Midterm Exam (6)
Fighting off the spirits that came swarming at me, I could feel exactly how strong I'd become. The curses they flung at my ankles to hold me in place were either meaningless, or whatever small effect they managed to slip past my guard dissolved into nothing the moment it touched my divinity.
They threw themselves at me again and again, desperate to wound me directly, but not a single one could lay a scratch on me. Spirits who had never properly trained for combat moved far too clumsily for that. Why would I fear attacks that couldn't even mark a dwarven-forged shield?
Having cleared yet another room packed to the rafters with spirits, I let out a light breath and absently shook off my mace. What swelled up in my chest after every battle was a strange, intoxicating rush — something beyond words, distinct from the buffs of my Mesugaki skill.
The reason I had worked so hard to grow strong had always been survival. I'd believed that failing the Academy entrance exam would cost me my life. And after passing, I trained like a madwoman because I never knew when Agra's bullshit might claim me next. But for all that effort, I'd rarely had the chance to actually feel a sense of achievement about getting stronger — my adversaries were almost always beings on an entirely different scale from me.
Just when I'd start to get a little full of myself, something would come along and grind my face into the dirt. I wasn't a mole in some whack-a-mole game, you know. The moment I dared to think, hey, maybe I'm getting pretty strong, my skull got cracked open. Want to know why? On pure stats alone, I know I rank among the strong now. But after being smashed, shattered, and broken over and over, the only thought left in me was that I was fragile.
Yet here in this dungeon, bashing in the skulls of spirits with my mace, my strength was finally something I could feel in my bones. Even granting favorable matchups, this was a dungeon that didn't appear until the Academy's second year. Meanwhile, I was a first-year sitting her midterms. If I had played this normally, I'd have been obliterated by those knights the moment I stepped inside. But they couldn't deal me so much as a single wound.
And it wasn't just the knights. Not one soul in this manor had managed to deal me any real damage. I was strong now — more than strong enough.
The world just oppresses me harder than that, that's all. Huh. So does that mean it's all meaningless anyway?
Lost in these scattered thoughts, I stepped out of the room, and the manor's transformed scenery greeted my eyes. The changes that had begun in the corridors were spreading, room by room, following wherever I conquered. Ornaments lay shattered, broken, or torn; what looked like human blood had been splashed across the floors and walls. Wind crept in through the broken windows and set the chandeliers swaying. Leaving behind a manor filled with desolate clatter, I opened the door to yet another pristine room.
At this rate, I felt less like an adventurer and more like some demolition contractor wrecking this estate. And I hadn't laid a finger on a single piece of property, mind you.
I kept pushing upward. I blew apart the dining hall where the family must have shared their warm meals together. I cracked open the skull of a noble lady lingering in a room stuffed with gowns and jewels. I cut down the butler barring the stairs to the top floor, and reduced the figure guarding the master's study — once, perhaps, the head of this very household — back into ash. And with each victory, the manor grew bleaker, more wretched. A house prepared to welcome its guests was being drowned in ruin by an intruder named me.
<>"It's starting to look just like the manor we saw from the outside."
At the end of it all, I arrived at the room on the very top floor — the last untouched place in a manor half destroyed. Adri's bedroom. When I flung the door open, there she was, the same Adri who had greeted me when I first entered the manor, sitting on the bed with her legs crossed, waiting to receive me.
"What are you?"
Her chin propped on her hand, the first thing out of her mouth was a question. "Why does the manor collapse everywhere you move? How are you interfering with this estate, when it should be under my control?"
"I'm the apostle of the great, pathetic♡ Chief God, that's all."
I tossed her the magic word in response to her flat, cold questioning. An apostle of God says she's going to work miracles — is there a problem? If it bothers you so much, why don't you submit a prayer inquiry to the pathetic Chief God? Though I doubt that lazy bum will answer you; he barely ever answers me.
Adri's brow lowered, and she spoke again. "What exactly do you know?"
"Hmm♡ Probably more than a shut-in ghost loner?♡ Naturally♡"
Did she have any idea how many times I'd cleared this manor? Adri, you don't know this, but I've beaten you hundreds of times over. I've even taken you down bare-handed, without a shred of equipment. Someone like me, not knowing everything about this estate? Impossible.
I answered honestly, smiling all the while — but unfortunately, my answer apparently wasn't what Adri wanted to hear. She scrunched her brow, then rose slowly from her seat.
"Fine. If you won't answer, then I'll just have to force that mouth open."
At those words, Adri raised her hand — and my body floated up into the air before being flung clean out of the room. I had no chance to find my footing. Before I could even hit the floor, the corridor tilted, dropping me downward like a ball; I went streaming down the slope as if riding a slide, and landed right back in front of the main entrance. Grimacing at the impact, I pushed myself up just as Adri appeared at the top of the manor's grand staircase.
