The Attack

Dame Noelle collected liquor as a hobby; that much he had roughly known for a long time. Her office alone was decorated with every kind of drink.

He had never heard, though, that she enjoyed it enough to get this blind drunk.

“And what, might I ask, brings you to my room—?”

The curious part was that, even in that state, she had somehow kept enough of her reason to hold a conversation. She sat perched on the edge of the bed, swishing a brimming glass this way and that and beaming away, with a softness he could never have imagined from her usual self.

She gets a bit cute when she’s drunk.

Normally everything about her was drawn so tight you could call her rigid; with the air around her loosened like this, the contrast made her look bright in a way he had never seen.

“Erm…”

The instant Aiden opened his mouth to get a word in, a glass thumped down in front of him as if to cut him off, and liquor so strong he could smell it from where he sat came glugging into it.

“A glass for you too, Aiden?”
“…I will decline.”
“Oh, why not—!”

“…”

Correction.

She did not get cute. She was apparently just the type with appallingly bad drinking habits. Perhaps it was the backlash from living her whole life like a model soldier stamped out of a textbook.

Even so, she pressed him no further, and instead tipped the whole glass she had poured for Aiden into her own mouth, which struck him as very like her. Never one to cross a line, gentle and good by nature. A decent soul packed solid with a sense of responsibility.

“Did nothing out of the ordinary happen to you yesterday, or today—?”
“…Sorry?”
“You are someone I brought here, Aiden— so is it not I who must take responsibility— if anything at all happens, do be sure to tell me—”

…Appallingly drunk as she was, even what came out of her mouth fit that impression of her.

“Dame Noelle.”
“Yeees—?”
“Why on earth do you go around being called the Butcher.”

The truth was, he could not help being honestly curious how she had ever come by a slur that suited her so utterly badly.

…Dame Noelle froze.

It’s rude, granted.

Come to think of it, the Prince had used that word at the banquet hall to pressure her, and when Katya wanted to scrape hard at Noelle’s nerves, she had reached for the very same one. There was no mistaking that even hearing the word made her uncomfortable.

And when a question would be rude however he phrased it, Aiden was the sort to ask it outright instead.

“…”

Dame Noelle stayed still for a good while, her body rigid, then finally spoke in a voice gone thick and hoarse.

“…On the battlefield, I killed the most, you see.”
“Isn’t that an honorable thing, for a soldier?”
“Because I killed anyone at all.”

“…”

“Anyone who took up a weapon and meant to go on fighting… no matter who they were—”

Noelle let the rest trail off and poured more liquor into her glass.

…He could guess well enough what had been left unsaid between the lines. He could picture it.

The Coalition War had been a total war for the ages, every nation on the continent throwing itself in with its survival on the line, and the first things a desperate nation forgets, once it is driven to the brink of defeat, are humanity and morality.

What such a nation would have done to hold out even a little longer went without saying. Conscripts driven out without even proper training. People who had held books and tools instead of weapons. Hadn’t there even been a country said to have conscripted boy soldiers?

“…”

As a Knight on that battlefield, Noelle would have cut down every one of them.

The Lionhearted.

The honorific went to a Knight who always stood at the very head of the battlefield and smashed the enemy line apart. But seen another way, that also meant she had performed the role of a slaughterer of humans better than anyone.

And the slur ‘the Butcher’, which changed her whole manner every time she heard it, must feel like having that wound dug open and salt rubbed into it.

No wonder she was drinking herself into a stupor. Each time a word like that reached her, the things she had wanted to forget, the nightmares lying under a layer of dust in one corner of her memory, would come rushing at her all at once.

“If a battle, goes on a long time—”

More liquor glugged out as Noelle poured, and Aiden’s eyes caught on her fingertips.

“the only thing that grows, is the number of the dead…”

They were trembling hard, as if she could barely put any strength into them. Her face had gone bone white, and the corners of her eyes kept twitching. She had weathered all that drinking until now, yet with this subject raised she seemed scarcely able to keep herself upright.

“…If everyone were afraid of me instead, then at least the number who surrender grows—”

The Lionhearted. A valiant slaughterer of humans. The Butcher, who kills everyone who comes at her.

