Birth of the Park Guardian
He looked younger than the Cretus I had seen in the vision during the ritual of Elsysion's blessing.
More than anything, the clothes on his body were little better than rags, and in his left hand he held a buckler — the kind of thing used only as a secondary armament.
He settled into a stance as he looked at me.
A mirror match between people who've learned Cretus Martial Arts?
I was settling into a stance of my own with that thought when a strange presence brushed against my back.
Whoosh!
The sound of a sharp blade cutting the air.
"Guh—!"
A heavy spear punched straight through my stomach and thrust toward Cretus.
Yet from the belly that had been run through, I felt no pain at all.
Only then did I realize that my body was faintly translucent.
Thud.
Cretus knocked the thrust spear aside with his buckler still held out.
It was a light, short motion, no more effort than swatting a fly.
BOOM!
Even so, the spear went sailing through the air as if it had been hit by a cannonball.
What just happened?
He had simply twisted his body a little and redirected the trajectory with his shield.
That was as far as I understood it.
Was that tiny buckler actually an iron lump weighing over ten kilos?
"Kh—!"
The spearman let out a short grunt, recovered his weapon, and opened the distance.
This is the chance.
A spear's strength comes from its long reach. In a situation where Cretus had nothing but a buckler, the right move was to close in the moment the enemy's stance broke and bury him in a brawl.
Even so, Cretus remained perfectly at ease.
"Hup!"
Scrape.
The man dragged his left foot across the floor as if planting his center of gravity, then moved.
BANG!
It was a destructive thrust that took the same footwork as a rapier and pushed its piercing power to the absolute limit.
I was certain that single blow would not only smash a target flat — it would punch clean through the forearm holding that target in place.
BOOM!
The result was the same.
The buckler, held out with a gap of about two fists from his body, knocked the spear aside. Once again the weapon went flying into empty air, and something close to resignation crossed the spearman's face.
Even so, he recovered the spear and settled back into his stance.
…Shield Bash?
It had happened too fast for me to be sure, but I had seen a single continuous flow — from the legs through the waist, then the shoulders and arms, all the way out into the hand.
It was a Shield Bash.
I had always thought of that motion as something you only used to shove lighter enemies aside…
So it had a use like this, too…
In the game, if you kept using parries, you would eventually get a Perfect Parry judgment that collapsed an enemy's core for a considerable stretch of time. Because simply batting something away with a shield almost never produced that kind of situation, I had figured it was a game abstraction.
And yet something very similar had just played out in front of me.
"Hyaaah!"
The spearman's movements changed.
A straight thrust loaded with everything he had was easily dismantled. Recognizing that, he altered the way he moved.
Grrrriind!
Something rasped and ground. Glancing at the spearman's grip, I saw a pipe-shaped implement in his left hand.
He was using that tube-shaft to put spin on the spear — clearly intending to ignore a parry that carried the principles of a Shield Bash.
Whoosh!
The spear came thrusting in with a sound that tore the wind. Cretus slipped lightly backward and offered the exact center of his shield to the approaching tip.
At first I thought he had simply hopped back a little. Before I knew it, Cretus was standing well clear of the spearman.
That, too, was a principle of the Shield Bash. By meeting the spear with the dead center of the shield, he had used the force of the thrust itself to carry himself backward.
Honestly, it was a choice I could not understand.
Whoosh! Swish—!
See? The follow-up attacks were already coming.
A spear is a weapon that gains its advantage from thrusting, thanks to its reach. Facing it head-on makes it hard to answer, so the way to win is to circle to the side and slip into the enemy's interval.
If all you do is block and keep giving ground the way he was doing now, you inevitably end up eating attacks.
Brow, right shoulder, thigh, instep. Thrust, thrust, then recover into a swing.
Cretus answered those attacks by shoving them aside with his shield. The spear no longer went flying into empty air the way it had before.
Is he being pressed back?
That thought lasted only a moment—
Thud, CRACK!
The spear thrust at his thigh slammed into the floor instead, and Cretus, missing nothing, stepped on the shaft and snapped it.
It was over in an instant.
That was a kind of parry too?
That was just a completely different skill…
Even having learned Cretus Martial Arts myself, the bodywork Cretus was displaying felt like something else entirely.
It's not that the enemy is weak.
A buckler is under thirty centimeters across, so it is basically used as a secondary for a one-handed sword. Swords move in straight lines, which means a buckler that can cover a plane can, used properly, cut off an enemy's blade path.
But against a spear — a weapon that aims at points, like an arrow or a thrown stone — it is not a particularly favorable piece of defense.
The enemy knew that, too, and kept throwing attacks that were hard to answer on the spot, didn't he? Aim for the head, then go for the thigh or the instep, swinging the spear along paths a buckler has trouble covering.
And yet, with movements that bordered on the miraculous, Cretus had swept the buckler through and twisted the spear's trajectory out of true.
There was no contest.
"…So this is the man they call the War God. I count it an honor to have been born in the same generation as you. And I shall resent you for the rest of my life."
Having lost his spear, the man drew a cutlass-form one-handed sword — his secondary weapon.
Given a spear's reach, tight spaces impose heavy constraints. In a narrow stretch, then, he would mostly rely on the cutlass.
"Hup!"