"To the audacious thief-cat trying to steal my manor — I shall deliver punishment."
The instant the words left her lips, every door in the house flew open and countless objects came shooting out of them. From the adorably harmless — brooms, serving trays, feather dusters — to grimoires spitting curses, swords enchanted with sinister auras, and even staves that summoned the dead. Watching a proper poltergeist straight out of a ghost story unfold around me, I laughed.
This was Phase One of the Adri fight. I had to punch through that endless storm of flying objects, climb all the way back up to the top floor, and land damage on Adri herself.
The first time I'd faced this pattern, it had been hell. Relax your guard for even one second and some object would clock you, locking you into hitstun — and then a chained combo of a dozen more items would shred you to pieces in a heartbeat. Well. That was the old days. Now, this didn't even qualify as a warm-up.
There was a rhythm to the way Adri's summoned objects attacked. Take, for instance: a broom swats your head to stun you, a knife buries itself in your leg, and a book fires off a curse right where you stand. The coding was designed purely to screw over the player — but once you'd memorized every last pattern? Different story entirely. Whatever attack came flying at me, I could always see the gap where I'd be safe.
"What the—"
<>"Ho. Nice reflexes."
I dodged the first incoming attack and broke into a sprint, and admiration drifted in from both sides. The two of them would never know — that I wasn't dodging on reaction. I knew exactly what was coming and exactly how I needed to move; the dodging simply happened on its own.
"Damn it! Why won't you get hit?!"
Adri looked genuinely heated watching me weave and slip through her barrage. But what could she do? Her opponent was me.
"You're throwing these attacks expecting me to take them?♡ Really?♡ This isn't a joke?♡"
"Shut up!"
"If it's too noisy, make me shut up♡ Ah♡ What's the matter, little ghost loner — can't manage it?♡"
I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Vaulted the railing leading up to the third. And arrived before Adri without a single scratch on me. Seeing me come, she frantically dragged every object in the vicinity around her body — but that too was a pattern I'd watched a nauseating number of times in the game. Which meant I had her every evasion memorized perfectly.
Slipping through the flood of attacks, I closed the distance and brought my divinity-laden mace crashing down onto that pale-white ghostly face.
"Gahk—!"
That's going to hurt.
The mace mastery I'd ground out with a single-minded vow to one day smash in Nakrad's skull was never going to feel light, you know? Adri writhed in pain, desperately trying to shake me off — but that was never going to happen. Call her a dungeon boss all you like; she was a mage-type. Could a casting class ever out-muscle a holy knight who'd clenched her teeth and ground her physical stats into the dirt?
So I struck her. And struck her again. And kept hammering away until, had Adri been anything other than a ghost, her facial bones would have shattered — when a shockwave erupted outward from where she stood.
I'd seen it coming, so I tried to plant my feet and ride it out. Impossible. Some invisible restraint peeled my soles right off the floor as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Hurtled from the fourth floor to the ground level, I tucked into a landing, rolled, rose, and looked back up.
"You goddamn witch!"
Staggering from the beating I'd given her, Adri pushed herself upright, venom thick in her voice as she swept her hand through the air. In response, spirits bearing Adri's exact likeness emerged from every corner of the manor — and all the objects that had briefly littered the floor rose into the air once more.
""I will kill you.""
The voices pouring out of countless Adris shook the whole house. Even in the game I'd thought it was creepy as hell, but seeing it in person? So much worse. An old nightmare stirred. Back in the days when I couldn't tell the real one from the fakes and just swung at everything, only to get chewed up by the flying objects and die. I'd tried this fight so many times, just to break this one boss. Took me at least a few hours, if I remember right.
Of course, now I know exactly how the real one gets chosen.
I lightly parried a sword swinging down at my neck and swept my gaze around the room. Lucky me. Starting on the first floor, of all things.
At the sight of me singling her out and charging, Adri scrambled backward in alarm — but it was already too late. I'd known from the very beginning that she couldn't drop me again. Just give it up quietly, Adri.
My mace came down on Adri's head, and in the same instant, the spirits that had filled the manor vanished without a trace. And moments later, the Adris revealed themselves once more.
""Can you find me again this time?""
"You think I can't?♡ Really?♡"
""Don't bluff.""
"The painting in the second-floor parlor. Am I right?♡ Hm?♡ Go on, tell me I'm wrong♡"
Sorry, but from the moment your starting position got exposed, your fate was sealed. I've got every one of your respawn points memorized. You're one of Soul Academy's boss monsters, after all. And unless you're strong enough to crush me with raw power, no amount of flailing will ever get you out of the palm of my hand.
So how about falling down quietly for me? Because at this rate, I'm going to have to go sit my exam without ever having closed my eyes.