How to Come Out on Top (3)
Two hours had passed since I fell into the Dead Forest.
Because I'd dropped in around evening, the sun had already gone home to rest, and the moon — overworked on a double shift — had taken its place on watch. The unholy denizens of this place loved the moon and its night shift, so the moment it showed its face, their real activities began. Roaming this forest. Baring their resentment toward the living. Moving to strip away whatever the living possessed.
As prey dropped into a den of starving lions, I should by rights have been fighting for my life with everything I had.
'...So why am I this safe?'
Standing in the middle of the forest, I was absurdly at ease.
It wasn't that the monsters hadn't found me. The dead are usually drawn to the vitality of the living, so plenty of them had lunged at me to claim my life. And I had politely sent each and every one of them back into the Chief God's embrace — meaning I'd cracked their skulls open.
Just moments ago I'd purified four evil spirits at once, adding to the slacker Chief God's workload. The forest's spirits were clearly doing their jobs.
The reason I felt so relaxed despite all that was simple: the fighting was laughably easy.
Evil spirits, beasts possessed by them, whatever they were — once the mace caved their skulls in, they lost their form. The relatively stronger ones didn't get purified in a single strike, but they couldn't hold out for long either. Before a mace imbued with Divinity, the unholy were simply powerless.
Of course, the monsters didn't just stand around watching me while I attacked. They gave it their all to kill me.
But look. They hurl a curse and my skills block it, they try a magical attack and their unholy mana gets purified by my Divinity, and the moment they resort to physical force my shield stops it — so what exactly are they supposed to do? They should just accept their beating from the mace like good little spirits.
Under these conditions, I'd spent two solid hours in continuous combat without so much as a scratch.
"What kind of question is that? The things lurking here are simply weak, compared to you."
No way. This place has a pretty high level range, you know? It's supposed to be somewhere a first-year at the Academy couldn't possibly hold out in. Sure, I've been growing fast even by game standards, but...
Huh? Am I actually stronger than I expected?
"At this level, I doubt you'll face any real danger here."
'Right?'
From now on, my only task was to keep fighting until morning came. Even a rough estimate meant swinging the mace for a good half a day.
But wasn't that literally my daily routine back home?
In the Aln household, there were days I went a full two days straight without sleep, just moving my body. And half a day? That's a cakewalk. If Fors told me to do only half a day, I'd have suspected he was planning an ambush mid-session.
'This is way easier than I thought.'
I'd braced myself for mortal peril and a desperate struggle, and what I got back instead was ease and leisure.
"Easy is always good."
'That's true, but.'
I had no intention of arguing with Grandpa. Easy is good. I know perfectly well you milk the honey while it's flowing.
The reason I answered so grudgingly, even knowing that, was simple.
If hunting the spirits here was this easy, then with a bit of prepared hardship, purifying this entire forest was entirely within reach, wasn't it?
Normally, entering the Dead Forest properly required meeting several conditions. First, you needed a Church-related class. A high reputation. A certain threshold of Divinity.
Once you met those conditions and encountered a specific NPC, you could pick up the questline tied to the Dead Forest. Its content: purify the forest held captive by the undead.
By the time players picked up this quest, they were usually pretty well-grown, so hunting the boss wasn't difficult.
Exactly — all they could do was 'hunt.'
Killing the first boss didn't purify the forest.
That was when the cycle play began.
Kill the boss, find the clue, kill the boss, find the clue.
Repeat that nonsense roughly five times, and finally you could drive death out of this forest.
Ah. Memories.
Back shortly after the game launched, people cursed this quest into the ground — what were the devs thinking? The forest was obnoxiously huge, taking a solid thirty minutes just to take down one boss, and they made you repeat it five times? And the rewards were somehow still garbage on top of that?
Still, once a walkthrough existed you could go straight to the true boss, so as the information spread, the rage over this quest died down. Later it even came out that the whole thing was linked to a different questline.
Let's think this through.
I got the skill from completing the Adri-related quest, so the prerequisites are covered. Divine mace mastery is the superior tier of blunt mastery — it's definitely a high-grade skill, so it won't interfere with wailing on the boss. And the location, obviously, I know.
The only real question is whether I can actually take that boss on.
I kept mulling it over with my arms crossed, but nothing came to my ears.
Weird. Whenever I stewed on something like this, the slacker Chief God used to toss me a quest. Did the freebies end because the first semester finished?
Cheap. Genuinely cheap.
