Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 9

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 9

Chapter 9

As predicted, the remedial sessions, while still consisting of various challenges, did not contain any lethal threats such as Ogres with sticks.

Through the many sessions of the day, Ludmila fought alongside members both new and familiar. Over the course of weeks, she had refined the methods she used to build up a base of trust and confidence in her leadership, so the process by which she brought teams under her has smoothened considerably. As a bonus, thanks to their clean successes, the casters had more than enough mana to cast a Clean spell on her – much to her great relief.

Rather than run back and forth between the Training Area and the city after each session, she was left to wait for her next team to arrive. She pondered Merry’s words about her conduct after parting ways with each group, wondering if the long-lived Elf’s words were just an unavoidable truth.

Lady Shalltear had admonished her several times over her tendency towards humility, saying that, if misplaced, it could bring as much harm as empty pride. Ludmila willingly accepted who she was – a noble of the Sorcerous Kingdom, who lived a life of oaths, duty and obligation – yet, at the same time, the sense of camaraderie between the free-spirited Adventurers was an attractive thing to her.

Was what she was doing with the Adventurers also a form of misplaced humility? If so, it was far more insidious: the desire for companionship blinding her to the consequences of her attempts to have others treat her as less than what she was. The more she thought about it, the more she believed that the veteran Adventurer was right: she needed to be aware of who she was and what was at stake at all times, or trouble would eventually find her and everything she had been charged with.

“Oh~ looks like you’re not dead yet.”

A voice from nearby jarred her from her thoughts. Ludmila turned around to find Lady Aura standing behind her.

“Good evening, Lady Aura,” she lowered her head in greeting. “I was expecting Lord Mare, but it’s always a pleasure to see you as well.”

“Hmm…”

Ludmila looked up, finding that Lady Aura had fixed an appraising stare in her direction.

“My lady?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Lady Aura blinked and looked up at her, “Maybe. The proctors are still reviewing the last training session for the evening. I just came in ahead of the others.”

“I see…you mean to say that Lord Mare found others for the night sessions?”

“Not quite,” Lady Aura replied. “It’s Momon, Ainzach, Moknach and Merry. Ainzach says he can prove something with you – something to do with the changes to training.”

“I wasn’t aware of anything like that, my lady.”

“Huh. Welp, guess we’ll find out when we find out.”

The sound of the wind blowing through the grove around the training area filled the air as they silently waited. After some time, Lady Aura spoke again.

“Say…my brother isn’t doing anything weird, is he?”

“Weird, my lady?” Ludmila asked, “I can’t say that he has. Not that I know of, anyway.”

“Hm…well, if you think anything is wrong, just let me know.”

“Of course, my lady,” she replied. “Though, if I may say so, most people consider me a bit out of the ordinary as well. Guildmaster Ainzach surely has the experience to identify anything ‘weird’.”

“Maybe,” Lady Aura’s tone was more than a bit dubious. “Thing is that everyone’s in some kinda big rush to get things done, and they’re all caught up in the excitement. Even this whole problem with training and development that’s cropped up is a result of it – how does that even get by them, anyway? They’re so busy looking up at the sky that they keep falling into holes. Anyways, since you’re working for that dummy, I figure you’re pretty good at dumping cold water on people’s heads.”

“That dummy…” Ludmila frowned.

“Shalltear.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, my lady, if you don’t mind: what is the relationship between you and Lady Shalltear?”

“…I guess you could say that we’re related through our parents.”

They were cousins? It would go far in explaining the interactions between them. Considering that Lady Shalltear was one of the Undead, it was quite heartwarming that they would maintain close familial ties. Most would probably recoil at the realization that one of their relatives had been turned into an Undead being.

“I see,” Ludmila said. “Thank you for the clarification, Lady Aura. As for dumping cold water on people’s heads…I only try to advise Lady Shalltear as best as I can.”

“There’s only been one giant crater so far, so keep it up, I guess? Ah – looks like they’re here.”

