Chapter 119
[Part 1: Remnant Academy Invasion Operation END]
[Part 2: The One Sword of Eternity, Nocturne's Strange Tale]
Despite defeating the boss, things did not exactly proceed optimistically.
Although the forced termination of Combat Mode freed Alperion and Sisiela from the damage-over-time effect and let them narrowly escape with their lives, Gestalt's branch chief, who was being pursued by the Empire, had no choice but to leave the Holy City before Adela regained consciousness.
Why didn't the Abyss help us? It was obvious they would discard us once we'd outlived our usefulness.
The only good thing was that, since the building had been cleanly blown away, we could sleep in accommodations that were at least better than before.
In any case, sleeping was automatically skipped as the game progressed, so it wasn't something we could actually feel.
As always, an unfamiliar ceiling greeted me.
[Veixel: Ah, can you hear me clearly?]
“Yes. I think it would be good if you could raise your voice just a little.”
[Veixel: Ah, ah. Yes, I turned it up a little more.]
[SaveTheGradStudent: The Act 2 boss isn't anything special, but the story is so long that you need to know exactly which parts to skip.]
[LG Chaos: For the story sections, Manager will brief you exclusively. During combat, Veixel and I will join in with the briefing.]
“Sounds good. I’ll be counting on you.”
[SaveTheGradStudent: Yep! But where is this? I've played hundreds of rounds, and this is the first time I've seen this respawn location.]
“...”
[SaveTheGradStudent: I mean it, this is the first time I've seen it while playing the game.]
I left him, having lost everyone's trust from the very beginning, and surveyed the room.
Just as I was about to slowly sit up, I suddenly felt strong pressure on my leg. It was tingling, as though my circulation had been cut off.
When I lifted the blanket, I found a young girl sleeping soundly with my leg as her pillow.
“Purr...”
So much for a new morning—it was already well past noon, with the sun high in the sky.
I understood that fatigue had built up, but there wasn't much time left, so I hurriedly shook Adela awake.
“Are you going to get up?”
“Mmm... Huh? Oh, sis! Did you sleep well, nya?”
“Yeah. How about you?”
“Hyaaaawn. I was so tired that I still feel sleepy. I didn't sleep a wink, nyaaa...!”
Adela stretched, reaching her arms out.
Her white, slender arms extended this way and that.
-ㅗㅜㅑ
-Kya
-Adela-senseiㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ I'm so glad you're aliveㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Her armpits are insaneㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick
-Wakya-pya
“You didn't sleep a wink? Do you even know what time it is? It's already two in the afternoon.”
“This is all because of you! I've never had such a rough night before...! Honestly, it was a little scary, but it felt good, so I'll let it slide this time.”
“... What?”
-?
-?
-?
-ㅔ?
-??????
-Sleeping together?
-Huh?
For a moment, I wondered if I had misheard her, so I asked again.
“You mean... sleep talking, right?”
“Sleep talking? Was that sleep talking...? Ah, it must have been sleep talking, haha...? I suppose it could have been... or maybe it wasn't...”
-What on earth happened during the night...?
-Bad thoughts, bad thoughts, bad thoughts, bad thoughts
-Adela, you rascal! What did you do to our NoName!
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ I've never seen a situation like this before
-Isn't this scripted too?
-Nope, it's even more lively because there isn't a script
-So there was a reason Adela was set as a full eighteen-year-old adult?
└ I'm extremely interested in the teacher's tastes.
Either way, I had no time to listen to any more of it, nonsense or not.
Ten minutes had already flown by between the game loading and this much conversation.
“Let's grab only the essentials and get moving.”
“Get moving? Where? Weren't we going to the Abyss branch?”
“I'll explain the details while we go. But first, you should get dressed.”
Once we stepped outside, I truly appreciated just how nice the inn we'd stayed at had been.
Beside it stretched a long row of upscale residences, while nobles strolled the streets in stylish everyday clothes.
“I got to sleep at an inn in District 3...! I should've slept longer. What a waste!”
The place where we had bedded down using the lodging voucher Gestalt had given us was unexpectedly in the very heart of the capital.
Since the guards had been turning the slums upside down in their search for the bay laurel, they'd deliberately arranged a room for us here, where, like the darkness beneath a lamp, we would be overlooked.
[SaveTheGradStudent: Of all places, District 3? We're screwed. We're headed to District 15 in the southwest. If you meet the retired knight commander there, you should be able to leave the city without trouble.]
The occasional sound of military boots sent chills down my spine, but because Adela and I walked along unconcernedly, we were able to pass by without being noticed.
“What? The Abyss branch was destroyed? Then what about Gestalt?”
