Preemptive Strike (1)
Swordsmanship class.
The main cast were swinging their blades with dazzling skill. Living Ron's life, I couldn't help but feel just how extraordinary their talent and martial prowess truly were. I watched them with genuine admiration, then thought to myself:
Act 1, Scene 2 probably wrapped up the usual way — the leads getting tangled up with each other. That means Act 1, Scene 3 is right around the corner.
Act 1, Scene 3: the Gate Break.
A gate dungeon left uncleared past a certain time limit collapses, corroding the surrounding area into dungeon territory and spewing its monsters out into the world. Because the gate — the boundary between this world and the dungeon — has broken down, the phenomenon is called a Gate Break.
In For Elise, there was a dangerous gate dungeon sitting undiscovered and neglected in a remote location. It breaks, starts pouring monsters out — and the cadets, right in the middle of a field training exercise, are forced into a fight for their lives against the dungeon's creatures.
Not happening.
In the first and second playthroughs, every cadet survives. But on the third playthrough — Hard difficulty — a few of them die. Push things the wrong way and the main cast starts dropping, the protagonist's misery route kicks in, and a bad ending becomes a real possibility.
I'm not letting that happen.
Besides, I had zero interest in sitting on my hands and watching people die when I already knew it was coming.
So.
I'll strike first.
A dungeon? I could sweep the place clean. Sure, I could also just tell the knight academy about the gate — but that option was out. Explaining how I knew would be a nightmare, and enemy agents already held key positions throughout the academy. Drawing that kind of suspicion was a bad play.
Plus, there was something in that gate dungeon I wanted for myself. A weapon I'd never been able to obtain in the game, no matter what I tried. Going alone was the better call.
"Cadet Number Seventeen."
The instructor approached me. My heart dropped.
Ah, damn.
Had he noticed me zoning out during training? He wasn't about to make me do punishment drills… was he?
"Cadet Number Seventeen, Ron Hazley!"
I snapped to attention and barked my name and number. The instructor stared at me for a long moment, then the corner of his mouth curled up.
"Your stamina and mana seem to have increased already, haven't they? And it's only the second week! You've been training that hard, have you!?"
Oh. So that's what this was about.
I relaxed and gave him a suitably earnest answer.
"You told me to push myself, sir, so I pushed myself with everything I had!"
"……!"
The instructor's eyes went wide.
"And why is that!?"
"Because faithfully carrying out an instructor's orders is a cadet's duty, sir!"
He grinned and closed the distance in a flash.
"Well, damn! Outstanding, Cadet Number Seventeen, Ron Hazley! Grasping the very essence of the knight academy already — what a brilliant mind you have!!"
"Thank you, sir!!"
"But you're nowhere near done! Look at you, already flagging like that! The next test isn't far off! The intensity is only going to climb! Will you push yourself harder and survive!?"
"Sir, yes, sir!!"
"Good! I like that answer, so I'll grant you a special privilege! Take your stance!"
"Sir…?"
"You'll master it far faster once you've felt it with your own body!"
This is a privilege, right…? He's not just trying to torment me…?
I hurriedly gripped the practice sword in both hands and settled into a guard.
"Everyone, halt! Eyes on me! This instructor will demonstrate once more!"
The cadets stopped training and turned their attention toward us. The instructor held his practice blade in one hand, wearing that same hearty smile as always. Not a single unnecessary movement. Not a single opening. A solemn, crushing pressure settled over my entire body.
"One of the Empire's time-honored knightly sword styles — the Light Wing Sword! I'll show you each movement, nice and slow! Eyes wide open, Ron Hazley — and block!"
"Yes, sir!"
The instructor swung his blade at a deliberate pace, carefully demonstrating each technique, adding commentary all the while. This cut goes like this, that one like that, and so on and so forth. I matched him as best I could.
"Now — picking up the pace!"
"Yes, sir!?"
The strikes gradually quickened.
Clang! Clang!
Practice blades crashed together in a racket of impact. Naturally, I failed to block some of them. The blunt edge found me again and again. Ow. That really hurts.
"Now — counter whenever you like!"
"Yes, sir!"
I swung as ordered.
Oh!
It landed clean. A downward cut aimed right at an opening — the best strike I'd thrown yet. Growth, maybe?
