"The moonlight is truly beautiful tonight."
"And yet we took such a beating—boo-hoo——"
Listening to her good friend's fake sobbing, Ryuu, for some reason, kept wanting to laugh.
"Hmph! Ryuu, you look so pleased with yourself!! Take this!!"
"You're drenched in sweat—it's filthy!"
"Heh heh heh, when we get back, how about we take a bath together~ And we can call the goddess to join us while we're at it..."
"What are you saying, Alise!"
"Aww——you're already a married woman, so what are you getting all bashful for."
She'd seen through the relationship between the girl and Isagi almost at a single glance—yet Alise clearly still hadn't realized the even more "terrifying" truth—
The girls' topics always took a turn for the intimate, which left the traditional elf, at this moment, red-faced to the ears.
However.
From the look of Alise, although she'd surely just been about to pounce over at her or something, right now she really was sprawled out on the ground, rather unable to move.
The always-energetic red-haired girl was, at this moment, utterly worn out in both body and spirit.
Although, after the training ended, Isagi had handed out Monkey Wine to them to mend their injuries, the draining of their mental energy was the real deal—there was simply no way to recover it directly with a potion, so all they could do was lie there limp like this.
Everyone else was much the same.
Only Kaguya stubbornly crawled up into a sitting position, holding her longsword in her arms as she sat off to one side—who knew whether she was resting with her eyes closed, or had already fallen asleep.
"You two, keep it down a little."
Ah, not asleep.
"Say, when we get back tonight, we should be able to rack up quite a few ability points, right?"
"Is that what's important here?"
"I know, I know—what's important is the experience of fighting against the strong, and... um... the feeling? Kaguya, don't be so tightly wound."
"Hmph."
Indeed.
For everyone today, what mattered most was the battle against the strong itself.
The moment she gently closed her eyes.
In Alise's mind, scene after scene from just earlier would surface of their own accord—though many of them were fleeting in an instant, she had, more or less, genuinely gained something.
For instance, they'd already figured out the mechanism of the "Pale King."
You couldn't let your weapon clash against his;
You couldn't linger within his line of sight for more than two or three seconds;
Otherwise your body would "die"—instantly becoming unable to move, taking at least several dozen minutes to slowly recover—although, of course, Isagi and the others had a specially made potion that could greatly reduce the duration of this "abnormal status," allowing the training to continue.
Truly simple, unsolvable—it even made the girls feel it was a little bit cheating.
Add to that his outrageous speed and strength.
Isagi's current transformation limit was ten minutes, but in reality, over the course of an entire day, not once had Alise and the others been able to hold out past three minutes.
But even this was already a remarkable improvement.
From having absolutely no power to fight back, to being able to mount a bit of a counterattack and trade a few blows back and forth.
The girls really were all genius adventurers—of that there was no doubt.
After all, at this very moment, they too were one of the City's Strongest Familias—second only to the Loki and Freya Familias, and roughly on par with the Ganesha Familia——
What they truly lacked was combat experience against high-level powerhouses, and that was simply unavoidable.
Every adventurer in the city lacked it—even the folks of the Loki and Freya Familias lacked it.
Because training among members of the same Familia became less and less effective the longer it went on.
It wasn't merely because of their mutual familiarity, but also because the absence of "life-or-death combat" caused the training to gradually turn into just "going through the motions."
"Hey, hey, Lion—when you all were in the Dungeon, was it monsters like that you fought? Including that whatever-it-was your junior transformed into—the Pale King—did you defeat that one too?"
"Mm."
"That amazing?! Hurry, tell us what it was like back then!!"
"As for the situation at the time..."
Amid the blankets, the other girls all gathered over at once, listening to the elf girl recount a not-so-distant story.
Beneath the deep winter night.
The moon and the stars weren't especially bright, but as the cool breeze brushed past, it gave off a tenderness and tranquil quiet of a different sort.
A small Magic Stone lamp swayed gently beside the blankets.
It was just like a distant lighthouse amid a pitch-black sea, while far off, the immense city's lamplight blazed brilliantly, revealing an incomparably warm glow.
Isagi and Cecil both refrained from disturbing the "gathering" of Ryuu-senpai and her former companions.
Watching the way the girls in the distance laughed and chatted.
And, too.
The gentle, faint smile on the elf girl's face.
Isagi knew that this was exactly the thing Ryuu had always wanted to win back.
Not just now, but every day hereafter—and for that reason, he himself wasn't merely helping out, but in a certain sense, bringing happiness to everyone.
The senpai were all such good people.
"They are the followers of the Goddess of Justice, after all."
Goddess Astrea was a deity of absolute justice and gentleness, and Isagi felt that this was probably the "finest" place in this world.
"Mm! Then I'll do my best too!!"
Clenching her little fists.
The ever-restless Cecil had also thought of a way to help the senpai—and that was to enhance the weapons in their hands!
Not just making new [First-Class Armaments]—although that wasn't anything difficult for her either, it would simply take a great deal of time, and—it might not even be as handy as the weapons they currently used.
Only a Lv. 5 adventurer can use a [First-Class Armament]; this isn't some kind of RPG-game "level requirement."
In fact.
Before Lv. 5, Ais had long used her "Sword of Despair."
But it was indeed also true that a Lv. 5 adventurer and a Lv. 4 one were worlds apart, and a [First-Class Armament], in the hands of a Lv. 4 adventurer, could not unleash its full might.
This too was a fact.
Isagi himself couldn't quite say why, but after leveling up to Lv. 5, he had indeed felt some kind of extremely vast difference.
Therefore, given that time was relatively tight at present, simply leveling up and enhancing the weapons that Alise and the others used was the best choice.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
The girls' "story session" actually didn't last very long either.
After Isagi leveled up, the "duration" of his traveling back into the past had changed from the original twenty-four hours to forty-eight hours.
Therefore.
There was still an entire day of training time tomorrow.
And Alise and the others were, at this moment, gathered together, through repeated discussion and review, preparing tomorrow's battle strategy.
In any case.
The Astrea Familia of old was a single whole!
The girls naturally had their own battle strategies too—whether for adventuring in the Dungeon, for fighting the Dark Familia, or for striving so that they themselves could "live" from now on.
Not to be saved by others, but to save themselves.
"Go and call "me" over as well."
Ryuu's sudden words caught Alise and the others a little off guard.
But soon.
All the girls nodded in agreement—Ryuu Lion was also everyone's companion, and for that very reason——
"This time, let's defeat that monster together!"
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Naruto: Is it reasonable to beat up an Otsutsuki with Hamon, right?
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