Cretus's Trial
In the ordinary sense of the word, a church is a religious organization bound by a shared doctrine, a common form of worship, and a single system of administration.
It is, in other words, a body of people meant to radiate something sacred, mysterious, and devout.
"Come at me, you son of a bitch!!!"
"Aaaaagh! You bastard!!!"
Thud! Crash! Crack! Smash!
"Go suck on your mommy's tit, you little shit."
"…Already did. Your mom's."
"What did you just say, you bastard?!"
Clang! Screeech! Crack!
The church of the War God Cretus, however, was a little different.
"I'm telling you, it's a misunderstanding, honey!"
"Shut your mouth!"
Slap! Slap! Slap!
Cretus was a warrior who had risen from a slave gladiator of the arena to the ranks of the gods. For that reason, the Cretus Church held martial prowess as its highest ideal — or, to put it more crudely, it was a gathering of people who were simply in love with fighting.
It was only natural that a culture so fundamentally different from any other church would take root there. That culture took the form of something called the arena — a kind of public sparring center.
I'd heard the rumors, of course.
This was a world full of people with hot blood and hotter souls. When that heat climbed all the way to a man's head, he grabbed someone by the collar or drew a blade — and once that happened, the city guards hauled him away. And whenever a situation got that heated, the Cretus Church was the one that stepped in.
You paid a modest donation, then beat the living daylights out of each other until the matter was settled. In medieval terms, it was something close to a trial by combat.
Sacredness?
Mystery?
Piety?
If that was what you came looking for, I was sorry to disappoint you — but there was none of that here. Not in the Cretus Church.
"Oh! Push him back!"
"That's it! Just like that — ack! Hey, you two! You're in cahoots, aren't you?!"
"Nooo!!! Stop!!! That's a whole month of my living expenses!!!"
They say the two greatest spectacles in the world are a fire and a fight. According to the knowledge of my previous life, at least. And this world was not so different — because one of the pillars holding up the Cretus Church's operating funds was the crowd itself.
"No! From there you should've gone like this! Like this! Huh?! You should've done it like this! Why are you just standing there taking hits?!"
"Hahahahaha!!! I won! I wooooon!!!"
"It's a fix! A fix! This is a fix!!!"
Where there was a fight, spectators gathered. Once enough of them packed in, someone with a quick mind suggested placing bets. And as the fever rose, the Cretus Church naturally claimed the whole pot for itself — encouraging legal wagering under the polite name of "donations."
They made money off a colosseum that held the most painful and desperate history of struggle the War God Cretus had ever known. Some people might have found that insulting.
"Sis. That old guy came again today?"
"…Don't look, Lennon. You must never grow up to be a man like that."
"Mister. I've got tasty potatoes. Buy some potatoes."
"We've got cold drinks over here, too. They taste even better with the potatoes…."
But few organizations had income as stable as the Cretus Church's, and fewer still put that income to work serving their local communities. From time to time I caught a strange look or two, but wasn't I walking a similar path of hardship myself, all for a great purpose…?
My nose itched for no good reason, and I scratched it.
"Your mama!!!"
"Your papa!!!"
Drunks whose heads had been boiling since morning —
"Honey! Honey, I'm telling you it's a misunderstanding!!!"
"A misunderstanding, my ass!!!"
— a husband caught cheating and a wife with her blood up to the brim —
"Today will finally put an end to our feud. This village is too small for the both of —"
"Shut your damn mouth and come at me, you idiot."
"Aaaaagh!!!"
— or people with stories of their own, all of them engaged in a dialogue of the body. A place of exchange. I passed them by and kept walking.
"What business brings you here today, brother?"
Nine out of every ten visitors to the Cretus Church came for a trial by combat. That was probably why the battle-priest looked me over as if checking whether I had brought anyone with me.
"Would you guide me along the path the Great Gladiator once walked?"
The battle-priest blinked at my words, then nodded with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
"Welcome, brother."
With a kindly smile that sat oddly on his solid frame, the battle-priest led me inside.
Creeeak.
Thud.
The moment I opened the door and stepped through, the quality of the air changed.
A first impression of the Cretus Church could easily paint it as a gathering of ruffians. It was as chaotic as a marketplace — brawlers locking horns, gawkers watching them, merchants hawking wares — and more than a few people would have clicked their tongues at the sight.
But the Cretus Church was, in the truest sense, a place where warriors who had devoted themselves to the martial path gathered to hone their craft.
Clang! Screeeech!
Crunch! Boom!
Whoosh!
The ringing of weapons colliding spoke of the weight of the lives those fighters had led. Their fighting spirit set my chest trembling. This — this was the true face of the church that bore the War God's name.
