Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 8

The Ogre’s legs buckled, yanking Moknach down as it tumbled heavily to the ground. Annoyed over its stubborn refusal to let go of the branch, he aimed a kick at the fallen Demihuman.

“This stubborn son of a–”

“That will be enough.”

A new voice turned his attention away. The others also turned their heads as a single figure approached from the direction of the city, dressed in an exquisitely crafted maid outfit bearing similarities to those commonly used by the Sorcerer King’s Household. Though mostly Human in appearance, her head was distinctly not. Her face had the appearance of a dog, stitched together like some sort of patchwork doll that children might find endearing.

“I have deemed that one side has been rendered entirely incapable of fighting,” she announced. “This exercise is at an end.”

Before anyone could respond, the maid spread her arms to cast a spell.

“「Widen Magic – All Greater Heal」.”

Streams of radiant energy fell over the field, caressing the prone figures in the combat area around them. Each stirred and slowly stood from where they had fallen. The Adventurers who had fought all the way to the end gaped at the effects of the spell. As everyone regained their feet, Blair stammered for several moments before finally managing to speak.

“Heal is a Sixth-tier spell,” his voice was filled with awe. “Only divine casters of legend could manage it. This, I don’t even know what–”

“All Greater Heal is a Ninth-tier spell,” the maid replied, making her way over to the Ogre that Josin had downed in his overwhelming assault. “...it will not recover the slain, however.”

She looked down at the corpse for a moment, then took a step back.

“「True Resurrection」.”

Before their eyes, the battered Ogre opened its eyes and struggled to its feet. Though it looked somewhat shaky, it bore none of the brutal punishment that Josin had inflicted upon it. Blair’s knees folded under him, and he looked up from the ground.

“W-who are you?” He asked weakly, “I’ve never seen – no, I’ve never even heard of such powerful magic. This is the purview of the gods!”

“Is that so?” The maid replied with a mysterious smile on her veiled face, “Well, far be it from me to make any claims to godhood. I am Pestonya, a humble servant of His Majesty the Sorcerer King…woof. As I am currently stationed in the city, I have been instructed to provide support for the Adventurer Guild when necessary. Rest assured, you need not worry overly much in your training: as you can see, even death is but a temporary setback.”

Pestonya made to return towards the city, but paused and turned back momentarily to deliver an afterthought.

“I would advise against being overly reckless, however. As you may know, resurrection services carry various costs. The material expenses are currently allocated as a part of the Adventurer Guild’s budget, but your guildmaster may have some unkind things to say if you squander his resources…woof.”

As Pestonya’s figure receded into the distance, the combatants looked around to each other somewhat uncomfortably until a woman popped out of the grass, startling the two Ogres nearby.

“Iiiyah~ That was really something, wasn’t it?” Merry, the missing member of Rainbow said with a note of satisfaction in her voice, “I haven’t had that much fun in a while!”

The unofficial strongest member of Rainbow, Merry was an Orichalcum-rank Ranger. A combatant who specialized in hunting the Undead of Katze Plains, she was also a generally devastating force on her favoured terrain. Seeing that she had vanished the instant the fighting broke out, Moknach had worked on the hunch that she would eventually track down and eliminate all of their opponents hidden in the grass. The first indication that his wager had paid off was the abrupt cessation of the attacks from the two concealed archers.

“How many were there?” Josin asked curiously.

“Hm…there were two archers, two mages – they were easy,” she looked around at the aftermath of the battle. “The Goblin with the spear was pretty tough to take out.”

“Wasn’t there another one?”

“Yeah, there was a Cleric near the Ogres keeping them alive while they were fighting…I could only get in close after you charged in. We knocked each other out though.”

Merry laughed, pulling blades of loose grass out of her nest of unruly red hair. Her disposition always seemed to match her name, making her appear much younger than she probably was. She was an Adventurer that had worked out of E-Rantel for as long as its people could remember: a wild, battle-maniac of an Elf who could never settle on a number for her age.

Nearly all the members of the training exercise were headed for the city at this point, except for one. While Pestonya’s magic had returned everyone to a healthy state, it did not free the entangled noblewoman. Entwined from head to toe, save for her nose which peeked out from a small gap in the vines, she had seemingly sensed that combat had ended and occasionally tried to wiggle free. She couldn’t struggle much, as she was bound up with a spear and bow staff flat against her body, and it made her look something like a caterpillar on a twig.

“I’ve never seen a Twine Plant spell last for this long,” Blair noted as Moknach threw the noble-turned-caterpillar over his shoulder again. “Could it be that even that young Elf lass is a powerful Druid?”

