Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 10

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Lord Mare squinted at her with a frown for several seconds, then looked back to Guildmaster Ainzach.

“Um…should we call over Miss Pestonya to cure her?”

“It’s not actual insanity,” Guildmaster Ainzach said. “As Merry said, her entire family’s like that. They put too much before themselves, to the point that extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice are normal. It’s in her blood, and it’s probably not something that can be cured. To someone looking in casually without knowing them, it might be considered steadfast or noble, but the reality is that she’ll most likely take various things to extremes that no one else can or will.”

“So I’m not actually crazy?” Ludmila asked carefully.

“Well, no,” Merry said. “I guess you’re more like some kinda weird mental Berserker.”

Ludmila sighed in relief: she had enough things to take care of as it was without also going crazy.

“It’s getting late, so let’s cover the rest of the assessment,” the guildmaster said. “You performed that Strike Art without any additional Martial Arts – actually I guess you can’t have tacked anything more onto that…probably.”

“I’m not sure what that means, Guildmaster,” Ludmila said.

“Hmm…to put it simply,” he told her, “Martial Arts are divided into four distinct categories: Strikes, Counters, Boosts and Stances. Strike Arts are just as you might imagine: attacks in melee combat or at range. Counter Arts are reactive. They can be divided into purely defensive techniques that protect you or your party, or techniques that allow the user to transition from defence to offence. Boost Arts are a warrior’s way to enhance themselves or their equipment. Stances are pretty much as they sound, but they also include techniques such as Sensory Arts that allow people to pick up on specific things in range in an almost magical sort of way.

“The reason why I didn’t think you had any additional Martial Arts active is because of our loose understanding of how they progress. The stronger one becomes as a warrior, the greater their capacity for Martial Arts. The greater the capacity for Martial Arts, the more of them you can use at once. Alternatively, you can start developing combination attacks or achieve otherwise physically impossible feats.

“The first Martial Art that you performed was not actually a basic Strike Art,” the guildmaster held up a pair of fingers. “It did two things: deliver magnified damage and knock back your opponent. If it was a basic Strike, it would only do one thing or the other. This is a case where your decade of training has ingrained a combination attack preemptively, to be transformed into a Martial Art at the appropriate time. Since you didn’t appear to suffer any drastic consequences from using it, it’s an indication that you’re at bare minimum around the upper edge of Silver-rank in raw capability: the earliest point where you start seeing that sort of thing. The one that you got hurt by was far higher than that…what was it that you did?”

“It was a sequential attack, using the first Strike in rapid succession,” Ludmila replied. “It’s also something that was drilled into me…except before the execution of the attack, I understood that the first strike might have knocked the Air Mephit out of range. I somehow made all three attacks happen at once but, now that I think back on it, it doesn’t make sense at all.”

“It’s not supposed to make sense,” the guildmaster smirked. “That’s one of the biggest barriers in learning Martial Arts: should and can drift further and further apart. A regular person has set boundaries for what should be possible defined by their experiences, but a powerful warrior can do the impossible. Learning Martial Arts could be seen as a warrior realigning their perception of reality, based on their ongoing growth.”

“There are still limits, though,” Moknach glowered at the spot where the Air Mephit once floated. “There shouldn’t be any way that a borderline Gold-rank warrior can kill a Difficulty Rating 45 opponent in a single attack. She is using a polearm, and she did basically lose her arm for it, but it’s still almost unheard of without also getting extremely lucky.”

“The different types of Mephits are flimsier than the average summon of the same level,” Lord Mare said. “It’s a tradeoff for their damage reduction and fast regeneration. They’re not very good for fighting something with strong attacks, but their qualities make them useful against opponents with weak offence…”

“…like low-rank Adventurers with no Martial Arts,” the guildmaster finished for him. “They’re ideal for it, actually – that’s why we settled on using them for this demonstration. That attack that Zahradnik pulled off I’d consider about right for the trump card of a Platinum-rank Adventurer. Our framework of how advanced Martial Arts work isn’t so concretely defined that we can pick apart the exact requirements for them, but what I do know is that anything higher than Platinum would have probably killed her outright.”

“Does it mean I’ll be able to perform that attack without breaking my arm at Platinum-rank?” Ludmila asked.

“These measures aren’t an exact thing,” he replied, “but it should be somewhere around there. Also, while you won’t be injuring yourself, increasingly advanced Martial Arts will still strain your mind and body. You’ll become exhausted if you try to use it multiple times in rapid succession.”

“So should I be holding attacks like that in reserve, while primarily relying on basic Martial Arts?”

