Dungeon Practicum
The dungeon practicum. My vision suddenly plunged into darkness, and a musty odor stabbed unpleasantly at my nose. The interior was thick with that signature chill unique to dungeons.
I pretended to scan our surroundings and deliberately slowed my steps. It was right as I was subtly drifting toward the very back of the group.
“Eros, I’ll need you on rear guard and magical support.”
Eisen didn’t miss the chance. He spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world and adjusted his grip on his longsword.
Thanks a lot.
I nodded, cheering inwardly.
“Still… since we’ve gone to the trouble of borrowing one of the Ainhardt family’s prized weapons, shouldn’t we test its real-world performance with our own eyes?”
“…What are you saying?”
“Lise, take point and lead the vanguard. I’ll support you from behind.”
“….”
I delivered the line with a perfectly serious face. It sounded reasonable enough, but it ultimately boiled down to me staying in the safest spot at the rear and simply spectating.
Eisen’s brow twitched faintly at my shamelessness, yet since he had been the one to assign me rear support in the first place, he had no grounds to argue. He simply closed his mouth and stared ahead in silence.
Lise nodded without a word and took her place beside Eisen, hand resting on her sword hilt. Eltemea stuck close to my side and conjured a small orb of light to illuminate our path.
We had been walking the dungeon’s entrance for barely ten minutes when it happened.
Several red glints flickered irregularly in the cave’s gloom. Then came the sound of countless footsteps, and a pack of goblins burst into view.
“Kiiik! Kigigik!”
They drooled on instinct the moment they saw Eltemea and Lise, then glared at Eisen with open hostility.
The first to charge forward—scraping the wall with a grating screech—was a classic goblin with greenish skin clutching a crudely rusted dagger. It instinctively avoided Eisen and lunged straight at Lise as if she had been its target from the start.
Shing—
A metallic ring far too refined for such a crude weapon sang out as Lise’s sword flew from its sheath. The blue magic stone embedded in the hilt glowed, sending streams of light racing along the blade.
Lise didn’t flinch at the incoming thrust. She deflected it lightly to the side, her slender wrist rotating with fluid grace. A silver arc traced a perfect half-moon through the air.
Squelch.
The cut was so clean it didn’t even sound like metal meeting flesh. The goblin’s head flew upward without a scream, blood spraying like a fountain. The headless body staggered a few aimless steps before collapsing in a heap.
Whoa.
The exclamation slipped out before I could stop it. Lise’s movements were textbook perfection—flawless, economical, and precise. Her posture was still a little stiff from first-battle nerves, yet the sword Eisen had given her was so exceptional it completely erased that flaw and then some.
The goblins who had just watched one of their own lose its head hesitated for a split second. Then excitement and instinct took over. They shrieked in unison and charged.
Eisen swung his longsword and smashed two on the left into the ground. Lise fearlessly plunged straight into the pack rushing her from the right.
Clang! Kaang!
The cave rang with the clash of metal. Lise’s blade sheared through their crude weapons without resistance, carving throats with mechanical efficiency.
Watching the goblin pack get systematically butchered by Eisen and Lise, I felt nothing but pure admiration. Eisen was one thing, but Lise’s debut in real combat was genuinely astonishing.
After clearing the area and pushing deeper, more monsters swarmed us with rabid hunger. These were kobolds—faster, craftier, and far more dangerous in coordinated packs than goblins.
“Grrrr!” “Kyaaaa!”
Six kobolds fanned out wide, drool dripping from their muzzles, and charged in a pincer meant to trap both Eisen and Lise at once. While Eisen used his aura to forcibly halt the three rushing him head-on, the remaining three targeted the blind spots and streaked toward Lise’s flank and rear.
Maybe she had finished adapting. Lise’s eyes had gone ice-cold. Instead of retreating to defend, she kicked off the ground low and boldly met the nearest kobold head-on.
Just as its claws were about to rake her shoulder, her body spun with supple grace. She swung her sword in a sweeping arc that used every inch of its reach.
Slish.
The blade snapped the kobold’s raised weapon in two and continued on to split its chest diagonally. The second kobold faltered and tried to scramble back, but Lise’s footwork had already closed the distance in a smooth glide. Her sword traced a perfect circle and cleaved its skull cleanly in half.
