Preparing the Conquest (14)
Frete, apostle of the Goddess of Beauty and Art, awoke in a place filled with darkness.
The first sensation to find him was pain. There was scarcely a spot on his body that didn't ache.
What on earth did I do yesterday?
No idea. Nothing comes to mind. My head has been dyed in so many revolting thoughts that I can't recall anything properly.
Let's assess my surroundings first.
I can't see anything. Has my vision been blocked by a blindfold?
No. I feel nothing near my face at all.
Hm? And it's not just near my face, it seems. My hands, my feet, my skin — the sense of touch itself has vanished entirely.
My wrists won't move properly, so I appear to be bound by something.
...Of course there's no smell. And no sound, either, even as I move my wrists this way and that.
Whatever could have happened?
Even facing a situation where any manner of crisis might have befallen him, Frete remained utterly composed.
Summer or winter alike, the man made his bed on the earth and his blanket of the sky, wandering place to place delivering his goddess's word — he was optimistic to the point of excess. Even now, he reasoned that as long as he wasn't dead, everything would somehow work out, and made to close his eyes again.
"Hey. Hey. Don't sleep, you lunatic."
That was when it happened. For the first time, a voice reached him from nearby.
A voice I seem to have heard somewhere in the distant past. The fact that I faintly remember it means she must have been somewhat beautiful.
"You can't summon a single thought in that head of yours, so what else is there to do but sleep?"
"Normally the correct reaction would be to panic, no?"
"If I die, I die. I would be granted an audience with the beautiful visage of the goddess herself — what is there to fear?"
"...Wow. Ten years on, and he's somehow become even more insane."
Snap! With the crack of fingers snapping, the darkness lifted and the surroundings revealed themselves.
The first thing he saw was the ceiling of a grim, brick-walled prison.
The iron shackles binding his limbs.
A body ruined as though he'd been tortured.
And finally — the face of a woman he had seen in the distant past, and had believed he would never see again.
"Karia?"
"Yeah. It's me, you freak."
"...I heard you had died."
"It's complicated, that story. Get your head in the game already."
Get my head in the game?
Ah. Of course. With my senses returning, the revolting fog in my mind has cleared as well.
Recognizing her, a flood of information surged through Frete's mind.
The reason I came here was the goddess's guidance.
She had told him that in Burrow Territory there were those who sought to dye the world in ugliness, and so he had set foot there with his identity concealed.
To outward appearances it had been an unremarkable place — but it could not deceive Frete's eyes.
To a man who divided all things in this world into beauty and ugliness, the filth seeping through the territory forced itself into his sight whether he wished to look or not.
Not long after entering the territory, Frete realized that the whole of it had fallen into the grip of an Evil God. And that at the center of it all stood House Burrow.
Having grasped everything, he had planned to withdraw for the time being and return with the Order's holy knights to wage a crusade of purification — but tragically, his intentions had come to nothing.
He had used every means at his disposal to erase the traces of his apostleship, yet he could not slip free of the Evil God's gaze.
Frete had fought desperately to escape the territory, but the darkness showed no end no matter how far he ran.
All that remained to him was to resist until he fell.
"Remember it all now?"
Frete spat out the blood pooled in his mouth and gave a nod.
"...Yes. Roughly."
"How weak did you get in the ten years I was gone? You couldn't even manage a proper escape."
"It couldn't be helped. I was never even granted a chance to fight properly."
The darkness that swallowed the territory the moment it realized I'd been discovered.
The countless traps lurking within it.
Worn down bit by bit inside that darkness, and then at the very last — the Evil God's Apostle, and Duke Burrow standing guard before him.
A coordinated assault that would have been a close match even at full strength, faced on the brink of collapse. What choice was there but defeat?
"And I would add that if we're speaking of weakness, Lady Karia, you are hardly one to talk, are you?"
There was a time when her power was so exceptional she was regarded, alongside Benedict Allen, as one of the twin pillars holding up the kingdom. That was no longer the case.
The Karia standing before Frete now possessed power at best equivalent to a single ordinary knight.
Hm. Now that I think of it, that is strange. Even granting Lady Karia's brilliance at this sort of espionage, there's no way she could deceive the Evil God of Darkness with strength that meager.
...Could it be that I'm seeing an illusion? Has my duty to carry word of this territory's calamity to the outside world conjured a phantasm before my eyes?
No. Impossible.
If I were conjuring a hallucination, it would have been something far more beautiful.
For example... yes. Someone like that person I saw not long ago in Partran Territory — she who bore a beauty as though the goddess herself had descended to earth.
Ah. How I long to meet her again.
The moment their eyes met, everything around them vanished; heavenly music rang in his ears; he wanted to feel once more that scene where the goddess herself must cry out that such beauty deserved her blessing. To kneel prostrate at her feet and receive that blazing gaze of hers...
"...You revolting pervert. Know your limits."
"Oh. Your ability to read expressions remains as sharp as ever, I see?"
I wondered for a moment whether the Evil God might be imitating Lady Karia, but no. What a relief.
"Got something to say?"
"Yes. It is important. Lady Karia — a massive black magic ritual is being prepared in this territory as we speak."
Frete had wandered the breadth of the continent battling the Evil Gods' followers. In the course of it he had naturally acquired knowledge of black magic, and he had a fair idea of what the magic circle he'd glimpsed during his flight truly was.
"The Evil God's Apostle intends to offer this entire territory as a living sacrifice."
"...Insane. Are you serious?"
"Yes. I don't know what that black magic will produce, but it is certain that every life in this territory will be sacrificed."
Through this calamity, a far greater calamity would bloom. That, above all else, had to be stopped. As Frete said this, Karia lowered one eyebrow.