“That’s a debate that’s as old as Martial Arts,” he told her. “Some people like throwing everything they have into an extremely powerful decisive attack, using similar reasoning to your own earlier: that it’s worth the cost to eliminate critical threats quickly. Others go with the notion that they can use a combination of Boost Arts and Stances to sustain high levels of performance at the expense of not being able to use more advanced Strike and Counter Arts. The real answer is probably to be flexible with how you balance your Martial Arts but, as I mentioned earlier, Adventurers tend to start with a narrow focus that ends up limiting their ability to apply themselves more broadly. One can, of course, make lengthy efforts to re-discipline themselves or search for martial schools that will accept them, but that means you’re not taking jobs.”

“And you say that I learned in a different fashion from Adventurers,” Ludmila said, “so I can learn Martial Arts differently somehow?”

“It’s not ‘somehow’ at this point,” the guildmaster answered, “you’ve already proven this. You have over a decade of training, and now everything you understand from that training is available to be developed into Martial Arts. Your school of combat is highly disciplined and methodical, and now all that’s left is to puzzle out how it translates.”

“I don’t want to be ‘that guy’,” Moknach said, “but didn’t she have trouble grasping a basic Strike Art just now?”

“Now that she understands the gist of it,” Guildmaster Ainzach replied, “it shouldn’t be too hard. Why don’t we try it out?”

“?Summon Monster IV?.”

A new Air Mephit appeared, looking exactly identical to the one before it. The Guildmaster nodded to Ludmila, and she stepped out again in front of the elemental spirit. Her first strike: a simple thrust, clearly damaged it. She went through several different forms, working through various piercing, slashing and crushing attacks, waiting for the summon to regenerate after each successful strike. Her final attack – a kick meant to knock back an opponent who came too close – drove the Air Mephit to the nearby wall.

“Something like that?” Ludmila looked at Merry.

“Was it really just that?” The Elf Ranger frowned, “What a scam – he did it all the damn time. Well, I guess it’s still hella intimidating with the force of an Adamantite Ranger behind it.”

“What did I tell ya?” The guildmaster all but crowed, “My hunch was dead on.”

“The results are impressive,” Momon said, “but is it really necessary to train Adventurers for a decade to achieve the same result? Various logistical issues stem from that, as you should understand.”

“You’re right about that, Momon,” the guildmaster said. “It’d be nice to have members coming in with that sort of background, but it’s far from a requirement. When we’re out exploring, the vast majority of what we face won’t merit that degree of mastery. As we’ve all seen, even basic Martial Arts can easily turn the tables on a well-trained warrior without them, so our first priority – as it always has been for Adventurers – will be surviving and getting the job done. The main point here is that the Adventurer Guild is in need of an institution that supplements our work in the Training Area because our members’ raw growth vastly outpaces their development.”

“Does that mean that everything has to change?” Lord Mare asked, “Do we have to just drop everything and wait for this new branch of the Adventurer Guild?”

“It’ll be a work in progress,” the guildmaster answered. “We can continue moving forward with what we have.”

“So…this is what we came for, then?” Moknach said, “I’ll be sure to keep what we learned here in mind for the Martial Arts training we’ve planned so far, but it requires that we consider our instruction methods. The harder we push towards our members learning essential Martial Arts, the more we ingrain certain habits into their combat styles. Hell, now that we’re thinking about things along these lines, none of us is really qualified – not the same way as an instructor at a martial school is. We’re all basically self-taught.”

“They need those Martial Arts to function at the bare minimum of our expedition standards,” the guildmaster replied, “so it’s just something we’ll have to deal with. At this stage, it’s impossible to have everything that we want right away, so we’ll just have to work out those sorts of issues after the fact. Also, while it’s true that our veterans are self-taught, those essentials are the basics in our line of work, and they won’t change even with our new mandate. What we need to do is take those basics and turn them into the foundation of our own school of combat. The rest – weapon mastery, fighting styles, group tactics and all the theory and discipline that goes behind them – we have the time to explore and formalize, and our members will benefit in the long run.”

He let out a sigh, shaking his head with a rueful look.

“Now that we’re trying to make one, I’m realizing why martial schools always seem to consider the age of their traditions as a point of pride. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“I’ll see what His Majesty has to say about the conclusions made here,” Momon said. “It sounds like we have a long while before we have anything comprehensive to put forward, but I believe you’re correct about it being something that the Adventurer Guild should be establishing to support its members.”

Those assembled started to head back up out of the Training Area, save for Lord Mare and the guildmaster.

“Is there anything else?” Ludmila asked.

“There is, as a matter of fact,” the guildmaster told her. “These night sessions…since it’s unlikely we’ll be getting any other members to join you on such short notice, you should be exploring all of the potential Martial Arts you have access to. Every drill; every technique; how you’ve been taught to fight, think and act: they’re potentially leads to the Martial Arts of your family’s school of combat.”

