Ch.920Dealing With Beasts Inevitably Turns One Into a Beast.

I didn’t find my joke particularly amusing, as Frider thrashed like a carp with his broken limbs and burst into anger.

“Pfft. Aha, ahahahaha…!”

Seeing his violent jumping that might evolve him into a dragon if left alone, I couldn’t help but burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“What’s so funny!”

“No, wait, just stay still…! This is killing me, seriously.”

My laughter was so intense that tears formed in my eyes.

How long had it been since I’d laughed this hard? Even the cigarette I’d been holding flew out and rolled across the floor.

“You…!”

“There, there. Calm down. It was just a joke, a joke.”

I wiped away my tears with my finger and pulled out a Karma of Murder tendril to press down firmly on Frider’s shoulder.

“A… joke…?”

Frider gaped in disbelief. It was a face I wanted to photograph and preserve forever.

“Yes. Just explaining things gets boring, right? You need to change the mood sometimes in between.”

That’s right. If you just drone on about lesson content throughout a lecture, tired students lose focus and their academic achievement suffers.

For an effective lesson, you need to sprinkle in some jokes to refresh the atmosphere.

“Grrrrrr…!”

Frider, having become the subject of the joke, seemed to have a different opinion.

[Stop teasing him. He’ll turn into a Werebeast at this rate, a Werebeast.]

‘Indeed.’

I agreed with Hersella’s words with an amused voice.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that they themselves do not become a monster, as they say.

Frider must have neglected that caution. Looking at how he increasingly resembled a Werebeast with every shout and roar.

—-

Frider, who had been fluently speaking the language of beasts as if he had a first-class certificate in Werebeast language, took a long time to recover human speech.

“Well… I suppose you’ve cooled your head enough by now. Shall we get back to the main point?”

I stamped out my second cigarette butt and began offering proper advice to Frider, who was bound by my Karma of Murder tendrils and floating in mid-air.

“Let’s see, where should I start…”

“Put me down first!”

“First, your basic physical abilities are mediocre. Your strength, speed—everything barely reaches the upper level of a Master.”

“Are you ignoring me?!”

How noisy. You should be quiet during class time, student Frider.

– Swoosh.

“Let go of this—mmph…!”

“Quiet.”

I pulled out another Karma of Murder tendril and covered Frider’s mouth before continuing my explanation. I didn’t cover his nose, so he could still breathe.

“Well, that part will improve gradually. It’s not for any special reason—you simply lack Karma power.”

That’s right. Frider fundamentally lacked Karma power… his level itself was low. Not a matter of talent, but purely due to lack of experience.

In a way, it was an inevitable result.

Unlike my knights of the Thousand Swords who fought constantly under my command, Frider was a princess of the Duchy of Faelrun, so she was often stuck in the north.

Except during the great invasion led by Rurik, after Rurik was bloodily defeated, only a small number of guerrilla Werebeasts crossed the mountains.

How could proper strength be built by hunting just three or four Werebeasts who weren’t even Champions?

Moreover, since the Werebeasts didn’t come down often, she probably spent her peacetime days shut in her room, endlessly absorbed in leatherworking.

While Frider was immersed in her hobby, the Thousand Swords were mobilized under my orders for monster subjugation, living a life where their blood never dried.

Naturally, a power gap would form.

Come to think of it, it was amazing, even miraculous, that she had reached this level.

If Joshua or Heinrich had lived as leisurely as Frider, they would have been struggling without even seeing the wall, let alone crossing it.

Yes, I suppose she does have some talent befitting a descendant of the Great’s Twelve Knights.

Frider probably doesn’t know this, but her family, Faelrun, is also a successor house to one of the Great’s Twelve Knights.

She too was born with the bloodline of the Great’s Twelve Knights, just like me. Of course, compared to me, the gap is like that between the sun and a firefly.

Even as a descendant of the Great’s Twelve Knights, if you can’t become the master of an oath sword, you’ll end up as just a talented knight.

To be officially recognized as a successor to the Great’s Twelve Knights like me, you need to awaken the oath sword kept in the Faelrun ducal house and reach the realm of heroes by crossing the wall.

Like Perlien de Genes of the Holy State, who was recognized as the master of Hauteclere.

…Come to think of it, Valdemar seems to have crossed the wall long ago… yet he showed no interest in visiting the tomb of the Great’s Twelve Knights.

Even though it was an opportunity to greatly enhance his power by receiving the blessing of his ancestor.

Even I gained significantly improved combat endurance thanks to the “Blessing of the Fire Man” bestowed by Rotholandus.

In the past, I would get stabbed and cut all over during long fights, but after receiving the blessing, I rarely got injured unless facing an equally strong opponent.

Valdemar’s ancestor… Lacy called him “Ogier le Danois,” I think?

