One thing stories love to just skip on or gloss over was the amount of menial labor and chores that go into preparing an army for battle. Even the amount of preparation a single person needed to do was quite a list, though Alissa was not too surprised by it, used as she was to similar things from her clubs in the previous world.

Apparently many [Heroes] from previous summonings would often just tell someone to do their chores for them, so that was clearly an option too. Alissa felt that it was not a good sort of behavior to emulate, however, as if they never did any of their own chores or maintenance on their own, they wouldn’t know how to do it should the circumstances needed them to do so.

Part of it was because she disliked that sort of entitled behavior, having seen more than her own share in her previous world, and part of it was out of pragmatism, as she felt that it would not be a bad idea to know what to do in order to maintain her own equipments and keep them in good working order just in case she was away on her own.

Of course, most of Alissa’s equipment were categorized as artifacts, and to actually perform any major maintenance or repair on them would need the help of at least a fourth-tier [Blacksmith] or the like, so she couldn’t do that much on her own. That said, she could at least keep her weapons and armor clean and free of grime and the like, while keeping the edges of the blades to a keen, polished sharpness.

Which was exactly what she was doing that day, just a day after the talk she had with Sir Inolet and Sir Marsten about the Temple Guards. Bronwen’s group had already returned but they slept in that morning, which was a privilege rarely allowed and afforded in a battlefield, So Alissa just took her time that morning while she was alone with her thoughts to do some minor maintenance on her gear.

Out of the artifacts she used, her soulbound cloth inner armor was the one that needed the least maintenance, as it could repair itself over time. That said, Alissa still took care to wash it clean every now and then, whenever she got the chance to do so. Such chances were rare during battles, but after the battle, she made sure to clean the artifact from all the blood, gore, and other unmentionables it had been dirtied with during the fighting.

Fortunately it washed well and shedded all the filth easily even with just some water, probably part of its enchantment, now that Alissa thought about it. She knew that fabric – much less white fabric – stained easily, but her inner armor, despite getting drenched in all sorts of shit on the regular, never truly stained at all. All that did not belong to it simply washed away when Alissa had the chance to clean it.

Her metal armor was a bit more finicky in that regard, surprisingly. While presently the armor was already in a relatively clean state and all Alissa really needed to do was to wipe off some of the dust that had settled on it in the previous few days, she remembered the time when she actually had to clean all sorts of things off it in the past, like after the battle at the fort.

It had not helped that at the time, there were many other more important things for her to help out with, so she always postponed cleaning up her armor until later, as she figured out that the artifact armor wouldn’t decay and rust just from being left dirty for a few days, unlike regular armor. She guessed right on that detail, but neglected to think about another thing.

Namely that dried blood, excrement, and god knows what else was caked on to that armor was a major pain to clean after than had a week to really stick to something.

Alissa must have spent a good hour or so scrubbing the hell out of her armor to get it clean when she finally got to it, and even then some of the really stubborn bits of filth needed some more extreme measures to remove. She remembered how she literally scraped off some of the last, most stubborn bits using the blade of her falchion before she could finally get them off her armor at long last.

And that was just her chest plate, too, with the other parts still waiting to be cleaned.

As a result, that day was one that she would not forget about anytime soon. It was not often that Alissa spent most of a day scrubbing all sorts of dried unmentionable filth from pieces of armor, after all, much less ones that required her to use actual strength – and she did have a lot of that to spare these days – to even get them off the metal.

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Thankfully, somehow, her weapons had far less filth stuck on them – which after she thought about it was probably by design, since a spearhead was designed to easily enter and exit a body after all – and only took a fraction of the time to clean. They even shed off the filth far more easily, at that, though of course, with weapons that was not the only bit of maintenance she needed to do on them.

Alissa also needed to keep the edges on her weapons properly sharpened. They might be artifacts that held their edge far better and longer than a regular weapon would, but the constant wear and tear of battle would still get to them over time. As such, she made it a habit to keep the edges cleaned and re-sharpened after every battle if she had the time to do so.