From out of a tree nearby appeared the people Lady Aura had mentioned. Ludmila wasn’t sure if they had been serving as proctors for the entire day, but they appeared none the worse for wear if so. Guildmaster Ainzach stepped up to Ludmila, giving her a once over.

“Well, you still look like you’re good to go,” he said. “How does it feel doing six training sessions back to back?”

“No better or worse than when I started, Guildmaster,” she replied. “Overall, I find the training sessions quite relaxing.”

“That’s good to hear,” the guildmaster looked over to Lady Aura. “Any change?”

“If she’s gained any levels,” Lady Aura said, “I can’t tell. What about you, Merry?”

“Mmh…a bit stronger?” Merry peered at Ludmila, “Feels weird, especially since I just saw her this morning.”

“That’s a good sign, then,” Guildmaster Ainzach nodded. “We can probably put any Adventurer into training like this if they get knocked down and we need them back up quickly. If Aura can register a change after all of this after a few days, it’s proof for sure.”

Ludmila was not aware of what the wider effects of her training would be, but she started to understand what Lady Aura was referring to. The guildmaster had a gleam in his eye that spoke of barely-contained excitement, yet her intense training schedule was probably not something everyone could handle for extended periods.

“Is this why everyone has gathered?” She asked.

“No,” the guildmaster said, “there’s something else I wanted to prove and, since you’re on this gauntlet of yours, I want to include it as a part of your night training. Let’s head in and get this started – Mare, did you have any place in mind?”

Lord Mare nodded and walked into the entrance of the Training Area. They followed him down several floors, into a passage that led straight to the end of one of the grotto areas. It was usually a route that Adventurers took after completing a session, allowing them swift access to the main nexus of the floor.

They walked out onto the shore of an underground pool, complete with a small waterfall and magical illumination. The air was warm, but the ground where the ‘end boss’ of the session would usually be was dry and swept clear of debris. Ainzach made his way around the floor, nodding to himself in satisfaction.

“Anyways,” he turned to the line of people watching him, “I hope I haven’t dragged you all down here just to embarrass myself. Everyone here knows we’ve run into a bit of a wall with our training regimen. The Training Area’s so good at strengthening our members that they’re outpacing the regular development of what should come with that strength. Mages can’t keep up with the number of spells that they need to learn, people are behind on the abilities they’d have sharpened normally over time, and our warriors are in trouble when it comes to Martial Arts.”

Though it was mentioned in passing the day previous, she hadn’t realized that there were such widespread issues appearing in the new Adventurer Guild. Her general approach of conserving caster mana and use of efficient tactics probably didn’t help with identifying the problems, either.

“Martial Arts usually take a long time to learn,” the guildmaster continued, “but it also usually takes a long time to rank up. In that time, a warrior becomes accustomed to combat – learning its ins and outs. In the old Adventurer Guild, by the time it took the vast majority of warriors to earn their Silver plates, they’d have had a good two or more years of experience under their belts. In the new Adventurer Guild, we got fresh faces coming in and hitting Gold within months, thanks to this Training Area.”

The guildmaster looked around as if waiting for someone to point out some flaw with his statement. The chamber remained silent, and he continued.

“Now, our members scrape together one; maybe two, Martial Arts by the time they hit Gold. This, in itself, is a testimony to how much combat experience they’re getting, but it’s still no substitute for years of practice on the field. Fortunately for us, Zahradnik offered me a puzzle that I think gave me the answer to our problem.”

Suddenly the subject of everyone’s attention, Ludmila looked questioningly at the guildmaster.

“How do you mean, Guildmaster?”

“Because you reminded me that most people that learn Martial Arts aren’t Adventurers,” he said. “It’s easy to forget because we’re the Adventurer Guild, but most Martial Arts users are professionals of other institutions. Soldiers; mercenaries; gladiators; armsmen in retinues. In other nations, like the Empire, there are nobles who extend the militant traditions of their houses to service in the military, becoming Captains, Generals or even rising to the ranks of the Great Imperial Knights. A Frontier Noble like you is basically that. Grab your spear and come up here.”

self-preservation

Ludmila did as she was asked, walking up to join the guildmaster while she retrieved a spear from her Infinite Haversack.

