Chapter 49 - Idle Paladin Training

“... I'm sorry.”

Laward hung his head.

Amelia had told me not long ago that Laward practically lived at the training grounds these days, to the point that the other students hardly got a chance to use them.

He was the first student to arrive and the first to leave.

That undead Esther had blown apart with F-rank healing magic.

Laward had been knocked out of the fight without accomplishing anything. His bones had broken, and he had collapsed in an undignified heap. All he could do was crawl across the floor and cling to the undead's ankle.

In the end, Blash hadn't recruited him into the order.

Right. You must have regretted that more than anyone. You must have been more frustrated than anyone.

Even protagonists sometimes... despair.

No.

They despair because they are protagonists.

Laward must have thrown himself into training like a madman afterward. He must have prayed more often and longer than anyone.

Only after reaching the lowest depths do humans pray to the highest heavens.

Just as Blash so often said.

The day Laward lay face down and wept, I knew he had hit rock bottom.

Though a protagonist would get back up even then.

“I don't think I can use it... against people anymore.”

“You can't use it against people? What does that mean?”

“You mean you've been going easy on me?”

Rebecca strode over and spoke before Laward could answer.

“What the hell...”

She tightened her grip on her sword's hilt as if she meant to crush it.

“Is this a game to you?”

She looked as though she was barely resisting the urge to throw her sword down.

“Stop holding back and give it everything you've got. I'll... get serious too.”

“No, Rebecca. You stay as you are.”

“No. I'm sorry.”

SNAP!

Rebecca snapped her fingers.

CRACK!

The instant her two fingers rubbed together, a beam of light shot toward Laward.

“Gah!”

An ordinary sword couldn't deflect that.

Magic had to be met with magic.

In the end, he coated his sword in divine power and knocked Rebecca's bolt of electricity aside.

Laward's divine power was S-rank, but the red light still covered only the edge of his blade. Initially, he had concentrated it there because he lacked the skill to control his divine power. Now he maintained that form even though he no longer needed to.

Was he still focused solely on offense?

A trace of his disposition remained.

SNAP!

First lightning, then fire.

A pillar of flame erupted beneath Laward's feet. It was so intense that it would have reduced him to ash if he hadn't quickly rolled aside.

Rebecca checked where he had dodged and set off two more pillars in succession.

BOOM! BOOM!

Laward barely evaded them by rolling this way and that, but this time the hem of his clothes began to burn.

Rebecca predicted the direction of his dodges, attacking the spot he would dive toward half a beat before he got there. Just as with her swordsmanship, she was playing a game of tactics and psychology.

Laward avoided falling for it because he had no habit of dodging or blocking in a particular direction. Had he kept dodging to the same side, the second pillar would have hit him.

Of course, even learning that he had no such habit gave Rebecca another piece of data.

Meanwhile...

HUMMM...

Laward had no choice but to summon a halo above his head and advance.

No. More precisely, he had been advancing.

From the moment Rebecca began using magic, he had been inching forward as he evaded her spells. Without her noticing, the distance between them had steadily shrunk.

And now.

BANG!

Laward tore across the ground and thrust his sword forward.

WHOOOSH!

At that instant, a powerful gust shoved him away.

Stripped of his charge's momentum, Laward was driven backward instead. Behind him—

BOOOM!

A pillar of flame erupted, and another blast of wind whipped it into a frenzy.

“Ghh...”

The flames surged toward him, larger and more violent than before.

THUNK!

Laward drove his sword into the training-ground floor to brace himself and barely managed to push forward.

Then the wind vanished.

Everything was still, without even the faintest breeze.

CRACK!

This time, from above.

A lightning bolt fell straight toward the crown of his head.

WHOOSH!

Laward released his sword and rolled aside.

Rebecca, who had been waiting for that precise moment, closed the distance in a flash and grabbed the sword embedded in the floor.

“Finally got my hands on you.”

She swung Holiday.

SWISH!

As Laward leaped away, lightning struck the spot where he landed.

CRASH!

“Gaaaagh!”

The first clean hit.

Lightning slammed into his body. Pitch-black smoke engulfed him.

A seamless flow of swordplay and magic.

He had forgotten that, from the very beginning, she had always been aiming for the second opening.

As Laward groaned in pain, Rebecca pressed the back of her hand to her forehead too.

“Ugh...”

Her stance faltered a little.

Meanwhile, Laward exhaled acrid smoke and fixed his eyes on her.

“You know... a lot of spells.”

“Hmm, who knows? Maybe I've still got more. About... eight thousand?”

“You've only been using destructive magic. Do you know defensive or healing magic too?”

“What's that supposed to mean? Are you still being an arrogant—!”

“I hope you do.”

HUMMMM...

Halos took shape behind Laward's back.

Not above his head. Behind his back.

And there were two of them, spinning round and round.

Laward's own unique magic.

The halos resembled lumps of rusted iron, rotating with an ominous noise. The one above his head had vanished before I knew it.

“I developed this solely to defeat undead.”

The moment he finished speaking, the two halos glowed red-hot.

I felt as if I had seen something like this before.

Right.

It looked like a fighter jet's exhaust nozzles heating up.

WHIIIIINE!

The halos' ominous noise swelled into a deafening roar.

“Please be careful.”

Laward spoke as if giving a signal.

“People don't come back to life.”

BOOOOM!

The two halos blasted beams of light behind Laward, adding thrust.

Acceleration.

By the time I registered it, he was already right in front of Rebecca.

