Raid Preparation (13)
The battle resumed.
The pattern was much the same as before.
The skeleton attacked, and I defended it.
Only one thing had changed: the voice of Grandpa now echoed in my ears.
<Child. Dost thou remember why the truly skilled all preach, one and the same, the fundamentals?>
'Of course I do! You nagged my ear off about it!'
What everyone calls the fundamentals is the bedrock of a discipline, the foundation upon which everything else is built. If you skipped the long grind of honing those fundamentals and simply built on top of them, the result might look finished at a glance, but before long it would come crashing down in a heap, leaving you worse off than if you'd never tried at all.
Grandpa had drilled this into me until I was sick of hearing it. There was a reason every master stressed the basics—how could I forget, when he'd been nagging me every single time I cheese-leveled my skills?
Grandpa spoke.
Garad's sword, he said, had nothing special about it.
That should have been an absurd thing to say, given that I was currently facing the man and drowning in helplessness—but somehow, I had a feeling I understood what Grandpa was getting at.
The sword the skeleton swung wasn't fast. There was no trace of the pressure Frey produced with her signature rapid strikes.
Yet the sword wasn't heavy, either. It carried none of the crushing weight I'd seen in the Alrn family's knight order—the kind of intimidation that steals the very word "defense" out of your vocabulary.
Then was it flashy? Not at all. His sword was stubbornly plain, ruthlessly practical.
Everything else was the same.
Garad's sword was utterly ordinary.
And yet it was strong.
So strong I couldn't see any way to break through it. The blade was always exactly where it needed to be, and that left me unable to take a single step forward.
<With that ordinary sword, he became one of the Hero's companions and was hailed as the strongest knight of his age. Dost thou know why?>
'No idea!'
<While others built structures upon their foundations, that man did nothing but pile the foundation higher and higher.>
The many renowned swordsmanships of the world were, in a sense, works of architecture.
A terrifyingly tall skyscraper.
A fortress with no gap to slip through, no matter where you looked.
A labyrinth with no way out.
A haphazardly built house that was, bizarrely enough, rock solid.
But Garad's sword was no building.
It was a foundation.
He piled earth upon earth upon earth until he'd raised a hill as tall as the buildings around it.
Where others constructed buildings, Garad had built himself a mountain.
<And dost thou know what that mad enterprise accomplished, once it finally bore fruit? It meant that no matter whom he faced, he could drag them onto his own battlefield.>
From atop a towering mountain, everything is laid bare.
The weak points of the skyscraper.
The unstable sections of the fortress.
The map of the labyrinth.
The pillars of a freshly built house.
And that is why it can be conquered.
You crush your opponent's strengths, worm into their weaknesses, until the suffocating foe flees their own walls—and then you bear down on them with your overwhelming height.
<That is why thou feelest helpless. A mountain so tall thou canst not see its summit is, in itself, despair.>
Understanding Grandpa's explanation was easy enough, but my brain didn't feel the least bit refreshed by it.
'Okay, so what am I supposed to DO about it?!'
That was the thing I needed most—how in the world was I supposed to knock him down? He hadn't told me that part.
I snapped at him for waxing poetic about the very guy suffocating me, and Grandpa laughed.
<If there is a mountain, climb it. Climb in silence, and one day thou shalt see the summit.>
'What kind of hand-wavy nonsense is that?!'
No, seriously, what the heck was that?!
The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like he'd cut his sentence off in the middle on purpose!
My brain short-circuited and I shrieked out loud, but Grandpa gave no reply. As if he'd said everything he needed to say.
Gyaaaaah! He summarizes on his own terms, decides that's enough, and leaves me hanging?!
Grandpa! Just because you served that useless Chief God, you're even picking up her habit of talking in half-finished sentences?!
If you keep assimilating like this, one day you'll turn into a degenerate pervert just like her, going "heo lol~ hah~" and then my whole life will be surrounded by perverts!
...Wait. Then everyone around me would be a pervert?!
No! I refuse to accept such a horrifying future!
