Mesugaki! (1)
With a skill like Unbreakable Will at my back, I'd never once imagined losing to anyone in sheer grit.
Today, however, I learned the truth.
There is always a bigger fish. Above every sky, another sky.
Forsell's stamina existed on a level my body couldn't even begin to fathom.
How is this damn old man still bursting with energy after teaching me for six straight hours? Just how high is his stamina stat?
My hands, still gripping the mace, trembled uncontrollably. My shield arm, worn down from blocking far too many strikes, had stopped listening to me altogether. Hours of nonstop movement had my lungs feeling like they were about to tear, and my brain had stopped producing thoughts a long time ago.
The skill kept forcing my body upright, but right now I was less a person and more a zombie — a zombie lurching along on pure instinct, dragging itself step after step.
"Young miss?"
But even that had reached its limit.
Given how long I'd lasted, I figured I'd endured remarkably well. As I've said before, will is only ever will. When the body hits its wall, I have no choice but to yield to it.
And what exactly am I trying to say here?
"Forsell."
"Yes, young miss."
"I'm going to sleep now, so don't touch me, you training-addicted lunatic."
You are a hopeless, incurable exercise addict.
What? I refuse to accept that! Prove it in a sparring match!
A sparring match? No thanks. I hate sparring. I'd rather do a duo queue...
That evening, as Forsell sat drinking alone in his quarters, he spoke to the presence lingering outside his door.
"Lord Count. You may as well come in."
"Ahem. You knew I was here?"
"You weren't exactly making an effort to hide it, my lord."
The door opened, and Benedict stepped through.
For a man who normally buried himself in his study well past midnight to appear so suddenly, Forsell showed not a flicker of surprise — because he'd been expecting him all along.
"This is about the young miss, Lucy, I take it?"
"It is. May I sit?"
"Please do."
When Benedict settled into the chair across from him, both sides of the desk were filled. It was a desk roomy enough that an ordinary pair could sit comfortably on one side — three if they squeezed — but with those two hulks seated facing each other, it looked like a cramped two-seater.
"Let's have a drink together. It's been a while."
"What is this stuff?"
"A souvenir from when we stormed the Vampire Duke's stronghold. I showed it to a man who knows his liquor, and his hands were shaking like leaves."
"And the name?"
"Couldn't tell you. All I remember is the poor fellow keeling over in shock at the sight of it, so the name escapes me entirely."
Forsell let out a hearty laugh and joked that anything this rare had to taste good. As he rose from his seat to hunt down a pair of glasses, Benedict spoke again.
"You knew I was coming?"
"Everyone in this household knows that when it comes to the young miss, my lord Count has no self-control whatsoever."
"...Ahem."
Benedict coughed awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable, but he couldn't bring himself to deny it. He had made far too many mistakes out of love for his daughter to refute a single word.
"What's your read on Lucy?"
"She has talent."
Forsell answered without a moment's hesitation.
He had trained countless people in his day — from world-renowned geniuses to the hopelessly dull who clawed their way to knighthood through nothing but effort. And in his eyes, Lucy was, without question, talented.
Her gifts were not one or two, but the most exceptional among them was undoubtedly her way with a shield.
A person wielding a shield for the first time usually uses it for defense and nothing else. They fixate so hard on the word shield that all their focus narrows to simply absorbing the opponent's blows.
Lucy was different. She understood how to draw out a shield's full potential.
Not merely blocking — at times she'd wedge herself into an incoming attack to break its rhythm, or shove the enemy back to throw them off balance. And even while doing all that, she never neglected her defense.
This was no ordinary talent. It bordered on a heaven-sent gift.
If this was what she could do without any proper instruction, what would she become after honing that talent for months, for years? What kind of monster would emerge?
"The blood of House Aln truly cannot be hidden. If it were up to me, I'd take over her training myself starting now. That girl could carve her name into the history books."
"I appreciate the praise for my daughter, but that's not what I came to ask about."
"Ah. Understood, my lord."
You mean the young miss's transformation, then.
The girl had changed drastically over these past few days — so dramatically that one knight remarked even a man risen from the dead couldn't transform that much.
The old Lucy had been a stranger to grit. The moment anything — study, exercise, anything at all — grew the least bit difficult, she'd throw it aside. She was so frail it was hard to believe she was the Iron-Blood Count's daughter.
Small wonder, then, that one noble who witnessed her had asked whether that was really the Count's child at all.
But at some point, something had shifted in her.
Forsell had seen that change with his own eyes from the day she first appeared at the training grounds. The word that defined the girl who walked in carrying a mace and a shield was tenacity.
Not a single day missed, training herself to the point where even hardened knights would click their tongues — no one alive could deny her perseverance. The method looked strange to ordinary knights, certainly, but by her own strange method, she had produced unmistakable results.
"What's your assessment?"
"A positive change. Ask anyone and you'll get the same answer."
Ask whether the old Lucy or the new Lucy was better, and every single person would say the new one. It was true her speech and conduct still fell short of noble standards, but compared to the outrages she used to commit, that much was nothing.
"Right. It is, but..."
"Is something worrying you?"
