No Fatigue Chapter 69

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Chapter 69 – Edvice 3

“Edgar? I’m here.”

The last interviewee was the fairy big sister, Melby.


Melby (Born in the fairy village called Tetelutia, Leader of Fairies, 《Sage》, 《Miss Perseverance》, 《Everybody’s Big Sister》)
?? (1120 years have passed since her birth)
Fairy

Level 44
HP 34/34
MP 997/997

Status: Fairy’s Oath

Skills
• Legendary class
【Telepathic Communication】 5
【Spirit Magic】 5 (↑1)
【Appraisal】 5 (↑1)
【Fairy’s Eye】 4
【Dimension Magic】 2(↑1)
【Dimension Magic Tool Creation】 2

• Master class
【Leadership】 3
【Magic Tool Creation】 9 (MAX)
【Space Magic】 9 (MAX)
【Fairy’s Eye】 7
【Fairy’s Song】 4
【Mana Control】 9 (MAX)

• General
【Command】 9 (MAX)
【Tool Creation】 9 (MAX)
【Mana Manipulation】 9 (MAX)
【Mana Perception】 7(↑1)

《Pioneer Elf’s Blessing》

The last time I looked up her Status was right after I’d just seen Alfecia, therefore I was a bit numb to it at the time, but now that I’m looking at it again, Melby is quite high-spec. She can almost be called a cheat-fairy.

“…well, I don’t think I can give you advice about anything, so… Do you have any concerns?”

“Well, let’s see. Maybe the fact that I don’t have any good ways of attacking? However, with the Fairy’s Oath I wouldn’t be able to use it even if I had one…”

“The only time the Fairy’s Oath doesn’t come into play is if you are up against an apostle of an Evil God, but in that case half-baked attacks wouldn’t work anyways.”

“Maybe I should try learning 【Light Magic】 and 【Darkness Magic】 to hide myself from people who can see me. I can do that with 【Spirit Magic】 too, but there is no guarantee that there will be Spirits of Light and Darkness at hand every time.”

“I see…”

“Also, I want to gain a Skill that’s about creating machines. However, I won’t be able to handle large machines with this small body of mine, so I may be relying on you for that, Edgar.”

“Of course I’ll help, but by using 【Telekinesis Magic】you would be able to put those machines together by yourself, since you have a large amount of mana.”

“Oh, yes, there is that too.”

“Come to think of it, what are your affinities, Melby?”

“Affinities? Let’s see…”

According to Melby’s explanation, this was how her affinities were.

S: Spirit, Mind, Perception, Magic Techniques, Magic Sense
A: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, Dimension, Creation
B: Holy, Darkness, Reconnaissance
C:
Z: All Weapons, All Martial Arts

Even with her complete inability to fight in melee range, her abilities are pretty broken.

“Ah, that’s right. I wanted to ask for your help with something.”

“Help with what?”

“Can you help me with learning something akin to hypnosis?”

“Hypnosis, huh…? According to my Master’s knowledge there is a Skill called exactly that, 【Hypnosis】.”

“The reverend of Yatagarasu had that one too, but do you know what kind of Skill it is?”

“Right… It’s a Skill to change the thoughts of other people using mana and basic deception. What do you plan on using such a dangerous Skill for?”

“I want you to use it on me.”

“Huh? On you, Edgar?”

“Yeah. As the time goes by, my memories from my previous life are getting harder and harder to recall. I was thinking that maybe 【Hypnosis】 can be used to strengthen my recollection.”

“…so that’s what it was. Fine, I’m not sure it will work, but let’s try it. Your knowledge from your previous life should be useful to my Master too.”

“Thank you. Also, can you use 【Telepathic Communication】 to read the mind of other people?”

“I don’t know about that… It seems there is a Lock on the 【Telepathic Communication】 Skill that prevents surface thoughts just leaking out?”

Hmm. It seems that one’s a bust.
It was pretty unlikely, since there is no way the Goddess would create a Skill with that much potential for abuse.

“On that subject, do the other fairies also have Statuses like yours?”

“Not really. A few of them have a Master-class Skill, but they mainly have high mana with only a few Skills. Oh, they all have 【Telepathic Communication】 and 【Spirit Magic】 at a low level though.”

I see. It seems Melby is really a special case, just as the Goddess said.

“You have 【Appraisal】 too, so did you notice anything worth mentioning so far?”

“Hm, something of note? Well, the fact that your Status is eminently broken is self-evident…”

So it’s self-evident. Well, yeah, it kinda is.

“Well, those Yatagarasu Emissaries were pretty strong. The Black Wolf Fang mercenaries had high Levels too, but the Emissaries had a good assortment of Skills.”

