Chapter Text
It was a nice day out. Sunny, warm, but with a cool breeze. Perfect for some training. He wished he could enjoy it, but his head was a bit of a mess, and it all had to do with a certain black-haired girl he had the misfortune of sharing swordsmanship class with.
It took a while for William to accept it, but eventually he had to admit to himself that he acted like a dick towards her. Captain Adolf confirmed that, even if not level 99, she was at least at his level, meaning a minimum of 60, and even if the device claimed that was her level, he knew he would have acted exactly the same. Even if she cheated, she was still high level, and refusing to believe that he called her a liar.
Well, of course he didn’t believe her, no one did, because the whole idea was ridiculous, but it was still the truth, so he technically was in the wrong.
It still didn’t excuse the way she made mockery out of him and the effort he put into reaching his level. To lie about never having held a sword to then humiliate him in front of the whole class, like she was saying “Oh, look, William Ares is so weak, even a spoiled girl who never trained in her whole life can beat him!”. He honestly didn’t mind how she sent him flying, no matter how justified, his anger still caused him to attack her from behind after the duel was declared over, he deserved a beating for that. It was her mockery before that that pissed him off so much.
If that’s what it all ended up on, though, then he wouldn’t be feeling so torn right now.
The reason he was feeling like a mess was because he wasn’t sure if his anger was actually justified.
He didn’t cross swords with her again, but he and Dolkness shared the class, so he ended up seeing her with a sword a fair bit. She… really didn’t seem to know what she was doing. First few classes, with no one wanting to pair up with her and the teacher doing his best to pretend she wasn’t there, she would just swing her blade like a child would swing a stick. Sure, each swing sent a shockwave, but it was all brute force and no skill.
He considered the idea that she focused exclusively on magic, like Oswald, but according to him, the girl also didn’t spend much time either studying magic or practicing it on the dedicated school grounds.
That piece of information led him to forming a new theory - Dolkness found some sort of legendary ancient artifact that raised her level without any fighting. He’s never heard of such a thing, but it made sense. The girl became so powerful without any effort, crushed some strong monsters with her brutish force, and decided she didn’t need to train if she was so powerful already. The idea infuriated him, but at least allowed him to keep his anger at her.
That still couldn’t be it though, and he knew that because of one Patrick Ashbatten. He was a pretty respectable guy, one that leveled up several times before coming to the academy and was the fourth strongest in this class after himself, Dolkness and the teacher. One of the few worthy of sparring with.
And someone who, for whatever reason, suddenly attached himself to the black-haired girl.
William had no clue what the guy was hoping for. Their spars were more like private lessons in proper posture when falling. Was he trying to figure something out? Maybe he was a bleeding heart who decided Dolkness was too lonely? Hell, maybe he was simply a masochist?
Whatever the case though, the girl was the important part, because she was trying . It was hilarious in an absurd sort of way to consider that trying, but he could tell, the girl really was doing her best to control her strength to find some middle ground between not pushing at Ashbatten at all and sending him flying. She was working hard, and slowly she was improving, a fact she sometimes cheered about while healing her partner, or as close as her almost emotionless face and voice got to being cheerful.
Now, it could be just that she only noticed her issues at the Academy with her control, and it was the first time in her life that she was training, but he severely doubted that. She never complained or needed to be pushed to work, no matter how badly it went. Thinking about it, even her swinging before Ashbatten got to her could have been an attempt to train her control or swordsmanship - their teacher certainly wasn’t interested in guiding her, after all.
To train like that, with no push from anyone, one needs diligence, something that must be worked on and developed. A person lazy their whole life just wouldn’t manage that. He would know, he too used to be a bit lazy before he was whipped into shape.
By this logic, Dolkness had to have worked hard and not just cheated into her level, at least not just that. But since she wasn’t really studying magic that much, it implied she was more of a physical fighter, and in that case how could she not have learnt swordsmanship? What did she do, fight monsters with bare hands?
… Well, with her level, she probably could. But she wasn’t always a level 99, right? She had to fight monsters before reaching it, so she would have been low level at some point too, and how did she fight then?
Urgh, William was confused and he didn’t like that. He liked when things were simple, straightforward, but he just didn’t get Dolkness. Was she a spoiled girl who reached her level by cheating in some way? But then how was she so diligent? Was she a hard worker who earned her place? But then what’s up with her skills?
No, he knew the real reason why he didn’t want to accept it, and the skills were just an excuse. The simple truth is, if Dolkness reached level 99 through her own effort, then what was his own life? If that’s what you get for working hard enough, then what did his own efforts mean? That he didn’t work nearly as hard as he thought he did? He couldn’t accept that.
But he also couldn’t ignore what his eyes were seeing, class after class.
Argh, what would Alicia do in his place?
Well, what Alicia would do is help someone she saw struggling.
Dolkness, with Ashbatten not present for this class, looked like superpowered puppy lost in the woods, trying to swing that sword like a stick again without really understanding what she was doing.
