The Way of the Overlord
Starting the very next day, Simon threw himself into intensive Overlord training in preparation for the Duel Evaluation.
Before and after classes, and in every spare moment between them, he practiced with the Overlord whenever he could.
Hm.
But no matter how many times he connected to the Overlord's mind and swung its blades, something about it felt off. He had no way of knowing whether his skill was actually improving — whether he was growing at all.
Unlike Bone Armour or the Mud Golem, where proficiency showed itself plainly before his eyes, Overlord training felt like trying to cut water with a sword.
Simon knew from past experience that when he hit a wall like this, agonizing over it alone was far less effective than asking someone for help.
So he moved.
"……And what exactly are you doing here, Simon Polentia?"
Professor Aaron had arrived at his research lab after class, only to find his student sitting on the floor in front of the door, nibbling on a scrap of bread. Simon shot to his feet and bowed at the waist.
"Good afternoon, Professor!"
"I asked what you think you're doing."
"I've come seeking your guidance!"
Aaron pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a wry laugh. So this was what it took to drag him out of his lab, now that Restoration lessons had become so rare.
"……Guidance, you say. On Bone Armour?"
"I finished that during the last mission!"
This lunatic.
Aaron was beginning to suspect, more and more, that this young apprentice of his was something of a monster.
"If not Bone Armour, then what?"
"I'd like to ask about the proper way to operate my new undead — the Overlord — that I acquired recently!"
Aaron had already heard from Jane about the special undead worth ten thousand gold that Simon had obtained at Blue Harbor. On any ordinary day, he would have brushed the boy off, insisting it was quitting time — but not today.
The Overlord, huh.
Aaron was a summoner down to his marrow, and he felt curiosity about the new undead welling up inside him. In truth, if work hadn't buried him, he would have gone to see the Blue Harbor exhibition himself.
Simon, who had been sneaking glances at Aaron's reaction, quickly pressed his advantage.
"The Overlord is an entirely new type of soft-bodied undead. It has six tentacles in total, each one a bone lacking in structural strength that's been coated in mithril and shaped into a blade."
"……"
"It was designed to slash and pierce with those tentacles as if they were swords. Its movements are remarkably mollusk-like, too. The operating method is difficult, though — so if you could take a look, Professor, it would be a tremendous help……"
"Fine. Come with me."
Watching Aaron turn and walk away, Simon quietly clenched his fist and celebrated.
And so they arrived at an open clearing by the building. With Aaron observing him with keen interest, Simon brought out the Overlord, connected to its mind, and demonstrated a whole range of techniques — then asked if this really was the right way to train.
"You think flailing around like that is going to train anything?"
"……Th-then what should I do instead?"
"Get ready. Take off your jacket."
Simon had no idea what that meant, but he stripped off his uniform all the same. Once he'd hung his outer coat and shirt on a tree branch and returned, Aaron pulled a skeleton made of Demon Bone from his subspace, then broke it apart into dozens of individual pieces.
"From now on, I attack you with these bones."
"Yes, wha—?"
"From now on, the only thing you may use is the Overlord. Block them."
Without warning, Aaron began flinging the bones with Restoration. At some point — Simon never caught when — his legs had been pinned to the ground by an applied technique of Bone Prison.
"Kgh!"
There was no dodging this.
Simon hurriedly connected to the Overlord's mind and sent its blades toward the incoming bones.
Clang!
Ching!
The bones ricocheted off the blades — but one of them slid in above a swinging blade and smacked Simon square in the forehead with an audible thwack!
It didn't hurt terribly, but it snapped his mind wide awake.
"Stay sharp. They keep coming."
Whoosh!
Who-whoosh!
The bones flew in continuous succession at an even speed and tempo. Simon raised two blades at once.
Read the speed. Read the pattern.
Having deciphered the bones' left-and-right flight paths, Simon crossed his arms — and the blades crossed with them, covering both flanks and the center in a single motion.
Send the blades precisely to where they'll land!
The blades swung, tracing arcs through the air, and the incoming bones struck them and spun away powerlessly. Perhaps because Aaron was controlling them, the bones showed no irregular patterns whatsoever.
It was a deliberately designed exercise: block them all, as long as your timing held.
"Doubling the volume now."
At Aaron's gesture, more bones materialized in the air.
"Same speed, same pattern. I trust you know what to do."
No explanation — the bones simply came flying. Sweating buckets, Simon took control of two more blades.
Four blades in total.
"Hnngh!"
All four blades swept in a curtain across Simon's front, batting the incoming bones aside. Watching them scatter, a flush of exhilaration spread across Simon's face.
This feels incredible!
It was on another level entirely from slicing empty air with no opponent. He could actually feel his control improving.
Crack!
Thud!
But his focus wavered for an instant, the tempo tangled, and bones began smacking into him all over.
"In a real fight, you'd already be dead. Control it more precisely."
Who-whoosh!
Whoosh!
Simon moved the blades until his mouth went dry with exertion.
When the tempo training was done, they moved on to accuracy drills — knocking floating projectiles out of the air with the blades themselves — and then to exercises where Aaron deliberately twisted the patterns, forcing Simon to strike projectiles whose trajectories were nearly impossible to read.
"Hah! Hah! Hoo…!"
Completely wrung out, Simon collapsed flat on his back.
Everywhere a bone had struck him throbbed, and the constant connection to the Overlord's mind had left his mentality frayed to threads.
Aaron quietly settled onto a nearby bench and put a cigar between his lips.