"To be honest... yes."
A sudden change doesn't always unfold in a good direction. Even when the surface looks fine, the inside may be quietly rotting away.
Having lived through something similar himself, Benedict couldn't bring himself to welcome Lucy's transformation without reservation.
"You know as well as I do — our daughter was twisted in all sorts of ways because of this worthless father of hers."
"She was."
When Benedict blamed himself, Forsell nodded along without hesitation.
"After her lady mother passed, I coddled her endlessly, and she became an utterly hopeless human being."
Lucy had certainly committed plenty of wrongs. But if you asked whether all of them were her fault alone — no, they weren't. In the end, a child's sins are a parent's sins.
Had Benedict raised Lucy with a firmer hand, perhaps her tyranny would never have grown so extreme.
"And now that child turns herself around overnight. That's not normal, is it?"
"No, it isn't."
"Is there anything you can think of? You watched her all day today, didn't you?"
"Determining that is the role of her parent, my lord."
At Forsell's earnest jab, Benedict turned his gaze away. Even now, he lacked the confidence to face his own daughter with an honest heart.
Watching this hopeless father — a man who adored and loved his daughter, yet simultaneously feared truly reaching out to her — Forsell heaved a sigh.
Perhaps the young miss lived like a degenerate because she takes after the Count himself.
He raked a hand through his hair, downed the wine in his glass in one swallow, and spoke.
"The young miss may have received a Blessing."
"A Blessing?"
"Yes. That fool Carl says that ever since he heard the young miss's taunts, he's had trouble controlling his emotions."
Carl had committed an unforgivable mistake, true — but before that, he had been a superb knight. In every extreme situation, without a single reckless act, he had coolly executed only what needed doing. He was a man you could trust with your life.
It was no accident that everyone in the knight order had hoped he would be spared punishment. If a man like that had lost the ability to govern his own heart, then perhaps Carl's excuse yesterday hadn't really been an excuse at all.
"A Blessing, you say."
"It would certainly explain how a person could change in an instant."
"True. True enough."
Blessings bestowed by the gods upon mankind rewrote people overnight all the time. It had happened more than once or twice before. If Forsell's guess was right and Lucy had received a Blessing, her transformation was very likely connected to it.
"If that's the case, there's not much to worry about... a Blessing, hmm."
"Isn't it a good thing? The day will come when the young miss inherits the family and takes up a noble's duties. It'll surely serve her well."
Benedict gave no answer. Instead, he plucked the wine bottle from Forsell's hand and poured it into his own glass. He took a sip, and his brow furrowed at the tangle of complicated aromas spreading across his tongue.
"It's certainly fine stuff. Just not to my taste."
"You call yourself a noble and can't even appreciate wine?"
"Give me the ale the dwarves drink any day."
At Benedict's grumbling, Forsell burst out laughing, then poured some wine into his own glass as well.
"The expedition to the Evans dungeon — that's a week from now, isn't it?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Take good care of our daughter until we return."
"Have no fear. Training runs to the Evans dungeon are hardly a new occurrence for us. Nothing will happen."
One day, after enduring several more of those hellish days with Forsell, I arrived at the training grounds to find Carl there, warming up.
He was sprinting laps around the grounds hauling a load of gear that looked at least twice his own bulk.
Judging by the sweat pouring off him like rain, he couldn't have been at this for just ten or twenty minutes.
He's out of his cell, so wasn't his punishment over? Why is he doing this?
As I stood there watching him stretch, the bald knight — who had lately taken to acting awfully familiar with me — came sidling over.
"Good to see you, young miss."
Hello there, Sir Knight.
"Hey, Baldy. Still shining bright today, I see."
"Of course! I polish it clean every single day!"
This knight took genuine pride in his immaculate scalp and interpreted the word bald as a compliment — a truly peculiar specimen. Thanks to that, no matter how viciously my Mesugaki tongue insulted him, he never took a single point of damage.
Sir Knight, why is Carl doing that?
"Bald Knight. Why is that weakling over there doing that?"
"He's serving his punishment."
According to the bald knight, house arrest was purely a punishment handed down by the family — entirely separate from whatever the knight order itself imposed.
So the running is the punishment? In army terms, it's like hauling a full pack around the parade ground?
"How long does he have to keep that up?"
"Until the expedition departs."
By "until" you mean minus time for sleeping and eating, right? Right? That's what you mean. Surely he's not expected to run without ever sleeping.
"Knowing him, probably not even that."
Whoa. Is it because this is a game world that the punishment difficulty is absolutely insane? All day long? Isn't that just telling him to run until he dies?
That's a problem, though. That guy's my subordinate, you know.
"He'll be fine. Back in the day, men did that sort of thing for over a week straight."
...And how are they still alive?
"And they lived through it, you say?"
"They're knights."
Was being a "knight" in Soul Academy just another way of saying "superhuman"?
...Actually, thinking it over, that tracks pretty well.
"By the way, young miss — I have a message from Sir Forsell."
What is it?
"What is it?"
"He says to come to the sparring arena once you've warmed up. He insists you ought to experience real combat before tomorrow's departure."
Combat? Here? At a training ground?