The very next day, Simon began an intense training regimen with the Overlord in preparation for the Duel Evaluation. He practiced before and after classes, seizing every spare moment he could find.
But no matter how many times he connected to the Overlord's consciousness and swung its blades, something felt off. He had no way of knowing if his skills were improving or if he was making any progress at all. Unlike with his Bone Armor or Mud Golem, where his growing proficiency was immediately apparent, training with the Overlord felt like trying to cut water with a knife.
Simon knew from experience that struggling alone was far less effective than asking for help. So, he took action.
"...What are you doing here, Simon Polentia?" Professor Aaron asked, having just arrived at his lab after his last class.
Simon, who had been sitting by the professor's door nibbling on a piece of bread, shot to his feet and bowed deeply. "Good afternoon, Professor!"
"I asked what you are doing."
"I came seeking your guidance!"
Aaron pressed a hand to his forehead, a wry smile on his face. He couldn't believe Simon would resort to this just because Restoration classes had been infrequent lately.
"...Guidance? You mean about Bone Armor?"
"I mastered that during the last mission!"
'That crazy bastard,' Aaron thought, beginning to suspect his young student was some kind of monster. "If not Bone Armor, then what?"
"I'd like to ask for your advice on operating a new undead I recently acquired, the Overlord!"
Aaron had already heard from Jane that Simon had obtained a special undead worth 10,000 Gold in Blue Harbor. Normally, he would have dismissed him, saying it was time to go home.
'An Overlord, he says.'
A summoning scholar to his very core, Aaron felt a powerful curiosity bloom within him. If he hadn't been so busy, he would have gone to the Blue Harbor exhibition to see it for himself.
Sensing the shift in the professor's demeanor, Simon quickly added, "The Overlord is a completely new type of invertebrate undead. It has six tentacles made of bone coated in mithril to serve as blades. It's designed to slash and stab like a swordsman, and its movements are incredibly fluid, like a mollusk's. However, it's difficult to operate, so your guidance would be a great help, Professor..."
"Fine. Let's go."
As Aaron turned and walked away, Simon quietly clenched his fist in triumph.
They arrived at an empty lot beside the building. With Aaron watching intently, Simon summoned the Overlord, connected to its consciousness, and demonstrated several techniques, asking if he was training correctly.
"You'll get nowhere just swinging it around thoughtlessly like that," Aaron stated flatly.
"...Th-then what should I do?"
"Get ready. Take off your shirt."
Though confused, Simon did as he was told, removing his uniform jacket and shirt and hanging them on a nearby tree. Aaron then retrieved a skeleton made of 'demon bones' from his Subspace and disassembled it.
"I will now attack you with these bones."
"Y-Yes?"
"From this moment, the only thing you can use is the Overlord. Block them."
Without another word, he began launching the bones with his Restoration technique. He had also used an application of 'Bone Prison' to root Simon's feet to the ground.
"Ugh!"
He couldn't even dodge. Simon quickly connected to the Overlord's consciousness, sending its blades to intercept the flying bones.
The bones ricocheted off the mithril blades. But one bone slipped past the whirling defense and struck Simon on the forehead. It didn't hurt much, but it snapped him to attention.
"Stay focused," Aaron commanded. "They're still coming."
The bones flew in a continuous, uniform stream. Simon raised two blades at once.
'Read the speed and pattern.'
'Send the blades precisely to their destination!'
The blades swung in wide arcs, deflecting the incoming bones with effortless power. Because the bones were under Aaron's complete control, their patterns were perfectly regular, intentionally designed so that Simon could block everything if his timing was perfect.
"I'm doubling the volume of attacks now."
At Aaron's gesture, more bones materialized in the air.
"The speed and pattern are the same. You know what to do."
The bones flew instantly. Bathed in sweat, Simon brought two more blades under his control, for a total of four.
The four blades formed a defensive shield in front of him, batting away the projectiles. A grin spread across Simon's face as he watched the bones scatter.
'This feels amazing!'
It was on a completely different level from slashing at empty air. He could feel his control improving with every block.
But a momentary lapse in concentration broke his rhythm, and bones began to slip through, striking his body.
"If this were a real battle, you'd be dead already," Aaron chided. "Control them with more precision."
Simon pushed himself to the limit, his blades a constant blur. After the tempo drill, they moved on to accuracy training, where he had to strike moving targets out of the air. Finally, Aaron introduced intentionally erratic projectiles that were nearly impossible to track.
"Hah! Hah! Whew!"
Completely exhausted, Simon collapsed onto the ground, spread-eagled. The spots where he'd been hit throbbed, and his mind was frayed from the intense focus. Aaron quietly sat on a nearby bench and lit a cigar.
"This is fun."
"...Huh?"
Simon thought he had misheard, but Aaron just blew out a plume of smoke without another word.