I was ranting in my head, overheated, and in that instant I lost track of the skeleton's sword.
By the time the Iron Wall's warning reached me, I was already raising my shield—but the skeleton wasn't sloppy enough to grant me time to set my stance.
Struck by the skeleton's blade from an unbalanced posture, my body went flying and slammed into the ground.
I tasted blood in my mouth.
"Seems you don't even have a gap to talk anymore, huh? Ha. Your mouth finally shut tight. Delightful."
I got up off the ground to the sound of the skeleton's laughter.
Divinity was welling up inside me from Impact Conversion, so I must have taken that hit properly.
I spat out the blood pooling in my mouth and healed myself with the Touch of Armadi. With Ankir elevating the grade of my divinity, my body snapped back to perfect condition in moments.
"Are you just going to watch? A bit embarrassing, fighting in nothing but your skin, though?"
I ignored his jab and turned Grandpa's words over in my head, but no answer came easily.
You're telling a girl who hasn't climbed a hill since high school to go mountain climbing.
"Given up, have you?"
Only one thing surfaced in my mind.
Something my department head used to drone on endlessly, back when I was treated as a slave at the company.
That bald pig always said: any mountain, if you just look at the ground and keep walking, you'll find yourself at the highest point before you know it. Work is the same—grind away quietly and the overtime will be over before you know it.
...Huh?
Wait. Just wait a second.
"I see now."
As I mulled it over, my head suddenly cleared, and a laugh slipped out of me.
Hah. All those times I wanted to beat him to death when he'd say that and then clock out by himself. Who knew it would come in handy now of all times.
"...Hm?"
As I kept giggling and chuckling to myself, the skeleton tilted its head.
Does it think I've lost my mind?
Well, whatever it thinks, it doesn't really matter.
I organized the divinity circulating through my body and steadied my mace and shield.
"Oh ho. You haven't given up? As expected of—"
"Shut it♡ impotent skeleton♡"
Grandpa had said it at the start. My strategy had nothing wrong with it, he'd sworn on his name.
"Did losing your junk make you fail as a male too?♡ Yakkity-yak, yakking away like some chatty old auntie♡"
If my strategy was right.
If the climbing path I was on was the right one.
Then there was no need to glance around at the scenery on the way to the summit.
It was enough to keep my eyes fixed on the path ahead and put one foot in front of the other.
"Why not explore a new gender identity while you're at it?♡ I'll dig out a dress for you, go on and wear it!♡ You're hollow in the middle anyway, so nobody would even find it weird!♡"
If that interpretation was right, then what Grandpa meant was simply: don't doubt yourself.
Keep going as you have been. Keep moving forward until something connects.
If it feels insufficient, just put more force into every step you take.
Trust the path you've chosen.
"The Hero Garad, in a dress~♡ Pu-hahah!♡ It might actually suit you though?♡"
"...Right. The fault is mine, for granting you the gap to open your mouth."
I had no idea whether that interpretation was correct. Maybe I was walking toward a cliff instead of a summit.
But so what? If I really was about to leap off a cliff, Grandpa would scream at me in a panic, wouldn't he?
And when that happened, I'd just pin the blame on him for failing to explain properly.
"Only figuring that out now?♡ Guess an empty head thinks slowly too?♡ Impotent AND braindead♡ Pfft♡ How pitiful♡"
With a click of my tongue, I caught the sword that came screaming down at me.
It was time to climb the steep trail.
To Ruel—who stood at Lucy's side at all times—Lucy's talent was the real deal.
A tenacity that refused to give up no matter the torment, and a comprehension that absorbed every lesson the moment it was taught—those things were undeniable proof that she possessed the makings of a hero.
But Lucy had one enormous problem.
It was that Lucy knew far, far too much.
Chosen by a god's love, spoken to directly from the heavens, Lucy's knowledge was so vast that even Ruel, who had lived through countless experiences, could not fathom its scale.
And one more astonishing thing: Lucy wielded that immense knowledge with breathtaking skill.
She always drew out the optimal piece of knowledge at the exact moment it was needed, and through it carved the fastest, safest path.