Sharpening a blade was a skill she never thought she would learn, as she had not even sharpened a kitchen knife in her previous world, so it took her a while to get used to the technique. One needed to keep the edge at a proper angle, as if they used too deep an angle when they sharpened the blade they might worsen the edge’s geometry, which would in turn affect its performance.

On the other hand, if they used an angle that was too shallow instead, it would result in a too-fragile blade that would need its edge retouched far more often, so the knowledge of the proper angle to use – as well as how to grip the blade so that it maintained that angle throughout the sharpening process – was crucial to the job.

It took like a couple dozen cuts to her hands – which fortunately just meant more experience for Leda as she healed them – before Alissa finally got a grasp on the proper technique and could handle the resharpening of her weapons herself.

Her falchion was the easy one to sharpen, as it was just an oversized knife in some way, and did not trouble her much, but her spear was another matter altogether. While spears were typically built with the spearhead separate from the shaft – which meant that they could be detached for easy sharpening – her artifact spear was entirely solid, with the spearhead fused together into the metal shaft.

While that method of construction does give the weapon more strength and durability – which was much needed given the greater amount of force it needed to tolerate from its intended wielders – it also made some routine maintenance like sharpening the edges of the spearhead more challenging. In the end, Alissa managed to make it work by moving the grindstone against the spearhead instead of the other way around, as she kept the weapon immobilized in place.

Some would probably say that such menial chores were beneath a [Hero], but Alissa disagreed about that. If anything, it gave her some sense of security knowing that she had personally checked and maintained her own equipment to the limits of her ability, rather than just relying on others for such a need like many did.

It also gave her a moment of peace when she was busy with such chores, a bit of quiet which allowed her to think many things over more thoroughly. While she was inclined to believe what Esperanza had told her, neither side had any solid proof on the matter as of yet, so Alissa tried to keep an open mind for the time being until she ascertained the truth for herself, one way or another.

She knew that such a path would have a high likelihood of putting her on opposite sides with people she called friends by now, but there was likely no path where she could have her cake and eat it too, so to speak. Life was generally not that nice, and so-called “ideal” solutions were absurdly rare, if they existed at all, which they don’t in most cases.

Alissa let out a long sigh at that thought and shook her head to clear her mind. Such thoughts would likely not even come into play until the far future, and at the present, she had more obvious problems to deal with. What Sirs Marsten and Inolet said about the Temple Guard bothered her indeed, and she could see the logic behind their request, both from a pragmatic and from an emotional point of view.

It was rather troublesome that even while a war raged on, those far in the back, in the safety of the capital, would play such power games over each other for their own benefits, but it was not something unexpected. Such things were just as commonly seen in Alissa’s previous world, so she had not been all that surprised to learn that this world was no different in that regard.

Apparently people with ambition and a desire for more power remained the same no matter which world they were in.

At least she hoped that such an internal conflict wouldn’t affect those at the frontlines too much, given how little direct control either the royal family or the temple had over those who were fighting out there. In fact, a majority of the highest ranked commanders on the frontlines were people who considered themselves part of the old knights’ faction, who remained neutral in the power struggle between the crown and the temple.

Much like Sirs Marsten and Inolet, they mostly cared about their duty, which was to protect those who were unable to protect themselves behind them. These people had little in terms of ambition or worldly desires, almost an ideal depiction of how a noble knight should be, even, in many ways. While Sir Inolet did mention that sometimes there were some bad eggs amongst the bunch, apparently most of the people aligned with their faction were just those who wished to do their utmost to defend their homeland and families.

They said that the commander on their next post was one of their old comrades as well. The group who would depart there would just be their party of now eleven people, pretty much, with their four “chaperones” on top, though the fort would also send out convoys heading out to different directions on the same day as well in order to disguise the movement as just another routine one.

Some part of Alissa wished that they could do away with such deceptions and do things in a more aboveboard manner, but she understood its necessity as well. Perhaps if they were stronger they could move more openly, but at the moment, if they did not hide their movements, there was the ever-present risk of the demons finding out about said movements and sending a strike team to cut them off, which would have ended in an ugly way, no matter what.

After all, even if Alissa, Ethan, and Joshua had [Respawn] and could just revive elsewhere in the worst case – as long as they avoided live capture, that was – none of the rest of their party had such an advantage.