With every clash, with every shift in the monsters’ patterns, Lise’s movements grew more fluid. The rigid textbook posture had absorbed real combat data and was now flowing into efficient, lethal forms.
She was evolving.
Watching that breathtaking growth, a warm feeling bloomed in my chest.
…Talent really is unfair, huh.
And then there was the weapon I had slyly coaxed out of Eisen from the Ainhardt family armory. It had elevated Lise into something far beyond a mere talented swordswoman.
After wiping out even the kobold pack, we ventured deeper. Thanks to Eisen and Lise holding the front line so perfectly, I was starting to think we might not face a single real threat.
“Hold.”
Eisen, leading from the front, suddenly raised a hand and froze. A heavy thud… thud… echoed from the darkness ahead. The footsteps grew louder as whatever it was drew closer.
What finally stepped into the light was a three-meter-tall monster called a Woodguard—a colossal mass of thick, intertwined tree roots. The bark covering its body was so tough and dense it was practically a nightmare for novices.
“I’ll take care of—!”
Before Eltemea could finish, Lise kicked off the ground without the slightest hesitation and charged straight at the Woodguard.
“Kuer?”
The creature swung its log-like arm like a club the moment it spotted her. The sound of it slicing through the air was terrifying, yet Lise remained calm. Her eyes tracked the trajectory perfectly.
At the last possible instant she arched backward, letting the massive limb whistle past by a hair’s breadth. Then she used the momentum to spring forward like a released coil.
In a flash she was perched atop the Woodguard’s forearm, looking down.
…That’s art.
The movement was so far beyond a beginner’s that an involuntary chuckle escaped me.
The Woodguard roared and thrashed wildly to shake her off, but Lise was already sprinting along its arm. She reached the main body in an instant. Her eyes burned with nothing but the pure intent to cut it down.
She leaped, gripping the sword with both hands, drawing up a faint aura and layering it along the blade. It wasn’t the blazing sword energy Eisen could produce, yet the subtle shimmer around her weapon carried a chilling menace.
Crunch—!
The bark that was supposed to be nearly impossible to scratch split open beneath her strike. Without pausing she reversed her grip and drove the blade straight toward the Woodguard’s core.
“Ku… kuuuu…”
The giant let out a final groan and stopped moving. The massive tree lost its balance and toppled forward with a deafening crash.
BOOM—!
Thick clouds of dust billowed in every direction. Lise lightly leaped down, landed gracefully, and flicked the green sap from her blade with a casual snap of her wrist.
She’s a monster.
“She’s a monster,” Eltemea said aloud at the exact same moment. Our eyes met.
With the Woodguard defeated, true silence finally settled over the dungeon. Even the monsters that should have been drawn by the scent of blood had vanished. Only the damp, heavy air remained.
“Well done, Lise.”
Eisen lowered his sword and offered genuine praise. As a warrior himself, his words were pure admiration for the swordplay she had displayed.
Still…
Thanks to Lise everything had gone smoothly—perhaps too smoothly. If my suspicions were right, someone had deliberately arranged this exact party composition to trigger an event.
The entire run had felt exactly like a carefully scripted training exercise.
Well, if it ends here, all’s well that ends well.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the unease creeping up my spine. Eisen had just taken a step toward the next area when the voice rang out.
“Junior students, is the practicum proceeding smoothly?”
Ha.
From the end of the passage, deep in pitch-black darkness where you couldn’t see even an inch ahead, came a sticky, skin-crawling voice.
It was a voice I knew all too well. For a single instant, everyone froze as if the air itself had turned to ice.
Eisen reflexively tightened his grip on his hilt. Tap. Tap. The measured sound of dress shoes echoed from the gloom. A figure slowly emerged.
Friendly features. A refreshing smile. It was Licht.
He approached with that same smile plastered across his face, yet his gaze was fixed solely on me—unpleasant, sticky, and purposeful. As if I were the only thing that mattered.
As expected.
Of all possible moments, during an event, with these exact four people grouped together, he had appeared at the perfect timing. The progression had been so natural that his arrival almost seemed inevitable. The sense of wrongness I had felt earlier had been correct after all.
“Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue at the confirmation that my premonition had been spot on.