“Gestalt is safe. He's a vampire, so he probably managed to leave the capital without difficulty. What's important now is how we get out of here.”
The capital of the Bahamut Empire was tightly sealed off.
Four walls were thoroughly guarded by soldiers stationed in battalion-sized units, and dozens of men took turns standing watch atop the walls even during the day.
That was why our main goal was to leave the capital in one go without triggering a quest and clear Part 2.
After dodging the knights roaming the capital this way and that and reaching District 15, we found an armored man sleeping on the cold stone floor, where sunlight never reached.
Judging by the smell of alcohol, the man was dead drunk in broad daylight.
“He looks familiar.”
“You know him, nya?”
I never forgot a face once I'd seen it.
Since forgetting someone might one day cost me my life in some way, I always made a point of memorizing names and faces.
[Retired Knight Commander – Alphonse Shipot]
The knight commander Laura had easily defeated at the very beginning, when she chose the ‘Nightmare Difficulty’ in the prologue.
I had thought the Empire truly had no future if someone with skills like these could hold the position of knight commander, and sure enough, it seemed he'd been dismissed afterward.
“You...!”
The man, who had woken up while we continued loitering beside him, opened his eyes wide and pointed at us.
“You... you damn...! Because of you...!”
He came striding toward us with a broken glass bottle in his hand.
His eyes were glazed with fury, and he looked like someone who might do anything.
[SaveTheGradStudent: You should be able to subdue him easily here. Just don't kill him under any circumstances!]
Following SaveTheGradStudent's advice, I took the full force of his charge and threw him onto the ground.
“Ugh!”
“You know him. We fought once in the capital before.”
“He doesn't look like anything special.”
Adela whistled as she watched the situation unfold.
Laura had been the one who fought and defeated him then, but when the game switched from Duo to Solo Mode, it seemed to interpret it as though I had done it.
“What are you talking about! I am the knight commander of this Bahamut Empire...!”
He took a stance as though he were about to draw the sword at his waist, but unfortunately, there was nothing for his hand to grasp.
“The knight commander... I was the knight commander...”
He looked so shabby and wretched for a knight commander that he was more than fit to become a laughingstock.
* * *
How had Alphonse Shipot risen to become a knight commander?
Those who did not know the details of his circumstances simply assumed that he had secured his position through the influence of his father, who had been a swordmaster.
It was not entirely wrong to think so, since his father's powerful influence was also the reason Alphonse had been able to join the Knights.
The problem arose when the Bahamut Empire began competing with the other great powers in a race to expand its colonies.
Rich in resources but lacking any solid foundation, the Empire revealed its weaknesses, especially in the military sphere.
Yet the Empire's leaders sought to paper over the sacrifice of their allies with the deployment of larger forces and the acquisition of colonies, and the knight commanders who always operated on the front lines soon became sacrifices to the barbarians defending their homelands.
In such circumstances, there was no knight willing to volunteer for the position of knight commander.
Knight commanders were chosen only from the Central Order of Knights, but the moment one took the position, they were destined to return to the front lines whenever war broke out.
Meanwhile, the knights who could curry favor in the capital and live in comfort had no desire to give up their positions.
In the end, it was a foregone conclusion that Alphonse, the highest-ranking knight with the weakest standing, would be pushed into being appointed knight commander.
“Here, I found the sword you asked for.”
However, word that the knight commander had lost a one-on-one duel to a little child spread through the capital in an instant. Before the matter could reach the Emperor's ears and anger him, pressure from the imperial household to deal with it forced the Knights to strip Alphonse of his position.
They needed to find a new scapegoat.
And the knights, viewing Alphonse's actions with resentment as an attempt to abandon the position of knight commander, were able to vent their anger by expelling him from the Knights altogether.
Confiscating his beloved sword was an added bonus.
“Thank you, children... Thank you so much for finding it...”
[SaveTheGradStudent: Now that Alphonse has gotten Astail's Greatsword back, he'll tell you how to leave the Holy City. Just follow him.]
“How can you be a knight commander and be so cowed by your juniors? And wasn't your father a swordmaster?”
Adela asked in a tone that made it clear she didn't understand.
“I was a commoner, through and through. When I was at the Academy, Sir Shipot took me in as his adopted son.”
“You were a commoner? But if you made it into the Central Order of Knights, you must have had quite a talent for the sword, right?”
“No, I had no talent whatsoever. At the Academy, I was barely good enough to avoid expulsion, and under normal circumstances, I never could have dreamed of joining the Knights.”
“That doesn't add up. You can't enter the Central Order of Knights unless your skill is recognized.”