…
Dammit.
“Oi, Dolkness.” Before he could talk himself out of this, William gathered his courage and approached the creepy girl.
She stopped swinging, thankfully for his ribs, and turned to him, her face as blank as usual, yet that turn of her head was probably meant to indicate confusion, which, fair, he was feeling the same thing. “Yes?”
Peripherally, he was aware that pretty much the whole class, including the teacher, stopped what they were doing to look at the two of them, which didn’t help his nerves at all.
“This is a sword, not a stick or a bat, so start using it properly.” He grumbled, because even if he was willing to try talking to her and maybe even offer some advice, he definitely didn’t like her nearly enough to be polite.
For a moment, it was silent except for the wind ruffling the leaves of nearby trees, animals having long since ran away from Dolkness and the rest of the class holding in their breaths, perhaps wondering if he was about to be pummeled in the ground again. Which, now that he thought about it, he probably should have been more polite so as to reduce the risk of that.
“I do not understand.” Contrary to everyone’s expectations, his included, the girl didn’t seem to care at all about his way of speaking. “Am I swinging it wrong?” She looked down at her sword, or more specifically her grip on it, as if trying to spot any issues with it. And there were quite a few of them in William’s eyes, but none in hers, so she returned to staring at his face soon after.
“Ugh, look.” He positioned himself to her right and recreated her grip on his sword. Even just standing like that felt awkward and painful in his ring finger, so he had no clue how she defaulted to it. “This is how you’re holding it right now, see? I’m not going to even start listing all the issues this kind of grip would cause you, just look how you should be holding it. Move the palm a little higher… move the fingers like this…”
As he continued instructing her, he wondered for a moment why Ashbatten didn’t correct her already. He was good enough with a sword to have also seen those issues, and if she was willing to quietly follow his instructions, she was certainly willing to do the same for her regular partner.
He found out why after he finished and the girl tested her new grip with another swing. The swing itself was still horrendous, but just by holding the sword properly, based on the way the air got displaced even more than before, the attack was roughly a fourth more powerful than the last one.
He wasn’t showing her how to use her strength properly, because he was barely surviving her strength used improperly and wanted her to develop better control first.
And William just messed it up for him. Ups. He will have to apologise later.
“Thank you for your guidance.” The voice of the Dolkness girl shook him out of the thought, only to shake him in general instead when he noticed her lowering her head to him, much too low for it to just be a nod.
“Wha- stop that!” He hoped the anger he expressed would overshadow the embarrassment he felt. “The hell are you doing?!”
She straightened herself up, thank the Goddess. “You aren’t my friend, but you still came to help me with my problem, so I had to express my gratitude.” She explained in the way he thought she would explain to a 5 year old why you say thank you, as if the issue wasn’t with how she did it instead. Was she mocking him again? But before he could further question her, she countered with that tilt of her head again. “Why did you?”
Well, he expected that question, and so had the excuse ready. “Your bad form was just pissing me off too much to stand it.” It wasn’t even untrue, and moreover it opened him up to start asking about what he really wanted to know. “Who the hell taught you, anyway, if they allowed you to fight monsters without knowing the first thing about swordsmanship?” Ha, take that Edwin, he could be subtle when he needed to!
“No one.” The girl hesitated, as if unsure she should say anything else, but he must have made a face that told her she should. “I didn’t have anyone teaching me how to fight monsters. I had to sneak out of the manor to do that.”
His first instinct was to call bullshit, but he held his tongue to word that a little bit more diplomatically. Dolkness was weird and seemed prone to misunderstandings. For all he knew, she could have been taught self-defense against humans and believed it’s different from fighting monsters, or something. “Well, who taught you magic?” She was capable of magic, he knew that, he remembered the Black Hole incident.
“I’m self-taught.”
“Bullshit.” This time he couldn’t stop himself. “You had to have had a tutor on magic.” Even he had one, and he didn’t really focus on magic.
“Why?”
“Huh? Well, I mean…” He floundered a little, not sure how to respond. “How else would you learn magic?”
“Alicia learnt without any tutors.”
She was… correct. Dammit, Dolkness was absolutely right. Alicia was a commoner with light magic, there was no way she had any tutors. Her magic wasn’t all that strong or varied, but she was also level 1. There was no reason to assume Dolkness couldn’t also figure things out by herself, especially since, now that he thought about it, finding a tutor on dark magic was probably just as impossible.
“Ok, fine, you’re right. So, what, you would just sneak out with someone to fight monsters, blast them with your magic, and just like that reach level 99?” It couldn’t be all there was to it. He fought a lot of monsters too, and he’s sure he had greater support than her if she had to sneak out.
The girl didn’t answer immediately. She frowned, causing him to sweat a little. Did asking her outright piss her off? She didn’t attack though. She just looked him over like she was considering something.