“Mare,” he said, “summon that, uh, thing we talked about please.”

Lord Mare pointed his staff to the space near them.

“?Summon Monster IV?.”

Out of the air materialized a pale figure, a bit over a metre in height and somewhat resembling an Imp in form. From the waist down, it had a small whirlwind in place of legs.

“What’s that?” Ludmila asked.

“I-it’s an Air Mephit,” Lord Mare answered, “a sort of elemental spirit. It has a little bit of damage reduction, enough that regular people can’t hurt it with physical attacks. Mephits of different types will regenerate quickly as long as they’re exposed to their basic element.”

“This’ll be your target while we do this,” Guildmaster Ainzach said. “Go ahead and take a good poke at it.”

Ludmila set herself in line with the Air Mephit, driving forward with her spear. The weapon glanced off the creature’s skin harmlessly. She tried several more times, to no avail. She tried cutting it with the blade of her weapon, then used several bludgeoning attacks. The Air Mephit continued to benignly float before her as if nothing had transpired.

“Any damage?” the guildmaster asked.

“None,” Lord Mare shook his head. “I’m not a summoning specialist, so this one should only be a plain Level 15…um, Difficulty Rating 45? Between their difference in level and the damage reduction of the Mephit, she’ll have to hit it a lot harder.”

“Meaning that,” the guildmaster said, “with her current weapon, she’ll have to get a lucky hit in…or use a Martial Art.”

“But I don’t know any Martial Arts,” Ludmila wondered if the guildmaster had forgotten the previous day’s admission.

“You do,” he said. “You just don’t know that you do.”

She struggled to maintain a straight face at his strange assertion, absently feeling the shaft of her weapon as she awaited some sort of explanation.

“Martial Arts are possible once one is accustomed to the use of their body and equipment in combat,” the guildmaster said, “and have gained the strength and discipline to surpass what one might call the limit of mundane martial technique. Everything that we consider a Martial Art follows this premise: Offence and defence are magnified, senses and conditioning are enhanced. At highly advanced stages, Martial Arts achieve what is normally impossible – it’s the warrior’s magic.”

The guildmaster’s gaze ran over the line of faces, stopping when he reached Moknach.

“Moknach,” he said, “do you still remember the first time you learned Martial Arts?”

The Mithril-ranked Fighter crossed his arms, silent in thought.

“I remember Merry laughing at me more than anything else while I was trying to figure them out,” he replied, “but I think it was the old guildmaster’s advice. He told me that I needed a way to defend myself against overwhelming attacks, and a way to strike decisively when I needed to.”

“That’s right,” the guildmaster nodded. “He said the same thing to me, and I told up and coming members the same thing, too. Warriors in a position where they are expected to hold the line and anchor their team are advised to learn at least Fortress or Evasion, depending on their combat style. Warriors with any expectation of needing to temporarily hold off opponents should, for that matter. Offensively, we’re told to figure out a move we can use with our own respective weapons. That’s how Adventurers learn Martial Arts: we pick one thing and focus on it because it’s what we need to survive on the job.”

Ludmila listened intently as the guildmaster explained, then frowned upon hearing the method being described: it was nothing like how she was trained.

“From that starting point,” he continued, “we slowly learn what else we think is useful, branching out to develop more and more advanced Arts. It’s the most effective way for Adventurers to learn, given the circumstances that they usually find themselves in. Unfortunately, it comes with a huge problem. Because we tend to start from Copper not knowing a thing about fighting, we have to feel our way through and maybe pick up some pointers if someone’s nice enough to share. We end up being drawn towards certain techniques and rely on what our habits lead us to, and the Martial Arts that we acquire also reflect that.”