"Brother who seeks to walk the path the War God once walked. This is the road you must take."
The place the battle-priest led me to was a vast chamber sealed by a stone gate.
Cretus's Trial….
The concept was to follow in the War God's footsteps and personally experience the trials he had endured. If you took the trial as a Guardian, the condition was simple enough: win three fights in the arena, each with a different kind of shield.
It wasn't that hard.
At least, that was what I thought at the time.
The moment I thought the soul-stirring clash of weapons had begun to fade, a noose appeared right in front of my face.
I bent at the waist on pure instinct and tried to raise my shield into a guard —
"Ghk—!"
— but my body would not move the way I wanted.
"Wh— whuh—!"
The Hector Training I had done before only ever involved a rope around my waist, on the theory that I might actually die if it went around my neck. This was a step beyond that — the True Hector Training, with the rope cinched around my throat.
I jammed my hands into the noose and tried to tear it free, but it would not budge. Only then did I understand that this was something close to an illusion.
Cretus's past…?
A great empire that had fallen centuries ago. Through reckless conquest, they had piled corpses into mountains and filled the seas with blood. Cretus had been one of the victims of that expansion. Born of a minority tribe, he was swept up in the empire's wars, enslaved under the banner of "purification," and sold into the gladiatorial arena.
"Hah… hah… hah…."
When I came to my senses, a vast arena stretched out before my eyes.
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"
"Ventus! Ventus! Ventus!"
"Cretus! Cretus! Cretus!"
The cheers felt strangely distant — almost like background music in a game.
"Listen, Cretus…."
Thud!
The man they called Ventus tossed a weapon toward me as I stood there dazed with my shield. It was an arming sword, a one-handed blade with a cutting edge that fell short of eighty centimeters.
To me, he was a complete stranger. But looking at the conflicted expression on the face of the man who had thrown me a weapon, something flickered through the back of my mind.
"Ventus…."
He was a friend born of the same tribe as Cretus. They had once sworn to become great warriors together — only to lose their people and fall into slavery in the arena.
I kicked the sword he had offered me aside.
"I have to go home alive. I have a reason I must return. I hope you'll understand, Cretus…!"
Ventus swung his axe at me with the face of a demon.
Whoosh!
It was genuinely threatening. A blow like that looked as if it could split a man open like a stick of dry firewood — provided it actually connected, that is.
Tap, tap, thud.
I took a light step, slipped out of the axe's arc, and opened the distance. Reading the trajectory, matching his breathing, I rapidly assessed the situation I was in.
This is my body.
He was calling me Cretus, but there was none of the dissonance of moving someone else's limbs, no difference in eye level.
The shield is a round shield.
A familiar piece of kit. Wood layered with leather, the rim and boss reinforced with iron for durability. Of course, against an axe that vicious, it still looked as if it would shatter on impact.
No armor, huh….
Hummm.
A red light flared from skin the axe had only just grazed. So the barrier was still intact.
Stay calm. This is doable.
My opponent's style was all linear attacks built around raw power and momentum. So I watched the spacing carefully —
Whoosh!
— and the man who had been swinging his axe closed the gap in a single step, driving in so tight I could barely even thrust an arming sword.
I couldn't dodge. I barely managed to catch his shoulder tackle on my shield.
…It was heavy. His full-force charge left a long scar carved across the arena floor.
Screeech!
I tried to shove him off and open the distance, but Ventus hooked the edge of his axe into my shield. Iron rim and axe blade tangled together, spitting sparks and a grating metallic shriek.
Huff!
His thick muscles coiled, and I felt myself being reeled in like a fish that had bitten a hook.
"Hup!"
I steadied my breathing, and Cretus Martial Arts pulled the optimal answer into focus.
— Don't resist.
Instead I drove forward, ramming my shield into the opening of his unprotected face.
"Ghk—!"
Caught off guard by the charge, Ventus clutched his face and staggered back. I didn't hesitate. I immediately cracked him across the head while his momentum was broken.
"Guh—!"
He went down. I looked down at him and caught my breath.
"Cretus! Cretus!"
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"
"Wooooaaaaah!!!"
The cheers of the crowd that had felt so far away now pounded against my ears until they rang.
"The victory is yours. Kill me. If you don't, this match will never end…."
At his words, my mouth opened on its own.
A battle cry that rebuked the crowd.
Others from the same tribe had been captured and brought here as well. Survive long enough, and one day brothers who shared the same blood would be forced to turn blades on each other. Cretus had raised a shield to refuse that fate. That was why the name attached to his core skill was the Shield of Faith.
"The victory is yours, Cretus."
As Ventus finished speaking, his form blurred — and in the next moment, the figure that took his place was a man with a vile face, a dagger in each hand.