“Lord William, how did you level up?” She finally asked, throwing him for a loop. If this was an attempt at deflection, it was a bad one, he wasn’t going to let it go so easily. Still, it was only fair for him to speak about it himself if he wanted her to be honest, and he had nothing to hide.
“Well, it started when I was 11 I think? My father took me with some other knights to the nearby forest to let me see them subjugate some monsters, and then to let me fight a few slimes until I reached level 2. Afterwards, I would join the knights on such missions. Once I reached level 6, my teacher took me to a Dungeon called Skull Kobold Peak, where we went up all the way to the fourth floor to train. Between the fights, I of course sparred a lot and learnt how to fight.”
There. He could see the looks of awe at the faces of his classmates, as he expected. Not everyone could boast about already leveling up at such a young age, much less fighting in a Dungeon.
He didn’t expect Dolkness to make such a face, of course, but surprisingly to him, her face instead showed… pity? What? How dare she-
“Do you remember how many slimes it took you to reach level 2?” She asked before he could explode, throwing him off again. Where was she going with this?
“Four. Why?”
She nodded, as if having expected that. “And in Skull Kobold Peak, how many Skull Kobold Scouts, Purple Centipedes, Skull Kobold Skirmishers and Skull Kobold Warriors did it take you to reach level 7?”
“Umm… I don’t really remember, probably some sixty?” It was a lot of work, which just went to show how hard it was to level up after the first few levels. Wait, first of all, how did she even know what monsters appeared in that Dungeon? It wasn’t exactly a secret, but it was a small Dungeon located in the territory of his family, far away from the Dolkness land.
She once more nodded. “Those monsters are at similar strength to Dire Wolves and Mad Boars, and thus provide a similar amount of Experience, that is, the magical energy we absorb from defeated monsters to level up, yes?” He slowly nodded, because she wasn’t wrong, but he had a feeling she was going somewhere strange with this. “Yet it took only around 15 of them for me to level up to level 7.”
He froze for a second, not wanting to believe that. He needed four times as many monsters to level up? “Wait, wait, what the hell? Do you have some kind of cheat to need to kill less monsters?!”
“I do have an Amulet of Growth which doubles my Experience gains-” Wait, what did that mean? She wasn’t wearing an Amulet Of Protection?! “-but I didn’t have it back then, and if I had some inherent effect, then why did it also take me exactly four slimes to reach level 2?
He had no answer to that. She apparently had.
“When you were in the Dungeon with your teacher, was anyone else with you?”
“Well, it was me, my teacher, Edmond and Frank…” Four people..! “Wait, do you mean that because I had-”
“Yes, since you had three other people with you, the Experience from each monster was divided between you.” She easily declared something so ground-breaking. “I was alone, so I got the full Experience each monster had to offer, while you only got 25% from each one, and thus needed to kill four times as many. Meanwhile, since you fought the slimes only by yourself, even though you were surrounded by allies, all the Experience went to you.”
That… That changed everything. More importantly, it made sense. He had no clue how Dolkness figured it out, but everything he knew about history confirmed it. The magical energy from defeated monsters, or, as Dolkness seems to call it, Experience, was known to go to those who participate in a fight, not just the one who dealt the killing blow and not to those who just watched from sidelines, no matter how close, and each monster only had so much energy to give, it couldn’t just make more of it because a bigger group fought it! In retrospect, it seemed so obvious!
“Oh.” He said aloud, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“This is why Level Grinding in large groups is inefficient.” She continued, as if taking his oh for a request to go on with a whole lecture about the topic. “Efficient Level Grinding is about gathering largest amounts of Experience in the shortest amount of time over a long period of time. For each monster you can defeat on your own, you have to consider if another person helping you will at least halve the time needed to kill the monster, or in a situation with limited resources if their presence will at least double how long your resources such as mana will last, otherwise you are better off going by yourself. In case of monsters you can’t defeat by yourself yet, you need to consider if the divided XP they offer will be worth the time it took to defeat them, as it’s entirely possible a weaker monster you can take down by yourself and faster will be ultimately more rewarding. Complications come when we also include loot in our analysis…”
As the girl kept on lecturing him, William finally understood what the difference between them really was and why she was so much more powerful than him. It wasn’t the matter of laziness on either of them. The difference was their approach. He just thought of getting stronger by mindlessly rushing forward in a path set down for him by others. His friends, for how smart they were, behaved exactly the same. Dolkness, though, had a different approach. She didn’t accept the simplistic ‘if you train and fight, you get stronger’, but she sought out how the world worked and formulated plans using math and stuff to maximise what she can achieve. He thought that he would become the strongest by fighting the biggest foe. She stayed with weaker monsters she could kill quicker, not out of cowardice, but out of understanding that effort isn’t what the world rewards, but hard, cold numbers. He lived in a fantasy, while she lived in reality.
When the bell rang and the teacher declared the end of the lesson, stopping the impromptu lecture, William wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.