"You're the one who started this. You may have started it on your own terms, but I'll be the one to end it."
"What do you mean...?"
"Be here tomorrow, too," Aaron said, tossing his finished cigar into a trash can and turning to leave. "We have to have some fun training, don't we? It'll be beneficial for me, too. I can collect data on an invertebrate undead."
"Ah, Professor Aaron?"
The professor, who was usually annoyed by everything, departed with an uncharacteristically chilling smile. Simon shuddered.
But his training wasn't over yet. After all his classes were finished, he headed to Pier's ruins in the Forbidden Forest.
[That Kizen professor's lesson is too predictable!] Pier's voice boomed. [Merely increasing proficiency and reflexes won't draw out an undead's true power!]
He placed a hand on the body of the Overlord that Simon had summoned.
"Wait, Pier! Are you going to—?"
[I'm not trying to Legion-ify it, so don't worry! You need to use this thing at Kizen, don't you?]
After Pier did something and stepped back, the Overlord's previously still body began to thrash violently. Startled, Simon shot to his feet.
[I made its consciousness go berserk to temporarily maximize its aggression,] Pier explained, sending in a squad of Legion skeletons. The agitated Overlord immediately lashed out with its tentacles, sending the skeletons' bodies flying.
[Watch closely, boy,] Pier said. [That is the Overlord's inherent movement.]
The Overlord's blades moved like coiling snakes, constricting the skeletons, or flicking just their tips to paralyze and knock them away. Until now, Simon's control had been limited to stiff, artificial attacks like slashing and stabbing. But seeing the Overlord's natural, instinctual movements opened his mind to new possibilities.
'It's so fluid. So that's how it uses its joints.'
'Just flicking the tips of the blades like that is threatening enough.'
'I shouldn't just stick to straight lines. I need to use curves. And swinging the blades like that can effectively cover a narrow attack range.'
As Simon's eyes shone with discovery, one of the Overlord's blades suddenly whipped toward him.
"Whoa!"
He hastily leaped back to dodge.
[What are you just standing there watching for?!] Pier laughed loudly. [Feel the Overlord's movements by dodging them yourself!]
"Pier!"
Pier's lesson was simple: observe the Overlord's natural movements, internalize them, and then reproduce them perfectly through the psychic connection. A human moving their limbs was a completely different concept from an Overlord moving its tentacles. He began to understand the ways it could move more comfortably and effectively. Gradually, Simon's own control over the blades became smoother and more natural.
After finishing his lesson with Pier, he stopped by the 'Mutant' clubroom during lunch the next day.
"Hey, kid! What in the world did you do to this thing in just one day?" Benya, the club president, exclaimed, examining the Overlord with a horrified expression.
"I just did some training..."
"You overworked it! The joint here is already worn down, and it's all dried out!" Her short skirt fluttering, she ran to a shelf and returned with several paint-can-like containers. She dipped a large brush into one and began slathering the contents onto the Overlord's body. "This kid isn't something you can just neglect like a regular skeleton! It maintains an extremely unstable body through artificial means, so maintenance isn't an option—it's a necessity! You have to take care of it constantly!"
"Oh... What are the specifics of its maintenance?"
"I like that curiosity!" Benya shouted, pulling on the Overlord's torso. "This soft material on its body is called 'Fluido.' When the Overlord moves its tentacles a lot, this part here, below the joint, dries out. You have to keep applying Fluido or slime components to keep it moist. If you don't, its durability will plummet, and you might have to replace the entire mithril part later. Okay?"
"I'll keep that in mind!"
Benya rattled off detailed instructions on the Overlord's maintenance. Even the Overlord, which normally hated being touched, didn't refuse Benya's care, as if it knew it was for its own good. Simon absorbed the new knowledge from his senior.
"Thank you for your hard work."
Just then, Fitzgerald entered the clubroom. He summoned a chimera from his Subspace and began tinkering with it.
"You here to tune up your chimera, too, kid?" Benya asked.
"Yes."
"Oh! Wait a sec. I got some good materials from Rochest."
While Benya went to the shelf, Simon approached Fitzgerald, who looked up and spoke.
"Simon, this Duel Evaluation isn't going to be easy."
"You saw, huh? Oh, right, you said you're in Class M with Malcolm, didn't you?"
Fitzgerald nodded gravely. "Be careful, Simon."
"Hm?"
"Malcolm is different from the opponents you've faced so far. You'll never win if you try to fight him with feints and tricks like before."
Simon blinked. He couldn't just dismiss Fitzgerald's words. He had learned that, despite his eccentricities, Fitzgerald always spoke with a logical basis.
"Then how can I win?"
After a moment of silence, Fitzgerald's gaze shifted to Simon's Overlord.

Comments

Loading...