Rebecca cast a defensive spell that encased her body in ice, but Laward's mere approach—the shock wave created by his tremendous speed alone—shattered the crystals surrounding her.

They glittered like shards of glass, filling the training grounds.

Laward caught Rebecca by the collar in midair and slammed her beneath him as he landed.

Rebecca, who had barely managed to hold on to the sword, desperately moved her hand, but Laward's moved first.

One of the halos behind his back flipped like a coin and shifted position. It hovered above his forearm.

Then, just as before, it roared and heated red-hot.

It was facing the opposite direction from when it had propelled him from behind.

This time, the beam would fire the other way.

Straight into Rebecca's face.

... Right.

So that was it.

The magic Laward used both as a booster and as a direct attack was the same as the F-rank stun spell.

The only spell I had taught him.

And one of the paladin order's fundamentals.

While I wasn't watching, he had honed that F-rank stun spell to its absolute limit and created this.

Even F-rank material became a masterpiece in the hands of an S-rank sculptor.

Laward had transformed the humiliation of that day's defeat into the only weapon he possessed.

He had risen again.

Solely to crush the undead.

I could feel the power of the weapon born from that desperation.

I, too, had once researched and failed over and over, all to defeat a single enemy.

“Stop.”

Because I knew what that was like, I had no choice but to stop him.

049

I carried Rebecca to the infirmary.

This time, it was definitely Infirmary 2—not Infirmary 1 or the medical practice room.

The real infirmary.

“Oh my.”

The school nurse swiveled in her chair, her long blonde hair swishing with the movement.

She turned toward me with a playful expression, so beautiful that I involuntarily held my breath. Unlike the heroines, she had a mature, relaxed air that made a vivid impression.

I'd thought so while playing the game too, but it was quite an incongruous combination.

Blonde hair and a pristine white coat were her signature colors.

“You're a patron, aren't you? I think I saw you at the closing ceremony before vacation.”

Her expression brightened as if she remembered me.

“Yes, but please take a look at Rebecca first.”

“Hmm, put her on the bed for now.”

The school nurse, who had the ridiculous name Akikira, spoke calmly.

She then looked back and forth between Rebecca, lying unconscious on the bed, and Laward.

“And you would be young Laward?”

“Ah, yes.”

Laward answered at once.

“Young Laward,” huh...

That sounded awfully awkward.

“Oh, I heard you brought young Laward out of the slums and even recommended him for admission. How curious.”

She gave me a meaningful smile.

“I passed through there that day too.”

In the game, she had taken Laward in and raised him. Akikira was the woman Laward called “Teacher” in Lucia's ending, Ending 6.

“Teacher” and “esteemed mentor.”

I hadn't expected to meet Akikira like this, but looking at each other with Laward between us felt rather strange.

“Well, I was wandering around drunk and just happened to end up there!”

That was why Akikira hadn't been my type among the teacher characters when I played the game.

In her thirties.

Her relaxed attitude made her seem mature, but her face itself was youthful.

A figure you could unequivocally call “incredible.”

Blonde hair and a doctor's coat that would probably satisfy someone's tastes—not mine, though. Definitely not mine.

Even so, the reason I'd wanted to pursue Grace rather than Akikira was that Akikira was a heavy drinker.

An absolute deal-breaker.

She took a pen from the front pocket of her coat, scribbled something, and looked at Laward again.

Her gaze settled squarely on “young Laward,” who was a stranger to her in this life.

“Be careful from now on, young Laward. If things had been stopped even a little later, Rebecca could have been seriously hurt.”

“... I'm sorry.”

“Save your apology for Rebecca when she wakes up.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

“Like I said, there's no need to apologize to me. Don't push yourselves so hard. I know the Joint Sports Festival is coming up, but...”

Huh?

“Oh, weren't you sparring to prepare for that?”

We weren't, but now that she'd brought it up, it wasn't something I could simply brush aside.

“You two can leave now.”

“Will Rebecca be all right?”

“I'll leave... after I see she's awake.”

“I'm going to take her clothes off, you know?”

... We obediently left on the spot.

RATTLE—CLACK!

The academy's distinctive sliding door shut with a clatter, and Laward left looking dejected.

I, on the other hand, leaned against the wall of Infirmary 2 and slowly closed my eyes.

“The Joint Sports Festival...”

The main event of the second semester, where three schools gathered to compete.

Winning it earned a reward that raised a random stat by one rank.

It was about time to start preparing.

According to the game's scenario, Laward couldn't win the Joint Sports Festival as a first-year.

Like the undead founder we'd faced recently, it was an impossible objective within the scenario.

His route was fixed: a crushing defeat in his first year, followed by victory in his third.

Fall, grow, rise again.

He was a protagonist who repeated that cycle.

But I had already overturned supposedly impossible routes in the game's scenario time and again.

I'd turned Laward into a fanatic of the Goddess, prevented the mandatory event where he rescued Amelia, and used Esther to smash the first undead to pieces.

Even if that wasn't the standard route, there were plenty of side paths.

They were steeper climbs than the winding trail around the mountain, but they could get you to the summit sooner.

Besides, there was the magic I'd just seen Laward develop himself.

A Laward original.

It might be possible.

A route where he broke the mandatory scenario and won in his very first year.

Chapter 49.5: What's My Name?

“Rebecca, you can open your eyes now. They've left.”

“... Miss.”

Rebecca cautiously opened her eyes and sat up.

“Thank goodness. You seem to remember me. Still, let me check first. Rebecca, what's my name?”

“You're Miss Heave-Ho.”