“Sir Shipot forced me to join the Knights too. To be honest, I still don't understand it. What on earth did he see in me to rate me so highly?”
Alphonse lowered his head to the ground, looking dejected.
No one knew his own limitations better than Alphonse himself.
After Sir Shipot passed away in the War of the Heretics, Alphonse found himself cast onto a thorny path.
His father had left him the ‘Astail's Greatsword.’ He had asked Sir Shipot countless times:
What on earth did he see in him to value him so highly? Yet the answer he received was always the same.
[Keep striving.]
In the end, he swung a sword and honed his swordsmanship for twenty years through grueling effort, but all he got in return was the disgrace of forced retirement.
“I should've applied to the School of Magic instead of the School of Knight Studies when I applied to the Academy, even if I'd had to force it...”
Name, who had pricked up her ears at a remark that could easily have been ignored, suddenly asked him a question.
“So you know some magic?”
“Magic... I liked magic when I was young. Isabella, was it...? I've even forgotten her name now. Bella, my childhood friend, would chatter to me in a voice like an oriole's, teaching me the magic she'd learned by herself in the library whenever she had a chance. She was the entire reason I decided to come to the capital.”
“Then why did you apply to the School of Knight Studies?”
“But Bella liked men who swung swords and wore armor. So, without knowing any better, I only trained in swordsmanship so I could become a proper knight. Haha, is that a strange reason? In the end, it didn't suit my aptitude at all.”
Alphonse sighed heavily and lamented his lot.
He had thought that ten or twenty years of striving would change something, but his skills were worse than those of the newcomers in their late teens who had just joined the Knights.
It had been a story to pass the time as we made our way through the winding forest, but the subject itself was hardly cheerful.
When we reached a hill from which the capital's walls could be seen in the distance, he drove his sword into the ground with a crunch.
He bent one knee and held his other arm horizontally in front of his chest, parallel to the ground.
Bowing his head slightly, Alphonse expressed his gratitude to us with the utmost courtesy.
“Astail's Greatsword was the only keepsake Sir Shipot left me. Even ten mouths wouldn't be enough to thank you, but I am truly grateful that you found it...”
Unaccustomed to such a somewhat ticklish situation, Adela scratched her head.
“But where are you planning to go now, nya?”
“There is no longer any reason for me to stay in the capital, so I should return to my hometown. To where I was meant to be.”
“Really...? Hmm... Well, good luck.”
As Alphonse was turning away, Name tugged on his sleeve and made him turn back.
“Did you need something else?”
[SaveTheGradStudent: NoName? I don't think you really need to learn Alphonse's sword technique here. It doesn't suit Adela, either.]
At the moment of parting, if you asked Alphonse for a reward, he would teach you the sword technique he had researched throughout his life instead of giving you money. That was what Name had read on TreeWiki.
“You know magic swordsmanship, don't you?”
Name focused on Alphonse's arm. Someone who used a greatsword would normally have muscles equally developed in both arms.
However, Alphonse's right arm was noticeably thinner than his left. It was a common side effect of using magic incorrectly during swordsmanship.
“Magic swordsmanship... It's just a technique created by an untalented knight struggling to get by.”
“Then could you show us, even if only briefly?”
“If you insist...”
Alphonse drew Astail's Greatsword.
He concentrated his mind and chanted a spell along with a deep breath.
Two thin rings of light formed around the greatsword and began rotating in opposite directions.
“It's a technique I picked up naturally after using a sword for so long. It lets me hit a little harder.”
With a battle cry, Alphonse slammed the greatsword into the ground.
Thud-!
The stone floor was gouged slightly. But that was all.
He put too much force into his body, making the trajectory erratic. It had even landed a little away from the spot he had aimed for.
“Ah, as expected, I missed again... Now, that's enough, right? I hope you recover the bay laurel too.”
Alphonse couldn't hide his regret as he sheathed the sword.
As expected, it was an attack that was an unequivocal failing grade for a swordsman.
“I've never seen anyone less talented than me. In that case, maybe I should've applied to the Knights instead of the Academy.”
After Alphonse left, Adela spoke as if thoroughly disappointed.
“Even a unique magic...?”
Yet Name continued watching Alphonse's retreating back for a long time after he had gone, as though unable to believe it.
‘Someone who struggles to properly control even his own body, let alone a sword, created a unique magic concerning swords?’
If one only looked at the shallow groove carved into the ground by the blade, it was nothing particularly impressive,
but there was a mark showing that the ground had split at a point no less than thirty paces from where Alphonse's blow had landed.
“What a waste of talent. If only you had trained a little more.”
Talent—this was what the word truly meant.