Trial of Ruel (5)
What the—? There's no one here but me.
I peeled my eyelids open again, and this time I could see it: a translucent barrier had sprung up right in front of me.
I knew this effect.
The Protection Brooch.
The reward I'd pulled off the Golem last time had just saved my life.
Haha. Well then. Guess I'm dying anyway.
As I watched the Minotaur raise its arm for another blow and quietly despaired over my impending fate, the monster suddenly stopped moving.
What? Why is it doing that?
I found out soon enough.
The Minotaur's body was slowly dissolving away from the feet up.
The time limit on the Trial of Protection had run out.
"The trial is at an end. Thou hast proven the heart of protection that dwells within thee, and thus art granted the right to face the next trial."
The moment the old man's voice died away, a door creaked open somewhere in the distance.
You... son of a... bitch...
"You despicable... mongrel of an old fart worse than a dog."
No answer came back.
Goddamn old man.
Going silent like that must mean even you feel a twinge of guilt, huh?
You petty, trash-heap fossil.
Just you wait.
Once I get into the Academy, I'll make sure rumors spread far and wide about exactly what kind of man the saint Ruel really was.
Feel free to look forward to it.
You don't know this, old man, but I'm a possessor.
Dragging someone's name through the mud with plausible-sounding slander? That's not even work for me!
Just wait for the day your honor lies face-down in the dirt!
I will find a way—whatever it takes—to drag you right off that hero's pedestal!
Once the Minotaur had fully vanished, my skills started doing their jobs again.
Unbreakable Will forced my body to move, and Fear Overcome drove out the dread of the pain still waiting for me.
Thanks to them, I managed to haul myself upright.
The very first thing I did after standing was puke my guts out.
Something kept surging up from below, and there was no holding it down.
I wondered which of my organs the Minotaur's fists had crushed when it hit me.
Along with whatever had been sitting in my stomach, blood came welling up as I retched.
At this rate, when I finish the trial and meet Forsell, I'm going to get an earful.
No, wait. If I'm this bad off, he won't even bother lecturing me—he'll just haul me straight to a doctor.
Picturing Forsell sprinting at full power with me slung over his shoulder was honestly pretty funny.
I wonder how fast he'd actually go.
Can't say for sure, but probably faster than a horse.
...Ah, wait. Though I bet Carl's going to get chewed out for nothing. For failing to protect me properly.
If that happens, I'll have to defend him—hey, if I got wrecked, you'd all be in the same boat, wouldn't you?
He got dragged into my mess, after all.
He doesn't deserve the scolding.
Once I'd steadied myself somewhat, I took a deep breath and raised my head again.
Now, where did my shield and mace end up?
I won't need them for the rest of the trials, but I'd grown attached to the old things, and I wanted to take them with me.
As I turned my head searching for my gear, I spotted something sitting in front of me: a single potion bottle.
The liquid inside glowed a faint red, and glimmering flecks like starlight drifted within it, shimmering and pulsing with light.
Wait—is this the thing I think it is?
In the Soul Academy game, there's exactly one liquid that looks like this.
A potion containing the miracle of healing.
This stuff is in a whole different league from a regular HP potion.
It clears every status ailment and restores fifty percent of your missing HP. A god-tier item.
Why is this here?
Don't tell me the old man gave it to me?
He summons a Minotaur to kill me, then hands me medicine to patch me up afterward?
Absolute lunatic.
This isn't even the classic "give you the disease, then sell you the cure" move—it's worse!
I very nearly died just now, thanks to him.
If I hadn't happened to pick up the Protection Brooch yesterday, I'd have been a bloody smear under the Minotaur's fist.
And this measly little potion is supposed to square things?
Where exactly did you leave your conscience, holy knight?
Did you offer it up to God along with the rest of your soul and lose track of where you put it, you bastard?
In a flash of temper I nearly kicked the potion away—then stopped my foot mid-swing.
The old man may be absolute garbage, but the potion had done nothing wrong.
If I drink this, I'll feel a little better.
I had no idea how the healing would actually play out, but it had to beat my current state.
Reaching for the stopper, I hesitated.
What if the old man had set another trap here?
Nothing like this had ever happened in the game, so I couldn't say for certain one way or the other.
Given that he'd just thrown a Minotaur at me out of sheer pettiness, there was no denying the man was a spiteful, small-souled creature.
Nothing guaranteed he hadn't done something nasty to it.
Reluctantly, I decided to put off drinking the potion for now.
There was no more physical exertion ahead of me anyway.
So as long as I could still move my arms and legs until the trial ended, that was enough.
Proper treatment could wait until I got outside.
Of course, while I was being treated I wouldn't be able to re-enter the dungeon, which meant no more leveling.
Ugh. There goes my plan to hit Level 10, evaporating into thin air.
But there was nothing to be done.
Safety beat dying, every time.
In a reality with no save files, I wasn't about to gamble with my life.
I slipped the potion into my pocket and went looking for my shield and mace.
They weren't hard to find.
The shield was caved in, dented deep in the middle.
Crumpled like that, it would never function again.
The mace was no better.
Handle and head had split clean apart—the weapon was, quite literally, now a "ma" and a "ce," good for nothing but dead weight.
