The Trial of Ruel (3)
The instant I set foot on the stairs, the statue moved to block my path.
Darkness swallowed everything—then light bloomed from both walls in the same breath. Thank goodness this part matched the game exactly. I'd almost regretted not bringing a torch along.
In the silence, only the sound of my footsteps echoed down the steps, one after another. When I finally reached the bottom, a place opened up before me that was nothing like the gloomy cavern I'd just left.
Nothing in the temple had escaped the ravages of time. Pillars cracked clean through, the floor overrun with nameless plants. Walls that must once have borne magnificent murals, and at the very center, a statue of the goddess. This was where the Trial of Ruel began.
Before approaching the statue, I fished the potions out of my coat—the ones I'd stocked up on during my last visit to Evans. Various potions granting temporary buffs. Small-village merchandise, so the effects weren't anything impressive, but there was no harm in preparing for the worst.
The moment I gulped them down, my mouth filled with bitterness. It was like someone had dumped one of those powdered children's medicines straight onto my tongue. They say what's bad for the tongue is good for the body, but isn't this a bit much?
Still, after downing them, I could somehow feel strength welling up from within. Preparation complete, I took my place before the statue.
If this trial really was identical to the game, it should be the voice's turn to speak right about now.
"Art thou the one who requests the trial?"
From the statue came the voice of an old man—utterly at odds with the goddess's merciful visage.
The first time I'd heard it, I'd been quite shocked. And no wonder: a cranky grandfather's voice pouring out of a statue of such a beautiful goddess. The mismatch was so total I'd burst out laughing without meaning to.
'That's me.'
"Right. You got it, old geezer."
"...Very well."
Huh? Did he just pause for a split second there? Must be my imagination.
"Within this place, manifold trials await to test thy conviction. Each is designed to push thee to thine uttermost limit, that it may be proven whether thy conviction is true. The trials shall not be light, I warn thee."
'Yeah, yeah, skip ahead, will you?'
"Old geezer. Got it, so shut your trap? Just from your voice I can already smell the old man on you."
Oops. That was a slip.
His speeches were just so long that my gamer's skip-instinct got the better of me. But come on—he was repeating, for the umpteenth time, a lecture I'd heard hundreds of times over!
Whenever I entered this trial, that old man's dialogue was unskippable, and it drove me up the wall. Back in my speedrunning days, I lived with the words yeah, yeah, shut up already on the tip of my tongue every single time he launched into his speech. I never dreamed that habit would bleed into reality—and past the mesugaki filter, no less.
So what if I talk a little aggressively? It's just a voice reading out the trial rules, after all. No matter what I say, it's going to carry on with the trial anyway.
I shut my mouth and waited for the voice to explain the trial. The answer never came.
...Huh? What's this?
Did that trial-announcing voice actually have a personality?
In the game it had droned on about the trial's contents without a flicker of emotion, didn't it? Had the shift to reality changed something here too?
No way. Surely not.
"I see. So full of thyself already. We shall proceed to the trial at once."
The voice explaining the trial was positively brimming with anger.
I was screwed. Genuinely, completely screwed.
Hold on—in the game there was no personality, no nothing! That voice didn't even have a single line of backstory attached. It was worth less than generic narration! How was I supposed to know there'd be hidden lore behind it?! This is a fluke! An unfair hit!
"The first trial is the Trial of Protection. One who bears the shield beneath god must learn to guard, unbowed, that which must be guarded—no matter the circumstance. Thus shalt thou be tested."
The voice cut off mid-explanation, as if to say it had nothing more to share with me.
Excuse me, grandfather? Normally you give a much more detailed rundown of the test. You're supposed to be a long-winded walking strategy guide with nothing better to do. Why are you clamming up like a sulking child?
Okay, fine, maybe I did go a bit too far. But you're not actually going to sneak something weird into the test just because you got your feelings hurt, are you? I'm Level 3 right now, and I know exactly what spawns in the Trial of Ruel at Level 3. Try any funny business and I'll spread it far and wide that the legendary holy knight Ruel was nothing but a petty old codger.
Too afraid of what I might say out loud to change my tune, I kept my sulking purely internal—until a chittering rose from the darkness.
Goblins. Two straight days of these things, nonstop. Talk about overexposure. Damn goblin vermin.
I counted them by eye. Twelve in all. Spearmen, shieldbearers, archers, and even a mage mixed in. A goblin warband—identical to the one I remembered.
What a relief. So he wasn't that petty after all.
The goblins matched my memory, but they were hardly pushovers. Goblins that move as a pack can become more cunning and dangerous than any other monster out there—and for someone like me, with precious little real combat experience, that went double. Honestly? I had no confidence I could score a flawless victory against all twelve.
