Forced Training (2)
Forced Training (2)
But what choice did I have? No better idea came to mind.
I had no intention of learning swordsmanship now, or anything of the sort. Even if I started learning now, there was no telling what level I could reach.
...... No, could I even have reached what you'd call a 'level' at all?
Aside from specific school techniques, the Empire had military swordsmanship too. Firearms were gradually overtaking swords on the battlefield, but monstrous experts who could rampage with a blade still existed in abundance, and there were masters who could literally be called one-man armies.
A guy like Lucas would dash around the battlefield like a madman and cut down enemies without a second thought, so the sword's relevance hadn't fully disappeared.
Still, I couldn't shake the thought that close-range targets were better dealt with using a pistol or a shotgun...... Then again, shooting at a swordsman who had deeply infiltrated a tangled infantry melee carried the risk of friendly fire.
That scene was rendered with 3D CG, but the motion wasn't great, so I couldn't tell exactly how they fought. It was a game that couldn't even properly depict anti-air fire in a large-scale airborne operation cutscene, so as for how they fought 'in reality'...... well, I'd never know unless I saw it firsthand.
Not that I thought the combat shown in the original was impossible here—
"Sylvia!"
—Right. It was because of those two in particular that I figured Lucas could perform just fine on a real battlefield.
I thought I'd come out early in the morning, but there were people who'd come out far earlier than me.
"Claire."
I answered Claire, who was waving at me excitedly, as I walked over.
"Leo."
"Hello."
Having seen my face over about three weeks, he'd apparently learned that I didn't bite, because Leo's expression was much gentler now. Though he still didn't seem entirely free of tension.
Fortunately, Mia Crowfield was keeping my secret well. If she hadn't been, there was no way Leo would've let down his guard around me even this much.
In the original, Leo was very friendly toward people he had no reason to distrust. Well, he was a harem protagonist, after all. It came with the personality.
"You were out early again today, performing requests."
They'd probably been out since around three in the morning.
This week's requests were things I didn't know about. Even if the academy was the setting, it couldn't possibly simulate every single day-to-day event at the academy. There were bound to be weeks that passed without any real story significance.
Still, if I saw the request forms, I'd know the contents and the rewards.......
"......."
"What do you think? I think I'm getting to know the local geography, so we went around on the optimal route!"
Claire said that with her eyes sparkling.
As she said, six beasts were stacked neatly beside Claire and Leo. 'Beasts' was what they called them, but if you met them on Earth, you could just call them monsters.
A massive eagle with embers still smoldering in its feathers, a giant vampire bat whose wingspan looked like it could give a person a hug, a bison whose horns were so absurdly huge it would've been terrifying just to run into it in reality....... And three other beasts besides.
Every one was an optimal target for extracting Marmaros.
...... In the original, weren't there simpler requests than these? Just errand-type things.
"Ah, while we were at it, we hunted a few beasts that looked dangerous along the roads. They said they'd give us a proper reward if we brought back proof."
Ah, was that so.
In the original, rewards would come instantly when you killed a monster, but reality wasn't that easy. You couldn't exactly butcher the meat on the spot.
In reality, you had to bring the carcass in to receive the reward.
"Couldn't you just detach a part of the beast and bring that back?"
"Huh? But if we left the carcass there, wouldn't it be unpleasant for people passing through?"
"......."
Well then.
I wasn't sure whether to call them diligent or pushovers.
The environment you grew up in really seemed to matter enormously. In the original, she'd deliberately pick the most infuriating things to say, and now she'd grown up this outstanding.
If the problem was that she'd grown up a bit too outstanding, well, that was still a problem.
"......."
I looked at Leo without a word, and he shrugged as he spoke.
"She's not wrong. If we don't clean it up quickly, blood leaks from the carcasses. The people who maintain the roads would have a hard time later."
It wasn't like they'd deliberately littered. Nobody would complain about the roads getting a little messy because of something they did to genuinely help people, but those two apparently cared about it.
"By the way, Sylvia, why are you out here at this hour?"
I didn't think my being out at this hour was all that strange.
At least it was far more normal than you two. It was eleven in the morning, after all.
...... By their standards, they'd probably been out for nearly seven hours.
"Did you have breakfast?"
"Yeah. Here, with Leo. We packed a lunch."
So it wasn't even a stroll.
"...... Ah, just so you know, we're not that kind of relationship."
"...... Who's the one bringing that up first?"
Leo scowled heavily at Claire's words. It was not a tsundere moment like in games, comics, or anime; it was a genuinely horrified scowl, the kind of face someone would make if a real sibling relationship were misunderstood.
True enough, Claire wasn't a romanceable character in the original...... Or was it a bit complicated to put it that way? It was just that her death was fixed, so you couldn't fully clear her route in the end.
"No one said anything like that, so you may rest assured."
"Good, if you didn't misunderstand."
"That's what I'm saying. Who's the one bringing it up first?"
Leo growled, and Claire ignored him easily.