“Don’t ask me,” Moknach grunted as he shifted his weight. “I don’t even know what to think any more. Shouldn’t a Druid know better than a Fighter like me?”

Several people awaited the returning Adventurers as they approached the city gates along the wall, looking out towards the group. The Dark Elf siblings, guildmasters Pluton Ainzach and Theo Raksheer, and a Goblin in grand silken robes holding a feathered white fan. Moknach set his burden down before he walked up to the awaiting group.

“Oi, Mare,” the Dark Elf boy jabbed his sister with an elbow.

“Auh!” She jumped, startled, “What? Why…”

Her brother gestured towards the entangled noble on the ground with his chin.

The Dark Elf girl motioned with her staff and the vines withered away; their remaining fragments disappearing into the soil. Finally free of her constraints, the ‘negotiator’ who had become a casualty for the entire battle collected her things. Under the combined scrutiny of the assembled Adventurers, she made herself scarce with a mortified expression.

Moknach turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

“Well,” he said with a hopeful voice, “we survived. What do we win?”

Ainzach sighed.

The Adventurers were dismissed to clean themselves up and the party leaders reconvened later that afternoon. Around the large meeting table on the second floor of the Adventurer Guild were Moknach, Blair, Josin and Merry from Rainbow; the Wizard Ilyn and Utrecht, the Gold-plate Fighter that had been taken down by the Magic Arrow barrage. The group that had awaited them at the gate was also present.

“Where’s that healer…Pestonya, was it?” Moknach turned his head to glance towards the stairs, “The other girl from the ruins as well – they’re not coming?”

“Pestonya went back to help oversee the construction of the new orphanage,” the Elf boy answered him. “Shalltear is working on her assignment from Lord Ainz. She was just dropping off some...things for the tomb.”

The familiarity by which he spoke of the Sorcerer King made Moknach realize that these two Elves were also probably from the Sorcerous Kingdom’s mysterious place of origin. No one that he had spoken to seemed to know where that was, exactly. As far as most people knew, he had made some sort of claim on E-Rantel: one which nobody had the slightest clue about, even Merry.

“And you are…”

“This is Aura,” Ainzach filled in, “and her brother, Mare. The other gentleman here is the Goblin Strategist. I met him a few days ago and he agreed to help out with the Guild’s training once in a while.”

The Goblin Strategist lowered his head respectfully in greeting. The two Dark Elf children simply stood and waited.

“Eh? Eh?! Eh!!!” Merry rose from her seat, “This cutie is a boy?!”

Merry leaned towards Mare to examine him more closely.

“This works?” She tilted her head curiously, “Yes, it works! Hehehe…”

The boy dressed in girl’s clothing shrunk away from Merry’s intense gaze, leaning away to cower behind his sister. Ainzach cleared his throat.

“You can do this later,” he spoke in a serious tone. “We have work to do.”

“That’s right!” Aura put her hands on her hips with a cross expression, “What was that, even?”

“I advised against throwing Adventurers straight into something like this,” Ainzach said. “They still need to get a feel for each of the other members, as well as the new way we do things. I’ll agree that the whole exercise went much worse than I had expected, though.”

“It was terrible!” Aura slapped a hand on the table repeatedly, “Thirty Adventurers against nine Goblins and Ogres, and only seven of you survived – that’s including the casualty that no one even bothered finishing off! This is no good! The New Adventurer Guild won’t be able to do work like this!”

“The projected distribution of losses was spot on in this case, however,” said the Goblin Strategist. “This exercise was to simulate a case where an Adventurer contingent ran afoul of a small but moderately strong tribe of Demihumans. I believe several points presented beforehand were proven to be valid, and few other things have been learned.”

“I agree,” Ainzach followed up on the Strategist’s words with a nod. “The training goals I outlined before we started address the issues we saw today. Many of the ranking standards of the old Adventurer Guild are still relevant to our new mandate. With the support provided by His Majesty, we can ensure that Adventurers fielded in future expeditions are prepared for scenarios far worse than this. If the entire contingent was at least Gold-ranked, familiar with their teams, and well-versed with our operations, this outcome would never have happened…probably.”

As he finished speaking, Ainzach’s gaze turned to Moknach.

“Ah, that’s right, boss,” Merry laughed. “I couldn’t say anything back when it happened since it would have blown my cover, but trying to flush out the Goblins like that was pretty a dumb call. You got played on your home turf!”

Beside him, Blair nodded in agreement while Ilyn looked like she was trying her best to become one with her chair. Moknach screwed up his face in confusion.

