Combat Training Practice (2)
Combat Training Practice (2)
— Crack!
The moment the blow landed, it was the kind of thunderous swing that screamed home run.
I'd never played baseball in my life, but it felt that way anyway.
The headless skeleton collapsed in a clattering heap.
"Ahaha. As expected of you, Sir Ian! Your reaction speed is incredible. I would love to learn from you sometime."
"Quiet. Get ready. I think there are a few more."
Ian dismissed Yulan's praise with a flat response.
This was an old dungeon.
Explorers inevitably flocked to dungeons, and wherever explorers went, corpses accumulated. It was only a matter of time before they rose as undead.
Just moments ago, a soldier had erupted from the floor.
Without Danya, it would have been difficult to spot.
With the dark surroundings, staying sharp was essential.
"Lux."
Right on cue, Everidge strengthened the light spell a little more.
Danya's sniffing grew more rapid.
Ian extracted a portion of Lunar and reshaped it.
The liquid metal wrapped from his fist all the way up to his shoulder.
The magic staff in his hand, which had been the length of an adult's arm, shrank to about two-thirds its size.
"Three ahead!"
Danya shouted.
Roughly twenty paces ahead. Skeletons clad in tattered leather came into view.
"I'll take the tank position. We hit them first."
The moment Ian gave the order, Danya's magic arrow skewered one of them squarely.
The remaining creatures immediately locked onto us and charged.
Everidge's crossbow sniped another.
"One got through!"
For a priest, Yulan had managed to let an undead slip past him.
That worthless bastard.
It worked out. I'd been planning to test Lunar's performance anyway.
A skeletal soldier was a monster type ranked below Grade 7.
Just as Ian was about to throw a punch like usual—
'Something's off.'
A strange energy emanated from the approaching skeleton.
'...Brimstone?'
Everything that came from the earth fell within Ian's domain.
Danger prickled through his senses.
A sudden flash of foreboding made him immediately draw back the now shorter and lighter staff.
And he swung it straight at the skeleton's head.
— Crack!
A crisp impact rang out once more.
But this time, the feeling was different.
A heavier sensation—like lighting a fuse.
"Cover your ears!"
Ian yelled.
Right after.
— KABOOOM!
The roar of an explosion filled the space.
Patter—
Fragments of stone scattered from the shockwave.
Even with Lunar wrapped around his ears at the last instant, the blast was massive enough to leave his head ringing.
"Is everyone alright? Sir Ian!"
Everidge, who had been at the rear, snapped to attention and checked on the team. Yulan's face twitched into a grimace before his smile returned. And as for Danya and Ian...
"Hoo."
Ian exhaled and straightened up.
At the same time, Danya pulled her hands away from her own fluffy ears.
"...I can cover them myself, you know."
She muttered, flustered by the sudden close contact.
"Sorry. It was urgent."
"It's not something you need to apologize for... Thanks, I guess?"
Making a soft hmph, Danya returned to her position.
Watching it, Everidge called out.
"Sir Ian, are your ears okay? You should have covered them...!"
Tap. Ian flicked his own ear.
The silver metal that had been shielding his ears smoothly slithered back into place as a staff.
"...Impressive. Most mages tend to react slowly. It's almost as if you're accustomed to close combat... Ah."
Everidge glanced at the magic staff and nodded to himself with a knowing look.
Pointing it out every single time was too much work, so I let him draw his own conclusions.
"By the way, how did you know about that explosion?"
Everidge asked, looking toward the skull—now finely powdered in the distance.
"Just a sense."
To be precise, I'd sensed the presence of gunpowder.
Not through the five senses, but through something entirely different—call it an extrasensory perception.
Another sense that let me detect things originating from the earth.
"Everyone fine?"
Checking on his team, Ian walked toward what had once been the skull.
Bone dust ground fine by the explosion's aftermath.
Amidst it, the scent of brimstone lingered.
'A deliberate trap, just as I thought.'
Ian's eyebrows drew together.
Setting aside the dungeon's nature, the presence of skeletal soldiers itself was easy enough to accept. Creatures like that could spawn anywhere as long as there were corpses and negative energy.
But a soldier's skull detonating like a bomb was another story entirely.
An ordinary tank would worry about the skeleton's weapon—not about its head exploding.
A direct hit from that would have meant serious injury at minimum.
The professors wouldn't engineer something this close to terrorism. The method was far too insidious.
'Exactly what I was worried about.'
Everything was unfolding according to the scenario.
Ian almost glanced toward Yulan before stopping himself.
There was no need to tip his hand about what he already knew.
If anything, Yulan was the one who should be curious.
He must be wondering how I dodged it.
"Your reflexes are quicker than I expected?"
As predicted, the bastard spoke up first.
Yulan approached, a grin spreading across his face.
"You sound almost disappointed."