Either way, carrying them would only be a burden.
I'd grown fond of both over these past few weeks, but it was time to say goodbye.
No way I could haul them along in a body that struggled just to walk.
Farewell, my friends. In your next lives, may you be reborn as legendary gear forged from rare materials.
Leaving the two of them behind, I limped toward the open door.
It was time for the next trial.
The room beyond wasn't much different from the one before.
With one single difference.
In the center, where the statue had stood, there was now a stone slab.
"This trial is the Trial of Sanctity. It exists to test the faith thou bearest within thy heart..."
Tuning out the old man's endless droning, I walked up to the slab.
The words carved into it told an anecdote about Armadi, the God of Creation and master of all the gods.
While Armadi feasted at a banquet with the gods beneath her, the wine ran dry.
So Armadi commanded her chamberlain to bring water, and when he bore the vessel to her, she dipped her own hand into it.
The water slowly blushed red, until it had turned to wine.
"Summarize this anecdote in a single line."
So this was the question.
This particular puzzle was one of the odder ones in the Trial of Sanctity.
You could find the answer inside the game—but also outside it.
Because this problem was based on an anecdote about Byron, the French poet.
Naturally, the correct answer was the same one Byron had given when he read this story.
"...Consider well before thou answerest."
"The water met its master, and blushed."
"The pathetic water met its master and blushed, just as pathetically as ever."
There it is again. Pathetic.Pathetic.
Could I just say it normally for once?
Haa. Well, at least the content was close enough.
The moment the answer left my mouth, the old man went quiet.
Old man, I've got every question in these trials memorized. There's nowhere for you to hide a trick card.
Just accept the answer like a good boy and move on.
Go ahead—tell me I'm wrong.
Then I'll demand you produce the actual right answer.
As I glared toward the voice with narrowed eyes, a dry cough sounded, followed by more words.
"The answer is correct."
With that, the door to the next chamber swung open.
You could've done that from the start.
Let's wrap up this trial fast, too.
I could feel my condition getting worse by the minute.
Even now I was only standing because of Unbreakable Will—I could collapse at any moment and nobody would call it strange.
My body was already at its limit.
My mind was holding the line, but not for much longer.
At the very least, if I was going down, it had to be after the trial ended—out there, where the light was.
That way, Forsell or Carl could actually find me.
I hobbled through the door into the next room, and this time a fully formed temple revealed itself.
Majestic murals covering the walls and ceiling. Chandeliers overhead, and rows of pews like a chapel.
Walking forward along the central aisle, I was greeted by the statue of a goddess.
"The final trial is the Trial of Endurance. Thou shalt now confront the nightmare that lies deepest within thee. Behold it, and—"
Yeah, yeah, can we hurry it up?
"Thou wretched old codger. Shut it and get on with it already?"
At my prodding, the old man shut his mouth.
Ah, sulking now, are we?
What do you want me to do about it?
What exactly are you planning to pull next?
Go ahead and summon another Minotaur like you did in the Trial of Protection, see if I care.
This trial happens inside my own mind anyway—there's nothing you can actually interfere with.
So skip the exposition. Any second now, I really might keel over.
"Very well. The trial begins."
The instant the old man spoke, my vision went dark.
When I came back to myself, I was standing in the middle of some lavish banquet hall.
Where was I?
It looked exactly like one of those noble parties you'd see in a fantasy setting.
The guests—men in immaculate suits, women in dazzling gowns—had clustered into their little circles.
Everyone wore a smile and traded pleasantries, while I alone stood abandoned at the edge of it all.
What is this?
This is nothing like the Trial of Endurance I know.
What I remembered from the game was a far crueler, more disgusting, more twisted nightmare.
What kind of weird stunt are you pulling this time, old man?
For all his wisdom, the man really is petty.
As I grumbled and looked around, a human voice drifted into my ear.
"Is that her? The Aln family's gutter-rat young lady?"
"Ahaha, 'gutter-rat young lady'? Such vulgar language, my dear."
"But doesn't it suit her perfectly?"
"There's a better word for her, you know. The disgrace of House Aln."
"Hmph. 'Disgrace'? Isn't that even harsher?"
The venom pouring out of the people around me seemed endless.
You could have filled an entire aquarium with nothing but their insults and still had some left over.
Watching the scene with numb detachment, I realized something—this wasn't my nightmare.
If it were mine, a banquet hall like this would never appear.
My nightmare would be Soul Academy 2 getting announced as a buggy disaster, or being drafted back into the army.
Or, failing that, it would show me those aimless days right after I'd crawled out of the orphanage, wandering with nowhere to go.
It was obvious.
This was Lucy's nightmare.
Right now, I was seeing the thing Lucy feared most of all, laid bare before my eyes.
Was this something Lucy had actually lived through?
I didn't exactly feel sorry for her. In the end, this too was the harvest of the karma Lucy herself had sown.
What bothered me about the scene was something else entirely.
If this was something Lucy had genuinely experienced...
Then just how low was her reputation?
If people said this kind of thing openly at a public social gathering, then Lucy was, for all practical purposes, a public enemy.
So this was... textbook social exile, huh?