Unlike the thrust-focused assault from before, the attacks that began now were weighty, cut-driven. A shifting, mercurial style of cutting close to saber swordsmanship.
A vertical cut aimed at the head changed direction in midair and swept for the inside of Cretus's wrist — the one holding the shield.
Cretus flicked his wrist lightly and turned the strike aside with practiced ease.
But as if that had been anticipated, the cutlass cracked like a whip and drove for Cretus's side.
Thud!
Cretus kicked off with his right foot, twisted his body, and opened his flank. As if sucked into a hole, the hand holding the cutlass locked tight against Cretus's side.
Tap.
Cretus lightly rapped the man's throat with the buckler in his left hand.
"…I yield, War God."
As the man accepted defeat and bowed his head, Cretus in turn honored the man's desperate struggle.
"I shall become a warrior of whom thou mayest take lifelong pride."
"…Enough. Do not make me look any more pathetic."
I had thought of the Cretus Martial Arts learned through Shield of Faith (Lv. 2) as nothing more than a stepping stone toward higher skills.
Seeing it firsthand, though, the difference was stark.
Cretus.
This was a man who could put on the same display of martial valor with a shield the size of a spoon.
That conviction settled over me in that moment.
All things that begin must end.
When I came back to myself, I was standing blankly in a solitary chamber seeping with faint light.
Fwaaah.
A brilliant radiance spilled from the back of my hand, hidden beneath the gauntlet.
I could feel it.
It was as if some vast presence were flooding into a space that had been left empty.
Clench.
Power overflowed.
Alright. Time to head out.
Flesh Cut, Bone Crush — the skill gained when Shield of Faith became Level 3. I needed time to put it to actual use, and more than anything, I wanted to reproduce and internalize the movements of the Cretus I had seen in the vision.
My heart was pounding so hard I could not stand it.
Rattle, creak.
I threw the door open hard and stepped out, and the ringing of sharp weapons still made my ears go dull.
My heart raced.
True to a group that worshipped martial prowess, the Cretus Church was a gathering of battle maniacs whose overall level sat dramatically high.
A Level 15 Guardian who had only just obtained Shield of Faith (Lv. 3) could not win.
I knew that, and I still wanted to test myself.
I wanted to fight and win.
That fighting spirit was surging up inside me when—
"A Guardian…?"
A voice thick with doubt.
It was not even a particularly loud mutter — the kind of sound that should have been swallowed by the clash of arms and vanished.
Even so, every noise ringing through the place vanished at once, as if time itself had stopped.
"A Guardian, you said…?"
— Who was that? Who just said 'Guardian'?
As if asking that very question, every gaze in the room snapped toward me as one.
More precisely, toward the back of my right hand, which was still pouring out brilliant light.
"A G-Guardian…"
"It's a GuardiAaaAAAN!!!"
"Aaaagh, uwaaaaaagh!!!"
"O War God, O War Godddd!!!"
"The hour of the holy war has dawned!!!"
Grrrk, KYAAAAAH!!!
Sounds closer to howls than shouts rolled out in every direction.
The fighting spirit that had been swelling in my chest washed away like cotton candy dunked in water.
…I was afraid.
For the first time in my life, I felt fear of other people.
Eyes bloodshot, they came charging at me with weapons of every kind in their hands.
Swords, spears, axes, maces, even gauntlets.
It was not only people who held Cretus's unique blessings — Guardian or Fighter. These were pure battle maniacs who admired Cretus's life so much that they had gathered in one place to hone their martial skill even after receiving other blessings.
The sight of them rushing in with fire in their eyes inevitably called up a zombie movie scene I had never once witnessed in this life.
"U-uwaaagh—!"
Without meaning to, I let out a battle cry, thrust my shield forward, and dropped into a parrying stance.
"The Great Warrior of Cretus has appeared!!!"
"Uwahahahaha!!!"
"He was not wrong! We were the ones who were wrong!!!"
It happened in an instant.
The kind of motion that made a Level 20 assassin's Shadow Ambush look like clumsy footwork. A small-framed man demonstrating it materialized at my back in a flash.
"Guh?!"
My body — over a hundred kilos even without the solid armor layered on top — left the ground.
"A warrior of the god has been born!"
— UWAAAAAAGH!!!
My body flew up into the air against gravity. Men with muscles inflated like balloons put everything they had into the throw; I even thought that at this rate, my head might punch through the church ceiling.
So this is that situation…
I did not know what it meant, exactly. But when my previous life's self had posted a completed Guardian build on the community boards, these were the comments that had come in.
Roughly the kind of comments people used at moments of celebration and cheering.
If you can't dodge it, you might as well enjoy it.
I let the tension drain from my curled-up body and surrendered myself to their welcome.
The gravity that usually pressed down even heavier once I put on armor suddenly felt infinitely distant.
…No, this might actually be a little too distant?
"Wha—?!"
THUD!
— Uwaagh!!!
Whose voice was that?
A cry closer to a scream rang out, and—
"Please, control yourselves. If you keep raising this kind of racket, even the Cretus Church will— whuh-uhh?!"
Someone's panicked shriek cut through the noise.
Ah. Yeah — this is the expression that fits right now.
It was absolute, five-minutes-from-disaster chaos.