Right. That is true.

“In contrast, the soldiers serving under Alfred-san aren’t kind of weak? Their Levels were lower than the mercenaries and had less Skills than the Emissaries.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that too. But, if we are discussing that topic, then we should call dad.”

So, I went to get dad.
It’s times like this that 【Telepathic Communication】 would come in handy, I thought.

Maybe we should experiment with learning 【Telepathic Communication】 during the 【Spirit Magic】 learning get-together.

“So, you wanted to talk about my subordinate knights?” Alfred-tousan asked as he arrived back in the office.

“Yeah. We were just talking about them with Melby, but… frankly speaking, aren’t they kinda weak?”

“Well, that was certainly frank, but… that’s indeed somewhat true.”

“The Black Wolf Fang mercenaries had high Levels since they took part in the war in Sonorato. The Yatagarasu Emissaries worked as assassins, so they had various Skills, and they periodically went hunting for monsters too, so their Levels weren’t low either.”

“I see… Santamana’s current younger knights don’t have any battle experience. Furthermore, to not snatch away the livelihood of adventurers they don’t fight monsters either. They do practice with battle formations, but their Status is a problem…,” dad said and fell into thought with a frown on his face.

“Ed, what do you think should be done? You have a plan, right?”

“Yeah, I do. First of all, they should really raise their Levels, at least until they have a minimum of 40 HP, to be exact.”

“That is really exact. Why that number?”

“It’s the bare minimum that lets someone survive a single hit from the 【Assassination Techniques】 that all Yatagarasu Emisseries had. The higher class Skill 【Assassination Skills】 can accomplish a one hit kill anyway, but those who had 【Assassination Skills】 were not more than a handful. So, the bare minimum should really be around 40 HP.”

“Hm… so you want to prevent at least 【Assassination Techniques】 from being able to eliminate someone with a single hit. Anything else?”

“If a certain number of them had the 【Eavesdropping】 Skill, then it would be good for security. Also, maybe about the use of magic. There aren’t too many mages among the knights, right?”

“If you are talking about those that can’t use any at all, then they are the minority. However, those that can use it in combat are about two or three in a hundred, I think. Only, to raise that number is quite a tricky problem.”

“Tricky problem?”

“To begin with, those who can use magic on a combat level usually become adventurers, because that pays better. Since outstanding mages can request a larger portion of profits in an adventurer party.”

“So people with even half-baked magic skills usually quit being a knight. What about those knights that come from the nobility? Aren’t they usually reluctant to switch to being an adventurer?”

“Nobles that have an affinity for magic aim to join the royal mages and not the knights. After that they proceed to abuse their privileges to stay away from the front lines. As a result, the knights have to constantly worry about the lack of magical firepower.”

Dad shrugged his shoulders.

“….what does it mean exactly when you said that they don’t quite reach combat level?”

“With 【Fire Magic】 they can barely start a fire, with 【Water Magic】 they can fill a wash basin at most, with 【Wind Magic】 the wind they can make can’t even break a thin branch, and with 【Earth Magic】 they can dig a hole about knee high.”

So about Skill level 1, or thereabout.
But, in that case….

“If they start to train it, they could reach a certain level of power, right?”

If they manage to learn the Skill, then the rest should just be a matter of practice.
We should choose people that are unlikely to leave the knights and train them up.

“But there is also the Skill level barrier.”

“Skill level barrier?”

This was the first time I’ve heard that expression.

“Well, Ed may not have any experience with it, but after reaching a certain Skill level most people can’t really advance anymore. There are times that someone breaks through with time, but sometimes they can only give up.”

“But, you can see their affinities with 【Affinity Diagnosis】, right?”

“Yes, but everyone knows that 【Affinity Diagnosis】 is only a prediction in the end, which does not always completely mash with reality. Some even think it’s nothing but lip-service on the part of the priests, but since I know Father Solow personally I don’t think it is.”

I don’t think Father Solow would do something like that either, but I’m not so sure about other priests.

I can imagine the more timid priest rather than telling it straight that they have ‘no aptitudes’ for anything, they instead inflate it a bit. Especially if the person in question belongs to the nobility, the fact that the priest prettied their affinities up a bit is unlikely to be found out, since it’s not something that can be easily compared between people.

“Perhaps their Skills don’t amount to much by themselves, but maybe in a group it could be different?”

“Something that becomes significant if done by a group…?”

“Yeah. For example, making a trench― a temporary moat, or a pitfall trap, or a wall to hide behind from arrows, or using a large amount of water to create a quagmire to hinder the enemy, or using Mirage from 【Light Magic】 simultaneously to misrepresent the group’s numbers or position, or creating wind in concert to blow away the incoming rain of arrows…”

“W-wait just a bit! You said some very important things just now! I’ll write them down, so would you repeat them, please?”