I don’t know what blessing he would bestow, but whatever it is, it couldn’t hurt to receive it.

Yet he never set foot in the Holy State… Does that mean Duke Valdemar wasn’t recognized by the oath sword? I suppose that must be it?

…I wonder about Frider.

I should ask the Duke directly later.

If he doesn’t want to see his daughter die in a foreign land, he should give her better weapons—why is she still carrying around a saw-toothed blade with just a bit of dragon material mixed in? What are the constraints of your sword?

“Mmph! Mmph mmph!”

…Well, that’s not important right now.

Hearing Frider’s muffled voice through the tendril covering her mouth, I stopped my contemplation and looked at her again before speaking.

“Let’s set aside the lack of Karma for now, and move on to… right, I should point out that there’s a problem with your fighting style itself.”

Frider’s problem isn’t just that she’s weak. In fact, being weak is hardly worth mentioning compared to her other issues.

“Should I call it a habit? I’m not sure if you’re aware of it… but you don’t actually think I’m a real Werebeast, do you?”

“Mmph?”

Frider blinked her eyes, with a face that said she didn’t understand what I meant.

The very fact that she didn’t understand was the biggest problem.

“I guess you’re not aware. Frider, your sword movements themselves are specialized for fighting Werebeasts. It’s closer to scratching than cutting.”

A sword style that doesn’t embed strength and speed into the blade to cut through the enemy’s body, but rather holds the saw blade against the enemy’s skin and scrapes it roughly and lengthily.

In other words, swordsmanship aimed at causing bleeding rather than amputation.

“It might be useful against Werebeasts. The most basic strategy against Werebeasts is to weaken their regenerative abilities through torn wounds and bleeding.”

The problem is that she insists on using this method even against opponents who aren’t Werebeasts.

“But I’m not a Werebeast, am I? What good does it do to just scratch the surface of an armored human? You need to cut and crush, not scratch. With proper force.”

That’s right. Frider’s biggest problem was that she was so accustomed to fighting Werebeasts that she adhered to the same tactics even against other enemies.

Even against enemies without regenerative abilities, or those with bodies harder than steel who could ignore saw blades scraping their skin.

What nonsense is that?

When facing such opponents, it’s a hundred, a thousand times better to just chop them into pieces, bones and all, rather than deliberately tearing and widening wounds.

While Werebeasts might reconnect and regenerate a severed arm, humans, Dragonborn, fairies, and monsters can’t perform such feats.

When facing an equal opponent, losing an arm essentially determines the outcome immediately, so there’s no reason to leave the arm intact while only mangling the skin and muscles.

“You do put some strength into your chain axe… but is it because of your habit of fighting Werebeasts that you focus more on the chain than the axe?”

Well, this too was only natural.

For a human, having an axe embedded in their body would immediately bring their life flashing before their eyes, but a Werebeast would simply pull out the axe blade and regenerate.

For Frider, whose fighting style was specialized—no, fixated—on Werebeasts, the axe at the end of the chain was merely something like a weight.

The thought of using it as a finishing blow probably never even entered her mind.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

My advice meant: your enemies aren’t just Werebeasts, so don’t get fixated on anti-Werebeast tactics—develop and master more versatile fighting methods.

“Mmph! Mmmmmph!”

Hmm. Seems like she understands.

“What else should I point out next… Ah, right. You used to use all sorts of weapons before, but lately you only use that saw and axe?”

My final advice concerned the weapons she used.

When I first saw Frider fight, she seemed to use about five different types of weapons…

But at some point, she stopped carrying anything other than the saw and axe. Did all her other weapons get destroyed? Either way, it was a shame.

“If you know how to use various weapons, you should take advantage of that, shouldn’t you?”

Being able to handle multiple types of weapons freely means being able to change equipment and tactics according to the opponent. There was no better way to compensate for lacking skills.

“Mmph…!”

Whether she had no choice but to accept my words, Frider nodded with a resentful face. Thinking this was enough, I carefully lowered her back to the ground.

“Asha said she’ll be coming here soon, so think about what weapons you’ll use from now on before then. We have plenty of materials.”

I advised her to make some useful weapons with the dragon scales and bones I would share with her.

…After saying all this, surely she won’t just make weapons for killing Werebeasts?

—-

With that final advice to Frider, the day’s training ended without incident.

Frider, freed from the tendril covering her mouth, immediately unleashed all sorts of curses.

Out of consideration for the dignity of the Faelrun ducal house, I’ll refrain from mentioning the content.

…Still, she didn’t insult my parents.

That’s fortunate. If she had insulted my mother, our filial daughter Hersella wouldn’t have stayed quiet.

She would have wielded the Karma of Murder tendrils to beat her, saying she had disrespected her mother.

Not Frider’s body, but mine.