…And then.
CLANG!
"!?"
The instructor's blade erupted with mana and knocked my sword aside at an angle. My weapon rebounded as smoothly as if the laws of physics themselves had been rewritten to demand it. Because I'd committed my weight behind the blow for power, my center of gravity went flying and I staggered backward.
Whoosh!
In the same instant, the instructor's blade shot forward and stopped right at my throat.
I sucked in a sharp, useless breath — then went down hard on my backside. Cold sweat beaded across my skin. Practice sword or not, for a split second I was certain I was dead.
"This is Opening Wing! The bridge that connects every technique in the Light Wing Sword — and its ultimate counter! Far too advanced for the likes of you lot just yet! But dig deep enough into the principles of the Light Wing Sword, and one day you'll reach it!"
A sharp edge entered the cadets' eyes. Every one of them looked fired up. The instructor chuckled.
"Cadet Number Seventeen! Did you feel it!?"
As if…
Still.
I think I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end.
It was clearly most effective when the opponent committed their weight into a heavy attack. I'd just experienced that firsthand.
A strange excitement welled up in me. Back at that cheap swordsmanship dojo, all I'd ever learned were odds and ends from a mercenary-turned-instructor. Coming to the knight academy and getting to experience — and absorb — a systematic knightly sword style was like rain falling on parched earth for someone starved of knowledge and technique.
"Cadet Number Seventeen!"
The instructor's voice boomed down on me.
Smack!
The flat of his practice sword cracked across the top of my head. Guh — that hurts!
"Nngh! Cadet Number Seventeen, Ron Hazley!"
My name and number shot out of me on instinct. The instructor bellowed.
"How long do you plan on sitting there taking it easy!? I never told you to rest! Get up and swing your sword!"
"Sir, yes, sir!!"
I take it back. This damn knight academy. It's ridiculously hard…
A day off. I left the knight academy behind.
The Melsis Stele stood in the Holton Mountain Range, about an hour from the academy. I went looking for it. It was a well-known monument, so the location wasn't hard to find.
The scale of the real terrain compared to the game map was night and day. Getting there took a fair amount of time, but the surrounding landmarks matched the game, so I found the Melsis Stele without much trouble.
Ancient script was carved into the stone — a tribute to the achievements of some magic knight from a bygone era. Yeah, I couldn't read it. Didn't need to, either.
From here, head east — that was it, right?
Drawing on the story of Elwi, I walked for a while until I arrived at a familiar destination.
Inside a cave. Dark mana drifted through the air like fog — a mana phenomenon generated by the combined power of the small bat monsters living here. The Veil of Darkness. It concealed their nesting grounds and prevented the cave's mana from being detected outside. Their survival strategy, essentially.
In Elwi, this Veil of Darkness was the reason the gate had gone undiscovered for so long.
Just in case, I poked my sword through. It passed cleanly to the other side. Then I stepped through myself. Same result — nothing happened.
Flutterflutterflutter!
"Oh, crap."
The moment I crossed the veil, the little bat monsters erupted into a noisy frenzy of flight. Yeesh — nearly gave me a heart attack. They weren't the type to attack people like me, though — small animals and insects, maybe — so I decided to ignore them.
Whooosh.
Found it.
Before long, I spotted an oval gate floating in the air, giving off an eerie sound. This had to be the one that would collapse in Act 1, Scene 3 and start dumping monsters everywhere.
Without hesitation, I stepped through.
Damp wind touched my skin. A mystical wetland filled my vision, dense with strange plants in every direction. Streams of blue energy flowed across the sky like rivers — the mana of nature itself.
You have entered the dungeon.
Fwooom!
The entrance gate contracted to a single point and vanished.
Time to hunt.
The Hard difficulty third-playthrough story had one particularly dangerous bastard in it. He should be holed up in this dungeon right about now — the variable unique to the third playthrough, the one responsible for snuffing out multiple cadets' lives in Act 1, Scene 3. And you never even manage to kill him in that story. He withdraws and joins the enemy faction.
So the right move is to take him out here.
Shiiing.
I drew the sword at my hip.
All right, then.
Unique Ability Soul of the Swordmaster activated!
Ssssss!
Ohh.