But that was fine. I didn't need to win outright. The passing condition of this trial was, above all, protecting the statue at my back until the timer ran out. And that happened to be the one discipline I was most confident in.
With Unbreakable Will, I would never give up, no matter the circumstance. With Iron Wall, I could move to meet any incoming attack and shut it down at the optimal angle. And with the Mesugaki skill's aggro-drawing provocation, I could lock every single one of their attacks onto me and me alone.
The conditions were perfect. From here on, everything hinged on my control—or, now that this was reality, perhaps I should call it my actual fighting skill.
I raised my shield and watched the goblins close in on me.
"Aww♡ What's the matter, pathetic little goblins♡ You've got me outnumbered and you're still scared?♡ Ahaha. Losers♡ Trash♡ Disgusting little mob mobs♡"
I felt their hostility lance toward me like arrows and took a deep breath.
Strange how the mind works. The first time an orc's killing intent hit me, my mind went blank white—but now, even bathed in bloodlust, I didn't tense up all that much. Maybe because I'd spent all of yesterday soaking in it.
Forsell really does know how to break a person in. Remembering yesterday's agony, I had absolutely no intention of thanking him for it, though.
"Come at me, XP-farming fodder♡"
The instant the goblins raised their weapons, power began seeping into my body, bit by bit. I'd learned this in the dungeon yesterday: the Mesugaki skill's buff effect didn't target just one person. Which is to say—anger enough people at once, and your stat boost scales with it.
Right now, at this very moment, I had to be three times stronger than usual. Probably!
"If you're mob trash, then die like it and become my XP♡"
Alright. Let's begin.
The moment the goblin archer drew his bowstring in the distance, Iron Wall spoke to me. Raise your shield. Without a flicker of hesitation, my body obeyed the call—and the arrow that had been flying at my face struck the shield and ricocheted away.
Maybe the goblins judged that my movement had stalled, because the spearmen surged forward with a vicious roar. Their spearmanship was pitiful. Give farmhands in the territory some spears and I imagine they'd fight about the same.
No need to humor such an obvious attack. I slammed my shield into the spear shafts, and the goblins, unable to bear the weight, staggered. I dove into the gap. A spear is certainly a threatening weapon—but only while the distance holds. Close the gap, and it's nothing but a clumsy obstacle in the way. Especially when allies and enemies are tangled together.
The same went for arrows and magic. Did these goblins have a hidden archmage among them? A divine marksman? Aiming at me while I was tangled up with their own kind meant accepting friendly fire. Given time they might steel themselves to make that call—but they wouldn't sacrifice their own comrades from the outset. I knew this, because Forsell taught me. Whatever else you could say about the man, in this one field he was absolutely reliable.
I crushed the skull of the goblin in front of me and lunged straight for the one behind it. The brute clearly never dreamed I'd be the one pushing in; he was still scrambling to react when his turn came. By the time he managed to square his stance, my mace had already arrived above his head.
CRACK!
Two down.
The moment I moved to strike again, Iron Wall fired a warning through me. I abandoned the follow-up and threw up my shield instead—and in that same instant, a fireball came sailing over the rim of it.
Fast decision-making! Considering how long casting takes, he was planning to just roast me along with the rest of the goblins, wasn't he?! What, is he all heated up?
I forced a laugh through the sting of flesh pressed against the red-hot shield.
"Pathetic goblin♡ Even your magic is a joke♡ Then again, no way a cripple like you could cast properly♡"
The moment the taunt left my lips, the goblins ringing me surged in to grab hold. Arrows arced overhead, and the goblin mage immediately began casting its next spell.
Ahaha. You're mad?! You're fuming! But here's the problem—you get angrier, and I just get stronger!
I leveled my shield to face them head-on and loaded power into my legs. The fireball had taught me something: leave that mage alone any longer, and sooner or later it would cost me dearly. So my next move was simple. Charge straight into the goblin horde obsessed with capturing me.
They didn't suspect—not even a little, not the tiniest sliver of a chance—that I would attempt a breakthrough. Their carelessness was my opening. Through that carelessness, to the mage. I drew in a huge breath and drove strength into my legs.
A reckless charge that abandoned all thought of my rear. A movement that, if I stopped midway, would hand the goblins every opening they could dream of. But I had confidence. In every hour of training I'd endured. In the potions burning through my veins. In the Mesugaki skill itself. It all wove together into certainty.
A goblin slammed into my shield as it lunged for me, and I didn't slow one whit. Forward—anything in my way gets hurled aside, then forward again! The goblin archers fired in a panicked flurry, but it was pointless. Did they really think that garbage archery could punch through my armor and shield?
And then, in a single heartbeat, I stood before the mage. It still hadn't finished casting.
My eyes met the goblin's mid-incantation. Watching the terror frost over its face, I smiled.
"Drop dead♡ Trash♡"