I Became a Mesugaki (5)
With my hair tied back by the maid and dressed in comfortable clothes, I warmed myself up in the Alrn family's training grounds.
The knights and soldiers who normally trained here shot wary glances at the sight of me, but I paid them no mind.
It wasn't as if I'd only ever been looked at that way by one or two people. Whatever they thought of me, all I had to do was my own thing.
The plan was already set. The research into the most efficient way to raise a character's stats had been finished ages ago, after all.
The first thing to do was increase stamina. Stamina is useful no matter what kind of character you're building — the higher your stamina, the more actions you can perform in a single day.
Exploring a particular location. Making the rounds to meet various NPCs. Even the training I needed right now — all of it demanded stamina. Unless you were deliberately building a frail sickly mage, stamina was a mandatory stat in Soul Academy.
So how did you raise it? The answer varied depending on the game's era, but the standard early-game method was running.
Not some skill or special technique — just plain, ordinary running, the kind everyone does when they're moving. Other methods existed, but they only became properly efficient in the mid-game. In the early stages, quietly holding a weapon in each hand while running was the best way to build stamina and weapon proficiency at the same time.
Which meant that from this point on, for roughly the next two weeks, I intended to run myself half to death with a mace and shield in hand, except when eating or sleeping. This was the single most efficient build for raising a character in Soul Academy.
Finished with my warm-ups, I simply started running the perimeter of the training grounds. Posture and breathing for running were things I already knew. Any man who'd done his military service had jogged until it came out of his ears.
Quite a lot of time had passed since my discharge, but what I'd learned back then was still ingrained in my body.
The first lap posed no problems at all. I was slightly out of breath, but that was it. For a first trip around an enormous training ground, I felt perfectly fine. The two stamina-boosting elixirs I'd taken were working exactly as advertised.
But after some time had passed — about an hour of circling the grounds — I felt something going wrong. I still had a long way to go before reaching my target, yet my breath was already hitching in my chest.
How was I supposed to run all day like this? Even giving it everything I had, I felt like I'd collapse after another hour or two at most.
Time crawled on, until I'd lost track of how many laps I'd run — and still I kept running.
The muscles in my legs were screaming. My overworked lungs burned as if they were tearing apart. My arms, weighed down by the mace and shield, hung so limp that "running" was no longer the right word — "swaying" would have been more accurate. But I didn't stop.
The old me — the one before possession — would have given up ages ago. I was never this kind of stubborn. I was the type to buy three months at a gym, work hard for one week, burn out, and waste the remaining two and a half.
How could a person like me possibly force my body to keep moving while holding back the feeling that I was about to die of exhaustion?
I did have a guess, though. A skill. Just as Fear Overcome had activated back when I took the elixir and my fear had vanished, one of the skills I'd assigned at character creation was probably doing its job right now.
In this case, I suspected Unbreakable Will. Its description had read: "Even death cannot break your will." Who knew a skill that had been nothing more than an instant-death prevention mechanic in-game would help like this?
Thanks to it, I found confidence. If I could pull off the death-march running the game character used to do for these two weeks, then surely — with a will even death couldn't break, what was a mere run?
Carried away, I forgot all about the words "pace control" and simply sped up. That was my fatal mistake.
What I'd overlooked was this: gaining willpower did not, in fact, restore stamina. Will was will, and the body was the body. No matter how iron-clad my determination, once my body hit its limit, collapse was inevitable.
Flat on my back on the training ground's ice-cold stone floor, I felt that truth with every fiber of my being. So THIS is why pacing matters.
You only find out what hitting the wall feels like by actually running until you drop, I guess. Next time I'll pay more attention to my body while I run.
"Lady Lucy?!"
The scream of my personal maid reached my ears, but I couldn't so much as twitch a finger.
"Are you all right?!"
Yes... I'm fine...
"I'm fine... My ears are ringing, so pipe down... scrub..."
I'm just tired. Give it some time and I'll be right as rain. So could you stop fussing? All your flapping about is making my head spin even worse.
Since voicing it aloud would no doubt get translated into a string of obscenities, I kept my mouth shut — and then I heard footsteps that belonged to neither my maid nor anyone else.
"Lady Lucy. If it's no trouble, may I carry you somewhere more comfortable to rest?"
With great effort, I forced my uncooperative neck to turn. One of the Alrn family's knights. I didn't know his name — only that I remembered him commanding the soldiers while they ran.
"Resting like this only slows your recovery. When you rest, you should rest properly."
Someone actually came up to me first. How remarkable.
Within the Alrn household, Lucy was treated like radioactive material. Getting close meant getting caught in the blast radius of her tantrums, so everyone except Benedict scattered at the first glimpse of her.
My personal maid was bound to me, poor thing, so she had no choice — but I never imagined another living soul would voluntarily approach me. Hmm. Well, the cold stone floor was about to knock my jaw loose anyway, so this works out nicely. He's offering help — I shall graciously accept.
"Very well. Scrub knight. I'll permit you to lay hands on my person."