Watching Lucy overcome danger, Ruel had thought more than once—how wonderful it would have been if the Hero of the past had been half as capable.
Yet that same knowledge sometimes dragged Lucy into peril. Her knowledge was so useful that she became swallowed up by it.
Even now was a case in point.
The skeleton that madwoman Karon had created resembled Garad endlessly.
So much so that even Ruel, who had spent over ten years at Garad's side, had momentarily been fooled.
The swordsmanship the skeleton wielded was no different.
The skeleton's sword carried Garad's strengths and his weaknesses in equal measure.
Ruel had told Lucy earlier that Garad's sword held no weakness—but that was true only of Garad himself.
A sword that crushed everything beneath its overwhelming mass did, in truth, harbor a weakness.
But that was only when that overwhelming mass was there to back it up.
Without the sheer class needed to press an opponent down, Garad's sword became not a sword of weaknesses, but a sword with no strengths at all.
That was precisely the case with the skeleton before them now.
Robbed of the immense mana it once possessed, moving on a trickle of the evil god's power, the skeleton's weight class was pitifully low.
It pressed Lucy through combat experience accumulated across countless life-or-death crossings, but that was all.
In pure weight class alone, it was about even with Lucy.
So if she simply held to her strategy, she couldn't necessarily win—but landing a single decisive blow was entirely within reach.
In fact, in the early stages of the battle, Lucy had held the initiative.
Her movements, as if she had perfectly memorized the skeleton's every habit, had driven it back.
Against an ordinary opponent, that would have been enough.
Once Lucy's signature tongue shook their emotions loose, they'd have charged again and again without ever pausing to think what had gone wrong, until they shattered.
But this opponent was not ordinary.
A skeleton bearing the memories of Garad, who had crossed innumerable battlefields.
Even in its fury, it identified the problem, and by changing its sword, it dismantled Lucy's knowledge.
From that moment, the situation reversed.
As her knowledge lost its power, Lucy began to waver.
Swept up in her emotions, she danced exactly as the skeleton wished.
Ruel had watched the whole process unfold, and had said nothing.
It was so that she would recognize the problem by suffering a crushing defeat.
Lucy was not a child who wanted to become a hero. She was a child who had to become one.
If he helped her fell the skeleton now, then one day she would meet another strong foe and have her life threatened in exactly the same way.
Better she lose here, in this place where losing cost nothing but pride. That was what Ruel had believed.
And the reason Ruel changed his mind was nothing special at all.
It was that Lucy, steadying her shield, looked far too much like she was having fun.
And that the accursed old bastard tormenting a girl who was like his own granddaughter had begun to grate on his nerves.
It was an utterly emotional judgment.
So Ruel had regretted telling Lucy so many things, thinking he shouldn't have.
But not anymore.
"Why do you keep glancing at my legs?♡ Not like an impotent one has anything to mount, huh?♡ Oh! Is that a habit left over from when you were alive?♡ The great Hero was a colossal pervert?!♡"
"...Enough!"
Lucy was climbing the mountain.
Steadfastly believing the path beneath her feet was the right one.
Upward. Upward. Upward again.
She was heading for the summit.
The initiative in the battle had long since flipped.
Lucy was unhurried, and the skeleton was desperate.
It shouldn't be this way.
A skeleton lacking in power had no ability to punch through Lucy's shield.
It needed to carve out an opening, open a path of escape—and yet here it was, whipped around by Lucy's taunts, charging headlong again and again.
Hah. A fighter this skilled—why had it faltered only moments ago?
If it could be fixed, it should have fixed itself long ago.
Well. That certainty of hers is not without merit either, though that is something I can teach her properly in time.
For now, let us be satisfied with this.
<Child.>
'What now?! Grandpa! Keep it short!'
<Taunt it. Attack it with its height. Garad was ever insecure that he stood small beside those around him.>
'...Wow, what incredibly useful advice!'
Then, Ruel thought, settling back comfortably, let us sit and watch a skeleton made in Garad's likeness get teased to death.