Insane vitality surged through my entire body. Mana swelled violently and raced through my circuits at full throttle. It felt like I'd been trudging around in heavy shackles only to suddenly break free and taste pure freedom — or like I'd been stuck in starter gear forever and then suddenly equipped a full set of endgame equipment.
Ding.
At the same time, a complete suite of passive skills bloomed into view.
◈ Sensory Amplification (A) — Not even the faintest presence or the slightest trace of mana escapes detection.
◈ Mana Eruption (S) — Dramatically amplifies an already ocean-vast output of mana.
◈ Iron Soul (S) — Grants immunity to mind-control magic, curses, and any attack targeting the inner self; emotions remain as unshakable as solid iron.
◈ Poison Immunity (A) — Immune to all toxins.
◈ All Blades as One (S) — Wield any sword — any number of swords — as naturally as your own limbs.
Hell yeah.
Extremely reassuring.
Whooosh.
Without warning, a wind swept through my mind. My senses sharpened to a razor's edge; my nerves were pulled taut toward something.
And then—
FWOOSH!!
Something long and thick and white — like an anaconda — shot out of a nearby bog.
A bog serpent.
A monster: the bog serpent. Its round maw, packed tight with razor-sharp teeth, yawned wide open.
I took a single step forward and called to mind the Light Wing Sword demonstration the instructor had shown during training.
In this state…
I was certain. I could recreate the principles of the Light Wing Sword with my own hands.
I swung.
Shhk.
A blade tracing a graceful downward arc. The bog serpent split like paper and slapped wetly onto the ground in two pieces.
Thuk!
I drove my sword tip down through the still-twitching corpse to finish it for good.
Fast. Unbelievably fast — hard to accept these were my own body's movements.
Good.
The feel of the swordsmanship had been carved into my hands as well. Satisfying.
I moved on, casually cutting down ambushing bog serpents and man-eating plants as I went.
First time exploring this dungeon…
In the game, there was never any opportunity to explore this place no matter what you did. But figuring out how to find my target was easy enough to deduce.
SLASH!!
"Guh… hrrk…"
I tracked down the dungeon boss and cut it down without breaking a sweat — a massive crocodile monster with partial armor of rock plating its body.
Dungeon Boss cleared.
Exit Gate Key acquired.
You may generate an exit gate at any location near the gate you entered through.
Fwoosh.
A green light coalesced in midair and shaped itself into a key. I picked it up.
If my hunch was right…
He should be coming out now.
Sssssssss…
Over there.
The corner of my mouth lifted.
Magi.
That same foul energy Orankel the demon had radiated — I could feel it with perfect clarity.
From the deep bog where the boss had fallen, a grotesque creature caked in thick mud slowly rose to the surface. It sat with its knees drawn up, head tilted quietly toward the sky.
Then its eyes snapped open — round and wide. A wet, squelching sound. At the same time, several mouths split open, revealing rows of pure white, evenly spaced teeth that stood in stark contrast to the swamp.
Grrrk, grrrk.
It ground every set of teeth together. A bizarre, dissonant racket filled the air.
"Why, is a human, why, here, why, is it, here?"
Its face twisted into a savage snarl, as if enraged. The words came out broken and disjointed.
"Why, is my precious, pet, why, is it, dead?"
The creature rose, its mud-caked body unfolding.
The demon — Maslo, the Mud Swordsman.
He'd treated this dungeon's boss like a beloved pet. He'd been living here alongside it, too. So I'd been certain that killing the boss would draw him out.
The existence that should have painted Act 1, Scene 3 in tragedy: the demon Maslo.
A single sword was gripped in his hand.
The Wolf Sword.
Just as I'd seen in the game — unlike the blade Orankel had used, the sword this one carried was of exceptional quality.
The Wolf Sword Calzack.
The wolf's blade left behind in the Tomb of Swords by Silvia, the free-roaming wandering knight and Swordmaster. Its strength and hardness put most famed blades to shame, and it remained unshaken even when saturated with vast quantities of mana. According to legend, the wandering knight Silvia had used that very sword to slay mighty monsters wherever she went.
And Maslo the demon had stolen it from the Tomb of Swords and claimed it as his own.
Today, I would kill Maslo the demon, stop the bad ending —
and take that sword for myself.
"Hss…"
My mouth watered.