"This is fun."
"……Sorry?"
Simon asked him to repeat it, certain he'd misheard, but Aaron said nothing more — just exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke.
"You started this. The beginning may have been your idea, but when it ends is mine."
"What do you mean by……"
"Come again tomorrow."
Aaron tossed the burnt-out cigar into a trash bin and turned his back.
"You've got to enjoy your training, haven't you? It benefits me too — I'll be collecting data on soft-bodied undead."
"P-Professor Aaron?"
Aaron, the man who found everything in the world a chore, walked away wearing an uncharacteristically sinister smile. Simon shuddered from head to toe.
But the training was far from over.
When classes ended for the day, Simon's next destination was Pier's Ruins, hidden deep within the Forbidden Forest.
[That Aaron fellow's classes at Kizen are far too predictable! Merely sharpening proficiency and reflexes will never draw out an undead's true power!]
So declaring, Pier placed a hand on the body of the Overlord Simon had brought out.
"Hold on, Pier! You're not thinking of……"
[Fear not — I am not going to turn it into a Legion undead! The Overlord is meant to serve you at Kizen, is it not!]
Ssssssssss!
Pier did something to the undead, then stepped back — and the Overlord, until now perfectly still, abruptly began thrashing its body with violent energy.
Simon leapt to his feet in alarm.
[I have driven the Overlord's mind into a frenzy, maximizing its aggression for a time.]
Pier sent a squad of legion-type skeletons forward. The frenzied Overlord whipped out its tentacles and sent skeleton bodies flying.
"……!"
[Watch closely, boy.]
Pier said.
[THAT is the Overlord's natural movement — the way it was born to fight.]
The Overlord's blades moved like writhing serpents, coiling around skeleton bodies to bind them — or flicking only their tips in light staccato strikes that stunned the skeletons as if paralyzing them.
Everything Simon had reproduced so far by connecting to its mind had been stiff, artificial attacks — slashes and thrusts and nothing more. But watching the Overlord's native movements made his brain feel like it was turning to jelly in the best possible way.
So fluid. So that's how the joints are meant to work.
Moving just the tips of the blades like that is threatening enough on its own.
Stop clinging to straight lines — use curves. Swing it like that and I can make the most of even a narrow attack range.
Just as Simon's eyes were gleaming, observing the movements in real time, one of the Overlord's blades came whistling down toward him.
"Whoa—!"
Simon scrambled backward to evade.
Pier laughed loudly.
[What are you doing standing there gawking! Dodge it yourself — feel the Overlord's movement with your whole body!]
"Pier!"
Pier's lesson was simple: observe the Overlord's natural movements as closely as possible, internalize them, then connect to its mind and reproduce them exactly. The way a human moved arms and legs and the way the Overlord moved its tentacles were entirely different concepts.
Simon came to realize that the Overlord had directions and postures in which it moved more comfortably and fluidly — and as he grasped them, his own blade work grew smoother and more natural in turn.
After finishing Pier's lesson, the next day at lunchtime Simon stopped by the Mutant club room.
"Honestly, you lot! What on earth did you do to this poor thing in a single day?"
Benya, the club president, was examining the Overlord's condition with a look of pure horror.
"We just did a little training……"
"A little? You ran it into the ground! The joint assembly on this side is already worn, and the moisture's dried right out!"
Her short skirt flaring, she dashed off and came back hauling an armful of paint-can-like tins from the shelves. Then she dunked a large brush into one of the tins, generous scoop after generous scoop, and began slathering the compound across the Overlord's body.
"This one is not like an ordinary skeleton — you can't just leave it sitting around. It maintains an extremely unstable body through artificial means, so upkeep isn't optional, it's mandatory! You have to care for it consistently!"
"Ah…… how exactly do I care for it?"
"Good question!" Benya cried, yanking at the Overlord's torso. "This squishy material in the body here is called Fluido. If you make the Overlord move its legs often, this area — right below the joint here — dries out. You have to keep applying Fluido or slime extract to keep it moist. If you keep neglecting it like this, its durability will drop, and one day you might have to replace the entire mithril coating. Okay?"
"I'll remember!"
Benya walked Simon through every detail of the Overlord's maintenance, a steady stream of new knowledge. The Overlord, which ordinarily detested being touched by anyone, didn't resist Benya's hands at all — perhaps because it understood the work was for its own sake.
From his senior summoner, Simon absorbed lesson after lesson of brand-new lore.
"Thanks for your hard work."
Just then, Fitzgerald arrived at the club room. He too pulled his Chimera out of his subspace and began fussing over it.
"Tuning your Chimera as well?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Wait just a moment, then. Some good materials came in from Rochest recently!"
While Benya headed to the shelves for the materials, Simon approached Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald looked at him and spoke.
"Simon. This Duel Evaluation won't be easy for you."
"So you saw it. Ah, right — you're in Class M with Malcolm, aren't you?"
Fitzgerald nodded.
"Be careful, Simon."
"Hm?"
"Malcolm is nothing like the opponents you've faced in the Duel Evaluations so far. If you fight him the way you have them — with a fake performance — you will never win."
Simon blinked.
Fitzgerald's words were not something he could afford to dismiss. Having talked with him any number of times, Simon knew this much: eccentric as he was, Fitzgerald always spoke from sound logical grounds.
"Then how do I beat him?"
"……"
Fitzgerald was silent for a moment — and then his gaze shifted, slowly, to Simon's Overlord.