“Are there really so many Martial Arts?”

The guildmaster stroked his bushy moustache several times over before answering her question.

“I guess the better way to think about Martial Arts is that every warrior learns them on their own, so every Martial Art is a result of their own unique approach. The ones that we commonly come to know are just the way we categorize ones that effectively do the same thing. It also means that you might have a dozen Martial Arts that others see as a single Martial Art, but only you can grasp the nuance in each enough to understand that they’re unique to themselves.”

“I see…also, why do people shout?”

“Shout?”

“Yes,” Ludmila said. “Now that I understand what they represent, I realize that, occasionally, people call out the ‘names’ of their Martial Arts when performing them…but it’s not actually necessary. There’s no reason to tell your opponent what you’re doing, is there?”

“Ah, that. In training, it helps a lot of people focus and visualize. You shouldn’t have any trouble because they’ve been drilled into you for years, but it works as an aid for warriors without that benefit. When your own Martial Arts start presenting challenges, you may end up doing it as well. It can help to solidify what the Martial Art is supposed to be doing, or convey its concept in some meaningful way…then again, I have heard some more frivolous ones – Merry’s got a couple of them.”

“That means there must be a reason outside of training, yes?”

“First one’s the same as before,” the guildmaster told her. “Sometimes you still don’t have it quite down yet, or it’s just so hard that you need the extra oomph to bring it out. Basic Martial Arts aren’t usually called out after a certain point. The more common reason is that you’re communicating with the people around you. When you work closely with a team, you come to learn all of the tools that each member has at their disposal and you figure various tactics involving them. Calling out a Martial Art is a way of notifying your party so that they can decide what to do about what you did.

“This is one of the main reasons why front line warriors tend to play a central role in any party: they’re generally in contact with the greatest threats, and develop a good feel for how a fight is going. The Warrior calls out Fortress – the party knows that the opponent has committed to an attack that merits the Martial Art and acts according to what they themselves have at their disposal. The healer knows that the warrior is probably okay, those in a position to deal damage know that they have an opening to exploit, or are free to dispatch other threats. The same goes with any action that potentially changes the flow of combat: communicating with your party is paramount when adventuring. Most of the things that you fight don’t even care that you just yelled something, and those that do haven’t prepared in advance like your team has. By the time they react, it’s usually too late.”

Ludmila nodded silently several times throughout his explanation. It turned out that it wasn’t as silly as she initially thought.

“Thank you for the explanation, Guildmaster,” she said. “Is there anything further I might need to know?”

“Nothing comes to mind for now,” he said. “Still, this should keep you busy for a good, long while. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know some other day. For the time being, I need to get back – we’ve gone so late that I’m going to be paying for it in the morning.”

As if to emphasize his point, the Guildmaster covered his mouth and yawned. Turning around, he headed up after the others. While Ludmila started to dwell on how she should start, the Air Mephit vanished. Lord Mare cast another spell and, in the place of the previous summon, four more appeared.

“I’ll leave these guys here for you,” Lord Mare said. “Just in case you kill a few accidentally. Maybe you can try some area attacks as well? As far as I know, warriors should have a few of those – especially the ones that use big weapons.”

“A few do come to mind, yes,” she replied. “You won’t be staying, my lord?”

“I’ll be in other parts of the Training Area fixing up some things while you do stuff here,” he said. “Um…did you have something for fast healing? A potion? That one attack you used broke your arm in three places and dislocated your shoulder.”

“Was it really that bad? I didn’t know that there was any way to tell at a glance like that.”

“Classes capable of healing have skills or spells that can gauge health, mana and identify status ailments. A few others can too. I-it was really shocking: just a whole bunch of things popped up at once.”

Ludmila grimaced at the reminder – she wasn’t keen on experiencing that again.

“It shouldn’t happen,” Ludmila said, “now that I know about it. I wanted to prove that it wasn’t just luck, and I used something that I decided would show that it wasn’t beyond the shadow of a doubt. I wasn’t aware of the consequences of doing so, but now I won’t be trying anything so crazy.”

“I don’t think it was crazy.”

She blinked and stared at Lord Mare for a moment.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t,” Lord Mare replied. “Shalltear says that you’re different from other Humans. That you’re more like us. You have a place to protect, and you’ll do what’s necessary to protect it – even if it kills you. Other people might say that it’s crazy, but, to us, not doing that is what’s crazy. Everything we’ve been given is for that purpose. Without purpose, there’s no meaning to our existence. A-at least that’s what Demiurge says – but we all feel the same way.”