"More detail—ah, damn it. It just became urgent, so listen to the short version. Rescue is coming here soon. The plan is to blow this place up from the inside when it does, so conserve your strength. Understood?"
"Yes."
It was an explanation stripped of all context, but Frete asked no questions. For Karia, who flipped other people's scalps as a matter of habit, there seemed to be no room for leisure.
"Oh, right. One more thing — brace yourself. I'm going to have to pretend to torture you, to keep your identity hidden."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Torture... me?
"Punch a hole through your palm. Carve up your side a bit. Have a go at your organs."
The moment she finished flipping his scalp back on, Karia's voice changed. From a lightly breezy woman's voice
to a grim, gravelly middle-aged man's.
"Don't worry. I'll make sure it hurts. So scream like you mean it."
...Are you not planning to force the screaming out of me anyway?
The words carved themselves into Frete's heart of their own accord — but tragically, he never got the chance to say them aloud.
Before he could, his mouth filled to the brim with the sound of his own screams.
Grandpa was right.
Because I trusted my own reading and pressed forward, I found my opening before I knew it.
And that opening rested on one simple truth: a skeleton can't stay calm forever.
Against a normal opponent, who knows. But before the Mesugaki skill, even a skeleton's empty ribcage fills up with rage.
While the skeleton held the initiative, I could bleed off that fury by smacking it around between exchanges — but not anymore.
As long as I focused on defense, it lacked the strength to break through my shield, and so the unspent rage could only pile up, festering and eating away at the skeleton's mind.
Look at it. Look at the sword it's swinging now.
The swordsmanship that once drew gasps of admiration from me was nowhere to be found — nothing remained but desperate, frantic attacks.
Ting!
I gritted my teeth, deflected the skeleton's strike, and showed it a smile from behind my shield.
"Aww~♡ What's with these itty-bitty little swings of yours~♡ So small~♡ Nothing down there either~♡ And delicate on top of it all?♡ Ohhhh, I get it now~♡ You're not a knight at all, are you, you little bone duchess~♡"
A sword strike came flying back in answer to the taunt, but it was no problem at all.
Back in the Trial Grounds it might have been different, but weakened as it was now, the skeleton's blade was threatening — just not overwhelming.
At the end of the day, it was still an ordinary sword.
This time from the right. Its form was far more ragged than at the start.
At this level, I could do more than just block — I could deflect.
No sooner had I made the call than I shifted my shield, and the skeleton's blade slid along its face.
The skeleton's balance broke for an instant, but I didn't press in; I simply raised my shield again.
That opening just now wasn't a decisive one.
"Lady Skeleton~♡ Gonna keep moving all cute like that?♡ *Hnk*♡ *hk*♡ But what's a girl to do~♡ No matter how hard you try, you'll never be as adorable as me~♡ How pitiful~♡"
"Coward! Hiding behind your shield!"
I watched the flurry of attacks come howling in with that rage-filled roar.
Perhaps because it was losing its reason —
in those attacks, the skeleton's old habits bled through. The game's patterns.
So I parried them off without any real danger, and once again a huge gap yawned open in the skeleton's guard.
And yet still, I did not press forward.
Because I had no confidence I could thread an attack through that gap and end it.
"Come out and fight me like a knight — face to face, fair and square!"
"Aww, mad?♡ Seething?♡ Then try making me come out~♡ Can't?♡ Too hard?♡ Well, I suppose Lady Skeleton's swordsmanship is adorable, just like those stubby little legs~♡"
Beyond my shield, I watched the skeleton raise its blade overhead.
A downward cleave. Basic, obvious — and more devastating than anything else in its arsenal.
Also the very attack I had faced ad nauseam back before my transmigration.
A clear opening — I judged it so in an instant. And then a strange unease crept over me.
However far gone its reason, this skeleton had repeated the same mistake three times?
The same one that had adjusted its sword mid-barrage through all my taunts, hounding me step for step?
Following that thread of doubt, I studied the skeleton before committing to anything rash.
A short step forward.
Its sword drawn up high.
Shoulders hiked slightly.
Hee hee. It's expecting a parry — it's already preparing to recover the blade.
So it's feigning a mistake to bait me in?
Ordinary openings won't draw me out, so it's gambling on danger to manufacture a real one.
Impatient. It's rushing. So it really did get angry, huh?
The skeleton from our first encounter would have put far more craft into its madness.
Well — my thanks, from the bottom of my heart.
Because you rushed, I could read your intent. And now I can turn it against you.
The power and timing of the strike it was unleashing now matched, exactly, the ones I had watched ten thousand times before.
It had simply prepared to retract its blade for the expected parry — nothing about the attack itself had changed.
Which means this, you see: even without my shield, I can parry.
I offer a prayer in my heart.
What I invoke is the miracle of defense.
Magic that conjures a shield of pure divinity.
A shield born at the precise position, at the precise moment, batted the skeleton's sword aside with impossible ease — and in its wake, a colossal opening tore open.
And I —
I, who had never once so much as twitched my shield to block that attack —
could plunge into that gap far faster than the skeleton ever dreamed.
It clenched its jaw and swung its blade to force me back, but an attack born of a clumsy motion was feeble
and broke against my shield, nothing more.
The distance between the skeleton and me collapsed to nothing.
Its hollow, empty sockets met my grin.
Watching it scramble desperately to evade, I raised my mace high overhead
and hurled it forward with everything I had.
Impact shuddered up my arm as the mace connected with the skeleton, and a bright, cheerful chime rang out to celebrate my success.
- Ding!
I won.
Take that, you trash mob.