Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 1

“Know your place.”

“Again.”

“Know your place.”

“Again!”

“Know your place…”

“Can’t you put some feeling into it?” Lady Shalltear asked, “You carry yourself so well when you’re out slaughtering the enemies of the Sorcerous Kingdom. Anytime else, you have all the flavour of raw tofu.”

“What is ‘tofu’ my lady?”

“It’s…never mind that! Focus on your training!”

On a windblown ridge high above Warden’s Vale, Ludmila stood across from Lady Shalltear. Her liege waved her closed fan animatedly as she spoke, but it didn’t make what she spoke of any clearer.

“I do not understand what this has to do with training, my lady.”

“It’s image training!” Lady Shalltear’s silvery voice rose over the wind, “Image training.”

“Repeating yourself does not make things any less opaque,” Ludmila said.

A tinge of frustration marred her liege’s pale countenance.

“As I said, you do perfectly well while you’re out slaughtering people. You need to do just as well when you’re not! I demand character consistency!”

“I feel that my character is ‘consistent’ as it is, my lady,” Ludmila said. “Also, I do not run around telling people to ‘know their place’ while I am fighting them. Or ever.”

“You do!” Lady Shalltear’s fan waved assertively, “You definitely do. M-Maybe not in those exact words, but you do!”

Did she? Maybe if one went to great lengths to reinterpret her words, but that was also outside of combat where Lady Shalltear insisted that she didn’t.

Nobles aspired to create and uphold order and everything had a place within that order, so defining the places that people of various trades and social strata occupied could be construed as indirectly saying ‘know your place’. The only time she had ever heard of the words being written or spoken outright was when a Noble’s vassal or retainer said it to remind insolent fellows of their place in the social order. She supposed that a Noble – or any other authority figure – could also say it directly to frame them as an insufferable character in a story.

“But I am not so haughty about it,” Ludmila said. “Haughtiness is supposed to be your department.”

If there was a department of haughtiness, Lady Shalltear would be its minister. Most people wouldn’t be able to pull it off without offending everyone that they came across, but her liege somehow only earned the respect of the public by being the very personification of pompous pride. In private, everyone close to her treated it as an endearing characteristic…most of the time. Lady Aura seemed to make it a point to ‘charisma break’ her cousin at every available opportunity.

“It suits you, as well!” The fan continued in its insistence, “And it won’t be the same thing. Your unyielding pride is fashioned differently from mine.”

Ludmila’s eyes went down to her glaive. How was this in any way related to combat training? As far as she knew, only Adventurers engaged in such theatrics during real battles.

“My lady, could you at least tell me what tangible benefits come from such an exercise?”

The fan stopped. Lady Shalltear’s crimson gaze pointedly shifted away.

“…you have some ulterior motive for this, don’t you?”

“Wh-Whatever do you mean? It isn’t as if I’m trying to mould you into a certain type of character for my harem. This isn’t a galge!”

Ludmila didn’t know what a ‘galge’ was, but, knowing Lady Shalltear, she was using unknown terminology to avoid explaining exactly what she was up to.

“So what type of character am I supposed to be?” Ludmila asked.

“You’re supposed to be–no! Y-You’re not tricking me into revealing my true intentions! How dare you use Job Class Skills on your liege! Know your place!”

“Is that what it is supposed to sound like?”

“No, like I said, your pride is built differently from mine. You should–argh! Combat! Combat training! Let’s do this!”

I suppose that’s one way to get things started.

Ludmila gripped her glaive and settled into a neutral stance, examining Lady Shalltear. Her stature was that of an adolescent Human girl and, if it were a contest between two regular people, their difference in height and mass between them would have spelled an overwhelming advantage in Ludmila’s favour. Unfortunately, size differences meant less and less as differences in levels grew.

In terms of equipment, Ludmila was fully adorned for combat. Lady Shalltear, on the other hand, was in her customary black ballroom gown, which included a half-bonnet with lace trim, black silken gloves, and a pair of black dress shoes. Her only apparent armament was the black-ribbed fan in her right hand, but she had adequately proven in the past that she could parry blows from Ludmila’s glaive with nothing but the fingernail of her left pinky.