“Oh, okay.”

I nodded and I repeated what I just said after dad hurriedly took out some papers and a pen.

“With mostly Skill level 1s it would be tricky, but a few people with at least Skill level 3 or ideally at level 4 or 5, all of what I’ve just said should be possible.”

“How many people would be needed for it?”

“Ten people should be able to create pitfalls, raise walls to hide behind from arrows, and create enough wind to disrupt arrows. Above that, depending on the exact numbers, the scale of things change.”

“I see… Even with low level magic, if employed by a group, it should be able to achieve better than expected results. Using magic is normally seen as a solo activity, so an approach like this hasn’t existed until now.”

“It might be an unscrupulous way of looking at things, but if by themselves they can’t use any meaningfully powerful magic, then that also eliminates the risks of them leaving the ranks of knights to be an adventurer or a royal mage.”

“Well, I’m at a loss… Was that also knowledge from your previous world?”

“No, since we had no magic there. However, there was a branch of the military called combat engineers who specialized in building roads and bridges.”

“I see. In Santamana’s military system the knights don’t want to work on things like that, so they make the temporary recruits do it. However, those are usually simple commoners, who aren’t necessarily good at building things… Or rather, they may not even know how to do it at all, and that’s why it’s quite an inefficient way of doing things.”

“In my previous world, the military of my country was frequently dispatched to disaster areas to restore infrastr… To restore roads, bridges, and harbors.”

“Were those troops a private army of nobles? Or the country’s standing army?”

“The country’s standing army, I guess.”

“I see, that makes them a privileged class, right? How come they just did all that menial work without complaining?”

“They weren’t really a privileged class. Also, they felt that protecting the citizens from natural disasters was a job worth doing. It’s not like they were doing it begrudgingly.”

Alfred-tousan is someone that can be called quite open-minded by this world’s standards, but even he doesn’t really get it when I start talking about my previous world.

To dad a country means a kingdom and a military means knightly orders.

“Ah, right. About my previous life’s knowledge…”

I also told Alfred-tousan and Julia-kaasan about the fact that a man who killed a lot of people in my previous world got reincarnated into this world at the same time as me.

“The other reincarnated person who I told you about before, he has the same knowledge as me. I can’t discard the possibility that he will be trying to reproduce various kinds of weapons that don’t exist in this world. Or rather, I’m almost completely certain he will be doing that. So, I want to start thinking up some counterstrategies.”

The reincarnator named Kizaki Tooru, the random slasher who my run-in with ultimately led to both of our deaths, should be starting to get active.
Kizaki shouldn’t be aware that I also reincarnated after him in this world, so he shouldn’t be making any serious moves just yet, but that’s nothing more than an optimistic guess.

“I’m not really clear on it, but is that knowledge really that dangerous?”

“An extreme example would be a nuclear bomb. That is something that was twice dropped on the country I used to live in during the last war. The result was that two cities were entirely burned to the ground and those who barely survived it ended up suffering from the aftereffects for decades. In my previous world they were considered so dangerous that an agreement was reached between countries that they wouldn’t be used lightly. It was said that if a country started to use them, then the subsequent retaliation would’ve left the entire world a scorched wasteland.”

“…and you say you know how to make that, Ed?”

“No, I roughly know it works in theory, but the way to make it is a military secret. However, the reincarnator on the Evil Gods’ side is much smarter than me. He was a doctor, so he shouldn’t have too much engineering knowledge, but the principles behind firearms, cars, and airplanes aren’t that complicated, so he may know them.”

It’s hard to imagine an elite surgeon with hobbies like unethical experimentation and murder for pleasure would be toiling away making tanks and planes, but that’s just my impression.

Since there is a high probability that I would lose a straight battle of wits, I want to slowly increase the number of allies that would stand with me.

“You’ve said it before too, but are ‘firearms’ really that amazing weapons?”

“I guess I’ll just show you. Melby, please, if you will.”

“Yes, yes. Here.”

Melby took out the gun, the Walther P38 from her dimensional storage and gave it to me.
I tightly held it by the grip.
…Good. It looks fine.
Then, I suddenly remembered.
It might be strange for me to remember this just now, but I was, in fact, shot to death by a police officer in my previous world.
Remembering the shock I felt just then, most of the blood left my face.

“Hey, Ed, are you alright? You are looking quite pale.”

“Yeah, ah… It’s nothing. It’s dangerous so I’ll show it in the courtyard.”

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