The Saintess's Bizarre Training Regimen (2)
I didn’t know about other things, but what could possibly be wrong with my perfect education plan? If they were that worried, all I had to do was toss them some bait.
“If you’re that concerned, then we just need to give them some motivation.”
“Is there a way?”
It wasn’t as if there wasn’t a way.
“People only display superhuman strength when they have the will to do so.”
In that case, I decided to give the sisters a small opportunity. I turned my head and called out to the nuns with care.
“Sisters.”
“““Yes?”””
“The church knights like strong women.”
I knew that all too well. The nuns had probably entered the order to earn money. Or perhaps some had been raised as nuns from a young age. Of course, it wasn’t as if they truly wished to devote their lives to the cloth. Since I had been scattering plenty of money around, this time not only members of the assassination guild but a fair number of decent girls had joined as well. So what was their ultimate goal? The majority ultimately aimed to marry into the Church Knight Order. Church knights received stable salaries precisely because they were proper “knights.” Naturally, they made for ideal husbands in the eyes of many women. The nuns’ endgame was to wed one of those knights and quit the sisterhood. After all, religion carried no true compulsion. It wasn’t an impossible dream.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Therefore, if you all wish to catch yourselves good husbands, go catch those harmful birds for me.”
Their eyes sparkled. Exactly as expected from the church’s nuns. Yep. That’s right.
At least until that moment, I genuinely believed things would go smoothly.
Several hours passed. I was disappointed. To think they were this utterly hopeless. Before me, the frail nuns had all collapsed, gasping for breath. How could every last one of them fail to hit even a single bird?
“This is ridiculous.”
I shook my head. This was beyond serious. I had never dreamed the women of the empire were in such terrible condition. Or perhaps even with motivation, if they were this bad, maybe there was something physically wrong with them?
“If it’s so easy, why don’t you try it yourself, Saintess?”
“Didn’t I already show you how it’s done?”
“With a different weapon!”
A few of the nuns had even grown openly hostile toward me. So this was how they wanted to play it? Fine. They say seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times.
“I really don’t understand. How is this not possible?”
I snatched up a fallen arrow, took aim at one of the sparrows perched on the goddess statue, and hurled it.
“Cheep!”
One of the sparrows that had been mocking the nuns from atop the statue plummeted with the arrow buried in its body.
Now, what excuse would they offer?
“But just holding a sword is already exhausting. How are we supposed to hit something that high up?”
“What about those of you with bows?”
“The birds just dodge them.”
Of course the birds weren’t going to sit still and wait to be hit. Still, they should at least be able to strike a stationary target. I had succeeded on my second try. And it hadn’t even been a sparrow—it was a smaller vampire bat.
“Then what about clubs?”
I asked the nuns holding clubs.
“Clubs aren’t working either.”
“What about flails?”
I glanced toward the nun who had been whining earlier. Surprisingly, she had done something Claire would have hated. Three of the birds Claire cherished lay dead at her feet instead of the ones I had created.
“W-well, I caught them by accident…”
“Oh? You’re quite good with that flail. How did you manage it?”
No matter how still they stayed, that was impressive. “I just threw it randomly and the noisy ones got tangled in the chains and fell.”
Flowers blooming on a withered tree. A flail should have been the hardest to handle, yet she had used it well.
“You put that thing to decent use. A flail, huh. That’s almost entirely luck.”
“Um, I hit one with an arrow too.”
One nun raised her hand. Even that one wasn’t one of my constructs.
“I got mine with a sword.”
Another had caught hers with a blade. Only a single bird, but it was a real one, not one of my mana-created sparrows.
“So three of you have decent combat sense?”
A swordsman, an archer, and a flail user. Hmm. We were desperately short on support. A mage, a cleric, or a priestess. Priests or clerics wouldn’t be hard to recruit, but the lack of a mage was disappointing. If either the swordsman or the flail user could double as a mage, it would be perfect. We could even form a nun hero party. It would be nice if they could surpass Eugene. No matter how talented, a mere nun probably couldn’t defeat one of the Four Heavenly Kings.
“Then what should we do now?”
It was Claire’s question. What should we do? There was only one answer. These three would be the ones I trained personally.
“I’ll take these three. As for the rest…”
“Even so, shouldn’t you give the others a little more of a chance?”
“How?”
We had to turn them into warriors before the pope returned.
“I told Priestess Lapel that I would send the nuns to the monastery for a while.”
“So then…”
Using the monastery as an excuse to pull them aside and train them through the assassination guild?
“Yes. After all, we originally planned to train them as assassination guild members.”
“I see.”
Then I only needed to take these three. Claire led the rest of the nuns away, and I took my chosen trio past the cloister into the rear garden. The nuns glanced around nervously before looking at me.
“Um, so what are we supposed to do now? We really only caught them by luck.”
Luck couldn’t be ignored. There was a saying that luck was also a form of skill.
“Luck is a skill. It also means you possess the strength to throw something at a bird. Above all, you didn’t hesitate to kill them, did you?”
“No.”
Honestly, an ordinary village girl would hesitate to kill a bird. But these three hadn’t. It was obvious just from how casually they had picked up the corpses.