“Wait…you mean that entire thing was planned? The way Aura started things off, it sounded like she was improvising.”

“Well, it was a surprise for the tail end of the exercise,” the Goblin Strategist replied. “A little bit of excitement after your basic orientation in the tomb. The group under my orders still needed to improvise the new ambush to press the contingent into making rash decisions.”

Moknach thought back on the sequence of events again and realized where he had screwed up. The wind over the area nearly always came down from the Azerlisia foothills to the north. Lighting the field on fire in an attempt to expose or drive away their ambushers had ultimately backfired on them and the situation had descended into chaos after that point.

“That’s...you worked that out in advance?” Moknach gave the Goblin Strategist a look of appraisal, “That’s pretty damn good.”

“Hohoho, you flatter me,” the Strategist waved his fan lightly. “Knowing how to use fire is one of the basics of the Art of War, after all. In truth, it was the mages in the field that should have started the fires but, since you had willingly sabotaged your own position so thoroughly, they had the spare mana to aid in offence.”

Utrecht winced at the memory; silence hung over the table. In their first training exercise, the Adventurers had made an embarrassingly poor showing. Never mind starting off on good footing towards their stated mandate of exploration: their first step had them land flat on their faces.

The operational procedures of the Adventurer Guild’s expeditions – well, the initial outlines drawn up with input from several of the Sorcerer King’s representatives and a few knowledgeable members of the city’s Guilds where their expertise was warranted – used various concepts which were each easy enough to understand on their own. As a whole, however, they had been woven into a fusion of exploration, diplomacy and projection of national interests which was unprecedented in the history of the Adventurer Guild.

A contingent of regular teams would be dispatched to an unexplored area, where they would establish an expeditionary camp. The five teams assigned to that contingent would use this camp as their base of operations and, over the course of time, work together to compile a comprehensive understanding of the region. This was not simply creating a map of an unexplored area: it was also a thorough assessment of its native populations, cultures, politics, flora and fauna, as well as its economic and strategic potential.

With this being the case, the Adventurer Guild was now recruiting members to include those who possessed the expertise to fulfill various aspects of an operation rather than the previous methods where martial or magical prowess was the sole qualification. The teams sent out as a part of these contingents would be at bare minimum trained to Gold rank, which was currently deemed resilient enough to weather most of the hardships expected from such work. If it was deemed a higher risk area, higher-ranked teams would be assigned. In special cases, a sixth team would be sent out: consisting of a group hand-picked by the Sorcerous Kingdom to support the effort and assist in resolving any outstanding issues.

Moknach had heard of ventures somewhat similar to these expeditions over the years, carried out by illegal Workers and funded by wealthy interests, but what the Sorcerous Kingdom proposed was far above and beyond any such isolated attempts to pilfer wealth and garner fame. The creation of this organization that would, in the future, send countless expeditions staffed by highly trained Adventurers to the far reaches of the world. It was an effort that could only be sustained by a nation – one that was on par with maintaining a powerful standing army.

The day that Ainzach had called together the Guild, several members had called it exactly that: an army. High-ranking Adventurers had the effective strength of mundane armies on their own, and it was difficult for them to accept that so many of these individuals would be organized into an arm of the government. This was central to the reason why the original Adventurer Guild traditionally held itself above the politics of nations, and now that same tradition was being challenged. Many feared that they would simply be a thinly-veiled vanguard; a scouting force for future aggression by the armies of the Sorcerer King into the territories of prospective targets.

A significant portion of the membership had left the city due to this break with accepted practice, but some had still been drawn into the tantalizing vision shared by Pluton Ainzach. Moknach had wondered what the Sorcerer King had planned when he first mentioned it over a week ago, but now he held the firm belief that no one that called themselves an Adventurer could help but feel the draw of his words. To the eldest and most experienced amongst them, his invitation had hit the hardest. They had been in the guild for too long; seen too much: understanding that, without the support of the Sorcerous Kingdom, the romanticized life of adventuring that many ascribed to their profession was simply a dream within a dream.

Understanding this – that this dream could now become reality – had sparked an ember he had long thought dead inside. Directly witnessing the resources that the Sorcerous Kingdom could bring to bear, that ember had been nourished into a flame which entrenched Moknach’s conviction that this dream had become an inevitability. The Adventurer Guild of E-Rantel, once merely one amongst countless other branches, would become The Adventurer Guild and all others would become little more than a shallow pretender to the name.

For this dream, Moknach was willing to take any amount of punishment; undergo any trial. Here, Adventurers in name would become Adventurers in truth, to the awe and envy of the world.