The Saintess's Ruthless Forge
The training continued, and the nuns’ determination only burned hotter.
“Does that mean there’s more after this?”
“You want to keep going?”
“Yes!”
Good. I like that attitude. Anyone I train should be able to handle at least this much hardship. In that case, I can push them even further, right?
“Next, I’ll give the goblins swords.”
The club-wielding goblins had been weak. After all, they’d only been wooden clubs.
“Won’t we die if they have real weapons?”
“Then don’t die before you kill them.”
This time, I restored their physical abilities to normal. The goblins were now given proper swords. In other words, they were no longer skewed toward any extreme—they were simply ordinary wild goblins, except for the blades in their hands.
“Kikikik!”
The sword-wielding goblins charged the trio all at once. The three nuns’ faces twisted in alarm.
They grumbled, of course, but my nuns performed splendidly. They turned the agility they’d honed while dodging attacks into lethal counterstrikes. In an instant, sword, arrow, and mace each pierced the skull of their assigned goblin.
Slash! Thunk! Crunch!
Less than ten hours, and they’d reached this level. Girls who had been nothing more than ordinary village maidens. In just six and a half hours of my perfect instruction, they had acquired the combat ability to slay monsters. Even their eyes had changed. That predatory gleam held the confidence that they could defeat goblins.
I clapped my hands together. Now the real training could begin.
“Perfect. The only thing left is fighting against superior numbers. Think you can handle it? I’m planning to prepare about thirty of them.”
“What?” Casey’s face went pale.
“Th-thirty at once?” Eri’s eyes trembled.
“Even so, isn’t that far too many all of a sudden?” Mari wailed while swinging her mace in circles.
That’s that, and this is this. I had to ride this momentum. Kikikikik! I released dozens of goblins. If it had to be done, it had to be done.
The battle that followed was, as expected, one-sided—the nuns were beaten senseless.
“Aaaagh! Save me!”
“Hic… hic… Mommy…”
“It hurts!”
Yes. They were getting absolutely thrashed. This round was similar. Thirty goblins without weapons simply pounded the nuns. Still, the girls tried to dodge in order to survive, but there was no winning against sheer numbers. Of course, whenever the nuns were beaten to the point of looking like melted cheese, I quickly healed them.
After being hammered for a long while, the nuns finally learned how to maintain teamwork while retreating from dozens of attackers.
“Haa… haa…”
An hour passed like that. At last, they succeeded in dodging the goblins’ assaults and began taking them down one by one. Thirty minutes were spent reorganizing themselves mid-battle. The rest was spent fighting back while evading the swarm.
By now, their eyes had changed completely. They truly understood that if they didn’t kill their enemies, they themselves could die. That instinct dominated their bodies, while a new mindset took root: If you can’t run, enjoy it.
Genius cannot beat hard work. Hard work cannot beat enjoyment. The saying exists, but it’s completely wrong. You simply combine them all.
A genius who works hard must also enjoy it.
These three weren’t quite heaven-sent geniuses, but they possessed combat instincts close to that level. I had used magic to assist them, forced them to work hard, and driven them to the brink until they realized the joy of fighting. I never taught them the method directly. I simply cornered them against a cliff with no escape.
People display superhuman ability when driven into crisis. That’s how they evolve. The professors at Atelina might not consider this a bad teaching method by imperial standards, but this is simply how it’s always been done.
Goblins often travel in packs. If you spot one or two, you must kill them immediately. Until now, we had only trained to kill those one or two. Now they had learned how to hunt dozens and how to escape when surrounded—without tucking their tails between their legs. And they had fought back.
I clapped again.
Covered in blood on their habits and faces, Casey, Eri, and Mari looked up at me sitting on the cloister railing.
“Well then, shall we move on to the next stage?”
The three looked at one another, then grinned and nodded.
Ever since the club goblins, I had barely needed to use healing magic. At most, I performed at the level of a priest supporting a party. The nuns had begun to enjoy combat. They laughed while fighting goblins. Sometimes they even let out witch-like cackles—“Kyahahaha!”—as they slaughtered without mercy.
Finally, they realized that the best defense was a good offense.
“From that point on, they became unstoppable.”
They even defeated dozens of sword-wielding goblins. Without hesitation, they answered blades with greater blades, crushing the numerical advantage of their enemies with sheer momentum.
“Perfect!”
At last, the “enjoying geniuses” I had wanted were complete. All in just twelve hours. With the mana I had crammed into them, these talents had been forged in twelve hours.
Next, I should probably let them rest. Twelve hours in, ten minutes of rest wouldn’t hurt. I clapped my hands.
Clap clap clap.
“Well done. Shall we take a short break? It’s been twelve hours, so ten minutes should be fine.”
“A break?” Casey tilted her head as if I’d said something ridiculous.
“Hm?”
“We’re not done yet.” Mari shook her head.
“We will become the sisters worthy of the Saintess’s expectations during the remaining twelve hours.” Eri declared she would live up to my hopes.