"Butcher Victor!"
"It's that slimy Butcher Victor!"
"Drag that boring son of a bitch out already!!!"
The man with daggers in both hands shrugged, a mean little smile on his face.
"Even fallen as far as I have, I still have to fight some bastard with no blessing at all…. You're pretty unlucky yourself, huh?"
I charged him without a second thought.
"Ugh?!"
This bastard was pure trash. Cretus's soul was screaming it. Answering that cry, I swung my shield — only to feel no weight at all.
What the hell….
It was a round shield. But unlike the one I had been "holding," this one was fixed to my arm. A small buckler known as a targe, its defining trait being that both hands remained free.
I'm supposed to fight with this?
"Ha! That startled me, you piece of shit…!"
It was time to pay the price for a reckless attack.
Whoosh!
A stinging sensation bloomed across my forearm where the blade had skimmed past. I'd been cut. A faint numbness followed in its wake.
Poison.
"Should I dig out your eyeballs first, like that Bendict bastard or whatever his name was? Hm?"
I thought he was simply raising his crossed arms — and then his body blurred, and in the next instant a sharp pain flared in my side.
Assassin.
Unlike Ventus, who had come from a small tribe and carried no blessing, this man had been granted a blessing whose entire profession was the murder of other people. There was no beating him by conventional means. Armor would have changed the equation, but the colosseum — apparently eager to see Cretus dead by any method available — had dressed him in nothing but rags.
I could not win the normal way.
In that case….
"Huff… nngh… nngh…."
I dropped to one knee and breathed hard. The bastard shrugged and let out a sigh.
"All that talk about being undefeated, I figured you were at least a little impressive. Turns out you're nothing."
He said it as he squatted down in front of me. Then he dragged his dagger lightly across my shoulder, my chest, my face, a greasy smile sliding over his mouth.
"What? Pissed off?"
His dagger drifted toward my eye.
"Want me to dig it out for you?"
Stupid bastard.
Flash!
I shot my hand out and seized the wrist of the startled man.
Crack!
I drove an elbow into him so hard his jaw nearly spun all the way around. But he still had enough consciousness left to bury his dagger in my thigh.
With no armor to support it, the barrier shattered in an instant. My balance collapsed, and a groan I couldn't hold back spilled from my mouth. I did not, however, loosen my grip on him with my right hand.
"Let go! Let go of me, you fucking bastard!!!"
Thud, stab!
The dagger ripped free of my thigh only to dig back into it again. A sickening pain rattled through my skull as if the blade had scraped bone, and a full-body shiver of revulsion crawled over my skin.
But my body still moved.
Squeeze!
I hauled on him with my right arm.
"Whuh—!"
He lost his balance and came tumbling into me, and I locked him tight against my body.
"Ghk—!"
I cracked him across the throat with my left hand. Struggling to breathe, he folded at the waist and dropped lower —
Flash!
— and I wrapped his neck from behind in a heartbeat. A rear naked choke.
Squeeze.
I tightened.
"Ghk—!"
A Guardian was built on the premise of solid armor. Beating a Level 20 Assassin with nothing but a targe was, for all practical purposes, impossible. But an Assassin's defense was even lower than mine without armor. That was more than enough.
"Whuh— ghk— ghk—!"
He had already dropped both daggers. His final thrashing began. He pinched and clawed at the arm crushing his throat. Through that arm I could feel the last spark of life guttering out.
His body went limp. The pathetic little death dance came to an end.
I won.
That was the thought that crossed my mind — and then:
"Butcher Victor!"
"It's that slimy Butcher Victor!"
"Drag that boring son of a bitch out already!!!"
It was him. The bastard I was certain I had beaten was standing there again, that greasy smile on his face.
Ah. I see….
Cretus's Trial was an act of walking his path. Along the way, your understanding of Cretus Martial Arts deepened, and you learned a new skill — the ability to focus your barrier into a single point. Winning through a dirty trick that exploited status-effect resistance, the way I just had, must have been judged as failing to meet the trial's true purpose.
What a pain.
I wished it were more like a game, where any method that got you the win was good enough.
"Even fallen as far as I have, I still have to fight some bastard with no blessing at all…. You're pretty unlucky yourself, huh?"
"Come at me, you worm."
"Aang?"
Unlucky?
By its very structure, the Guardian blessing was nearly impossible to grow through normal means. That was why it demanded skill-proficiency grinding and explosive growth through exploits. As a natural consequence, real combat experience tended to lag behind.
And into that situation, an enemy who would not stay dead had just appeared. For grinding up my proficiency in person-to-person combat, the conditions could not have been better.
So here —
I'm lucky.
That was the right way to put it.