Hey. If someone up top is that stingy, the people below won't treat them like a person. You've got to give a little so it feels worth following your orders. Is that so hard to understand?
Not that I want the handout now. I just talked trash about you, and if I heard a little ding right after, I think I'd actually snap.
Truthfully, the decision was already made. No matter how I turned it over, standing in one spot for half a day was inefficiency of the highest order. And a Hardcore Veteran like me simply cannot tolerate this kind of wasteful dead time.
Monsters do show up, but how much EXP could these things possibly give? They're all one-shot kills. Would they even fill 0.01% of my EXP bar?
So I would purify this forest. No quest had been issued, but I would complete the quest anyway. Digging my own grave tended to net me far more than smacking around pathetically weak spirit scraps ever could.
When night grew deep and the stars came out, Luka would sometimes recall the star that had once stood beside him.
The shining darling of brilliant, radiant talent. Martial arts. Magic. Every branch of knowledge. The moment he began learning anything, he would surge far ahead of everyone and claim the highest seat — then, muttering that it had grown dull, he would abandon it all and move on. Had he been born in the age of upheaval, he would no doubt have borne the title of Hero.
Luka had happened to stand at his side. He had scrambled, always, in desperate attempts to follow behind him — until he realized he could never shine the way that man did, and collapsed where he stood.
What he chose instead was the work of making stars.
Finding beautiful raw gems, polishing them with his own hands, and setting them into the night sky. Creating something that would outshine the star he had once watched.
Luka knew it himself.
He knew this was nothing but a compromise. That it was the thrashing of a defeated man. That it was masturbation in a hollow void that no amount of struggle could ever fill.
Had he not known, Luka would never have been moved so emotionally as he was now.
Watching Lucy Aln roam the night forest as if out for a stroll, Luka was regretting, with every fiber of his being, the thing he had done.
I was emotional. If I intended to do something like this, I should have prepared far more thoroughly. I will erase the memory of this moment, but should that magic falter — should the Aln and Partran houses come demanding answers — suicide would be my only recourse.
If I could turn back time...
...No. Even then, I would act exactly the same.
The moment I spoke with Lady Aln, just the two of us. The moment I saw her, so endlessly reminiscent of the star I once knew. The only options left to me were to confirm a fragment of that talent.
"So far, passable, I suppose."
Through Luka's eyes, Lucy Aln had proven to be a genuine genius.
Divinity or no, to think she could roam this forest so lightly at such a young age. Her handling of shield and mace. The face that showed not a trace of fatigue despite her constant movement. The composure that radiated even amid the ambushes that came crawling out of the darkness.
Lucy Aln had already left the Academy's first-year standard far, far behind.
By Luka's judgment, she could be dropped into the third year as she was and still turn in outstanding results.
But this was not enough.
Still lacking.
What Luka expected of Lucy Aln was not mere genius.
A talent that would ascend into the night sky and burn brighter than anyone alive. A light that would dim the star he had once watched. Something so overwhelming it would force him to abandon a craftsman's pride.
That was what Luka prayed Lucy would show him.
Watching Lucy push blindly forward, either fearless of the dark forest or simply oblivious, Luka suddenly realized where she was headed.
That place... is without a doubt where the one who commands this forest's many spirits resides.
How convenient. Shall I observe what manner of response she offers when she meets the creature?
Luka watched Lucy with a host of expectations — and not one of them was fulfilled.
The desperate battle he longed for did not exist.
All there was to see was the sight of evil spirits being crushed flat and scattered before an overwhelming Divinity.
And the being that stood at the head of the forest's countless spirits —
"Kyaaa~♡ So scary~♡ An evil spirit spitting out this as its curse~♡ Puhahah♡ Aren't you just a pathetic little scrub?♡"
— before the mocking voice of that girl, it could do nothing at all, and was purified on the spot.
"...What was that?"
Having dispatched the evil spirit without even exchanging a proper round of blows, Lucy Aln gazed at the spot where it had stood as though disappointed, then promptly moved on elsewhere.
Only then did Luka realize he had been laboring under an enormous delusion from the very beginning.
She didn't arrive here by chance! She set out to face that spirit from the start!
What is this. Lucy Aln. What do you know about this forest?!
Inwardly erupting in a gasp of awe, Luka quieted the pounding of his own heart and followed in her wake.
He waited to see what she would show him next.
Watching the Dead Forest's second boss scatter into dust, I furrowed my brow.
No, seriously, why are these things so pathetically weak?
Isn't something wrong here?
Did Luka pull some kind of stunt?