A Man's VS Game 4
Why had our scatterbrained goddess specifically pointed us toward the Ice Cross Knights? She could have said something broader — hire a mercenary company, temporarily recruit a knight order — yet she singled out Oleg Svedov, the man who'd completely ruined his first impression. There had to be a reason.
And now I finally understood what that reason was.
To put it uncharitably, Oleg Svedov was gullible, impulsive, and thoroughly hot-blooded. Yet for all those glaring flaws, he still enjoyed the unwavering love of his childhood friend and the trust of nineteen comrades.
Even our party members saw him as little more than an eccentric — nobody found him genuinely unpleasant. The viewers had accepted him the same way they'd accepted Manash as a walking gag: a funny extra. A few of them ground their teeth in mock hatred over the fact that he had a beautiful childhood friend, but even that was affectionate ribbing.
"Every time he opens his mouth it's perfection this, efficiency that, artistry the other — like some armchair general who's never seen a real battlefield and learned war from books. Let's knock him down a peg."
"Ah…"
So if I had to name Oleg's strengths, they would be his lead-from-the-front initiative and the leadership that inspired people through it. Instead of the charisma of perfection and genius, he had the power to make people naturally fall in step behind him through sheer effort and action.
At Oleg's sincerely spoken words, Irene's eyes — still burning with fury — wavered in momentary confusion.
Until now, handling mid-bosses and boss monsters had been my job. Irene had been the supporter who helped me do it. Suddenly being told to take center stage seemed to give her pause — not the hesitation of someone unwilling, but of someone who lacked confidence in herself.
That was when Alissa stepped in to back Oleg up.
"Don't worry, Irene."
"Whoa, are these two a husband-and-wife con duo? The way they play off each other is just—"
The moment she confirmed the mages had lost interest in our side, Alissa casually linked arms with Irene and dropped the formal speech. So that was why she'd been carefully attaching "Sister" this and "Sister" that even while speaking casually — it had been for the benefit of the mages and Imperial officers watching.
If Oleg Svedov was the kind of man who strode ahead and made people follow, Alissa Friedrich was the kind who gently pushed from behind. She grabbed the collar of anyone who charged too far and reined them in; she shoved anyone who hesitated forward. She was the Ice Cross Knights' externally mounted brain.
Softly, sweetly — nothing like Oleg's powerful voice — a gentle whisper slid into Irene's ear. The persuasion of a vice-commander who had shepherded twenty overgrown children for nearly a decade coiled into Irene's ear like a serpent.
"You're thinking, Can I really do this? You're full of the idea that you have to succeed. Or maybe you're a little regretful, thinking you got carried away by emotion and stuck your neck out too far."
"Um, well…"
"I'm not blaming you. A Sister of the Goddess Church getting riled up at the sight of a dark mage is the most natural thing in the world. Holding it in, biting your tongue, and looking out for yourself would be the more shameful choice."
Watching them, my chest pounded for some strange reason. Oleg stepping forward without hesitation, Alissa supporting him from behind, and the knights falling into formation without a single complaint the moment their commander pulled out a bomb vest.
Something felt off. I wrapped myself in mana and sharpened my senses as far as they would go — and sure enough, an unfamiliar mana wavelength was pouring off Oleg and Alissa, wrapping around us like a force field. …I'd called on the goddess half as a joke after seeing the bomb vest, but this was clearly why she'd issued the quest.
It was like they'd awakened one of those coupling skills you occasionally see in character-collection mobile games.
Coupling skills are abilities that apply a general effect to everyone, plus an additional effect that triggers specifically for one designated character. They showed up now and then in Heroines Chronicle, and I'd seen them plenty in other mobile games too.
The shield used by a tights-wearing saintess character would pile on extra buffs for the bikini-armor holy knight released alongside her; conversely, the HP-recovery aura used by the bikini-armor holy knight would restore not just the tights saintess's health but her mana as well—
A fire witch would lose her burn tick damage if an ice witch was on the opposing team, but her base attack power would skyrocket; conversely, an ice witch would lose her freeze debuff if a fire witch was on the other side, but her single-target skills would turn into AoE—
Skills designed to snipe specific counterparts based on a character's backstory. In Heroines Chronicle, they were the skills most heavily used in shady fan works — polar-bear-slaughterer ships, yuri couplings, and the like.
And now, for the first time, that kind of skill had revealed itself before me in the world of Heroes Chronicle.
"No, these two really might be a husband-and-wife con duo. Something about this feels weird… the mana's moving strangely. Are they layering some kind of skill on her?"
Oleg Svedov and Alissa Friedrich — a childhood-friend coupling skill forged over nearly twenty years — had gently pushed Irene's still-hesitating back.