“Men hesitate the first time they hunt monsters too. Because it’s taking a life. Emotional creatures like women hesitate even more. Yet you three did it without flinching.”
Anyone could call themselves an adventurer. But without hesitation toward killing, they couldn’t fight monsters. And that wasn’t all. Adventurers didn’t earn money just by subjugating monsters. They had to dissect the corpses and harvest materials.
“I didn’t realize that was such a big deal.”
“I sort of understand what the Saintess means…”
“It’s not just skill. You can tell just by looking at their eyes. More than half of those sparrows earlier were motionless ones I created. You couldn’t hit them? That means you never had the resolve to kill in the first place.”
Without the will to kill, even with talent you wouldn’t be able to catch them.
“Ah, is that how it works?”
“You three instinctively only went after the moving ones. That’s why I rate you highly. Not all of you, but did your parents work as monster hunters or soldiers?”
Their weapon handling was still novice level, so they clearly hadn’t practiced much beforehand.
“My father was a hunter.”
“My mother was an adventurer.”
Two of them were exactly as I had guessed. If their father was a hunter or their mother an adventurer, they would have seen that sort of thing up close. Naturally they would find it easy to kill a bird.
“See?”
“Both my parents died when I was young.”
The last one had lost her parents. If it wasn’t their occupation, then the family environment must have been harsh. Someone had died, or she had to survive alone with no room to be picky. A woman in a desperate situation. In this era, having no parents wasn’t much of a flaw. The war with the Demon King had continued for so long.
“That can happen too.”
I patted the orphaned nun on the shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Children who lose their parents usually live hard lives, so they can handle most things.”
Surprisingly, it was true. It would have been better if they had caught more birds, but I had miscalculated. I had overestimated both the kingdom and the empire. The empire had its own level of capability. These nuns must have lived in rather poor conditions themselves. So I decided to train them properly.
“““Thank you!”””
Plus they were good at listening.
“Since you three have the will, I think you’ll be easy to teach.”
Shall we move on to the next step? Now that we had come this far, there was no difficulty. In the end, mindset was what mattered. From now on, these three would handle everything as long as their bodies could endure the suffering.
“All right, introduce yourselves.”
I learned all three of their names. The girl with long brown hair was Casey. She handled a sword well. The girl with short blue hair was Eri. She was good with a bow. The girl with long red hair was Marie. She swung a flail skillfully. All of them were young women from villages outside the imperial capital.
“Now then, we’re moving straight into real combat.”
“Real combat? Already?”
There was a saying that life itself was real combat. Naturally, those with potential should start with real combat. Even in the kingdom’s army, the conscripts who survived against the Demon King’s forces had become incredibly strong.
“You’re joking, right?”
Of course, this real combat had a different flavor. No matter who I was, I wasn’t about to throw these weak girls into a dungeon from the start and tell them to die. So I used a modified version of the black magic monster summoning ritual to call forth goblins. When I clapped my hands, a small dimensional rift opened before the nuns and three green monstrosities emerged.
“Kikik.”
“Gikik.”
The goblins looked plausible on the outside, but they were purely for training. I had modified them so they wouldn’t kill anyone.
“These are goblins.”
“Even so, this is really…”
The nuns looked reluctant. It was true that goblins and orcs often preferred human women. Because of that, goblins and orcs were the worst possible opponents for females.
“Don’t worry. They aren’t strong enough to actually kill you. Their weapons have no edges, and I’ve pulled out all their teeth and claws.”
These were goblins I had prepared in advance.
“In that case…”
“Exactly. These are martial-arts goblins.”
Just as the name suggested, they only used physical techniques. Goblins that relied solely on hand-to-hand combat weren’t much of a threat. I had tested it myself while fighting the Demon King’s army and training the kingdom’s soldiers, so I knew well. Of course, if they kept getting hit they would die, but with a little resistance they could subdue goblins that only used physical techniques.
“M-martial-arts goblins?”
“They only use physical techniques. I modified them that way on purpose.”
I had even included them in the kingdom army’s training program. Back then there had been a separate training instructor, so all I had provided were these training monsters.
“You want us to fight these things and win?”
“That’s right. The best training method is real combat.”
The kingdom army had been the same. They had always lived alongside war.
“But we really don’t know anything. We don’t even know how to fight.”
“You’ll learn as you get hit.”
You really did learn as you got hit. That was how I had grown up. So naturally you would learn how to dodge, how to harden your body, and how to block. The question was how efficiently you used that knowledge.
“I see.”
“First, win against those goblins. That is your assignment.”
Even if they were only goblins, they had to defeat them to become proper nuns.
“How much time do we have?”
“One day.”
Beating a few goblins was more than enough time for healthy young women. I had learned elemental magic in a single day, after all.
“Then what will you be doing during that time, Saintess?”
Me? I had only one thing to do.
“Watching over the sisters, of course.”
I answered with a bored expression.
“Aren’t you going to rest?”
“Why would I?”
They had to train for twenty-four hours. Why would I need to rest? At my words, the faces of the three-nun party twisted in utter horror.