"It is an honor, my lady."
The knight approached carefully and gathered me up into his arms. Only then did I notice that everyone's gaze on the training ground had converged on me.
Most of those gazes were filled with worry. Not worry for me — Lucy had pulled off her fair share of utterly deranged antics, so who would worry about her? No. They were worried about the knight holding me.
They were afraid of what Lucy might do to the knight who'd shown me kindness.
That's a bit much, even for this. I know Lucy was a vicious little witch, but would she really throw a fit at the person who helped her?
Hadn't Lucy once nitpicked some trivial mistake from her perfectly dutiful maid and driven her out? Stormed into the kitchen and raised hell because the head chef had served a dish she didn't like? Hurling abuse at a teacher merely for telling her to study?
Yeah. All of it. She'd done it all.
Hm. Fair enough, they have plenty to worry about.
Recalling old Lucy's track record, the knight helping me now struck me as all the stranger. With a résumé like that, he stepped forward to help anyway? Had his superior ordered him to?
"My lady. May I ask you one question?"
Yes.
"What is it."
"Why are you running with a mace and shield?"
The unexpected question stopped me cold.
"I understand you wish to train your body, but it seems you're pushing yourself far too hard from the very start."
Listening to the knight, it seemed that me suddenly marching out to the training ground and running around with weapons in hand looked bizarre from the outside. Objectively speaking, of course it did. A girl who'd never exercised a day in her life was suddenly sprinting for over an hour with a mace and shield.
But I couldn't exactly explain the circumstances. How was I supposed to tell the people living in this world that running with weapons in hand raised both stamina and weapon proficiency simultaneously?
Because I don't want another line added to the ghost stories about Lady Lucy that the maids have been whispering to each other lately, that's why?
So I had no answer to give at all. When I clamped my mouth shut, the knight gave an awkward laugh.
"If you intend to begin conditioning, please ask us. This is what we do every single day. When it comes to proper training, no one understands it better than we do."
It was a perfectly persuasive argument — and I had absolutely no intention of listening to a word of it. Because I genuinely believed that what I was doing was right.
And why wouldn't I? In this world, my skills were activating just fine, weren't they? Which meant the game's systems had carried over intact. If I used the same build I'd used in-game, I could grow stronger faster than anyone else. How was I supposed to throw that away?
"My lady?"
I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine.
"Shut up. Scrub knight. Don't tell me what to do."
God damn this mesugaki. Where in the world did the words "I appreciate the concern" fly off to? What, do you die the instant the word "thank you" leaves your mouth? Is that your illness?
Receiving an answer that could not remotely be called gracious, the knight offered an apology and sealed his lips. This wasn't what I'd meant to say. Once it got translated into Mesugaki-speak, there was simply no way to convey a polite refusal.
Haah. Damn it. Can't this be fixed? It's fine for now, inside the estate, but if this keeps up at the Academy later, I'm in serious trouble. Am I actually going to get ostracized for real?
Erin, Lucy's personal maid, watched her mistress diligently running in a corner of the training grounds.
Three hours in already, even counting only today, and Lucy was drenched head to toe in sweat. Her steps wobbled as if strength were failing her body — she looked ready to collapse at any moment.
But Lucy did not fall. As though stopping her feet meant dying on the spot, she forced her legs forward, heaving and staggering, one step at a time.
Why is she working so hard?
Three days had passed since Lucy began her running, and Erin still could not understand her. The Lucy she had known was not the sort of person who did such things.
The Lucy Erin knew was a nasty-tempered little brat who believed she was the sky of the entire household. Someone who threw tantrums whenever the smallest thing didn't go her way, nitpicked everything and everyone around her, and filled the hollow of her self-esteem by insulting others.
How dreadful must her temperament have been, for the position of her personal maid to sit vacant again and again?
Becoming a noble daughter's personal maid was, in any other family, considered an honor. It meant you'd been judged capable enough to attend upon the family's most precious person. Once appointed, a personal maid might be dismissed by her superiors — but no one ever gave the position up willingly.
It was different in the Alrn estate. Lucy's personal maid position was no seat of honor. The phrase honorable forced resignation, the way it circulated regarding the post of Lucy's maid, said everything about how that job was regarded.
And so, when Erin had been assigned as Lucy's personal maid, it had felt as though the sky were collapsing on her head.
I thought I'd worked well all this time. Did I earn someone's hatred without realizing it? Did I somehow give offense to the head maid? Is this a warning to quietly leave?
The night she received her assignment, Erin had lain sleepless, turning over and over in her mind what wrong she might have committed.
To remain constantly at the side of a girl whose mere passing glance was an ordeal — it was nothing short of falling into hell.
Erin had no choice but to keep bowing and scraping before Lucy's tyranny. Her days became an endless cycle: bowing her head from morning to night, then weeping into her pillow once darkness fell.
And then one day — the very day Erin's heart had clenched in dread at the arrival of yet another morning —
Lucy changed.