Ludmila had grown significantly stronger since then – even after dying in the Draconic Kingdom – but her liege was so strong that it was impossible to tell how much further she had to go to pose a real threat to her.

Yet, this is exactly what I’m looking for.

The Nar she had encountered in the Draconic Kingdom was also so strong that she couldn’t figure out the difference between them. She had to be able to hold her ground against such beings before future conflicts abroad erupted. Expecting one of the Sorcerer King’s powerful vassals to make up for her shortcomings was unacceptable, yet it had already happened three times before.

She considered several lines of attack before discarding most of them out of hand. Lady Shalltear already outclassed her in agility. Trying to do anything complicated would slow down Ludmila’s strike and make it laughably easy to defend against. Reaching her target before an adequate defence could be conducted was her only feasible option.

With height came reach, which was perhaps her only advantage over Lady Shalltear in open combat. Assuming that her liege intended to fight bare-handed – or at the most with her fan – an attack below Lady Shalltear’s knees would force the Vampire to lower her posture so she could enact a parry. That would effectively add milliseconds to her reaction time, easing the slim threshold Ludmila needed to get past her opponent’s guard.

Her course of action decided, Ludmila lowered her centre of gravity slightly, preparing to explode into a lightning-fast lunge. She activated Greater Ability Boost, Wind Stride and Limit Break before launching herself forward and activating Flow Acceleration. In the split second it took to close the gap between herself and Lady Shalltear, she imbued a Piercing Strike with negative energy and accelerated the attack with an as-yet-to-be-named Martial Art.

“「Umbral Thorn!」”

Her lunge came in faster than anyone below Mithril Rank could likely register. Then, her glaive was ripped out of her hands as Lady Shalltear lifted her skirt to stomp on the weapon’s haft.

Ludmila didn’t pause to think about what had just happened. She reached down to recover her glaive, only to have Lady Shalltear grab her by the wrist. A wrenching force pulled her to the side. Ludmila took two steps to regain her footing and realign herself against her opponent, only to see her dismembered arm coming in to club her across the head.

The world spun endlessly as she was sent careening into the air. An indescribable sensation filled her as she fought to steady herself.

I am just a head now, aren’t I?

Lady Shalltear had used Ludmila’s arm to swat her head clean off of her shoulders, yet she could still feel her body far below somewhere. Her efforts to stop the spinning had led to the rest of her losing balance and falling to the ground. Minus her arm. She could still feel Lady Shalltear’s cool hand gripping her wrist.

Ludmila’s head reached the apex of its long arc. A long sigh somehow left her lips despite not having attached lungs to drive her breath. After tumbling through the air for several more seconds, she discerned that she would land somewhere in one of the ravines below the ridge.

She got a faceful of conifer needles as her head fell into the trees before bouncing off of a boulder. It wasn’t as bad as she thought it might have been. Was it her ability to mitigate damage from falling? Or was it just the protection of her helmet? Maybe the boulder couldn’t get past her damage reduction.

Or maybe it is all three?

She bounced a dozen more times before landing in a rushing creek. Its current pushed her further down the slope, sending her over the steps of a towering cascade. Thankfully, she landed in the pool below and settled against some half-submerged stones. She wasn’t sure what she would say if her subjects spotted her bobbing down the Katze River. Did heads even float?

Unable to move, all she could do was consider her predicament. The Undead were immune to critical hits, so conventionally fatal blows such as being stabbed in the heart or, in Ludmila’s case, losing her head wouldn’t kill her unless the attack also happened to deplete the force animating her physical being. Furthermore, the Undead could ignore crippling pain and debilitating blood loss, dragging themselves towards their enemies even if they were cut in half or smashed to a pulp.

Of course, as just a head, Ludmila couldn’t do any of that. Furthermore, she could regenerate and she wasn’t quite sure how that worked when she was in three pieces. Would her head grow a new body, or would her body grow a new head? Surely not both. Her arm probably wouldn’t grow a new Ludmila. It might be useful in various ways to have copies of herself running around, but something told her that it would be a bad thing that would lead her down bizarre paths.

