too. Considering his circumstances living on Salt-Sour Mountain, it would be unnatural not to have Perception and Stealth. Kudol and the others already knew about them anyway. However, taking their advice into consideration, he would falsify the levels to be a little lower.

Yuri was full of confidence that his disguise was perfect... but one wonders what he would have thought if he knew that in the Forea World, the average magic power for a magician was 50, and the average vitality for a soldier or C-class adventurer was 70.