“Thank you, Lord Mare,” Ludmila said quietly. “It’s encouraging to know that I’m not alone in that thinking.”

Lord Mare looked down, scratching his cheek lightly.

“Oh!” He looked up again, “There’s one more thing I wanted to show you.”

Lord Mare turned around and walked to the mottled stone wall behind where the observers had gathered. He gave it a push, revealing a hidden door. Ludmila made her way over, taking a look inside. There was a small chamber and the edge of what looked to be a large pool of steaming water further in.

“Y-you were worried about a bath, right?” Lord Mare said from beside her, “I went ahead and made one. I hope it’s okay.”

“It’s wonderful, my lord,” Ludmila replied. “Thank you very much.”

The tension built up from training seeped out of her at the prospect of relaxation, and her thoughts turned to review the events of the day.

“L-Ludmila?!”

Through blurred vision, she raised her head at the alarm in Lord Mare’s voice. She brought a hand up to her face, finding her cheek wet with tears.

“W-what’s wrong?” Lord Mare hovered nervously in front of her, “You don’t look injured…”

“Hey Mare, what’s taking you so – AAH! What did you do to her?!”

Lady Aura reappeared from the entrance, expression turning cross.

“Nothing!” Lord Mare shrunk away, “I-I didn’t do anything!”

“Haah? Then why is she–”

“It’s alright, my lady,” Ludmila sniffed. “I was just thinking over what we learned just now.”

“Are you really that happy about it?” Lady Aura looked over at her, “I mean, they’re better than your regular attacks, but even something as weak as a Death Knight will shrug it off.”

“It’s not about the Martial Arts themselves,” Ludmila took a deep breath, “but what led to them. I’ve always appreciated what my parents did for me, even as a child. But, as I take more and more steps through life, I keep finding more to be thankful for – things I had no clue about until I needed them.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, then looked over at Lady Aura and Lord Mare.

“The Guildmaster is right: every drill; every technique; how I’ve been taught to fight, think and act – it’s all in there, packed into my upbringing: generations of knowledge subtly passed on to me. The lessons of my house have been carefully crafted with the idea that death can come at any time for a Frontier Noble and, even should that happen, I can still learn after they’re gone. They’ve left me with so much…”

Within her, gratitude, pride and heartache welled up with every word. Another sob wracked her body, and Ludmila lowered herself to the ground, hugging her knees as she wept quietly.

“Big sis…”

“Hsst! Get a clue, already!”

The trickling of the waterfall on the far shore of the grotto was the only sound in the air until Ludmila stood back up again. Lady Aura walked around for a bit before leaning in to take a look inside the bath.

“This is…a secret room?” She asked, “What kinda traps did you put in there? A Mimic? Don’t tell me you hid a Roper in the back…”

“A Roper?” Ludmila wiped her eyes again and looked into the bath – she had no idea what Lady Aura was referring to.

“T-there isn’t anything!” Lord Mare cried in protest, “Geez, big sis, it’s just a place where she can take a bath after training. She doesn’t have the time to go back and forth with this new schedule.”

“…really?”

“R-really!”

“What if someone else finds it?” Lady Aura said, “Everyone is going to start expecting a hot bath at the end of their training.”

“Uuu…maybe I should put a Roper in there, after all…”

“I-I didn’t say that you should!” Lady Aura shuddered, “Can you imagine hiding him in the bath?”

“Eh? But he’s a really nice person!”

What was a Roper? Lady Aura considered it a trap, but what sort of trap could you hide in a bath? Something like a Mimic could potentially be the bath, but her imagination failed her with what a Roper was.

“J-just make sure no one can find it, okay?” Lady Aura told him, “If you start using that kind of trap, half of the Adventurers will quit. How well hidden is this door, anyways?”

Lady Aura reached out to close the stone portal, and it merged seamlessly with the grotto wall. Ludmila leaned forward, trying to find any trace of where she knew it should be with no success.

“Hmm…” Lady Aura joined her in her inspection, “I can see it pretty clearly, but can someone like Solution even find this?”

“P-probably not,” Lord Mare replied.

“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“Wha–! Y-you didn’t ask!”

“Why would I ask?” Lady Aura frowned at him, “This is supposed to be a level 12 floor: why would there be a door that needs a level 80 detector here?”

Lady Aura grabbed Lord Mare’s Arm, dragging him off amidst his protests.

“Anyways,” she said over her shoulder, “we need to get back to work. We’re the only ones that know about that door, so you should be safe to use it. Just tell me if Mare tries to peep – I don’t know what those women have been filling his head with while I’m not around.”

The Dark Elf twins disappeared into the tunnels, with Lady Aura muttering darkly about how her brother was falling into deviancy.