She rolled onto her back and sat upright, feeling decidedly odd in the process. When she tried to stand up, however, something pressed down on her shoulder. Ludmila went rigid as what felt like a tongue traced around the torn edges of her severed neck. The sensation stopped after a full circuit, replaced by hands that roamed down her torso and midriff.

Now, of all times?

If there was anything that she learned after Lady Shalltear had first started becoming intimate with her, it was that her desire for hedonistic pleasure was third only to her sense of love and duty to the Sorcerer King and protecting her demesne. Ludmila supposed it was to be expected, given the reputation of powerful Vampires and the fact that she was the Cleric of a previously unheard-of wandering god of hedonism.

Ludmila squirmed in her liege’s thirsty embrace. The strange scenario aside, she didn’t particularly mind Lady Shalltear’s advances so long as she didn’t have any pressing matters that required her attention. Since Lady Shalltear shared that same set of priorities, things more or less tended to work out. In fact, she expected the development at some point during Lady Shalltear’s visit that day. A part of Ludmila also hoped that seeing to Lady Shalltear’s needs would take up the time that she would otherwise pay to the rest of her ‘harem’. The tireless nature of the Undead wasn’t something that mortals could keep up with, as Clara quickly came to realise.

Yet, she was probably a bit too pleased about that. Come to think of it, how long am I going to be stuck here?

Lady Shalltear would resume her duties eventually, but the fact that she came out to help with Ludmila’s training meant that she had probably set several hours aside.

Ludmila shifted her jaw, but moving her head was a futile effort. Or was it? Someone randomly finding her was unlikely, but she could probably call for one of the Krkonoše to come and pick her up. At the same time, she didn’t want them to witness whatever Lady Shalltear was doing to her body.

On a whim, she activated her hairpin.

“Hmm…”

She righted herself as her head cleared the water and floated out of the trees, picking up speed in an attempt to dry her soaked hair. It wasn’t long until she returned to the ridge, which resembled the scene of a massacre. Crimson stains painted the rocks for dozens of metres in all directions. In the centre of the gory blot upon the landscape was Lady Shalltear, who was sitting in a pool of blood up to her waist. She had shed her usual appearance, looking not unlike a lamprey fastened to the stump of Ludmila’s neck.

Ludmila’s lip curled as she gazed down at her liege from above.

“I am not even sure where to begin here,” she said.

Twin points of crimson light looked up at Ludmila from the depths of their black sclera.

“Hich hisch hor haut!” Lady Shalltear said, then spat out Ludmila’s body, “This is your fault! You wouldn’t stop bleeding!”

“How can you even blame someone for that?” Ludmila frowned.

“Because you’re the one that’s bleeding!”

“…”

Blood pulsed out of Ludmila’s severed neck, washing down her bloodstained armour and adding to the pool on the ground. Lady Shalltear gestured at the sight with her elongated fingers, her long tongue occasionally moving sinuously to lap some of the bright crimson liquid off of Ludmila’s body. The following pulse just as quickly repainted the pure white plates of her armour.

“This is only happening because you’re regenerating,” Lady Shalltear told her, “so stop regenerating!”

“…is that possible?”

“Of course it is. It’s as simple as controlling your breathing or blinking. It would be hard to play dead if you endlessly gushed blood over the ground like this. Come to think of it, I had to do that once…”

“You did?”

In what situation would someone as powerful as Lady Shalltear need to play dead? Her imagination couldn’t supply the sort of contest that would necessitate such an action.

“I did,” Lady Shalltear nodded. “It was for a drama. I stabbed myself, and, to keep the wound from closing, I disabled my regeneration.”

“I see. Wait–you mean I could have done this the entire time while you were feeding on me instead of you digging in constantly like that?”

“Yes.”

“And you purposely neglected to tell me?

“What’s the fun in that?” Lady Shalltear’s countless teeth formed into an indescribable grin, “Plus, you’d run out of blood if you didn’t regenerate it back.”

She sent a disgruntled look at Lady Shalltear and her body, but she couldn’t figure out what she needed to do to stop her regeneration. She would have to figure it out on her own time.

“Is it safe to come down, my lady?” She asked.

“Hm?” Lady Shalltear licked her body again, “What do you mean?”

“Do you not go berserk when you get covered in blood like that?”