"Then… how… how can I knock him down a peg?"
"That, I know."
I couldn't just sit still at a moment like this.
The Ice Cross Knights' coupling skill — more precisely, Oleg Svedov and Alissa Friedrich's — had laid a fuse in Irene's heart. As a comrade, tossing a spark onto it seemed fair enough.
"I'm no noble, and I've never properly studied tactics or strategy, but living as an adventurer taught me a few things the hard way."
"What is it, Roland?"
I hadn't taken ROTC officer courses, and I hadn't dropped into a fantasy world as some noble heir schooled in the arts of kingship.
But when you're standing in front of a mid-boss who advertises his defining traits this loudly inside a virtual-reality game, even the most obvious advice will do. Because Irene — true to her title of Candidate Saint — was far too kind a person to even think of that obvious advice on her own.
So the advice I was about to give was the advice of a gamer wearing the skin of an adventurer and mercenary.
"If you don't know what to do, do whatever the bastard would hate."
"Something… he'd hate?"
It was so painfully obvious I was almost embarrassed to call it advice, but Irene looked at me with those golden eyes round with surprise.
To a nun who had lived by love, service, devotion, and faith, the idea of maliciously and relentlessly tormenting an opponent wasn't something that came easily. But to a Korean gamer — from RPGs to FPS to AOS, every multiplayer game ever made — the art of screwing over your opponent was second nature.
The Oleg & Alissa couple, still whispering with mana rippling around them as their skill stayed active, seemed to take my obvious words as a kind of remedial lesson and listened without comment.
"They're building a fortress and using dark magic under the banner of efficiency to raise an army. They didn't want us arriving before it was finished, so they sealed the gate and hid the information, right?"
"That's true…"
Those golden eyes, which had been surging with rage and resolve, softened into a gentle lamb's as she listened to my murmur — bright and attentive, like a model student. She even lowered her voice along with me, as if we were sharing a secret, worried the dark mage far off might overhear.
It was so endearing I nearly laughed out loud, but I held it in and pressed on.
"Don't overthink it. We're a party. Me, Grace, Katie, Hanna — we're all ready to back you up. Oleg and Alissa too, and the Ice Cross Knights will throw themselves in without question."
"That's… um, I'm really grateful…"
"It's only natural."
When I said it like a gentle pat on the back, her face flushed red — as if she'd only just realized she'd stepped forward while ignoring the party leader and the senior adventurer. With the feeling of staining a pure white canvas, I whispered the fundamentals of Korean gaming into her ear.
You don't play the game to have fun. You play it to piss the other guy off—
"So let's think this through slowly. When you said life was precious, that bastard went and used dark magic by sacrificing people's souls."
"Yes. He… he did the thing I hate right in my face, didn't he?"
"Then you do the thing he hates."
On the surface it was the obvious advice to dig into a weakness and twist, but it wasn't wrong. Han Se-ah, Oleg, or Alissa would have given the exact same counsel if they'd been standing here instead of me.
But hearing my plain words, Irene squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them glittering with resolve as she locked her gaze on the fortress.
At the same time, her holy power began to move with ferocious intensity. Watching her sacred arts weave themselves beautifully atop Oleg and Alissa's mana wavelengths as if receiving support, I was reminded once again that she was a natural-born 5-star. Irene had always shown archer-level reflexes when weaving holy arts under sudden ambush — so maybe she'd just conceived some entirely new sacred technique.
Her holy power surged as if she meant to exhaust every last drop of it to complete a single spell. The knights, Han Se-ah, the viewers, even the Imperial troops and the dark mage who'd been raising hell at the fortress all stared blankly in our direction.
"What… what the hell is that…?"
"Ahh — the Goddess blesses this war……!"
Even as people who didn't know she was a Candidate Saint — who thought her merely the nun of the hero's party — gazed at her with awe, she finished the sacred art in silence. Holy power gathered on a scale that would make high-tier magic look trivial, slowly taking shape.
What she created was a massive suit of armor, a shield, and a mace.
Holy armaments of staggering power, clearly modeled after me — Roland.
……The peculiar part was that they were so enormous it was hard to believe they belonged to a human. The armor, a colossal mass of holy power that ignored the dark mage's resistance entirely, flew onto the battlefield and wrapped itself around a dying ogre lying on the ground.
"Y-you, you damn nun of the Goddess Churchhhhh——!!!"
"Rise once more and stand against evil!"
A ten-meter ogre, clad in holy armor and armed with a holy mace, staggered to its feet.
Fully restored — and buffed by a 5-star Candidate Saint.