“Hmm.” Something felt off. They seemed half-mad. Still, mad was better than fragile, wasn’t it?
“Are you girls all right?”
“Yes! We’re perfectly fine! We’ll bathe in the blood of our enemies for the Saintess!”
Well, they said they were fine. Then they must be fine. I was the kind of person who respected others’ opinions. Therefore, I decided not to question the girls who claimed to be all right. They were grown adults; they could handle themselves. Besides, I didn’t dislike this type. People who found joy in enjoying the fight and ultimately gaining the power to crush their enemies. Victory was, after all, a sweet fruit.
“All right, then. Next, let’s start with orcs and ogres.”
I raised the level to orcs and ogres. Naturally, they were stronger than goblins, but the three sisters were only attacked one-sidedly at first before easily trampling the monsters. The more they fought, the more the nuns changed. From simple girls into women who knew how to stand against the world. More adventurer than actual adventurers, they transformed into inquisitors who purged monsters.
By the time twenty-four hours had passed, the nuns with madness in their eyes were complete. Drenched in blood, these women could now be considered first-rate warriors even by imperial standards.
“The three of you have shared life and death together for only twenty-four hours. You must know this well yourselves.”
“““Yes.”””
Their dry, uniform replies suggested their discipline had taken hold. They could have just answered normally—why like this?
“From now on, even if your blood and birthplace differ, you must live like family. In that sense, you will simply be called the Three Sisters.”
Since they would operate as a trio, treating them as real sisters wouldn’t hurt. Teamwork was the most important thing in a party, after all. I hadn’t even selected supporting nuns yet, and for a three-dealer party, binding the three together as sisters was ideal.
“““Understood.”””
“Good that you listen well. Then let’s wrap this up.”
I retrieved the Hourglass of Habel and administered plenty of healing. This should be sufficient. Even without my direct involvement, sending them to dungeons through the Adventurer’s Guild would let them rack up achievements on their own.
If the Four Heavenly Kings were moving, it would be the betrayer Clanice. Since the Demon King was dead, they would obviously replenish their forces from dungeons. In that case, rather than the already ruined Kingdom’s dungeons, they would target the Empire’s as well, aiming to bring the Empire down. The Empire’s nobility was currently in chaos, making it the perfect time for that cunning woman to make her move. In that case, perhaps I could let them rest a little? Carrots and sticks had to be given in balance, after all. Forcing them into dungeons right now might cause complaints to erupt.
But the nuns were even more insane than I thought.
“Then what do we do now?”
“Hm? You have free time today.”
No time had passed outside. Only twenty-four hours had passed here, and they had been reborn as warriors. So dungeons could wait until tomorrow.
“We are still lacking.”
“You’re lacking even after that?”
This was why I hated geniuses. Teach them once and they immediately wanted to show off even more, as if it were nothing. At least they weren’t arrogant about it, so it wasn’t a bad thing. It was hard to scold them for this.
“Want to clean the church instead?”
“““Yes!”””
I hadn’t expected them to be this happy about being told to clean. At first I thought they’d gone mad, but apparently not.
“You really like it that much?”
From now on, I should probably assign them chores too. If they enjoyed it this much, I had to put them to work. Not just church cleaning—maybe send them into a dungeon today after all?
No. I didn’t know much about the Empire’s dungeons to begin with. I had cleared dungeons in the Kingdom because something felt off about it, but the Empire was vast and its battlefields minimized, so there was no need. I hadn’t looked into dungeons much at all.
While I was sending the girls off to clean and pondering what to do about dungeons, Claire approached.
“Oh, that girl?”
“Yeah?”
Claire wore a bewildered expression.
“No, what exactly did you do? How are the girls already in that state?”
Even when asked, I had nothing particular to say.
“Who knows? Maybe they were geniuses.”
At the very least, they were geniuses compared to the fools at Atelina, the Empire’s top educational institution.
“No, there’s no way they could have those eyes after less than an hour. Unless time stopped and you trained them during that period—”
Indeed, it would be strange for the girls to reach that state in under an hour.
“I summoned a bunch of monsters with summoning magic and told them to kill. When they were on the verge of death, I healed them with miracles.”
“It hasn’t even been an hour since training started, though? Normally, people don’t do that, right?”
If she dug too deep, it would become troublesome. It might be better to give a vague answer. I had planned to remain a mysterious lady if possible, but Claire was Katarina’s subordinate. If the assassin guild kept investigating, it would become annoying. Maybe it was better to throw her some bait.
No—Claire was testing me right now. I couldn’t afford to lose this battle of nerves. I had to remember: Claire was Katarina’s subordinate, always watching me.
“If you nitpick every little thing like that, you lose. Is that why you’re so good at it? Because you’re from the assassin guild?”
“Just how much are you—”
She was slowly trying to fish for something.
“Why?”
At my question, Claire carefully opened her mouth.
“Who exactly are you, my lady?”