"Ahaha! How could that be? It was my mistake. I'm not accustomed to using holy power in an offensive capacity. My apologies."
"No. That was a perfectly plausible situation. Don't worry about it, and focus on attacking rather than supporting the tank. My tanking won't have any trouble."
In truth, Ian intended to block Yulan's underhanded schemes.
Had he caught on?
The man's eyes curved into crescent moons.
"You seem a little different from the Sir Ian I know."
Yulan paused for a beat before continuing.
"Almost like a different person?"
He smiled slickly, but his eyes were utterly serious.
Irritating prick.
"Quit the nonsense and focus."
Ian took the lead.
Fortunately, no traps of note appeared after the self-detonating skeleton. The only change was that the deeper they ventured into the dungeon, the darker and damper the atmosphere became.
Various trash mobs emerged after that as well.
But Danya and Everidge did their jobs so effectively that Ian had no opportunity to shine.
"Divine Cleanse."
As if his earlier slip had truly been a mistake, Yulan's holy power didn't miss either. If anything, he was dispatching undead faster than anyone else.
They advanced like that for about thirty minutes.
"The air is getting more humid."
"I feel a breeze as well."
"Is there a passage connected to the outside?"
The dungeon's interior landscape gradually began to shift.
At some point, the surroundings grew incrementally brighter.
The air felt like damp night air.
That moment.
"Something's coming. Animals. Predators. They're in a pack, and there are a lot of them."
Danya delivered her briefing.
Soon after, a writhing mass became visible in the distance.
Everidge, who had sharp eyes, explained.
"Dusk Wolves. About eleven of them. This is troublesome."
"Dusk Wolves?"
Danya jumped.
She had every right to.
Dusk Wolves.
Highly agile and tactically coordinated in combat, they made it difficult for mages or ranged damage dealers to land their skills.
Their hide was tough, and their fur possessed strong magic resistance.
For a team without a knight-class fighter, they were an exceptionally difficult opponent. They were an atrocious match for Ian's Team 13. On the surface, at least.
'Strength: magic resistance. Weakness: blunt physical damage. They attack in packs, but they retreat in packs too.'
A strategy existed.
"Everidge, get ready to support with the crossbow."
"...Excuse me?"
Fully extracting the Lunar from his back, Ian stepped forward.
◆
Meanwhile,
Team 7 included Rina Rosewell and Jacob.
Their situation was far from favorable.
Jacob, the knight department student serving as the team's tank, had taken a serious hit from a self-detonating skeletal soldier.
Needing to heal Jacob had slowed them down considerably.
"How does a knight department student fail to dodge a single thing like that?"
Rina Rosewell muttered to herself.
Though it was loud enough to be less a mutter and more something everyone could hear.
"B-but. This is. Skeleton soldiers don't normally explode like that."
"Haah. Whatever."
They were on the same team now, so abandoning him wasn't an option. Still, they had broken through quickly before this, so they had built up some buffer time.
"Haaah..."
Rina Rosewell let out a deep sigh.
Naturally, the rest of Team 7 didn't just sit and take it quietly.
'She really has changed.'
'This isn't the old Rina anymore.'
'I know grades are important, but isn't that breaking teamwork?'
Rina Rosewell had suddenly transformed.
Anyone could see that her kindness and consideration had vanished without warning, replaced by selfishness and aggression.
Simultaneously, her skills had improved somewhat—
But this team had been formed based on Rina's reputation and personality. The dissatisfaction that had been building from the start could only keep accumulating.
Meanwhile,
Jacob's mental state was visibly deteriorating.
"......"
Forced to rest while receiving the priest's healing magic.
Jacob's eyes flickered violently as he sat there.
He was a proud cadet of the knight department.
And he had become a massive burden to his team.
Worse still, it had happened in front of Rina Rosewell, the girl he secretly held feelings for. Hadn't he pushed hard to be on the same team when they were being assembled?
The image he had dreamed of was himself standing gallantly by Rina's side, instead of some pathetic student from another department.
'This... this isn't how it's supposed to be.'
This wasn't what he had wanted. He hadn't wanted a miserable situation where a goddamn crazy skeleton's head left him seriously injured and collapsed.
'Fuck. Fuck...'
Self-loathing reared its head. At the same time, the negative emotions that had been lying dormant deep in his heart surged up alongside it.
He knew.
He acted completely cocky, but inside he wasn't like that. Ever since entering the academy, he'd been filled with a sense of his own inferior talent and jealousy toward the successful honor students.
Jacob secretly rummaged in his pocket.
[ Medicine to Ease the Mind ]
A drug he had bought on a whim on the way to the Magical Engineering Gate customs checkpoint. He tossed it into his mouth.
— Oh dear. You've been carrying such heavy worries.
A honeyed voice began to fill his head.