The guildmaster looked towards the veterans of the Adventurer Guild, who nodded silently.

“Now what if we had someone that learned differently?” the guildmaster asked them, “Someone like Zahradnik here?”

“I’ll admit that she’s good,” Moknach said, “but, in the end, she still has to learn Martial Arts.”

“You mean to say that her upbringing has provided her with the opportunity to fully develop her expertise before needing to learn Martial Arts.”

“Got it in one, Momon,” the guildmaster grinned. “Though you probably already knew.”

“Well, let’s just say I didn’t want to steal your thunder,” Momon chuckled.

“Well thanks for that,” the guildmaster replied. “Everyone here knows how good she is: you can match any other pair of even-ranked Adventurers out of our membership in a regular fight and the outcome is roughly fifty-fifty. You pit them against Zahradnik, and it’s not even a bet anymore. Why is that? In a contest of raw strength against a dedicated frontline warrior – say, arm wrestling – she’ll maybe come out even. She’s actually slower than most of the other Rangers at her rank. It’s not as if she’s particularly tough, either: she folds just like the rest when it comes down to it.”

The guildmaster turned to Ludmila once again, gesturing towards her loosely.

“The difference is that she’s been training in a school of combat for over a decade – one passed down by her family for generations. Most of the time, Copper plates are the handful of hopefuls that pick up a weapon for the first time and grope their way forward: they’re kids who have no hope of inheriting the family farm, or believe that they can lead a more exciting life than that of a civilian. People that grow up on stories of Heroes and Legends and decide that they might be able to make a legend for themselves as well.”

Guildmaster Ainzach rejoined the line of observers, then turned around to address her.

“You told me that you didn’t pick up anything about Martial Arts from your family, right?”

“That’s right,” Ludmila replied, “My brothers and I trained apart from the others until each of us was about old enough to assume patrol duties. Just going by what you’ve said, I guess it was so our training wasn’t hampered by the temptation to start learning Martial Arts as soon as possible. That being the case, however, I never had the opportunity to learn any of my family’s Martial Arts.”

“That is a shame but…Merry?”

“Just a basic Piercing Strike will work,” Merry said.

Ludmila sent a questioning glance in the guildmaster’s direction.

“Your parents might not be around anymore,” he said, “but Merry has been a part of the E-Rantel Adventurer Guild since before your family even came here. She’s known House Zahradnik since there’s been a House Zahradnik.”

“Well, mostly when they were more active doing Adventurer work,” Merry said. “Andrei especially. Did some jobs with him, too…I don’t know every little secret, but I’ve seen at least some of it.”

Setting herself in line with the Air Mephit again, Ludmila swallowed.

“What do I do?”

“Just give it a good, clean stab.”

She stepped forward, driving the point of the spear into the Air Mephit. The blade glanced off, much as it did before.

“When you perform a Martial Art,” the Guildmaster said, “you’re carrying your actions through to the next step in your mastery of combat. You’re drawing out the power through unity of body and mind: the combination of your discipline and conditioning. A Strike Art is visualized in the mind from start to finish, triggered the moment you commit to it.”

The blade of the spear glanced off several more times, and Ludmila was starting to think that the Air Mephit was giving her a smug look.

“I trained to fight conservatively most of the time,” Ludmila said.

“Uh…really?” Merry sounded surprised, “Andrei’d just drop down into a whole Demihuman tribe and do terrifying things with that spear of his. Wouldn’t even take half a minute before the lot of ‘em stopped fighting and started running away screaming instead. Even his kicks would send a Goblin flying a hundred metres…y’know, I’m really starting to remember just how much of a maniac he was.”

Ludmila frowned at Merry’s description of her ancestor. Tales of Andrei Zahradnik’s feats in combat were actually few and far between; only the results of his exploits really seemed to matter in the recountings.

“If it’s at odds with what you’ve learned,” the guildmaster said, “then go with something you’re more comfortable with. What we want is for you to execute your first Martial Art. Once you grasp that, you should be able to apply it to all of the techniques that have been drilled into you.”