“Running in first, killing the most, ending the battle even a little sooner, wanting to cut the number of the dead down even a little—”

Noelle rambled on, plainly not knowing herself what she was saying.

Her hand shook as if she had come down with the tremors, and it did not know how to stop. The alcohol glugging into the glass gave off a raw smell strong enough to make his head swim.

“I, er, that is to say—”
“Yes.”

An instant before the drink spilled over, Aiden caught her wrist.

“I understand.”

“…”

Noelle blinked blankly.

“You’ve been through a lot.”

Whether or not it got through to her, Aiden went on evenly.

“This doesn’t seem like a conversation to have while you can barely think straight, so I’ll keep it short.”

As the Prince had said before, Noelle might well have committed terrible acts in the midst of the war. He could also tell that something had happened involving the Prince and the Lord Protector, her master.

But even so, from her intent and her actions, Aiden could draw only one conclusion.

“You have been through a lot.”

“…”

“I can’t say anything else.”

Noelle gazed at Aiden for a good long while, her eyes gone round.

A good while.

A very good while.

As though something in her head had opened up.

“…Thank you.”

The answer spilled out in a thoroughly abashed voice.

And then.

“No, wait—”

Before Aiden had a moment to stop her, Noelle threw back the glass of hard liquor in one go. She plainly could not bear the delicate mood a second longer and had resolved to drink herself unconscious…

“…”

That really did seem to be the finishing blow. Watching Noelle flop down onto the bed as though she had passed out, Aiden let out a sigh.

“Aiden— I will, protect you—”

As she mumbled it in her sleep, Aiden quietly drew the blanket up over her.

“—Oh, boy.”

If Katya’s trouble was that she was plainly childish at heart, this person’s was being far too strict with herself.

Aiden swept a glance around the room.

…I’d better do a bit of tidying up for her.

Probably essential work, if her usual image was going to survive.

If there was one saving grace, it was the sense that a conversation over drinks had still done a fair amount to ease Noelle’s mood.

…That’s three off Dame Noelle alone.

He had been stacking up copy rights for a while with no occasion to use them, and the pile already came to three. Add the two from Katya, one unused skill-copy right from the Prince, and the still-unopened ‘Point Shop’ on top of that, and it was fair to say he had plenty of room left to grow.

This should do…

It was safe to assume that the ‘ingredients’ for dealing with the coming Act 1, the Ghost Knight commotion, were just about gathered. The ‘skill’ to cook them, meaning combat technique, was still far from polished, though the hopeful part was that it showed signs of coming along passably, too.

— Dying a bit less, aren’t you?

Meyer withdrew his sword as he said it. For the voice of someone who had just split Aiden in two, it was as refreshingly cheerful as could be.

— You only died somewhere around eighty times today, didn’t you?

“…”

— Improving this fast in a few days is something even I haven’t seen much of.

Aiden, sprawled on the floor, glared up at Meyer without a word.

This is absurd.

There truly was no coping with Meyer. Aiden had somehow boosted his physical abilities with pure-white ki, threatened the man with divinity, even called on dharma power to run for it, and none of it had been the slightest use. His ki tore like cardboard, his divinity scattered like a campfire, and his dharma power never had time to gather into anything he could wield. Meyer closed the distance and cut him in two.

Dying, dying, and dying again.

It made him wonder how on earth someone could manage that while broadcasting with his whole body that he was not fighting in earnest.

“…”

The funny part was that the man’s claim that Aiden had improved was no lie. On the first day he really had died more than a hundred times, and Aiden knew perfectly well why.

Since Analysis was a skill copied off Meyer in the first place, Aiden could not learn the man’s school outright, but he was somehow still picking up at least the counter-methods. Thanks to that, the ways to cope moment by moment were stamping themselves into his body automatically, and because failing to put them into practice at once meant dying on the spot, the learning felt outrageously efficient too.

Even with every one of those advantages, though, the gap between them was so overwhelming that his head went flying every time.

As he turned those thoughts over, his body, split in two, knitted itself back together with a crackle. Inside the Mental World, however he died, his body was restored this quickly. The first time had been loathsome enough to make his skin crawl, but after dying tens to hundreds of times over several days, even this felt passably familiar now.

“…Still, training or not, is there really any need to feel every single sensation this vividly?”