“I did! You were standing there like an endless fountain of blood, so I thought ‘Ah, what a waste’. Then it got on me and my Blood Frenzy kicked in. But, well, you were right there, so this and that happened…a-anyway, I was sitting there gorging myself when I realised that you weren’t going to stop making a mess of the place, so you ended up in my mouth.”

Ludmila floated down to examine her neck, but the holes left by the thousands of needle-sharp teeth in Lady Shalltear’s mouth had already healed over. It appeared that Lady Shalltear had reattached her arm, as well. After hovering tentatively over her body for a moment, Ludmila reached up to grab her head and reattached it to her body.

“Am I on straight?” Ludmila asked.

“It doesn’t really matter…”

To prove her point, Lady Shalltear reached up and twisted Ludmila’s head around. Ludmila immediately twisted it back, tempted to bap her liege on the head.

I should ask Lady Aura whether I am allowed to do that.

In private, Lady Shalltear was casual to the extreme unless there was someone present whom she wanted to put on airs around. While it was good to see her act as a young woman around her age normally would, Nobles tended to have a floor on that behaviour and Lady Shalltear often fell straight through it without slowing down.

“So,” Lady Shalltear waved her bloodstained gloves as she assumed her usual form, “did you learn anything?”

“The basic principles of combat remain the same no matter how powerful one is,” Ludmila replied. “Also, I am not sure how far you can be trusted with my body.”

“Oh, you can trust me with it, alright,” Lady Shalltear licked her lips. “What principle did you break?”

“I overcommitted to an attack,” Ludmila said. “I became obsessed with getting past your defences. That led to me committing a novice error that was easy to counter.”

“No matter what you did,” Lady Shalltear said as she fixed her bonnet, “I would have stopped it…hmm, did I even need to? It looked like a negative energy attack.”

Ludmila retrieved her glaive, examining the weapon for signs of damage.

“It was,” she said, “but just having it connect would count as a confirmation of its worth. I am confident enough with the use of my Iris-type attacks that I have moved on to developing a new series.”

“Sticking with the flowery language, I see. But why ‘thorn’? That attack looked powerful enough to instantly kill most people. Even someone at a similar level of strength wouldn’t be very happy after getting stabbed by it.”

“I settled on ‘thorn’ because it is designed for fighting opponents more powerful than myself. The attack is not meant to grievously injure my opponent – though it would be nice if it did – but to get through their defences to land a debilitating effect.”

“So it’s the poisonous sort of thorn,” Lady Shalltear put on a thoughtful look. “How did you come up with it?”

She reached into her Infinite Haversack and withdrew a Trooper’s Towel to clean the drying blood off her Lady Shalltear and herself. Another glance at her surroundings convinced her that it would be more effective to have the next rainfall wash away the rest. Lady Shalltear’s attendants had come out of hiding from their mistress’ berserk state, so Ludmila gestured to the pool of blood at her feet.

“Are you doing anything with this leftover blood, my lady?” She asked.

“I’ve had my fill, so…you girls, clean this up.”

The Vampire Brides rushed forward, going to their hands and knees to wholeheartedly partake of their mistress’ gift.

“As usual,” Lady Shalltear said with a glimmer in her eye, “you’re always so considerate of your fellow Undead.”

“If anything,” Ludmila replied, “I feel that the Undead of the Sorcerous Kingdom are not shown enough consideration. They may be summons, but they are still each their own person. Anyway, Umbral Thorn was inspired by several things. Most obvious was my need for an attack to use against stronger opponents. Along with it came our observations of how Death Knights were handled by the Beastmen in the Draconic Kingdom. In any situation where levels of offence and defence come close enough that people are not instantly slain or mortally wounded, support can be offered by other parties. I am similarly of the mind that anyone of notable strength will have parties that support them.”

She felt that it was the obvious conclusion, at least. Even Mithril-equivalent individuals were far too valuable to simply fling at the enemy without supporting elements. Those in the Realm of Heroes and beyond would undoubtedly have entire cadres dedicated to their success and survival. It was something that both Re-Estize and the Empire were strangely backwards about, as they treated powerful individuals as ‘units’ in themselves and didn’t have any practices in place to ensure their survival beyond giving them equipment. This was especially strange for the Empire, which employed Clerics in the Imperial Army to support its rank-and-file troops, yet not its highly limited number of champions. Adventurers, too, had support in every party, yet both countries hadn’t adopted the idea for their elite forces.