The spearhead lowered again, settling into a solid middle guard. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. A quick, powerful strike: one designed to check the advance of her opponent. The blade would jab forward, imparting a great deal of force into her target, and return to its starting position before anyone could exploit the shift in her defence.

She opened her eyes, trying to hold onto the mental image. The spear jabbed forward, bouncing off of the Air Mephit.

“Too hard.”

Ludmila straightened and turned to Moknach.

“Too hard?”

“Too hard,” the guildmaster agreed.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Merry explained. “Remember what Ainzach said: you already know how to do it – you just don’t get that you do. When you fight, you might think about the moves that are available to you, but you’re not thinking about the strike itself when you perform it. It’s a result of your training – something you do without thought. Your mind and body are in accord; all that’s required is the focus and conditioning to carry it out.”

She turned back to face the Air Mephit. Her spear jabbed out, returning to its original position as the elemental spirit was forced back. The hole torn in its side quickly closed itself.

It worked.

“Was that a lucky hit?” The guildmaster said, “Try it again.”

Lucky? The Air Mephit wouldn’t have been knocked back if the attack had failed. Eyeing the summon as it drifted towards her, she was reminded of the Ogre that had come forward to face her before her first death.

The spear flashed out, splitting into three images of itself that hammered into the approaching Air Mephit. It was driven backwards, slamming into the grotto wall and disintegrating into motes of light.

–!

Ludmila went to one knee, dropping her weapon on the ground. She gingerly clutched at her right shoulder, suppressing a cry as the sensation emanating from her arm sent waves of agony through her. The voices of the others could barely be heard.

“What!” Moknach shouted.

“That…that wasn’t a basic Strike Art,” Ainzach said.

“?Middle Cure Wounds?.”

The soothing sensation of healing magic washed over her, and the pain subsided. She raised her head to find Lord Mare looking down worriedly at her.

“A-are you alright?”

Ludmila nodded appreciation, retrieving her weapon from the ground before rising to her feet again.

“Thank you, my lord.”

She returned her attention to the others, finding the guildmaster and Moknach discussing the result animatedly between themselves. Lady Aura was looking at them from the side with a frown, while Momon and Merry were looking in Ludmila’s direction from behind crossed arms.

Momon cleared his throat.

“That was dangerous.”

The voices quieted.

“How much damage was that, Mare?” Momon asked.

“I-it took about a quarter of her health,” Lord Mare answered.

“What happened, exactly?” Ludmila touched her right arm again, “I think the Martial Art worked like it was supposed to, but…”

“You sacrificed your body to perform a Martial Art that was beyond your capability to normally use,” Momon told her. “There’s a certain War Troll in the Sorcerous Kingdom that’s familiar with the concept. The difference is that he can overtax himself and regenerate, but you’ll just end up with a broken arm.”

“I see…” Ludmila mulled over the result, “If the situation is ideal, it can still be used. With a healer or a potion on hand, a critical threat can be eliminated before it can harm the party. The teams that I’ve been leading always end sessions with plenty of mana by the end, so I believe it can be employed to great effect.”

“No.”

She looked over at Merry.

“No?”

“No! Almost no one can do that!” Merry gave her a look divided between disbelief and anger, “You said that you trained to fight conservatively, but you Zahradniks are all the same! You’re all crazy, self-sacrificing idiots, and you’re every bit the maniac that Andrei was!”

“What she means to say is that people normally can’t do that,” Guildmaster Ainzach said in more measured tones. “There’s something that’ll usually limit people from hurting themselves like that – they’re just unable to outside of extraordinary circumstances. To put it nicely, your will surpasses the limits of your body.”

“That doesn’t sound so extraordinary to me,” Ludmila said.

“That you’re saying that says something on its own,” he replied. “Your mind is unhinged from your body; your sense of self-preservation is overridden by your will. You can deny reality or ignore it with a straight face…and nearly everyone would call that madness.”