...... Hmm, well.
"It's nice to see you two getting along."
"What?"
"Did I?"
Claire and Leo said that almost simultaneously.
"With him?"
"With her?"
It was such a reaction straight out of a cartoon, I had to fight hard not to laugh.
Still, it was nice to be able to watch this scene play out right in front of me.
Since they were both characters I used to like.
*
It wasn't just Leo and Claire. Most of the protagonist's party in this game were diligent.
Even Jake, who seemed to live very lazily on the surface, was the same. He only looked lazy on the outside. In reality, he was busy doing all sorts of work and studying. Especially since he was in love with someone of another race, something still unfamiliar in this world. He needed to know enough to properly refute anyone who disparaged Lottie.
In that sense, wasn't I the laziest one?
Whenever I had time to rest, I would rewind time as many times as it took and rest with full force.
Of course, rewinding time didn't mean the rest from those long hours accumulated in my body and took effect. When I rewound time, the exhaustion I originally had at that point came rushing back.
But still, it was great for pulling a 'just five more minutes' kind of move.
If I had an hour to rest, I'd rest soundly for that hour.
Then I'd only rewind time to 30 minutes ago. I always genuinely wanted to rest, so doing that wasn't particularly hard.
No matter how grueling things were, about 30 minutes of rest was enough for my body to feel okay. Unless I'd suffered a truly severe injury.
So, I'd rewind that improved-state 30 minutes multiple times and stretch out my rest time.
My body certainly only recovered about an hour's worth, but at least my mind carried through continuously through it all, giving me time to mentally prepare.
And if something urgent came up during that time, I could deal with it too.
"......."
That was the case now. Under the single-minded conviction that I didn't want to face the coming Monday, I rewound time for the fifth time.
When I lay sprawled on the bed to a degree that felt almost excessive, quietly thinking about what lay ahead, ideas would occasionally come to mind.
Most of the thoughts that flitted through my head were short snippets, but when I combined those snippets, something resembling a plausible conclusion would emerge.
For example, the ideas that occurred to me now were like this.
I'd already received the academy's first-semester schedule.
Thanks to that, I knew what the academy had planned from the second week of May onward. That schedule was the Field Practicum.
The Field Practicum ran from Thursday through Sunday, a total of four days.
The destination was Winterfield. Naturally, it was quite far from the battlefield.
That was the extent of the academy information I had. The rest was my knowledge of the original game.
Winterfield lay in the Empire's far north. There were places where snow fell year-round, hence the name.
Maybe it was because of that image, or the stereotypes of an existing fantasy world, but in the lore, the Empire's renowned martial artists often hailed from there.
Even if they didn't necessarily bear the Winterfield name.
Among the names that immediately came to mind, several figures were tremendously important both in setting and story.
Among them, the Sword Saint was also famously from Winterfield.
"...... Huh?"
I snapped wide awake in an instant and bolted upright.
Resting my chin on my hand, I sank into somewhat serious thought.
The Sword Saint was not yet dead in the story. That was, unless my appearance had created a major divergence and Lucas had gone and sought out the Sword Saint first.
The reason Lucas had sought out the Sword Saint was because 'he had confidence in his own abilities' at that point. Meaning he went there believing he could definitely win in a fight. Actually, according to the developer anecdotes, Lucas was already stronger than the Sword Saint at the present time, but Lucas only committed to that with certainty in the timeline of the second work in this universe's continuity.
The Sword Saint was a little old but still hale and hearty.
If I set my mind to it, meeting the Sword Saint next week wasn't out of the question.
If I could meet the Sword Saint before Leo or Claire, couldn't I learn various training methods all by myself? Something like a meditation technique that required a bit less sleep. I could rewind time and train, so...... well, my physical abilities would just reset every time I rewound, but still.
"...... Ah."
Ah, no.
It wasn't that it wasn't out of the question.
I knew where the Sword Saint was...... but that location was nestled in the mountains.
The Sword Saint had a setting where he had severed ties with the world and lived in seclusion, so he couldn't be met through normal methods in the game. However, among hidden quests, there was one that allowed you to meet the Sword Saint.
"But I'd have to climb a mountain."
I pressed my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose.
Just as the roads differed somewhat from the game, the mountain landscape would certainly not be identical to the game either. Climbing a mountain wasn't an easy task to begin with.
Wasn't that true? Even climbing just Seoraksan required you to push on for a dozen-odd hours, and the snowy mountain where the Sword Saint resided was far more treacherous than that.
"...... No, wait a moment."
I thought of the two people I'd seen this morning, smiling brightly next to a pile of six beast carcasses.
...... Even if I didn't want to climb it, wouldn't those two stubbornly climb it anyway to find the Sword Saint?
They'd shown tremendous passion for swordsmanship, after all.
And probably, Alice or Charlotte would be with them at that point.
...... If Alice was there, I'd be there too.
"......."
Probably, if anyone had been next to me right then, they would've been startled by how deathly pale my face had gone.