The ‘savage’ Beastmen that had invaded the Draconic Kingdom had no qualms about using healers to keep their champions and common soldiery alive, however. This led her to believe that it was simply a cultural issue. More advanced countries that they encountered in the future surely wouldn’t be so foolish.

“So it negates healing?” Lady Shalltear asked.

“I have been adjusting the effects of the attack,” Ludmila answered, “but that is one of them. You mentioned some time ago that your attacks had a necrotic effect that stopped healing, so I thought I could at least come up with an imitation.”

“Hmm…but that component of my attacks is from a passive,” Lady Shalltear said. “Why not do the same?”

“I am still exploring the possibilities, my lady, but I am sure I will figure that one out one day. As far as I know, only Alessia and I incorporate negative energy into our Martial Arts, and Alessia employs it quite differently from me.”

“Curses and such, right?”

“Right. She incorporates retributive curses to supplement her balanced combat style, which allows her to maintain the initiative more often than not. My combat style, on the other hand, is highly defensive and needs decisive strikes against strong opponents that I cannot whittle down with my usual spearmanship.”

That being said, Umbral Iris had proven itself a terminally stupid attack. She needed to adjust it to the point where it wouldn’t disturb her defensive balance. Having it not result in getting her weapon stomped to the ground or thrown off line would be nice, as well.

“See?” Lady Shalltear raised her delicate chin to point her nose up slightly, “Image training is important! You need to solidify your character themes.”

“I still do not agree about that sort of haughtiness suiting me,” Ludmila said.

“Haughtiness is probably the wrong word,” Lady Shalltear told her. “As I said, your pride is built differently from mine. You’re not a Vampire and it doesn’t stem from an inborn sense of superiority like many Heteromorphs. It’s still pride, though. Pride and unwavering conviction in what you stand for. I bet you can pull out all sorts of tricks once you fully embrace that side of yourself.”

“Pull them out from where?”

Despite her dubious response, she had a feeling that Lady Shalltear was right. The conceptualisation of Martial Arts and various Skills and Abilities seemed to rely just as much upon one’s nature and character as it did any sort of training. She had first learned this from Alessia, then found confirmation in the various paths that the Adventurers took. Nothing that they came up with or were working towards ever deviated from what they were.

But I still do not want to come off as an insufferable woman. That is very nearly the opposite of how I see myself.

Across from Ludmila, Shalltear unequipped her fan and folded her arms, giving Ludmila a measuring look.

“As I thought,” Lady Shalltear said, “you should really come over.”

“Come over, my lady?”

“To my place. We haven’t had an intruder in quite a while.”

An intruder? She recalled the Sorcerer King granting his permission for her to come and visit, but she didn’t think it would be visiting as an intruder. Did that even make sense?

“So I am coming over…to fight?”

“You don’t have to fight,” Lady Shalltear told her. “I was just saying it might be helpful. Nazarick and its denizens have plenty of character. Oh, speaking of which, there is a fight going on: we’re having an internal tournament. Lord Ainz wishes to witness the fruits of our training. Everyone’s looking forward to the event.”

Ludmila pushed down the irrational sense of excitement that rose within her upon hearing that the Sorcerer King would be present.

“What should I wear, my lady?” Ludmila asked.

“Wear?” Lady Shalltear tilted her head, “Just the usual is fine.”

“But I wear that all the time.”

Ludmila felt a blush creeping up her neck as the most insolent, knowing smile crept onto her liege’s face. She must have brought up the Sorcerer King on purpose.

“I will have to make time for the visit,” Ludmila said. “When is this event scheduled for?”

“Exactly two weeks from now,” Lady Shalltear replied. “The tournament should only last for a day, but you may want to stay for longer. You should be able to visit that shorty’s place, too.”

She could see Lady Aura and Lord Mare’s territory, as well? It sounded like she would need to set aside much more time than she expected.

“In that case, my lady,” Ludmila said, “I should get back to work right away. I will try to reschedule as much as I can between now and then.”