And every single death really was vivid down to the last detail. Halved by a sword, burned in divinity, his body bursting under ki, turned into a honeycomb by dharma power. Each one hurt as if it were really happening.

— It’s needed.

But Meyer answered firmly.

— Listen, greenhorn. Let me tell you one thing. Do you know why I became a great Knight who left his name in history?

“Sorry?”

— Because I put myself through training so hard it was more fucking miserable than the real thing.

“…”

— I did hell training like that and finished every last bit of optimizing, and now I’m instructing you one-on-one myself, so don’t complain. It’s all being done because it’s needed.

…No, well, the words were sound enough. But wasn’t he just having a hard time of it right now? As far as he could tell, all he was still doing was getting cleaved in two by Meyer, over and over.

— When I say you’ve improved a lot, that’s not empty talk.

“Sorry?”

— Believe me. If a fight broke out this minute, you’d be able to pull your own weight by now.

“…On what grounds?”

What kind of training was it, getting split apart by him again and again without learning a single thing properly?

— Right, and that’s the heart of it.

The words dropped as if Meyer had read that very thought.

— You’ve died by every method under the sun over these few days. Right?

“I have, haven’t I?”

— Reckon it as having earned that many spare lives.

“…”

— Look at me with disbelieving eyes all you like, I won’t take it back. It’s a fact.

“It just feels like being tortured…?”

— No.

Meyer gave a snort of a laugh.

— It’s not just torture. It’s torture with value.

…So even this guy admitted it was torture.

Spending every night going through something like that, he was bound to start hearing remarks like this.

“Aiden. Are you sleeping properly at night?”

Dame Noelle raised it in the office, her voice full of concern. Anyone who saw Aiden growing gaunter by the day would have worried.

“…Yes, somehow.”
“If anything is uncomfortable, do tell me whatever it is. I will have it improved somehow.”
“…I am fine.”

Sadly, nobody could help with this one. However well he knew he would not die and that the sensations were simulated, going through experiences like that again and again could hardly be good for his mental health. His body was perfectly fine, but his mind felt pushed to its limit every day. Withering, you might call it.

His answer seemed to leave her unsatisfied, though; Noelle pursed her lips and gazed steadily at him. When he made the effort to smile and show he was all right, she shook her head.

They held each other’s eyes like that for a moment. Then, as if she meant to say something now that they were talking anyway, Noelle hesitated briefly and spoke up.

“Aiden.”
“Yes.”

She stole glances at his face to read it, chewing at her lip.

“When I was blind drunk, you came to my room, did you not.”
“I did, yes?”
“Did I commit any discourtesy at the time?”

“…”

“…I have been told from some time back that my drinking turns nasty.”

From the way she spoke, she seemed to remember not one thing of what had happened. Whether that was fortunate or unfortunate was hard to say.

Well, now…

Should he call it a discourtesy? She had certainly shown him a good many sides of herself he would never normally see.

“…No.”

Aiden scratched his cheek and gave her his honest impression. She seemed to be worrying far too much about something, so he meant to put it as kindly as he could.

“If anything, I’d say it was cute.”

“…”

“Dame Noelle?”

“…”

“Dame Noelle…?”

“…”

There was no answer.

Dame Noelle kept her mouth stubbornly clamped shut, only pulling her hat down low and staring at her desk. But however she tried, she could not hide the heat that had rushed up to the tips of her ears.

“Aiden.”

After staying silent like that for a good while, Noelle glared at him with something resentful in her eyes.

“That is forbidden.”

“…”

“Kindly refrain from saying such things as far as possible.”
“…Did it offend you?”
“It did not offend me, but it is forbidden.”

“…”

“Strictly speaking I did like it, but in any case, do not do it.”

Why was it forbidden, then?

…And the way she honestly owned up to having liked it, in the middle of all that, was very like her indeed.

She’s weaker to praise than I’d have thought.

It had to be rare for someone in her position to have that weakness. Either way, the more layers he peeled back, the more odd quirks she turned out to have…

“Aiden, Dame Noelle!”

He had no time to dig any deeper into that impression before the office door flew open. Stella burst in, so hurried she seemed quite unlike her usual self.

“Dame Stella? What is the matt—”
“Her Highness Katya has gone missing!”

Horrified, Aiden sprang up out of his seat.